Chapter Text
The first few days are a blur. Nurses hover over her, the police are in and out to ask her about Jang Han-Seok, Vincenzo, and everything in between. Of course, they would choose now to start paying attention. She keeps repeating the same things, “I’m fine, I don’t know why, I don’t know where he is now, I had nothing to do with it.” and finally, they all start to believe her.
Mr. Nam helps her check out of the hospital, her arm still confined to a sling. He drops her off at home with a concerned gaze and a promise to call and check on her later. Truthfully, she can’t wait to be alone. She was beginning to feel suffocated by the questions and the gazes and the constant reminders of reality, of death and disappearance.
Her first move is to collapse on her couch, inciting a flare of pain in her injured shoulder where she hadn’t sat carefully. She thinks about how, if he were here, he would’ve guided her to the couch himself and fluffed the pillows before letting her sit. This line of thinking sends another flare of pain, but this time to her chest, maybe straight to her heart, even. She lets out as deep of a sigh as she can manage, leaning back in a way that won’t affect her shoulder.
You’re so dramatic, Cha-young, the voice in her subconscious whispers. “Shut up,” she whispers back. Soon enough, she’s falling into a dreamless sleep.
Talking to cops and reporters will feel like a cakewalk compared to today, she thinks to herself. She’s finally recovered enough to go back to Jipuragi, and with returning to Geumga Plaza comes talking to the tenants. She’s not sure what level of knowledge they currently have, knowing rumors run rampant and the whole story could be twisted into something entirely baseless by now, but they deserve to know the basics. That he’s gone. That he’s not coming back. That he can’t, even if he wants to. Cha-young knows their attachment to Vincenzo, knows their passionate personalities and feels it mirrored in herself, but she’s not sure she can do it today. The loud talking over each other, the rapid-fire questions she won’t be able to answer, the fact that at least one person will probably be drawn to tears. She knows it’s all well-meaning, all based around their loyalty and respect, but she feels exhausted still. She’s been trying to think about him as little as possible, which is easy enough when she’s at home. They never spent much time at her place, only the rare occasion when they would have a makgeolli session at hers instead of his, though those memories are precious enough to give her pause when she stares at the bottles in her kitchen. Now they remind her of both her father and of him, of his soft and relaxed demeanor as they drank hours into the night, before she hugged him in an attempt to test her feelings. But when she gets back to the plaza, the reminders will really start to dig their heels in, and she’s been dreading that most of all.
Hong Cha-young. You survived a gunshot wound. You can handle a simple conversation with your family. This is nothing, she reassures herself.
Her sling is finally gone, allowing her the freedom to pound her fist against her chest for more confidence, except she hits a little too hard and dissolves into a quick coughing fit. Already off to a great start, she thinks.
She guesses she should’ve expected them all to be in the hall waiting for her, but this was an honor normally reserved for Vincenzo. She can’t quite place her finger on the mood, feeling a sense of welcoming and solemness at the same time. A warm hand gets placed on her shoulder, several murmurs of “how are you feeling?”, “are you okay?”, “let us know if you need any help!” start to echo through the crowd. A simple throat clear is enough for her to get their attention.
“Can we have a family meeting?” She asks, straight and to the point. They all begin to nod in agreement before the eventual suggestion of heading to Toto’s restaurant. Mr. Nam is waiting for her at the back of the group and places a light hand on her back before giving her a reassuring smile.
“Welcome back, Ms. Hong.”
The meeting is missing two guests: Mr. Lee still in the hospital recovering from his stab wound, and the man of the hour himself. The tenants are beginning to dissolve into their usual chatters, talking amongst themselves while slowly rising in volume. She begins to look to her left for her partner, to get his usual nod to start, but stops herself mid-action when she remembers he’s not there. The pang in her chest is back, and she doesn’t expect it to fade much today. She reaches for a glass to clink, too tired to raise her voice in order to call them to attention. When they’ve all quieted and turned to her to listen, she takes a breath. This shouldn’t be that hard, but she feels like a parent about to tell their children that their pet has gone missing and may never come home. She almost chuckles to herself, considering how Vincenzo would hate being compared to something like a household cat. Someone says a quiet “Ms. Hong?” and she realizes she’s taken too much time trying to prepare herself.
“Right, okay. As I’m sure you all have noticed, Vincenzo Cassano is no longer here.” She regrets her word choice immediately, as they all begin to assume he’s dead. She claps her hands together for attention. “I don’t mean that as if he’s no longer with the living, he’s alive.” The tenants all breathe a collective sigh of relief, beginning to point fingers at her for worrying them as though they weren’t the ones to misinterpret and interrupt her in the first place. Mi-Ri is the first to speak up, “but, he’s coming back, right?” Cha-young bows her head slightly as they all look to each other, hopeful that she’ll answer positively. Her prolonged silence must speak for itself as the mood quickly turns somber. Mr. Tak is the first to break the silence.
“Then, we should raise a toast. To him finishing what he set out to do. He took care of those Babel bastards just like he said he would, and he made us into a family. So, we should celebrate.” The whole table agrees in almost perfect unison and the room changes into a flurry of movement as drinks are passed and filled. Their loud cheers echo throughout the room and Cha-young hopes that somehow, someway, he can feel it wherever he is now.
She’s in her office perusing through a pile of paperwork that seriously, is giving her a headache just to look at, when the first postcard arrives. The picture contains a beautiful, lush island, water bluer than Cha-young has ever seen. Instinctively, she knows who the postcard is from. She doesn’t have any other friends, (“friends”), that live elsewhere, that would send her a postcard, that know her work’s address. She doesn’t want to start hoping, start getting ideas about things like futures and promises kept, but it feels like it can only be from him. In fake protest, she doesn’t read the card immediately. She leaves it on her desk, picture facing up, glancing at the green island every so often when her eyes start to glaze over from legal jargon.
Eventually, Mr. Nam leaves for the night, with a “don’t work too late!” and a wave. She still hasn’t flipped over the postcard. She spares a glance at his empty desk, feels that all-too-familiar burn of missing him, the way he would steal looks at her as they worked through the night, using the pen she gave him to take notes. She leans back in her chair, swipes a hand over her eyes, begins to prepare herself to check the postcard. When she turns it over, she takes in his neat handwriting, wondering if he used her pen to write it. The note is short; a brief, “I’m safe, don’t work too hard while your shoulder is still healing.” She lets out a sigh of relief. Knowing Vincenzo can’t be killed and having the confirmation that he’s alive are two entirely different beasts. She chuckles to herself at the final line, as if she can feel him next to her nagging about her workload when she’s supposed to be recovering. The chuckle gives way to a sigh, as most of her happy thoughts around him trail into sadness inevitably. She pins the card to their board in the firm, stares at it from afar. “I miss you,” she whispers into the air and lets it go.
The fifth postcard contains the same picture as the others but carries an unfamiliar Italian phrase. She translates it to the best of her ability, coming up with this:
La famiglia è la patria del cuore.
Family is where the heart is.
God, that’s cheesy. But like her heart knows her better than her brain, her eyes start to well with tears and she can feel the flimsy wall she’s been using to hold back her pain falling down. She swipes at her cheeks, wipes the tears before remembering the last time someone had wiped her tears for her, in a hospital bed, before she asked him not to say goodbye. And just like that, the dam is broken. She doesn’t know how long she’s there, hunched over in her chair, tears streaming. The spell breaks as fast as it was cast and she suddenly feels drained to her bones, dried of all the liquid in her body. The office feels too big, his absence glaringly obvious, the gaping hole in her chest even bigger, and she wishes she could soothe it.
The ninth card is about the Lees' newborn, Dal-rae. He asks Cha-young to send his regards to his goddaughter, which, regards? He’s so old-fashioned. And she’s a newborn, she can’t understand words. Actions are better. She’d rather see you in person, she thinks bitterly. Or maybe it’s just her who would rather see him in person. Against her will, the thought of Vincenzo being a godfather to the Lees’ baby sends a feeling of warmth through her chest.
Wait. He’s a godfather now. Haha! She laughs to herself about making a Mafia-godfather related joke, before she remembers she can’t tell it to him. It’s getting old, collecting thoughts and stories and memories she wishes she could share with him. She might as well be keeping a log at this point, she’s had so many things to say. In her defense, they used to share everything. They went to work together, ate together, and for a few days there even lived together. She doesn’t know when their partnership had morphed into what felt like old best friends, but she’d never had a best friend before, and therefore never had one to miss. It’s a painful feeling, not being able to reach out and tap his shoulder with her bunny massager to tell him a Mafia joke that he’ll no doubt pretend to be annoyed at.
She’s in the office with Mr. Nam late one night, deep into working on Ms. Oh’s case, when she makes a decision.
“Do you want to go get drinks?” She asks, miming knocking back a shot. He straightens out the papers he’s holding, lets out an enthusiastic, “sure!” before moving to grab his things. She’s on her sixth, (or is it her seventh?) shot when she brings him up.
“Damn it, I’m so pissed off!” She exclaims with a fist to the table as if to emphasize her point. The sudden outburst makes Mr. Nam jump, sloshing a bit of his drink. Before he can say anything, she continues. “It’s been nine months and I still miss him. Isn’t there a time limit to these kinds of things? Ooh, like an expiration date! Yeah! I’m at my expiration date. That’s it. I’m done missing him, no more.” Mr. Nam starts to speak but she’s not quite finished yet.
“I told myself, this whole time. I knew he wasn’t going to stay. I asked him all the time, and the answer never changed. Do the job, leave Korea, no exceptions. Hong Cha-young, you have no business getting attached to a man who’s leaving, you are smarter than that. Except, I am not smarter than that. Not at all! I got attached anyways. Hong Cha-Young, you are so stupid! How did I pass law school?” Her elbow starts to slide a little from where it’s propping her head against the table and she straightens up. She’s afraid to look at her drinking companion, to see pity in his eyes. But when she finally does meet his eyes, she just sees understanding.
“Did you ever tell him how you feel?” He asks in a gentle voice, one that surprisingly makes her want to cry.
And just like that, the stories start pouring out of her; the shared kiss at the museum, his personal promise to come back, the way he’d been willing to die for her that last night. She tells him about the time she spent looking for a good Italian phrase to say to him--something that might indicate to him that he was important to her, about how she ran through the airport like a cliché just to say it to him before he left. She tells him that she regrets not being more explicit about her feelings, regrets spending so much time assuming it was unrequited or that it would just be too painful to be together and have to part. She thinks about regret, about how despite his warnings, she was still left with an abundance of it. She tells him she wonders how things could’ve been different if she had said more, if he had said more. He speaks up for the first time with a, “with you two, I don’t think you ever needed to say it. I think you just knew.” And damn, if that doesn’t send a bit of a splinter into her heart.
For a while, she didn’t have a gauge on his feelings. She knew he wanted to leave, she inferred he thought himself undeserving of love, but he had never actually confirmed that for her. Love can’t be dodged anyways; she thinks to herself. It just grabs ahold of you, whether you want it to or not. She had fought the urge several times to tell him that just because he’s a villain doesn’t mean he doesn’t love; she sees it in him constantly, the capability he has to love. But she hadn’t wanted to go down that road, hadn’t wanted to get into the implications of them and love. She’s several more shots in when she finally takes a break from spilling her soul. She’s not like this; doesn’t share her feelings, doesn’t pine over a man. But apparently, Vincenzo brings out all kinds of unexpected sides of her, from villainy to schoolgirl crushing.
She knows she must have given Mr. Nam more than he bargained for, (and enough gossip to last an entire year if she’s honest), but he just gives her hand a comforting pat before saying, “he’ll keep his promise, Ms. Hong.”
She stumbles into her childhood home, kicking her stilettos into the kitchen, too drunk to be bothered with manners and organization. He’ll keep his promise, she hears Mr. Nam’s voice from earlier replay in her mind.
“Ha! He’s not exactly known for keeping promises.”
But you’re the one who told him promises can be broken out of necessity, the voice in the back of her mind says.
“Aish, what does that have to do with anything? It doesn’t change the fact that he broke the only other promise he ever made me. I don’t know why he bothered to make it in the first place. He doesn’t know that he’ll be able to come back. I mean, what is he, a crystal ball? A psychic? Absolutely not! Just a man! A man who breaks promises!” She cackles to herself wildly before it turns into tears. The tears only serve to make her angry and she stomps her feet before willing the tears to go back into her eyes. “No more crying! Hong Cha-young, you’re better than this.” She manages to stumble to her bedroom without injury and collapses into bed fully clothed. Tomorrow, she’ll stop crying over him. Tomorrow, she’ll get to work on getting his mother justice. Tomorrow, she’ll put on her armor and go back to being the leader Geumga needs.
The eleventh card just says a simple, “Thank you.” She knows exactly what for, has been hard at work on his mother’s case. Though she hasn’t earned a thank you just yet, as the case still hasn’t been won. These days, she’s found herself at a dead end, struggling to find a final blow to win it once and for all. She could hire another employee, another lawyer to help her, but she can’t bring herself to do it. She pictures someone else at his desk, taking over his space, and feels like she might be sick. No, it’s fine. We don’t need any new hires, and I certainly don’t need a new partner, she thinks to herself. She knows why, knows that no one could ever fill the hole he left, but she disguises it by telling herself she’s completely capable of doing this work alone. She was a star at Wusang, and she’s only gotten better since then. She can handle Jipuragi herself, the way she had intended to in the beginning.
She doesn’t know when exactly it happened, the shift in their dynamic. She remembers the night she hugged him for the second time, as a test about her feelings. She lied to him, then. She’d known that she felt something for him beyond it just being a matter of danger. But what was the point in telling him the truth? Even if he had reciprocated, he was supposed to leave. They were work partners, battling towards a cause where his end goal would be to go as suddenly as he had appeared. She couldn’t help that she already had an attachment, but she could try to stop it from getting worse, cut things off before they even began. Except, it doesn’t work. He loses their second bet and she finds herself inexplicably drawn closer to him, close enough to kiss. His eyes had opened and contained no surprise at the lack of distance between them, before she panicked and flicked him admittedly too hard. She mentions that she’d love to see an enemy get splashed with pig’s blood at least once, and just like that he’s arranged it for her. And then they go undercover as Mr. Anderson and Ms. Benning.
The kiss that night may have started as a distraction to keep up their ruse, but she had felt it was her only chance to express her feelings—just once. The problem occurred when he kissed her back. That was most definitely not expected, but they both had given into the kiss as though they wanted to take advantage of a chance they might never get again.
Soon, they’re back to dealing with business and preparing for court. His mother dies and she feels her heart caving for the boy he never got to be and the man he is now, the boy who misses his mother and the man she loves. Then there’s the whole cliched airport goodbye only for him to come back that same night. He never answers her question, if he came back for her, but she thinks she knows the answer. That night, she can’t help but be taken back to the night he threw a party at the plaza to block demolition. He had looked so cool and confident, wine glass in hand, adorning a fancy Booralro suit, greeting party members in both Italian and Korean. She tells him this much, brings up his current Booralro suit that’s been ripped due to his altercation from earlier. He tells her, in his own Vincenzo fashion, that he was glad to meet her under the guise of being glad she knew Booralro. Her heart had pounded like it was a confession, like he was telling her he was glad to have been seen, that he was glad it was her who saw him. She should’ve known letting him go was never going to be easy, no matter how hard she fought against it.
The twelfth postcard arrives on the day she wins Ms. Oh’s retrial, and it feels like both a reward and like he has some kind of secret intuition informing him how important the day is. That morning, she had suited up with a set of earrings that had come along with the eighth postcard, hoping they would help her feel like he was next to her in the courtroom. The twelfth card is waiting for her at the office after she wins the trial and contains the same Italian phrase she said to him all those months ago, causing her to smile ruefully. She flashes the card to Mr. Nam, who gives a knowing laugh before she pins it on the board with the rest of the matching cards. He hands her an invitation to an event for diplomatic relations between Korea and Italy but declines her offer to join due to prior plans (a paper airplane competition).
Cha-young no longer feels like an outsider at these sorts of events, slowly making her way past people she recognizes vaguely, some more familiar than others. She settles in front of a painting before she hears the sound of footsteps next to her. She doesn’t really have an interest in seeing who it is, sure that they’ll make themselves known any minute now—whether to hit on her with some cheesy pickup line or to mansplain the painting to her.
“War and art are best observed from a distance.”
And that voice. It’s not a stranger. It’s one she’d know anywhere; one she’s probably hallucinating. Should she go to therapy more? Hallucinations are definitely a sign of bigger issues.
After a second of conversing amongst herself, she finally turns towards the voice. And it’s him. It really is him. She drinks in the sight; his signature Booralro suit, his loose strands of hair falling into his eyes, his pale skin but his healthy demeanor. He looks good, really good. Not that he usually doesn’t, but the last time she had seen him, he’d been splattered with someone else’s blood—haunted look in his eyes as they said their final goodbyes before he was on the run from the home he’d never expected to find. It brings her a sense of peace, to see him look like this, like a better version of himself.
“Buona serata, mademoiselle.”