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, though not quite as graphic as the last two, still 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 3: The Confrontation – February 6, 2022
“Eunho, did you hurt my daughter?” Haewon’s appa asked him next.
His head flew up at those words. His eyes grew wide.
“No, sir!” he ejaculated. “I could never hurt Haewon.” He glanced down at her. “I love her. I have always loved her.” A sad smile curved his lips. “Since she was a tiny girl. She’s like my china doll. So fragile.”
A sob cut off any other words he might have uttered. He was still terrified that, from last night’s events, she would suffer some ill effect that the doctors had failed to anticipate.
What was wrong with him? He never cried. He hadn’t shed a tear since he was a tiny boy. But such resolve had been repeatedly tested over the last few hours. He hadn’t slept in over thirty hours. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. Perhaps he was just simply physically exhausted and was being tested beyond his endurance.
“I usually judge a man by the company he keeps. What do your friends say about you, Eunho? How did you come to be in that room with Haewon?”
He closed his eyes. These were all questions he didn’t wish to answer. But her appa’s beady, black eyes were bearing down on him.
“I can only tell you what I did, sir. I entered the room and found her lying in a pool of…” His voice trailed off as her eomma suddenly whimpered. “I cleaned her up, dressed her, and carried her to my car. I drove her here and demanded that someone attend to her immediately. I told the doctors what she drank and what happened to her. I told the police too. And I gave them the names of all the men involved.”
“Men?” her mother echoed faintly.
He swallowed. He had said too much in front of the poor woman.
“There were three men in the room with her. Though, I cannot tell you if they were all involved. I saw only one for sure.”
But that was a lie, surely. For one friend had been caught completing the deed. But another had invited Eunho himself to participate with the promise that the girl was to be passed around. Certainly, all four of them had planned to partake of her. He felt like retching again.
“The police are going after all three?” her appa asked suddenly.
“I believe so.”
“And you will testify in a court of law against these friends of yours?”
That was the question. Those same friends could implicate him in several other rapes. If he turned on them, would they turn on him? Of course, if they did, they’d have to admit to more crimes.
But as his eyes turned towards the pale girl lying in the hospital bed, Eunho asked himself how he could not testify against his friends. How he could not attest to the events that had led to Haewon’s current situation.
“Yes, sir. If you wish me to do so.”
“I do not know,” the man mumbled. “It depends on whether they will require her to testify too. I’m not about to put my fragile daughter through the stress of that. We must speak with the police.”
Eunho nodded his head. Whether or not he testified, his partying days were over. He could not see himself taking another drugged girl without being haunted by a vision of an unconscious Haewon covered in her own blood.
—
“Eunho.”
“Yes, sir,” he spoke into his phone, responding to Haewon’s father.
“I wish to see you. At my house. Come meet me this evening. Seven o’clock.”
“I will, sir. How is Haewon?”
“She’s recovering here at home. She’s doing a little better.”
Eunho’s mind retraced the last week. Particularly, the day after the incident occurred.
“Sir, I think I should be the one to tell her,” Eunho spoke up that first morning as her parents were still absorbing the shock of the attack on their precious daughter.
They hadn’t responded to his assertion. But her mother had urged him to visit the cafeteria and get something to eat. Then her father had insisted when Eunho had protested.
After forcing some food down his throat, Eunho returned to a sleeping Haewon half an hour later. Her three visitors stayed with her for the next few hours. Eunho spent an awkward afternoon speaking of business affairs in hushed tones with her father. Mr. Mae seemed just as interested in his appa’s company as he always had.
Once they had convinced themselves that she was out of the danger zone – at least, for today – her parents left Eunho alone with her while they went to grab some dinner. She awoke again in the early evening. To Eunho. Alone.
He was sitting in a chair that he had pulled up next to her bed. He was trying to read a book. But he had never had any use for books. He had just glanced up at her as he’d shut that boring book, and he’d been startled to discover that she was watching him.
“Who did it, Eunho?” she whispered the instant his eyes met hers.
He felt an odd shifting in his gut as the flash of her eyes struck his. But he frowned at her question. “Did what?”
“Raped me.”
He stared in shock at her. She knew?
“Don’t look so surprised. I’m not a dunce, you know. Only one thing could explain the pain I’m enduring today. And I know I didn’t voluntarily give up my virginity last night. I’ve never even been kissed.”
He continued to stare at her. She might still appear quite fragile, but she wasn’t a child any longer. The last time he’d spoken with her, she had been a girl of fifteen. Now, she was most definitely a woman. And one to be reckoned with, apparently. He wasn’t going to be able to hide from her.
“Which one raped me?”
He swallowed. “I can’t know for sure that it was only one. I didn’t witness it. But the guy that picked you up yesterday. His name is…”
“Gyeoul.”
Surprised, he lifted his eyebrows at her. “Yes.”
Her eyes left his to stare unseeing at the wall across the room. Angry tears began to course down her cheeks.
“The one time I defy my parents for a tiny bit of freedom, I meet a jerk who rapes me. My eomma will never let me go anywhere now.” Her eyes met his then. “I’m going to die in that house, Eunho. Having never experienced life. Or freedom. Or any semblance of control over my own fate.”
Her words struck such a chord within his soul that he gasped. And then some shocking words of his own slipped from his lips.
“Marry me, Haewon.”
Her eyes had never left his. She stared intently into them. Then she scoffed. “Eunho, you have no love for me. Why would I marry you?”
“That’s not true. You are the one woman on the planet I do love.”
Her eyes challenged him. “You don’t even know me. You haven’t seen me since I was a child. Six years we’ve lived without the other. I don’t know you either.”
But it wasn’t true. She acknowledged it as she continued to probe the depths of those hauntingly attractive eyes of his. She did know him. Better than he thought. She knew the men she’d been hanging out with last night had been his friends. That was why she’d felt safe with them. Suddenly, a bubble of despair surfaced and escaped out of her mouth as a sob.
“How could your friends rape me, Eunho?” she burst out suddenly.
Shocked, he simply stared at her. “How did you know he was my friend?”
“He mentioned you. Yesterday. When I met him at the coffee shop.”
WHAT?!
Gyeoul had recognized Haewon when he’d bumped into her? But, how? Eunho hadn’t met Gyeoul until two years ago. They hadn’t been friends when she’d last lived here. Eunho had never spoken of her to Gyeoul either.
“How can you have such friends, Eunho?” Her voice recalled him to the present moment.
He emerged from his shock to stare at her.
“Eunho. Are you in the habit of raping girls yourself?”
He was appalled that she had found him out. She was an innocent. A child. The one safe zone in his life. Where none of the evil in his life existed. Neither what he had done nor what had been done to him. How could she possibly have guessed his darkest secret?
“Did you rape me too, Eunho?”
He stared at her. Utterly horrified.
“No!” he gasped. “I could never!” He was clearly appalled. “I could never touch you. You’re a child! An innocent child!”
Her lips twisted wryly as she continued to stare at him with those disturbing eyes of hers. “I am not a child, Eunho. I haven’t been a child for a very long time. And it’s not such a stretch that a man who hangs out with rapists would be one himself. Have you drugged a girl to get her to comply with your desires?”
This was a nightmare. How had this tiny wisp of a girl figured him out? He was swamped by despair. She was the one person in all the world whose opinion of him mattered. She was decimating him with her voice. Her words were cutting him into tiny pieces. Soon a breeze would blow through this cold room and whisk him away.
“I did not rape you, Haewon. I could never touch you.”
“Then why would you ask me to marry you?”
“Because I can give you the freedom you desire.”
“But you would never touch me?”
He shook his head.
“Then there is no freedom in the marriage you propose. I will be free only when I find a man who both loves me and desires me.” Suddenly, another sob bubbled up. “Though that is highly unlikely now. It was always a long shot, but now…” She glanced down at herself. “Who’s going to want a violated invalid?”
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
“A lot of guys. Your appa is rich. Your health has been, at best, precarious.”
She laughed harshly. “You’re saying a fortune hunter will marry me hoping I die soon so he can spend my inheritance.”
“Well, that would be one way to find a guy who wanted you. But there is one thing you’re forgetting…”
She glanced sharply at him, her eagle eyes piercing his own. “What’s that?”
“Haewon, you may not realize it, but you are stunningly beautiful.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, then she opened them to meet his again. “Yet you don’t desire me?”
He ground his teeth. “You’re a child.”
“I am not a child, Eunho! Look at me! Really look at me!”
She reached out, grabbed his hand, and pulled him towards her. “I am not a child any longer. Must I convince you?” She drew his hand towards her chest. But when he saw her intent, he tugged himself free of her grasp.
“Haewon!” he rebuked her, shocked.
“What?” she asked on a sob. “Is it really so shocking that an untouched girl would want to be touched? No one ever touches me. Not even my parents. Do they think I’ll shatter if someone’s skin contacts mine? If somebody’s heat kisses my own?
“I long to be touched, Eunho. If you really loved me, you would touch me.” She raised her eyes to capture his, and he gasped at the pain he read in hers. “I could never marry a man who refuses to touch me.”
“You would never want me anyway, Haewon,” he muttered.
But he reached out and ran his fingertip lightly along the top of her hand. She gasped as a bevy of tingles flooded her innocent skin. She focused hard to concentrate on responding to what he’d just said.
“Why? Because all the things I believe of you are true? I know why you wouldn’t let me attend parties with you when I was younger. I didn’t understand for a long time. But now that I’m older…now that I met your friends last night…now that I know who you are…you’ve been protecting me from last night for years, haven’t you?”
Her eyes still intent on his, he nodded his head as his finger traced a pattern across her soft skin.
“Yes,” he responded succinctly.
She sighed. “How ironic that I believed I’d be safe with your friends.”
“They’re not my friends. Not if they could touch you.”
“Did you touch me, Eunho?”
His one word shocked her. “Yes.”
Her eyes dueled with his. She was surprised. She would have sworn that he would never touch her. He had always staunchly protected her. Even when he’d been attacking his sister or his stepmother, he had continued to treat Haewon with uncustomary sweetness. He had always been unfailingly kind to her. He’d wrapped her in a bubble. Safe from everyone. Even from himself. She had believed it was impossible for him to hurt her.
“I cleaned you up,” he clarified, “and dressed you.”
His words broke her resistance towards him. “What?” she asked as her voice rode another wave of despair.
“After he raped you, you were a mess. I came into the bedroom and saw you lying in your own blood. I made someone bring me a towel. Then I wiped you clean, so I’m sorry. I’ve seen you. Your most intimate places.”
Why on earth was he blushing? He had done far more with many girls’ intimate places than brush a towel across them. So why couldn’t he tolerate being this honest with Haewon?
Probably because he was never this honest with anyone. Certainly not with himself.
Her gaze sharpened on him. “Eunho? Are you blushing?” Her lips quirked in surprise. “You just admitted to being a serial rapist, but you’re blushing at the thought of my private places.”
His eyes widened. “I’m not a serial rapist! I just…encouraged girls to go all the way with me.”
“Encouraged them? You mean, like your friends encouraged me last night?”
He closed his eyes and nodded.
“My God, Eunho! You know that is rape, don’t you? That you’ve taken all those girls without their consent? Used their bodies for your own pleasure without any thought to what they want?”
Her words broke him. He caved in, nodding. “How could I not know it after seeing what they did to you?!!” His voice was breaking on a sob now. “I would have done anything to protect you, Haewon. I would have laid down my life for you if I could have prevented this from happening to you!”
“But you would do it to another girl? To countless girls? You realize how twisted that is, don’t you, Eunho?”
“You’re different,” he whispered.
“No! Eunho! That is a lie! I’m not different. I am just like them. They are just like me. You hurt those girls. Every bit as much as your friends hurt me.”
“You’re different,” he insisted. “You never beguiled me. They beckoned me. They flirted with me. They asked for it.”
They’d been tantalizing him for years. From photographs. And computer screens. And beaches. And fast food joints. And living rooms where they drank with him and his friends. Taunting him. Daring him to take them. They’d only be satisfied when they were satisfying him.
“No. Eunho. No!” She shook her head emphatically as tears slipped down her cheeks. “If what you are saying is true, then I must have asked your friends for it. I beguiled Gyeoul. I beckoned him. I flirted with him. I must have for him to do this to me.”
“No! That’s not true, Haewon! Gyeoul is evil. Heartless. Cruel.”
She glanced up at him. “Just like you?”
He took a deep breath. “Yes. Just like me.”
Sorrow flooded her face and her eyes. “Admit to me that those girls are just like me. They deserve your respect too. Admit it,” her insistent voice challenged him.
He hung his head. “I know. Don’t you think I know?!”
“No. I don’t think you do. Because if you did, you couldn’t have touched them. Not any more than you could touch me. What your friends did to me was wicked. And I didn’t ask for it! I went to that party to see you. To find my friend. And your friends tried to destroy me. You’ve done this to other girls yourself?”
He thought of Yunyeong and nodded.
“How, Eunho? How could you? How could you violate a girl? How could you take her against her will? How could you tear her? How could you make her bleed?” She closed her eyes to hide from him.
He had been her hero. She had woven stupid fantasies around him from the time she was a child. But those dreams had begun to morph into something entirely different a few years ago. Before she’d left for Seoul even. They were the reason she’d been so angry at him for not letting her attend parties with him. She had craved his kiss. She’d known he must be kissing other girls. But she hadn’t known that he was hurting those girls. She was repulsed.
Yet…she couldn’t forget the sweet boy of her childhood. The one who had bandaged her hurts and given her an hour of freedom in the sun. Where had that beautiful boy gone? And was it possible to reclaim him?
Just then, his fingertips stirred something on the inside of her as they slid across her hand again. But as she opened her eyes and glanced at her hand, she realized it wasn’t his fingertips. She watched in wonder as his tear slid down the back of her hand, slipping over her knuckle. And she felt words flowing past her lips before she could even think about them. Her heart was speaking now.
“I will marry you,” she suddenly asserted. “On one condition.”
He stared at her in shock.
“That you swear to me that you will never touch another girl ever again.”
He simply gaped at her. It was what he deserved. What he had earned. Would it be a penance of sorts? Could he atone for his many sins by marrying an innocent girl who would never desire him? He would be signing up for a life of celibacy if he agreed. Could he do it?
As he stared into the eyes of the one person he loved in all the world, he knew that he could. For her. He could do anything for Haewon.
At this moment in time, he had no desire for another girl. Certainly not for an unwilling one. Not after what he’d seen this precious girl here endure yesterday evening. She had held a very large and quite accurate mirror up in front of his face last night. And he had seen what he had become. A monster. He was sick of his reflection. His image was taunting him.
Suddenly, he remembered his eomma. And how his appa’s infidelity had bruised his little soul. Eunho had become his father. He had transformed into a monster of the same make and model. His eyes widened in horror. But as he turned that gaze upon Haewon, he silently swore an oath to her. He would never do to her what his appa had done to his eomma. If he took Haewon as his wife, he would be faithful to her. Always.
Her voice sounded again.
“There’s one more thing. I want a three-month-long honeymoon. Take me around the world, Eunho. Show me life as it was meant to be. Show me its beauty.”
—
One year.
The doctors in Seoul had given her one year to live. So she’d come home. Now, because of the alcohol and the Rohypnol, the doctors here had reduced her life sentence to six months. She had six months to spend with Eunho. She wanted to give him all of that time.
She knew her parents wanted that time for themselves. But they’d had twenty-one years with her. And Eunho needed her. To show him who he was meant to be. To show him the kind of man he could still choose to be. That it was never too late for redemption. Not if he meant it. Not if he searched for it. Not if he reached for it. Not if he accepted it.
This was her one chance to change a life. That her time spent on this earth would mean something to somebody besides her parents. That she wouldn’t have simply wasted all the air she’d breathed. This was her opportunity to make her life count for something.
Truthfully, she had loved the beautiful boy with the haunting eyes since she was a tiny girl. He’d caught her singing in the hallway that first morning. He’d popped his head out of his doorway and startled her. Until her eyes had careened into his. The expression in his midnight eyes had stilled her.
She had instantly known that she’d met a kindred spirit. Something gentle lay buried deep within that enigmatic gaze. And she was going to dig it out. She was going to swim deeply into that heart until she found the treasure that had been buried there. Then, she would unearth it. For all the world to see its stunning beauty.
She was convinced it still lurked beneath the surface. Out of sight. Out of mind. Unremembered by Eunho or anyone around him. Except for her.
For she recalled every kind thing he’d ever done for her as a child. She remembered the touch of a butterfly bandaging the broken skin of her knee. She recalled that hour in the sun. That glorious day Eunho had given her to simply be. Like other children were allowed to be. To chase butterflies. And run around. Without fearing her heart would burst.
She reminisced about his singing with her. She had always sung her favorite song around him. Eunho was the only one who had ever appreciated her voice. Or her song. One day, the words had burst from his lips too…
“Dance in the garden.
Bask in the sunlight.
Soak in its embrace.
Echo the daylight.
“My darling, just be.
My lovely, just breathe.
My heartbeat, just know
I am with you
Wherever you go.
“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.
“Hold me in your arms.
Bask in my smile.
Soak in my embrace.
Linger awhile.
“My darling, just see.
Who you’re meant to be.
My heartbeat, just know
You were always,
Always meant to glow.
“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.”
—
She had awoken while Eunho had been in the cafeteria. Eating lunch. Because her appa commanded him to. He’d left her alone with her parents for half an hour after they’d arrived at the hospital. But Eunho had no idea she’d woken up while he was gone. Her parents had explained everything to her. Including the report the doctors had given them.
