They spent several minutes walking in silence. But he couldn’t outrun the feeling that she was rushing home in fear.
“Sam Sook. Your children are safe with your mother. Why are you hurrying home to see them? Se Yeon is most likely sound asleep in her bed. And Se Ri is probably enjoying tea with her grandmother,” he finally pointed out. Sensibly, he thought.
“I need to get home.”
He furrowed his brow. “Do you think that you have to be with them all the time? Never let them out of your sight?”
Did this fear stem from the loss of her husband? Was she afraid that some evil would befall her too, and she would leave them alone on this earth?
She didn’t answer him.
“Sam Sook?”
“Yes,” she finally bit out between clenched teeth.
The valley between his eyebrows deepened. “But why? Are you the only capable adult around them?”
“No,” she breathed out.
And yes.
“I don’t understand you,” he finally mumbled in frustration.
“I hope to God you never do,” she muttered darkly.
He stopped her then. With a hand on her arm. “Sam Sook?” he quizzed her. More with his gaze than his words.
“Dangers lurk everywhere, Yeo Wool. For young girls especially.” And she marched onward.
He bent his brow as he gazed after her for a moment. Then he sped up to catch up with her. “Did something happen? Did someone hurt one of your daughters?”
“What?” she gasped. “No!”
“Then what are you talking about?”
She shook her head. They were almost to her mother’s house. “Nothing. I just want to see my babies. Thank you, Yeo Wool, for escorting me home.” She paused for breath. And to glance up into his face. “I am so very sorry that you no longer possess the comfort of your grandmother’s presence.”
“It wouldn’t be so hard if I had the comfort of yours,” he declared softly.
Stilling her as she turned towards the door. And her heart began to pound again.
“Goodbye, Yeo Wool.”
Then she was gone. Leaving him very alone.
––
That night, Sam Sook cried herself to sleep. Weeping silently in her bed while her children slept soundly in the room next to hers.
For today, Yeo Wool had deeply touched her heart and unearthed more desires than she knew how to handle. Even now, she longed for him to be lying next to her in this bed. His arms wrapped securely around her. His ear attentive to her concerns. His sword at the ready to defend both her and her children.
But she could never ask him for those things.
And all her feelings were mere absurdity. She didn’t even know the man. She knew only the boy he had been so very long ago.
He might not even be the man whom she believed him to be. The hero whom Jung Sook clearly thought him. He might be an altogether different sort of person. Many men were quite the opposite of the character which they revealed to the world.
She just couldn’t take the risk.
Her heart couldn’t handle the uncertainty.
So it bled out onto her pillowcase in crystal streams.
