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MATURE RATING: Warning: This section of Ringing the Belle is a complete departure from anything I’ve written before.  It deals with much more serious topics.  I would definitely give this a very serious mature rating.  This chapter, in particular, is quite graphic and explores extremely sensitive topics.  Please proceed with caution.  To my faithful readers: if you find this story too disturbing to finish, I will not be offended.  It was very difficult for me to write it.  And its ending is very different from the ones I usually write.   However, the last book in the series will not make as much sense without this story.

Chapter 1: Paradise Lost – February 5 – 6, 2022

 “Eunho!  My friend!  Come join us!  We have found a particularly delectable, little tidbit to sample tonight.  She is delightfully drunk.  Gyeoul slipped a little something into her drink to help her along.  We’re going to enjoy her favors.  I would have let you go first, but Gyeoul was particularly eager to try this one.”

As Eunho stepped off the staircase and entered the bedroom, he was unprepared for what he was about to find.  Eager to sample tonight’s delights, he had come sailing into the room.  He crossed it quickly.  Only to stop abruptly at the side of the bed.  His friend had just climbed off the girl.  Who was clearly unconscious now.  Blood was pooling between her legs.  But that wasn’t the sight that gave him pause.  His eyes found her face – her achingly lovely face now slack with slumber – and he choked on the bile that was suddenly filling his mouth.

And a burning rage that terrified even him filled his tongue with a lashing fury.  He spun around and grabbed his friend before he could even zip his pants shut.  Eunho hauled him up to his face by the collar of his white, button-down shirt.

“What did you slip into her drink?!”

His friend just stared at him with bulging eyes wide with fear.  He’d seen Eunho angry on occasion but never like this.

Eunho shook him.  Hard.  “What did you give her?!” he breathed out in a lethal hiss.

“Forget-Me-Pills.”

Eunho’s grip tightened on his collar as his eyes squeezed shut.  He took a deep breath before unleashing on his friend the same fury that Minha’s boyfriend had spent upon him a year ago now.  His friends gaped at Eunho as Gyeoul went flying backward to sprawl on the ground while he nursed his swollen lip.

Eunho spun back towards the bed.  “Where are the rest of her clothes?!” he snapped.  “Somebody, get a towel!”

He was overcome by such an intense grief he couldn’t even move.  As he stood, paralyzed, staring down at the only girl he had ever loved, all of his life choices suddenly slid past him.  Like a movie someone had compiled of all his sins.  It moved with breathtaking speed.  He saw them all – even the ones he’d thought he’d forgotten – every girl he had ever taken to his bed and each one he had pressed beyond the point she was willing to go.  And a new thought entered his head.  Had they each been someone’s treasure?   As Haewon was his?

Horrified, he bent over Haewon and pulled her tenderly away from the crimson stain that had bloomed beneath her.  Someone shoved a towel into his hand, and he used it to wipe her clean of her blood.  He wasn’t even turned on by the sight of her naked flesh.  He did, in fact, have to force himself not to vomit.  This fragile girl – a girl he had loved since childhood – had just been violated in the worst way possible.  He was fairly certain from the amount of blood that his friend had used her to full advantage.  Eunho really wanted to retch now.  

He pulled down her dress and turned around to search for her underwear.  It was lying, discarded, on the floor.  He bent to retrieve it.  His friends had fled the room.  No one liked to be around Eunho when he was in a rage.  And tonight’s was the worst they had ever seen.  

He slid her panties back up over her body as a sob escaped his lips.  No one watching him could have denied he cared for her.  But his friends would have questioned his identity.  Eunho wasn’t known for tenderness.  As he hovered over her, his fingertips sliding along her skin, he couldn’t help but feel like he was dressing a china doll.  Tender memories of her as a small child slid past him.  He touched each one with his mind…

––

The very first thing he remembered wasn’t a face.  It was a sound.  A crystal clear voice raised in a haunting melody had threaded its way down the hallway outside his room.  He’d been a fourteen-year-old boy lost in a video game when that dulcet tone had reached his ears and pulled him from his dreamland.  Like a lad caught in a trance, he had set down his controller and wandered towards his doorway.  Riveted to that sound. 

He knew that melody.  It stirred echoes from long ago.  Echoes he had buried beneath a decade’s worth of years.  Down where his deepest pain resided.  The voice was so similar too.  Only younger, it seemed. 

“Come with me;

Come with me.

We will see

What we were meant to be.

“Follow me;

Follow me.

Come and see

What you were meant to be.”

He’d popped his head out into the hallway, and his eyes had landed upon the most enchanting creature he had ever seen.  A tiny girl of seven tender years, Haewon had appeared to be no more than four years old that day.  Her delicate skin had been nearly translucent.  The midnight waves of her hair had flowed around her body, contrasting mightily with that porcelain complexion.  His eyes had traced the elegant bones of her slender arms.  Then his gaze had made its way up her body to her face.  Drawn by that captivating sound.  To that beautiful mouth.  The most glorious smile had been lighting up her countenance, and her eyes had glowed like two great, obsidian jewels in her small face.  Those eyes had collided with his a moment later, and her song had faltered.  But the damage had been done.  Eunho had been instantly and completely fascinated by the tiny girl.

“Hello,” he had whispered huskily, for some reason afraid that he was scaring her.

Her wide eyes had grown larger still.  “Hello,” she’d breathed in the tiniest of voices.

Then she’d continued on down the hallway, her poignant song filling his ears once again.

“Dance in the garden.

Bask in the sunlight.

Soak in its embrace.

Echo the daylight.”

He remembered very little of his eomma.  The flash of her gentle eyes.  A scent.  A sound.  A song borne on the breeze.  The song Haewon had been singing that day. 

––

Another memory surfaced.  He remembered the day like it was yesterday.  Haewon had been eight years old.  They’d gone for a walk at the park.  She had been ecstatic to be out in the spring air that day.  She’d tossed her head back, sending her long, midnight tresses to dance upon the breeze blowing past her.   She had opened her mouth, and the most delightful sound had escaped her lungs.  Laughter had flowed past her lips.  Laughter that stirred precious echoes in his soul.  

Eomma…

Then, being especially daring, heady with her newfound freedom, the delicate girl had begun to skip down the path.  A moment later, Eunho watched as she tripped and fell forward.  Only a tiny whimper escaped her lips.  His heart thudding in his chest, he ran towards her.  Had his china doll broken herself?

He fell to his knees before her.  And gently reached for her bleeding knee.  As his fingertips delicately skimmed her skin, he recognized that this was the first time he had ever touched a girl with true tenderness in his heart.

“Haewon, are you all right?” he whispered as his eyes probed the spot she’d skinned.  “Come.  I’ll carry you home.  We need to clean and bandage your knee.”

At that moment, he’d been happy she was so tiny.  He’d slipped his arms under her and picked her up.  Cradling her softly against his chest, he’d carried her to his house and lovingly washed and dressed her broken skin.  The whole time he’d attended to her, he hadn’t given the other girls a single thought.

––

Another time she’d been playing outside in the garden.  Chasing butterflies.  During one of the rare moments when she’d been given the liberty to bask in the light of the sun.  Eunho had never met another girl who was born to dance in the sunshine like that special girl.  Yet most of her life, such freedom had been robbed from her by her parents’ fear.  

But that particular day, they’d left her alone with Eunho, and he’d let her wild spirit free.  He’d spent an hour watching her in delight as she’d run around his backyard trying to catch butterflies with her net.  As she had floated about his terrace, the raven waves of her long tresses had flowed around her face, framing it in beauty.  Her great, dark eyes had glowed with an inner light.  The widest smile he’d ever seen grace her lips had stretched her countenance into a sunbeam.  She had appeared to be sublimely happy that day.

It was only later as she slipped into a chair and fell asleep basking in the light of a kind sun that Eunho realized his error.  Her activity had been too much for her heart.  It had taken her body several hours to recover strength that afternoon.  He had picked her up in his arms and taken her into the house to lie on Heejin’s bed while Haewon snoozed the day away.  Thankfully, she had awoken before her parents returned for her.  But she’d still been listless when her appa had carried her out the door for home.  Eunho had never breathed one word of her excursion to them.  Nor had she. 

However, she had terrified him that day.  He had never again let her be that free.  But such restraint had broken his heart.

––

As he stood alone in that abandoned bedroom, his friends having fled the vicinity, he glanced down at a girl he hadn’t seen in more than six years.  And his heart ached.  He reached up to check her pulse.  It was thready at best.  He bent to pick her up in his arms.  He strode out the door, down the stairs, out another door, and to his car.  Tonight he was glad it was a fast one.  He set her gently in the front seat of his car and fastened the seat belt around her.

“Please, Haewon, don’t die.  Hang in there,” he whispered brokenly.  Tenderly.

He rushed to his side of the car and sped all the way to the hospital.  He carried her into the emergency room and informed the receptionist that his friend had a heart problem and someone had just fed her Rohypnol and raped her.  Those seemed to be magical words because in the next instant they were being escorted back behind that desk, through a doorway, and into a curtained-off area.  A few moments later, a doctor entered the room.  Eunho would spend the next few hours being interviewed by doctors and policemen.  But nothing scared him as much as the still form now lying in a hospital bed.

He had given them all up.  All of his friends.  The name of every guy that had been standing in that bedroom.  The police had asked for details, and Eunho had provided them all.  He didn’t even care if he went to jail.  He certainly didn’t give a care if any of his buddies did.  They had just destroyed the only precious girl remaining on the planet.  They deserved to rot in hell.  He was beginning to suspect that he might also.

After hours of interviews for him and treatments for her, he was finally permitted to sit at her bedside.  Several more hours passed before she woke up.  Disoriented.  Scared.

The first thing she was aware of was a crushing fatigue.  Followed by an intense ache.  No – two distinct aches – in her lower regions.  She shifted slightly and groaned as pain spiraled through her core.  The soreness was overwhelming.  She hissed as she opened her eyes.  She was staring up at a white ceiling as she was engulfed by a great sense of unease.  Something was terribly wrong.  And this time it wasn’t only her heart.  

She knew that ceiling.  She’d seen it many times – or one identical to it.  It belonged to a hospital.  Had she undergone another procedure?  Or a test that had gone bad?

But that wouldn’t explain the searing ache between her legs.  She winced as she shifted again slightly.  She was accustomed to pain in her chest.  But this ache in the middle of her body was completely foreign.  And unwelcome.  What had happened to her?  

She searched her memory, but she could find nothing which would explain her current circumstances.  The last thing she remembered was preparing to attend a party with her new friend last night.  She’d met him in a coffeehouse yesterday afternoon.  She smiled as she recalled how sweet he’d been.  She hadn’t been in the company of young men very often.  Her appa hovered incessantly.  Especially since they’d moved to Seoul for her heart treatments six years ago.  Appa had become even more cautious when they had left Eunho’s protective presence – the infuriating boy never let her go to any party he was attending!  And he had often interfered in her plans with his sister too.  

Haewon had never had any fun.  Until last night.  She had lied to her parents and told them she was going out with an old girlfriend she’d run into while shopping.  She hadn’t even returned home to change.  She hadn’t wanted to risk being put under house arrest.  She was so tired of playing it safe.  She was exhausted.  Simply worn out from gazing into the eyes of two people who had spent her entire life terrified that she would slip from this earth at any moment.  They’d spent so many of their efforts simply keeping her alive that they had never let her really live.  She loathed reading the concern in their eyes.  She just wanted to act like a normal girl for five minutes.  So she had sneaked into that party with him.  What had his name been?

She reached up and rubbed her temple.  Why couldn’t she remember a simple name?  Or any of the faces at that party?  She could still see his, though.  But none of the others.  He had gotten her a drink, right?  

She remembered suddenly.  Because it had surprised her.  It hadn’t been a simple punch.  It had alcohol in it.  She almost didn’t drink it then.  What would it do to her heart?

But some rebellious, little imp had prompted her to throw caution to the wind.  That was the very last thing she could remember.  Except for his smile.  He had had such a pretty smile…

Eunho leapt from his chair and approached her.  Finally, her eyes focused on him as he came to sit on the edge of her bed.

“Haewon!  Are you okay?”  He reached for her hand and chafed it between his own.

She blinked up at him.  Surely, she was still confused.  What was he doing here?

“Eunho?” she asked, disbelieving.  

She stared at him for a full minute.  She hadn’t seen him in six long years.  She’d been fifteen the last time they’d met.  She had privately sighed every time he’d graced her presence with his own.  He had always been beautiful to her.  But, by the time he’d turned twenty-two, he’d begun to look like a man.  Gone was the boy she’d fallen in love with as a child.  He’d been replaced by a gorgeous man. 

Her eyes took in his countenance.  He still had that shock of curling, midnight locks that cascaded over his forehead.  Making her sigh again.  His wide eyes were still as dark as night and seemed to glow whenever they captured hers.  His nose was a straight blade.  As she gazed at him now, she had to admit that he had grown even more handsome.  Except…had he always had that scar on his chin? 

Her eyes traced it.  That must have been one nasty injury.  How on earth had he done such a thing to himself?  Had he tripped with a knife in his mouth?

His mouth twisted suddenly, and she remembered his temperament the last time she’d seen him.  It had been in such sharp contrast to his attitude towards her when she’d been younger.  When she was a tiny child, he had always seemed to be protecting her right to freedom.  And rescuing her from several scrapes too, if she remembered rightly.  However, by the time she was thirteen, she’d begun to lose patience with him.  He’d become quite exasperating as she’d grown older and developed her own desires for liberty.  The right to choose her own path.  Eventually, he had adopted her parents’ fears concerning her health.  She had then chafed at the bit he too had put into her mouth.

But, as she stared up at him now, one question was pulsing like a strobe light in her brain.

“Why am I in the hospital?”

He frowned.  “You don’t remember last night?”

Of course, she didn’t.  He knew she wouldn’t.  He and his friends used roofies all the time to encourage girls to sleep with them.  Usually, though, they gave them just enough to make them willing.  Not to knock them completely out.  But Haewon was a special case.  Just a little alcohol alone was dangerous for her.  Mixed with a date-rape drug, that alcohol had become even more threatening to her delicate system.  It had been touch-and-go for a little while last night, but the doctors had brought her through somehow.

Eunho breathed a sigh of relief even as his heart broke.  How could he possibly tell her what his friends had done to her last night?

“I don’t remember anything.  I’m just so tired.  And I hurt,” she moaned.  Right before she slipped into unconsciousness again.

––

Her parents came.  Someone had finally been able to reach them.  Around ten o’clock in the morning, they came bursting through the doorway of her tiny room.  Their faces lit with worry.  Her appa’s gaze landed squarely on Eunho’s face.  He could feel the older man heave an audible sigh of relief.  Before confusion rippled across his countenance.

“Eunho?  You’re here?  How did you know Haewon had been hospitalized?”  

They hadn’t seen the young man in six years.

“I’m the one who brought her here.”

“What?” her eomma gasped.  Her eyes flew to her daughter’s face.  “What’s wrong?  Did she have an episode?”

“No,” Eunho swallowed.  

How on earth was he going to tell her parents what had happened?  He had always had them fooled.  Because he adored Haewon, he had consistently acted with supreme deference around them.  They knew nothing of his profligate ways or of his obsession with alcohol and women.  Or of the brutality of which he was capable.

“I found her at a party last night.  She’d been given some alcohol and a drug.  She was unconscious when I entered the room…”  

He stopped.  How could he tell them she’d been raped?  Their faces were already horrified enough.

Eunho had revisited last night dozens of times.  If he just hadn’t been late to that party, he could have stopped it.  He could have prevented Gyeoul from touching her.  From drugging her.  Eunho could have saved her.

Now, as he turned the events over in his mind, he kept seeing himself climbing that staircase, relishing the idea of riding a girl who was too out of it to protest.  He’d done it many times, so why was the contemplation of it making him sick to his stomach today?

Because it was Haewon.  He had never contemplated taking that fragile girl to his bed.  She was a child.  An ethereal, delicate bloom meant to be protected from every harsh wind of fate.  But the one time it had mattered, Eunho had come too late.  He began to weep.  A single tear slid down his cheek.

Her parents stood staring down at him.

“What is it?” her appa asked sharply.  “Is she in a coma?”

Eunho shook his head.  “She spoke to me an hour ago.  The doctor said she’s all right for now.  He thinks her heart will be okay.  As okay as it can be…”

“Then why are you so upset?” her father asked brusquely.  Fear was adding a sharp edge to his voice.

“I don’t know how to tell you,” Eunho gasped.

Something in his tone alerted her eomma.  She stepped forward and picked up her beloved daughter’s hand.  “Oh, my poor baby, what did he do to you?”  She turned her head towards Eunho.  “The man who drugged her – did he touch her?”

A sob escaped Eunho’s lips as he lifted his eyes to meet hers.  He nodded his head.  “I’m so sorry.  I arrived too late.  He’d already…”

Her father’s eyebrows met violently in the middle of his forehead.  “Are you telling me that one of your friends raped my daughter?” he asked breathlessly.

Eunho couldn’t meet his eyes.  His gaze slid to the floor.  But his head bobbed up and down as his lips uttered two words.

“Yes, sir.”