Chapter 209.2

Chapter 209.2

“Do you want to be happy with that woman?”

Natalia tested him, moving her dry lips. His blank face crumpled as if a sheet of paper had been wrinkled. Kia leaned forward and matched her eye level as if she’d said something absurd.

“No. I want forever.”

His ink-dark eyes glinted. He didn’t need happiness, he only wanted Sonya forever, no separations, no longing, just the two of them in the world. Killing intruders was easy.

For Kia, raised like a boogeyman, it had always been the simplest, most convenient choice. But over the past half year he’d learned Sonya could not be taken that way.

If he exposed the truth that Yuri Solzhenitsyn, long thought missing, had actually been serving as an NIS agent for more than ten years, would Sonya come to him? Kia tightened the rattling chain in his hands and squeezed his eyes shut.

No, Sonya would gouge his eyes out the moment he tried that. He might remove Lee Wooshin, but he would lose Sonya too. A laugh of defeat escaped him.

‘Kia, someday someone will pull you out of that place. Someone will lift you from the pit.’

No. That pit was their precious home, their origin. If Kia had discovered a world full of light-

‘I would take you deeper than now, farther down, and hide. I would flee the clinging sunlight and run into the deeper underground. I would hold you tight and gladly fall into the abyss.’

If it meant a place where only the two of them could exist.

Even if that place were hell itself.

Kia slowly removed the cross necklace that felt like an old skin.

“Snap out of it. Where in the world is forever? Is that woman your god? Ugh!”

He shoved the cross into Natalia’s mouth with a sneer.

“Oh, so she was my cross after all.”

“Ugh, uhh!”

“That’s why from the start I wanted to tear agents like you apart.”

When he pressed the end of the cross, a blade sprung out from inside. Natalia’s mouth tore and blood flowed.

Gagging and choking, a few drops of blood splattered on Kia’s pale face. Natalia thrashed but kept her eyes wide. Her words slurred and mangled, yet she refused to yield.

“But God… you meet Him when you’re dead, don’t you? Pfft!”

Clang!

The cross hit the floor. Kia froze for a moment, his pupils shifting slowly before his face suddenly brightened. He rose from his seat with a strange calm.

“Where are you going? You’re not leaving me tied up, you bastard!”

Natalia screamed with a ragged voice, but he ignored her completely, merely straightening his disheveled clothes.

“I’m going to get her.”

This time for real.

To somewhere no one could ever find.

Leaving Lee Wooshin alone in this world was his next move.

*

Late at night, after all the servants had gone to sleep, Lee Wooshin prepared carefully for any unexpected situation. He placed a fur shafka hat on her head, adjusted a thick winter mask to hide her face, and held her close as they walked to the frozen lake. Kneeling on one knee, he slipped a pair of skates onto Seoryeong’s feet.

“What if the ice breaks again?”

“It’s frozen thicker than before. It’ll be fine.”

“I’ve never skated before.”

“Our Han Seoryeong picks up everything fast.”

“Well, that’s true.”

When she hesitated but nodded, Wooshin let out a quiet laugh.

“Still, don’t get cocky. You’ve lost a lot of muscle. Do you have any idea how many times I bit my tongue keeping my temper while training you? I had to put ointment on my tongue every night, just to raise this strong, healthy body. Now it’s all soft and squishy.”

“That’s not…”

“Forget training. This time, I’m really done.”

“…”

“Stay out of the defense business for good.”

He took her hand and stepped onto the ice. While Wooshin glided smoothly across, Seoryeong stumbled, struggling for balance. But keeping her footing was something she’d always been good at, and soon she found her rhythm, moving steadily along the slippery surface.

She let her body follow his lead. With their hands locked together, even the Russian winter wind felt crisp and clear.

“Ah!”

Suddenly, her skate caught on a rough patch of ice. Wooshin grunted and wrapped his arms around her waist, spinning them both in circles.

Seoryeong clung to his forearm, barely steadying herself before they toppled over.

Pulling down her mask, she exhaled a cloud of cold breath. With their bodies pressed close and eyes meeting, it felt for a moment as if they were the only two people left in the world.