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He recalled that day like it was yesterday.

“I still remember the first time I saw her.  She was like a dream,” he murmured as his eyes slid over a face that had grown only lovelier with the passage of time.

His eyes closed as he relived that beautiful, horrible day.  Beautiful because he had found the love of his life at the tender age of fourteen.  Horrible because she had belonged to his little brother.  And Dan Se had believed that he could never have her.  

Never touch her.  

As he had touched her today.  

Never be touched by her.  

As she had touched him today.

“A wild fantasy that only my heart could dream up.”

Mi Sook’s eyes flew wide open as she stared in shock at him.  Was Dan Se referring to her?  To the first time he’d ever seen her?  

That awkward eleven-year-old?  With her too-big nose and her rosy cheeks?  Her fat lips and her fatter thighs?  She’d been positively pudgy then.  Her father had ridiculed her often because of that baby fat.  How could she have possibly attracted the notice of a confident fourteen-year-old boy?  

Dan Se had nearly been a man then.  He had seemed so by the age of sixteen.  When Han Sung had yet appeared to be a child.  Still chasing butterflies and catching rainbows in his hands.  His older brother had possessed a quiet poise that had made him seem a decade older.

His quiet voice continued, “It seemed to me that the gleam of the sunshine was trapped within the raven strands of her long braids.  Its light surely burned in her midnight eyes.  They glowed in the midst of her face like two great, ebony stones.  Made all the more noticeable by her pale skin and her rosy cheeks.  Two roses bloomed in those high cheekbones.”  

He smiled as he recalled her blossoming beauty.  She had been such a tiny thing then.  Like some little doll.  He’d been nearly a foot and a half taller than her.  Certain that he could have picked her up in his arms and swept her off somewhere with ease.

And he had wanted to.  Especially when he’d noticed the bruises on her arm.  Her sleeve had crept up, exposing her wrist to his view.  And his stomach had flipped over.  Because he’d known.  Instantly.  He had recognized that there was a monster in her life too.

Immediately, his compassion for her had flowed.  But he had learned long ago not to show it.  So he had kept it under wraps.

But he wouldn’t think of her pain right now.  He would remember only the light of her countenance and the beauty of her laughter as his brother had birthed it under a bright sun that first morning in the garden together.  Dan Se’s lips once again curved wide, a tiny echo of her own happiness that day.

His words were fanciful.  And so at odds with his quiet nature.  So poetic.  Not at all forced.  How on earth had that silent, rigid boy of her memories contained such wonder?  Such beautiful feelings?  Such glorious descriptions?  Such magnificent words?

She wished for more of them.  He made her seem…beautiful.  Extraordinary.  Beloved.  When she had been none of those things.

Her eyes slid over his enraptured countenance.  His sweet smile was lighting up his face.  And she realized that she had rarely seen that glowing curve in evidence.  In fact, she strived to remember such a time when they were younger.  Yet she could not unearth one remembrance of his smile ever appearing.  Which might explain why she had feared him so.  And been so ready to paint him as the villain in Han Sung’s story.

She reached out then and touched that lovely arc.  Her fingers slipping over his lips.  Stilling their story.  And shocking his eyes open.  But she didn’t care.  She smoothed her fingertips along that soft curve.

“Why don’t you smile more often?” she queried gently.

Immediately, that smile fled.  And a cold sobriety entered his gaze.

“Because where I grew up, joy was a weakness.”

She stared in horror at him and felt a tear biting into the corner of her eye.  “That ought not be so!” she gasped as she realized that the same had been true of her life in her father’s presence.  “Joy is strength!”

His brow crumpled at her vehemence.  “Is it?”

“Yes!” she cried out.  “I will prove it to you.”

“Will you?” he asked, stunned.

“Mm-hmm.”  

Then – forgetting her pain, forgetting anything but him and his obvious distress – she leaned towards him even as a groan tried to force itself out between her lips as she moved her aching back.  But she would not grant it admittance into the air around her.  She focused all her attention on those lovely lips which had curved so beautifully into a line of laughter a few moments ago.  And she bent even closer to him.

He realized her intent, and his eyes grew wide in surprise.  He felt her breath pass over his mouth.  And then her lips were brushing gently against his, and he was lost in the bliss of his first kiss.  And in the wonder of it coming from the girl whom he had spent over a third of his life loving.