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He notices it while they’re studying.
In many ways, 3L isn’t that much different from 1L. He still ends up gravitating towards her, perpetually in her orbit. He still finds his gaze drawn to her. But perhaps, he’s no longer the only one. Now she looks for him too, almost as many times as he does her, and not only for studying. When before he could freely look without any repercussions, now he has to be careful because their gazes catch more often than not.
They’ve become closer, he likes to think.
Close enough that they can study together late at night. Sure, they did that before anyway, but what’s different this time is that she seems to have let her guard down enough around him to let him see her right after she’s taken a bath.
She claimed she was rushing and needed him to answer her questions asap because the exam was tomorrow, and so they find themselves side-by-side poring over her notes.
It drives him to the point of distraction – the way she perches on her seat, toes peeking from her overgrown sweats, how the mass of damp hair she’s haphazardly put up in a high bun curls wild around her face, how some strands escape the confines of the tie to drift lazily while brushing her nape and the fine baby hairs shining faintly gold in the light from the overhead lamp.
There’s something soft about her, tonight, something open. And despite that they’re studying for a very stressful exam, 3L Kang Sol can now handle the pressure. That’s another thing that’s changed. She no longer drowns in her work, but slowly and steadily paddles through the massive waves.
Han Joon Hwi wonders if this is how she’s like at home, when he notices something on her nape. She’s wearing an overly large Hankuk sweatshirt, and belatedly, Joon Hwi realizes it’s the one he’s been missing since a while back. It would be prime teasing material except it seems like she’s not wearing anything underneath from the way the back of the hood drags down low behind her neck. They feel the slight heat of the summer months even at night. Even Joon Hwi is just wearing a plain t-shirt instead of the long-sleeved sweaters he prefers.
He would’ve teased her by now, if not for that awareness to strike him like lightning – his shirt on her body, and Joon Hwi doesn’t know how to process that information. The air-condition must be broken since he feels hotter for some reason. He coughs and stretches, and that’s when he notices the mark.
It’s placed low on her nape that it could easily be covered by the turtleneck sweaters she liked to wear, but he can clearly see it from his vantage point. It’s a small stylized sun, beautiful and delicate, and Joon Hwi in a fit of insanity wants to run his fingers over it, for the pad of his thumb to trace the outline. I plead guilty under insanity defense, Your Honor.
Would she be ticklish?
To stop himself from making a monumental fool of himself, he clenches his fingers together, clears his throat and asks, “You have a tattoo Kang Sol?”
He thought she’d react the same way she did when he called her sunbae, but she just smiles, testing Joon Hwi’s already fraying control. She touches the back of her neck, the slight dip where the mark is, and Joon Hwi rebels, wanting to be the one to do it.
“Yeah, I drew it. Me and Dan unnie were supposed to get matching ones except…”
Kang Sol trails off, biting her lip, and Joon Hwi nods, not needing her to continue.
“I’ve never noticed it before?” Sure it would have been covered by her turtleneck sweaters, but that wasn’t the only thing she wore, and it was weird that he hadn’t noticed it in the entire time they were together. For Joon Hwi not to have noticed anything about her, of all people, when ever since that first class in Criminal Code his gaze had permanently been drawn to her as if magnetized by an unseen force.
“I usually hide it with concealer. I got it in High School, and I have no plans of removing it since it reminds me of Dan unnie, but for a future lawyer to have a tattoo,” Kang Sol shakes her head, “With my track record in juvie, I can just imagine the flood of post-its and rumors if someone else saw. People here can be so judgmental.”
“And yet?”
She gets distracted from her mutterings about discrimination and stereotypes to look up at him, “Oh, I didn’t have time to apply it tonight. And I thought, what a bother. I don’t think I have to. I mean, it’s you Joon Hwi.”
It’s you Joon Hwi.
He has to stop himself from reading into it - tries to, but ends up reading into it anyway.
And another thing he can’t stop himself from doing. “Can I touch it?”
If Kang Sol is surprised by the abruptness of his question, it doesn’t show. Much. Mostly, she just looks like she did when she was thinking about why he would stay out in the cold night to stand guard over her and her younger sister. He didn’t pull out his trump card when she was teasing him about his trauma of dogs, but that was one question that he wasn’t ready to answer. He won’t lie, and especially not to her.
“Sure.” She turns her face away from his so that her neck is on full display, in a subtle gesture of trust, and Joon Hwi doesn’t know what to do with the feeling. He lifts his hand slowly, as if about to touch a skittering creature, and the comparison isn’t that far off. It shouldn’t be as big a production as this, with him just touching her neck, but he stills anyway right before he makes contact.
He traces a ray of sunbeam. Her skin has started to warm, and she squirms a little. He mutters a soft, ‘sorry,’ before tracing the other rays, eight all in all. When he gets to the center, he circles it over and over in a spiral motion, the mere act, a bit hypnotizing to himself.
She giggles, high and girlish, so unlike her usual self that he stops his movements, his finger still on her nape. Ah, so she was ticklish after all.
She turns back to him, and this picture of her, eyes bright, color in her cheeks, her in his sweatshirt, and his touch imprinted on her nape – this is a picture he is sure he’ll remember even when he was already old and grey. He’ll remember her, this exact moment, in perfect clarity.
He doesn’t need photographic memory.
It’s embedded in his heart.
Joon Hwi gets her sunflowers for her birthday, bright and tall, a bouquet of them wrapped in baby-blue ribbon. Kang Sol feels like her cheeks are about to fall off with how wide she’s smiling.
She didn’t realize how much things had shifted. Though it didn’t appear to be so, there were times when she kept people at arms length. She had always been a tad wary of men, and it was no wonder when she had the type of father figures that she did.
But she always ends up going to Joon Hwi anyway. When did it all start to change? When did she start to look for him, not to discuss cases or to have him tutor her, but just to share everything that happened in her day? To hear his smart-alecky remarks, to have him argue with her, to eat ramyeun together – the list seems endless.
Ye-seul has been on a flower language kick recently so she excitedly shakes her shoulder, “Unnie, that means ‘I see the sunshine in your smile’.”
Kang Sol is sure he didn’t mean to send it with that meaning in mind. It was her birthday, and she remembers when he discovered her tattoo. He was pretty straightforward after all. But Ye-seul looks so excited that she doesn’t have the heart to let her down gently.
And anyway if they were talking about sunshine smiles, then these flowers would suit him more than her. Sometimes, the way he grinned, lopsided, as if he never experienced what he did, as if he was never betrayed, was so bright that it could probably power the entire university.
She knows he hides his scars deep in his heart, but she’ll be by him if only to help him continue to smile like that.
It becomes some sort of tradition between them. Every time a special event would come around or she’d do well in a test, he gave her flowers. Kang Sol thinks herself silly. In the past she would’ve demanded food as her reward, and yet she doesn’t admit that the prospect of a new bloom serves as great an incentive as not failing, or Professor Yang’s rare quirk of the mouth in approval. She passes with flying colors in her 3L, a far cry from her 1L days.
When they win their moot court competition in their third year, he gives her bluebells. She doesn’t fool herself into thinking it’s anything special, because he also gives Kang Sol B an expensive box of chocolates.
Regardless, she keeps it close to her heart.
Kang Sol B is the one to tell her what they mean this time. She looks at it speculatively, and then discreetly at Joon Hwi. Later when they’re in their room, she says out of the blue, “They mean ‘thank you’.”
As Kang Sol said, she wasn’t expecting anything more, but she was still touched, even if she thought that again, it should be her giving this to him if that was what it meant. She doesn’t know how she would have survived law school if not for him.
Kang Sol B looks like she wants to say something more, but looking at her roommate’s serene smile, she just says, “I’ll let you figure it out for yourself…unnie.” She turns back to her desk in a rush, but too late, Kang Sol has already enveloped her adorable roommate in a bear hug, the small bouquet of bellflowers safely deposited on her bed.
o
A case they’ve been working on at the legal clinic gets ruled in their favor, that of a mother asking for child support. They manage to successfully argue that the wayward husband should get a harsher penalty than the norm. It’s the first case where Kang Sol has taken the lead, and she’s managed to help their client win without any risk of flunking or suffering a single nosebleed through the entire endeavor. She pats herself on the back for small wins. When their client, Ye-seul, and Bok-gi had hugged her congratulating her for her hard work, she felt like she was at the top of the world.
Joon Hwi gets her a bouquet of roses this time around – a mix of yellow and orange roses, still sparkling with dew. It looks so much like sunshine that it invigorates her. Kang Sol feels like she can take on anything.
Or perhaps almost anything. Anything except Ye-seul’s and Bok-gi’s probing questions that make her wonder and second-guess herself.
Ye-seul fingers a yellow petal. “These are really beautiful unnie,” she says in awe.
“You can’t deny it,” she adds victoriously, “You’re the only one Joon Hwi oppa gives flowers to.”
“Yeah, but don’t you usually go for red flowers when declaring your love. It’s what I would do,” Bok-gi adds while discreetly looking at Ye-seul.
“Aren’t yellow roses supposed to mean friendship?” Bok-gi also adds before cowing slightly at Ye-seul’s slightly reproachful glare. “Sorry, sorry Ye-seul noona. I have no idea what I’m talking about,” he pleads frantically.
Kang Sol imagines Joon Hwi with red roses and snorts out a laugh. How cliché. “I like these better,” she says while softly touching an orange petal, “And anyway, I still don’t think there are hidden meanings to these. It’s Joon Hwi we’re talking about here. If he had something to say, he’d just say it. He doesn’t need flowers to do that.”
Ye-seul and Bok-gi look at each other like they want to say something but ultimately opt not to. In the meantime, Ye-seul had been typing something rapid fire on her phone. She looks down and smiles before holding up the screen to Kang Sol triumphantly.
“See unnie, orange roses mean enthusiasm, which describes you perfectly and,” she snickers scandalously, “desire.”
Kang Sol admits that she jolts at that, remembers a late night at the copy room, the press of the pads of his thumb and fingers on her skin and warming it up. She had looked back at him laughing, intending to tell him to stop since it tickled, but his eyes had looked black, absorbing any and all light that entered. He had stared at her as if she was a legal provision he was struggling to memorize, but would gladly do so anyway, because this was Joon Hwi, and the law was his life. Her words had died on her tongue, and they just stayed like that, his fingers still on her nape, and Kang Sol’s heart in her throat.
It never happened again though, so Kang Sol clears the fog from her mind, Bok-gi’s words interrupting her thoughts.
“Friendship and desire? Man, hyung is the master of mixed messages even when he’s not saying anything.”
“Don’t make conclusions when you’re not sure if your premise is correct. Get your facts straight first,” Kang Sol recites automatically, “Like I said, I don’t think he’s giving these with that much thought put into it. All flowers are the same to guys, and to make sure he didn’t send the wrong message, he was extra careful and made sure not to get red roses.”
Kang Sol is sure of her conclusions. After all, she knows Joon Hwi best, doesn’t she?
Ye-seul looks like she wants to argue, but refrains and pouts instead.
Bok-gi ventures carefully. “Noona, would it be so bad? It’s hyung!”
Would what be so bad? Kang Sol thinks. Letting herself hope?
“Of course it would,” she stays uncharacteristically quiet. “He likes someone else, and I don’t want anything that would ruin our friendship.” She manages a strained smile.
Ye-seul looks ready to protest, but at that exact moment, Joon Hwi enters the legal clinic asking what they were up to.
For a while, the discussion is left forgotten.
o
Joon Hwi is the valedictorian of their batch, as expected, though it was a close match between him and her roommate. Kang Sol B seethes but bows out gracefully, and Kang Sol jokes that she had been rooting for her roommate over him, what a shame. Joon Hwi grins, not believing it for a second.
He gifts her a graduation bouquet, holding her hands as he hands it over to her, “Here you go, sunbae.” And Kang Sol has never been one to be shy, but throughout the years there have been times when she’s been afraid to look Joon Hwi in the eye.
To dispel this strange atmosphere, she hugs him, and to her surprise, this may be the first time she’s done so. She doesn’t need to get on her tip-toes and her head fits perfectly in the crook of his neck. One of his hands automatically go to her waist, while his other lightly brushes her nape over the tattoo they both know is there concealed, and yet exposed by the knot she has her hair in. He cups it protectively, and Kang Sol must, must, imagine it, or else she’ll explode. She must imagine the press of his lips to the side of her head. He must be wine-drunk. She must be. They all are, and they have cause to be, with law school finally behind them.
While listening to his valedictory speech, she cradles the bouquet. They’re a colorful mix of yellow, orange, white, pink, and lilac blooms of the same funnel-shaped flower. Ye-seul is beside her giving the flowers a strangely intense look.
Kang Sol decides to indulge her since it was a special occasion after all, “What do these mean then,” she whispers conspirationally.
Ye-seul looks at her, gaze direct with unshed tears. She smiles a watery smile full of feeling. “They’re freesias unnie. They mean…they mean ‘I trust you’.” She gazes at Kang Sol meaningfully.
Kang Sol finds her breath catches.
Joon Hwi is hammered. The rest of The Study Group isn’t that much better. In various states of intoxication, they go home one by one, hugs, kisses, well-wishes, and promises to catch up being tossed around.
As always, Joon Hwi and Kang Sol are together. She’s been complaining about not getting him a gift for being valedictorian, only to joke that the most she could afford was a bowl of ramyeun.
“Don’t worry. There is something you can give me,” he says while swaying towards her. She looks alarmed and prepared to catch him if he falls, and wow he must be drunker than he thought, because it would be so easy to make a mistake now as he focuses on her lips painted bright pink, the same shade as the freesias he’d given her.
“What do you want?” Kang Sol has her hands on her hips, and even after offering to get him a gift, she still looks like she’s challenging him.
Joon Hwi is drunk, but unlike before when he’d been wallowing in sorrow, he feels overwhelmingly happy. He’s valedictorian, and about to become a Prosecutor. He has Sol by his side, and the rest of his friends and professors. He has everything going for him. But it’s the kind of punch-drunk happiness that has sharp edges. As he remembers a conversation overheard, he thinks it’s the kind of happiness that also makes him want to cry as it dawns on him like a blow to the back of the head that his uncle isn’t here anymore. He must still have his wits about him though because he doesn’t say the first thing that comes to mind when she asked that question.
He grins at her in answer, and that’s how they find themselves at a tattoo parlor in Gangnam at midnight. It’s bright, well-lit, and simple, with white walls and wood furnishings. The tattoo artist is a woman with a bob cut and an intricate mural on her arm. All in all, everything looks nice.
Kang Sol looks incredulous. “You want me to pay for your tattoo?”
“I’m paying for it,” he waves off.
“Then that would defeat the purpose of it being a gift,” she states with her hands on her hips again. “Am I just here for moral support? Not that I think that this is a good idea. Lest you’ve forgotten, you’re drunk, and this is too similar to those times people get drunken tattoos of their lovers only to regret it in the morning. What was it they were called again,” she snaps her fingers, before pointing at him with narrowed eyes, “Stamp Tramps! Think about this very carefully Joon Hwi. You’re getting a stamp tramp, and I bet you all the ramyeun in the world you’re gonna regret it in the morning.”
He laughs. “I’m not that drunk.” He is, but she doesn’t need to know that. She only narrows her eyes even further. “And no, it wouldn’t be much of a gift if you were just here as moral support.” He passes her a piece of paper lying around and a pen he’d borrowed from the artist. “I want you to draw it for me, the design for the tattoo.”
Kang Sol looks dumbstruck. “Joon Hwi…”
He interrupts her before she can finish. “You said you got your tattoo done because it reminded you of your sister. I want one to remind me of my uncle.” It is one reason, but not the entire one. He wonders if she realizes the implication of the whole thing.
Kang Sol looks like she’s seriously considering him before taking the pen and paper from him. “All right,” she sighs in resignation, “What do you want it to be?”
“The moon.” She quirks her eyebrow at that. “I like the moon,” he offers, before continuing, “Can you make the design like yours?” He gestures to her neck with his eyes, and Kang Sol covers it with a hand, slightly embarrassed. Joon Hwi doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of seeing her like this.
At her unspoken question, he hesitates a bit before answering seriously. “You said you wanted to get matching ones with your sister, but that you weren’t able to. Maybe you can think of this as the next best thing,” he shrugs, hands in his pockets, slightly nervous.
She blushes, but doesn’t try to hide it this time around. The pink in her cheeks matches the pink in her lips and the bouquet she carried with her all the way here. “A-arraso. Fine then,” she tries to make up for it with the brusqueness in her speech, but Joon Hwi can’t help but think, adorable, lovely, beautiful, a veritable thesaurus of words he’s kept to himself.
“Anyway, it’s only this one time. When have you ever known me to be impulsive?” It’s true, he’s always made carefully laid plans, and he’s always thought on his actions before making them.
At that, Kang Sol just laughs. “You. Are. The Most. Impulsive. Person. I Know!” Each word is punctuated with pokes at his chest. She probably means to rebuke, but the contact just makes him feel drunker than he already was. “Who was the one who risked going to jail for a convoluted plan to save our professor? You’re even more impulsive than me!”
He’s not, he really isn’t. If he was, then he’d just blurt all the words he’s hidden, everything he’s felt for these past four years.
She does finish the design, and Joon Hwi finds it to be perfect, a stylized waxing crescent moon.
Now to decide where to put it.
He shows her the inside of his wrist in suggestion, and she cradles his fist in her hands. She brushes the knuckles once made bloody in anger so long ago and he wonders if she’s remembering the same thing as him. Impulsively, he turns over his hand to encompass hers, also brushing the spot that once bore the mark of her frustrations.
They’re quiet for a while before Kang Sol says, “Not there. Getting a tattoo on the inside of your wrist hurts like a bitch,” startling a laugh out of Joon Hwi and dispelling the intimate mood.
He agrees. He wouldn’t be able to hide it either, even if he was wearing a suit.
“I know the perfect spot,” he says with a mischievous look, “You picked it yourself.”
“Do you need me to hold your hand?” Kang Sol asks, and Joon Hwi finds himself endeared. He doesn’t need it strictly speaking. He’s survived both military service and police academy after all. A needle is nothing. As for wanting it…
“Yes, thank you.”
Kang Sol could curse Joon Hwi. She could curse herself too now that she thinks about it, because she had somehow let them end up in this situation, the one where she’s holding Joon Hwi’s hand intertwined with hers, as he lies, shirtless, under a needle, getting her mark (Kang Sol could bang her head on the nearby table - her design!) permanently inked on his chest, right above his heart.
He grins roguishly at her, with not a hint of pain in his features, and Kang Sol’s heart starts. She tracks the planes and ridges of his muscles, so much bare flesh open to her gaze, and finds herself surprised at the vehemence she feels with another female’s hands on him.
She thinks of orange roses, and flushes violently. She can’t do this. Joon Hwi is the drunk one, not her. She can’t take advantage of him like this.
She recites provisions in her head to calm herself before noticing Joon Hwi’s eyes once again on her. It’s not a cheeky look this time around, but just a calm and soft one. It must be the lights, because it’s like he has stars in his eyes as he looks at her. He looks at her like she hung the moon he’s getting tattooed onto his chest.
She wants to slap both her hands on her cheeks, except one is still tightly clenched in his. He rubs his thumb over her knuckles, almost absently.
She thinks of soul mates and soul marks and how she abhorred the idea when Ye-seul was sharing the plot of this one novel she was reading. And yet she thinks about them now, and about what it means to choose to have a mark put on you anyway.
Joon Hwi doesn’t think much has changed for them ever since he became a Prosecutor and she became a Lawyer. They still regularly meet, with each other, and with the rest of the study group. She keeps her hair down nowadays, but it doesn’t stop the awareness, the knowing for Joon Hwi. Each time he thinks about it, he feels a tingling in the place where his heart should be, but Joon Hwi has always ever been pragmatic. He doesn’t believe in magic, nor does he believe in soul mates.
But he has dinners with her, her mother and her sister at least twice a month, and each time beats going back and eating ramyeun alone in his luxurious, yet empty apartment. She’d been able to move them to a better place, far away from the awful memories, although it was still small, she had joked.
He doesn’t know what she was talking about. It was just right. He’s still the one who ends up installing the CCTV for their new place, and she just shakes her head at his ridiculousness. He justifies, you can never be too careful.
Even when he was alone in his apartment, she still ends up going there to brainstorm or to just relax. She puts her hair up like she used to in law school, and doesn’t bother hiding her tattoo, and each time he sees it is a test of his restraint. He’s never minded being alone before. It’s not as if he had a big family in the first place, and he’s had time to get used to being an orphan, but he still can’t help feeling bereft and as empty as his apartment when she leaves.
She finally has her own car, but often lends it to her mother to use, which makes it so he’s the one who ends up driving her to her workplace, or picking her up before they meet up with Professor Yang at school. He really doesn’t mind.
It’s just, he doesn’t know what the hell they are or what they’re doing.
He doesn’t believe in anything without basis so of course he doesn’t believe in something predestined like soul mates. It’s far too dangerous for a prosecutor to believe in anything without evidence.
So why does she want to make him believe in anything?
Once, they end up going to his workplace together, she to meet up with a client being interviewed by another prosecutor.
They walk so close to each other that their shoulders brush, and Joon Hwi with his sharp hearing can pick up the whispers. Would it surprise her to know that he was different as a Prosecutor, so very different from himself when he was with her? Would it surprise her to know that people called him cold, eerily reminiscent of when he’d been called a law-ciopath accused of murdering his uncle? It probably surprises his work mates to find him walking with a woman, and for all that he remains mysterious to them, Joon Hwi cringes inside because he knows he’s an open book when he’s with her, that he can’t help his smile or his laugh whenever she rebuts him, that he can’t help the softness of his gaze which lands on her hair and her bright pink lipstick she wears like armor.
‘Is that Prosecutor Han?!’
‘I didn’t think he was even capable of smiling!’
‘You remember when he broke down that one politician’s story? He practically confessed then and there!’
‘He seems nicer with kids though…’
‘Aigoo, he has such a nice smile. He should do it more often. I wouldn’t mind being interrogated by him if he smiled at me like that.’
He pays it no mind and is about to open the door for her, when she, all of a sudden, hugs him close to her chest, right there at the entrance of the Public Prosecutors’ Building, with everyone stopping to gape and stare.
He’s thrown into a whirlwind of emotion and confusion. She’s always hated being talked about and giving reason for people to talk about her. He’s about to ask what she was doing when he sees something terrifying over her shoulder.
It was a portly lady walking her tiny Chihuahua. He hated them. The little ones were always the worst. They were unnatural in his candid opinion. In an instant he realizes what she’s doing, and can’t help the gratitude and self-pity. He’d have to bribe her with ramyeun for five years to get her to forget this.
He can’t help the self-pity, and he also can’t help curving his body over hers, and burying his nose in her neck to avoid seeing the monstrosity. Almost on instinct, one of his hands cups her nape. This close, he’s assaulted with the strong scent of flowers. It makes him heady. He ends up nosing her neck in a repeated motion. She shudders, and he feels her trembling from where she’s buried her face in his chest. Outside, it looks like she was crying and he was comforting her in a tender and yet intimately close embrace. His boss would probably have words with him later. But that’s better than him losing his cool here.
What would people think, he thinks wryly, if they knew it was the reverse? She was the one comforting him, and the sobs were just laughter she was trying to stifle.
“I hate you,” he says, eyes closed, still nosing her neck, not meaning it, never in his life meaning it.
“I love you too,” she says, the last of her laughter dying, and oh he’s the one trembling this time around.
As he hugs her closer, grateful for the excuse, he thinks that maybe he should thank the damn dog.
Their tradition with flowers continues. Surprisingly, it’s Kang Sol who sends the first bouquet since they graduated. It was Joon Hwi’s first case as a prosecutor, and as expected he had wrapped it up brilliantly.
She makes good on her promise to herself. When she hears her phone ring, she smiles.
“Why sunflowers?” Joon Hwi asks through the phone, and even without seeing his face, Sol can practically hear the beaming grin.
That’s why, she thinks, a similar grin breaking on her face. Lawyer Park Geun-Tae shoots her a curious look, and she waves it away before turning so he couldn’t see. He was too much of a gossip and he’d tease her relentlessly.
She wonders when it first started, that she found his smirks to be less aggravating and more comforting. She wonders when it first began, that she had started to look for him to see those smiles. At times though, they were still aggravating, albeit for a different reason this time around, like causing her heart to do unexplainable cartwheels in her chest when he flashed them at her.
He repays the favor eventually when she wins her first case as a Defense Lawyer. She fingers the delicate white ruffled petals while talking to him over the phone.
“Ji-ho’s pissed by the way,” he says exuberant, and Kang Sol can’t help but share in his joy even if it was at the expense of their dongsae, “But I know he wants to congratulate his noona too for doing such a great job.”
He never did say what flowers they were, and Ye-seul wasn’t as close by as before that Sol could easily ask her. She hums while taking a picture of the white flowers to make into her cellphone background.
She tries asking Lawyer Park, although her hackles were already preemptively raised.
“Are those from loverboy? Yah Kang Sol, if you’ve got an in with the Prosecution, could you tell Prosecutor Han to go easy on me once in a while?” Kang Sol rolls her eyes. Honestly, she wonders sometimes why she decided to join Lawyer Park’s firm of all places, even if it was her name that came first, but then remembers Professor Yang and has to accept defeat. He does answer her though, “Aren’t those morning glories?”
A quick internet search has her thinking that the flowers on her desk were similar to the ones on her screen. Temptation looms now that she’s there, and though she vehemently argues with herself that she wasn’t falling for Ye-seul's insinuations – couldn’t fall for them because there was too much at stake – she ends up typing the words ‘flower’ and ‘meanings’ into her search engine anyway.
What she reads slowly wipes the smile off her face. The meanings are lovely, but the most common one that stands out is one; ‘love in vain’.
Kang Sol overanalyzes. She’s a pro at it. He must have sent it in connection to the sunflowers she sent. Suns and mornings, the surface connection is there. But if Ye-seul is to be believed and he really was sending those flowers with full knowledge and intent, then this must be his way of letting her down gently. She doesn’t blame him, especially after that stunt she pulled at his workplace. She just feels thankful that he also finds their friendship precious enough to give her an out without making things awkward. So Sol finds it easier to believe her first hypothesis – that there was really no deeper meaning to this at all.
He still sends flowers after that, to celebrate her little victories. He sends them so frequently that Sol finds that she doesn’t need to wear perfume anymore. Lawyer Park fake-gags in the other room and claims he’s allergic.
She never tries to search for their meanings again.
o
The law circle is small. Word of mouth spreads easily even from the prosecution and the courts to the private lawyers and public defenders.
And with someone like Prosecutor Han Joon Hwi, rising star and hotshot prosecutor that he was, news about him would spread like wildfire.
Kang Sol had heard it from a clerk who had heard it from a chief at the Public Prosecutor’s Building. Stone-cold Prosecutor Han had someone he was trying to woo.
‘Word was he was overheard while interrogating a suspect – some high school kid. The kid asked why he was a Prosecutor and if there was someone he liked, and he said there was and that one of the reasons why he was a Prosecutor was so he could impress her dad, or something like that.’
Judge Kang calls her immediately, the ceaseless ringing acting as her personal alarm clock.
“Before you get any ideas in your head, it’s not me.”
“Wow, not even a hello to your unnie,” Kang Sol yawns though she was already wide awake, “And before you say anything too, it’s obviously not me either. I’m happy for Joon Hwi, I really am. Maybe I’m just sad he didn’t tell me himself and I had to hear from gossip.”
Judge Kang has no rebuttal to that.
Kang Sol really does find it fine. It was like with the flowers. It was like with his testimony at the trial. Even if it wasn’t her former roommate, even if she had let herself hope, the picture was already complete without need to fill in the rest of the pieces.
It was never her.
o
She starts to date, if only, if only to treat herself. If only to salvage this relationship with Joon Hwi. She doesn’t want to take his chance away in case the girl he likes misunderstands his relationship with her. She doesn’t know how she’ll manage if she loses his friendship. It would be like losing Dan unnie again, or maybe an arm or a leg. It would be like losing family, and the phantom pain makes it hard for her to breathe.
The flowers stop coming.
She avoids anyone working with the law. She tries dating someone Seung-jae oppa recommends, his dongase in medical school. It lasts all of one date before she finds herself unbelievably bored.
She tries so hard to avoid lawyers, judges, and especially prosecutors, but each one only lasts one date. They try to get to know one another before she goes off tangent about a grizzly case, and they find themselves turned off by her.
Eventually she gives in, dates a fellow defense lawyer like her. He seems nice enough, with a kind smile. They last more than one date and she considers it a win. They talk about their cases, offer points and counter-points, and improve each other’s arguments. She actually finds that she’s enjoying herself, and starts to laugh again.
But when he goes to kiss her and she accepts the kiss, it’s not his face he sees, but someone else’s smile. When he reaches to place his hand on her neck, she violently wrenches away.
She can only stare at his forlorn face, ashamed of herself.
“You’re an idiot hyung.”
Ji-ho doesn’t need to state a fact that Joon Hwi already knows, but it was nice enough of his former roommate to join him in his misery, as pathetic as he may seem.
There’s no big-shot prosecutor here, just a guy downing his twentieth cup of soju for the night. Joon Hwi’s always had high tolerance, but he’s testing himself see.
At least when he was like this back in law school, Kang Sol hadn’t left him alone.
Great minds must think alike, or perhaps Ji-ho and he were just in the same predicament that he could read Joon Hwi’s thoughts well enough. “Do you want me to call Kang Sol noona here?”
Joon Hwi laughs bitterly. Ji-ho just sighs and sits by him. He orders a bottle for himself. This is starting to be routine for them ever since Kang Sol noona started her serial dating phase.
“Really, hyung. Why don’t you just say something?”
Joon Hwi huffs. “It’s not my place to make decisions for her. I don’t own Kang Sol.” Outwardly, everything is fine between the both of them. She didn’t need to say anything. He got her message loud and clear and he wouldn’t risk his presence in her life – in whatever capacity she’d allow – for his impulses and rash decisions.
She still stops by his apartment from time to time. He still had dinner with her and her family. (He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to cope if those are taken away too.)
It’s just that he doesn’t send her flowers anymore.
He tries his best not to influence her choices whenever she breaks up with someone, only acting as normal as possible, acting as the friend she trusts him to be. Instead, he processes his feelings away from her where she can’t see, with copious amounts of alcohol. Didn’t she tell him that, that it was good to go through your feelings, to not keep them bottled up inside?
He rubs the spot where the tattoo rests, symbolic really, it’s as if he’s soothing his heart. It offers no comfort, only disgust at himself at how melodramatic he’s being.
“I’m not going to argue with you there hyung. Professor Yang is a bad influence on you. You’re becoming as much of a drama queen as he is,” Ji-ho says in response to Joon Hwi’s thoughts he’d unwittingly broadcasted out loud.
Joon Hwi tries to glare, but it’s a half-hearted effort at best. “Thank you so much Ji-ho. You’re such a comfort to your hyung.” Ji-ho just shrugs, the jerk.
But nevertheless, he’s never failed to be there for Joon Hwi.
It’s been days since Kang Sol’s most recent break-up. In a rare instance, she’s at Hankuk, but without Joon Hwi. It was notable enough that Professor Kim had commented on it. She’s worried that she was just being overly self-conscious, but Professor Yang had too.
“Where’s Han Joon Hwi,” Professor Yang asks, or more like demands.
“I’m sure he’ll be here shortly Professor,” she answers him, while looking at the ground.
“It would have been more efficient if you had come together.”
Slightly irritated, Kang Sol says, “I’m not his keeper.”
Professor Yang merely raises an eyebrow at her outburst, which is unfair really since it was hardly an outburst.
God, she was even pouting. How many years later, out of high school, out of law school, and now a lawyer, and she still felt bad about disappointing him.
“I’m sorry Professor. I’ve been feeling a bit,” Kang Sol thinks hard for an excuse, “under the weather,” she finishes lamely.
“Then you might as well go home. We won’t be able to do any real work with you like this,” he orders.
Kang Sol sighs. He was still as harsh as ever.
She gets up to leave his office, before he clears his throat. Kang Sol waits with an eyebrow raised. Even if she still cowered at times, she could still sass him.
His stormy glare shows the little show of defiance was unappreciated, before he sighs in acceptance. He starts a bit awkwardly, a first which catches Kang Sol’s attention and has her listening raptly, “Han Joon Hwi told me something once, although he was admittedly tipsy at the time. He said that if he ever had to ask permission for your hand in marriage, besides your mother and sisters, he’d have to ask me too, in place of your,” and here another first, Professor Yang coughs, hesitating, “Your father. If he wasn’t my top student, and a full-fledged Prosecutor now, I’d have sued him for his cheek. I’ll consider the alcohol a mitigating circumstance.” He rolls his eyes before they rest upon her in full seriousness.
Again miracle of miracles, his mouth quirks, and Kang Sol is hit with sudden nostalgia of when they were both far too young. “Do with that information as you will Kang Sol A. And let me remind you not to take rumors at face value,” He tsks, “I know I taught you better than that. Aren’t defamation cases your area of expertise?”
Kang Sol can only nod dumbly at her former Professor.
“Now go home already. I also taught you to take better care of yourself. If you can’t do it properly, you may as well rely on Han Joon Hwi.”
o
It was a joke. It had to be.
She walks the length of the Criminal Cases Chambers halls in a daze. In her hands, she holds another white flower, cradling it like a precious treasure.
Lawyer Park had shoved it in her hands in disgust complaining about how he wasn’t a messenger boy, before telling her to rush to court for her case. It was only a single flower, but since it was the first one in months, Kang Sol couldn’t let it out of her sight, no matter how pathetic it made her seem.
Her thoughts are rioting in her head. She had to see Joon Hwi. She doesn’t want to see him. She was so distracted that she almost ended up crashing into a pillar if not for a strong arm pulling her back.
She whirls to her savior in surprise, before bowing frantically. “Judge Lim! I’m sorry for the trouble.”
Really, Kang Sol thinks while glancing at him from her vantage point from down below, to inconvenience a Presiding Judge like this. Pull yourself together Kang Sol!
And of all Presiding Judges, it had to be this one. Judge Lim was another elite of the elite. He was admired even by her roommate whose list of people she respected was a very short list indeed. He was principled, and promulgated decisions which were legally precise, but just. Even Kang Sol admired his decisions and couldn’t find fault with them.
To be honest, it was more than that though. This particular judge reminded her so much of Joon Hwi, like the fact that they were both young and brilliant, and had climbed up the ranks at such young ages. They even parted their hair the same side, for God’s sake!
Joon Hwi had liked him, Kang Sol remembers. Though she has yet to argue in his court, Joon Hwi had spoken highly of him as one of those judges who were incorruptible, and for someone like Joon Hwi who was naturally suspicious, that praise made him stick in Kang Sol’s mind.
“It’s not a problem. Please be careful though,” He coughs, a bit awkward, “It would be a shame to lose a lawyer of your caliber to brain injury. My wife has spoken very highly of you.”
“Ah!” Kang Sol shouts in recognition, startling the judge, “The other Judge Lim sitting in the Civil Case Chambers? She’s brilliant! I was a big fan of Miss Hammurabi while I was still studying. She was one of my inspirations to get into law school!”
He nods, and Kang Sol sees how his stern face just transforms upon hearing about his wife, how it becomes almost boyish as he dimples. Wow, she would also love to be looked at like that.
“What had you so distracted,” he asks while peering at what she holds in her hand. “A gardenia? You must have a secret admirer.”
Kang Sol feels like she’s been hit by lightning. “Why do you say that Judge Lim, if you don’t mind my asking?” Her heart is jackhammering behind her chest.
“I don’t mean to intrude, but I think they mean ‘secret love’. I like to dabble in flower arrangements,” he explains, a bit sheepish.
Kang Sol normally would find that to be adorable, but her heart is pounding in her ears as she decides to bother him some more, notwithstanding that he’s a respected Judge of the Court. She brings her phone close to him so he can see. “Would it be alright to ask you something? Would you happen to know if this is a morning glory?”
He peers closely, studying her phone wallpaper with his chin in hand. “No, they look alike, but I believe that’s a moonflower.”
Kang Sol’s heart has stopped. No, it’s in her throat, as she asks, gulps, “And…what do they mean?”
Judge Lim smiles, and a far-off part of Kang Sol’s brain that’s not focused on his answer thinks he looks angelic, and says, “They mean ‘dreaming of love’.”
Sol has been weird ever since she entered his apartment. She’s been quiet, even while eating ramyeun and drinking cups and cups of soju, even while she sits comfy in the Hankuk sweatshirt he’d lent her. She has her hair pulled up, so he can clearly see the tattoo on her neck, and it’s like his own personal siren call, beckoning.
But the last thing he wants to do is make her uncomfortable, so he stays a respectful distance away. That is until she suddenly bursts into tears.
And then all bets are off. His rational thinking is gone, just instinct driving him as he gathers her into his arms. He’s never seen her cry – not when she was humiliated in class, not when she was bleeding, not when she was worried about failing and punishing herself, not when she was being threatened by a molester, never, and it breaks him. He’s always been the crybaby between the both of them.
He rocks her in his arms, her sweatshirt-clad back to his chest, as he murmurs calming shushing sounds against her hair. He’s got her, he whispers, he’s got her. She hiccups, starting to calm down.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” he whispers quietly, still slowly rocking her.
“Huh?” Kang Sol asks, and Joon Hwi feels like he’s missed something. “Yah Joon Hwi! D’you think I’d cry over a guy?”
There is no right answer to this.
“Um…no?”
He tries anyway.
She glares but she’s like a squirrel with puffed cheeks, and Joon Hwi laughs in what feels like a lifetime and only hugs her closer, feeling like a man who’s found an oasis in the middle of the desert.
“It’s my case,” and here, she starts to tear up again. Joon Hwi panics, rubbing her arms in what he hopes is a soothing manner. “I couldn’t prove our self-defense case theory. My client’s going to suffer because of my incompetence.”
Joon Hwi tries to comfort her as best as he can. “Knowing you, I’m sure you did everything humanely possible - actually I’m sure you even went beyond human limits. There’s always the appeal. My Kang Sol wouldn’t give up that easily.”
She stares at him, contemplative, and he realizes what he said. Damn. He’d meant to say, ‘The Kang Sol I know'. Before he can explain himself out of it, she exclaims with renewed vigor, “Damn right we will! Of course I’m not giving up.”
It’s the fire in her eyes that always pushes him over the edge of reason. She turns around to face front and settle comfortably in his arms, but not before he makes an impulsive decision once again.
Kang Sol stills in his arms, as he kisses the sun on her neck. It’s the same scene as back then, repeated again how many years later, and like a man possessed, hypnotized, he traces the path his fingers once took, with his lips, tracing every outline and fine detail.
She shudders, her whole body trembling, and he can’t mistake it for laughter this time around.
He lifts his head, gaze heavy, and one thought permeates through the fog. Fuck.
He won’t be able to explain his way out of this one.
But Kang Sol doesn’t scramble away from his arms like he’d expected, doesn’t storm off from his apartment and out of his life forever, like he’d feared. She hums still in his arms, and from past experience Joon Hwi knows this is her thinking. Like he’s been doing his whole life, he waits for her.
“How long have you wanted to do that?”
He tightens his grip on her unconsciously. “Kissing your tattoo? Since I saw it,” he admits honestly, “Kissing you? Since that first day in Professor Yang’s class, or maybe even,” he inhales to fortify himself, “Since that day we met at the bookstore.” Wildly he’d thought of kissing her to shut that spitfire mouth, unexplainably attracted to someone who had swindled him, but he’d most definitely be sued for sexual harassment. He’s still not in the clear though regarding that potential suit depending on how things went down now.
“You know,” she starts, also unconsciously gripping at his sleeves, “I wasn’t entirely honest about never crying over a guy. Part of it was because of you,” she whirls in his arms, and Joon Hwi is alarmed at the tears in her eyes, though she’s laughing uncontrollably, “Joon Hwi how could you be so stupid! You could’ve saved me a lot of heartache if you just gave me a planter’s guide.”
He feels fireworks, unbelievable comfort, and relief. Finally, it feels like he can breathe again. He draws ever closer to her, and whispers against her lips, “To be fair, you caused me heartache too,” before waiting there, a hairsbreadth away, content to share the same air as her, as he waited, always waited, for her permission.
“Dummy,” she murmurs, and surges to meet him with all the fire in her supernova soul. Air, Joon Hwi thinks, is frankly overrated.
She grips the lapels of his hoodie tightly, and he smiles against her lips. In any other situation, it would look like she was hustling him. Trust Kang Sol to kiss like she was fighting. He gives as good as he gets. He threads his fingers in her hair, rustling it free, and combing the strands gently.
She bites at his lower lip demanding he let her in, and he growls and picks her up in response. Somehow they end up in his bed, which has never felt so warm before no matter how many blankets he piled on himself.
Without breaking contact, she pushes at his sweatshirt, a wordless order. What else could he do but follow? Briefly he separates from her to pull it up and off, but she only latches onto his neck, gluttonous. “Sol…” he groans, helpless under her assault.
She straddles him and there’s a brief moment of respite where they both just try and catch their breath. She’s kiss-swollen, pink lipstick smeared everywhere, hair wild and free, and Joon Hwi gulps, parched, wanting to just drink, and drink from her.
She parts his bangs, smiles impishly, and Joon Hwi groans at the unfairness of it all, before tracing down his neck, torturously slow that Joon Hwi finds his self-control fraying inch by inch, before stopping above his heart where the matching moon to her sun lies, forever tattooed on his heart.
She traces it reverently, and Joon Hwi is overcome with feeling, before her eyes spark in challenge as she does to his tattoo what he did to hers earlier – tracing over it with her wicked lips and tongue, drawing it again anew on his skin. At her bite, another mark of hers on him – who was he kidding, she could leave as many as she wanted – he snaps. He shifts them so he was on top of her, before kissing her with the force of years of unsaid feelings. Despite her hands in his hair driving him crazy, reason eventually returns to Joon Hwi. He slows the both of them down, but not before nipping her on the neck as payback.
“Sol, we’re tipsy, and I want to do this with you when we’re both stone-cold sober. I want to remember every delicious detail,” he manages to get out in between gulps of air and with great difficulty.
Sol nods, without a word, not arguing against him this time. Joon Hwi almost wants her to. The full-bodied flush he could see going down beneath his sweatshirt tests his limits. She was beautiful like this. She always was, but there was something ethereal about her now, bathed only in moonlight from the windows.
“Sure,” she coughs, “Let’s just sleep,” she declares eyes twinkling like stars.
“I mean it Sol,” he sighs sufferingly. It was hard to be so moral and upright sometimes. As expected, she just laughs at his pain and claims big spoon.
He puts up a token argument, but in truth he doesn’t really mind, especially with her arms around him like this, and one of her hands over the moon and his beating heart. He’s never felt safer than anywhere else except in her arms. He gets lulled by her breathing into calm, dreamless sleep.
Kang Sol wakes up in bed alone to the sound of sizzling, and the repeated notifications on her phone which turn out to be messages of congratulations in the study group chat (She thinks it was Ye-seul who let it slip, but really she’d be shocked to know it was Professor Yang).
Tip-toeing outside the door, she spies Joon Hwi making hangover ramyeun and eggs, while still shirtless. She grins. She’s definitely not complaining, nosiree.
Back still to her, he says, “There’s food on the table already. Eat up, you’re going to need energy for later,” a wicked tilt to his voice that Kang Sol absolutely does not flush at. It would make him more big-headed than he already was. How did he even do that, Kang Sol shakes her head at the mystery.
She is hungry though, with her stomach rumbling to prove a point. She approaches the table before smiling softly at the vase of flowers at the center – full of sunflowers and moonflowers intertwined.
fin