Chapter 5: Devastated by Love – February 14, 2022
The morning after their flight landed in Hawaii, Haewon lay on the couch in the lobby of their hotel on the island of Maui and watched in wonder as a butterfly floated by her face. The most amazing thing she’d found here in Hawaii thus far was the open-air living room of sorts behind the hotel lobby. The hotel consisted of pillars and a ceiling downstairs, but it had no walls, except those required for support or to separate one room from another. It possessed no outer walls. It was completely open to the outside world. To the weather that seemed to have descended from heaven to permeate the beautiful island.
For just a moment, her eyes traced the white clouds floating past a bright cerulean sky just beyond the hotel’s ceiling. She breathed in the sweet ocean air and smiled. Then she continued to watch in fascination as the orange and black butterfly landed on the couch cushion an inch from where her fingers were lying.
Haewon was resting after a long flight. And reminiscing about her wedding night.
Eunho had been the gentlest of lovers.
She smiled as she recalled their first night together.
“What do you wish me to do to you, my love?” he whispered in her ear as he settled his weight on the bed next to her that night.
“Kiss me. Touch me. But nothing below the waist. Or above the knee.”
“Ahhh, so your ankles are fair game, then?” he smiled tenderly down at her.
She grinned at him. “Absolutely. Can you do something delicious to even my ankles?”
He had proceeded to demonstrate. She giggled now as she recalled the next half an hour. But, eventually, she had remembered his poor back and the impulse that had struck her as she’d traced those wicked scars with her fingertip. So after Eunho had delighted the skin below her knees, she had quietly commanded him, “Eunho, come lie beside me.”
When he did her bidding, she demanded, “Roll over.”
He gazed at her questioningly.
“Face that wall.” She pointed to the wall running parallel to the side of their bed.
He acquiesced, turning his back towards her.
“Perfect,” she smiled. But as she looked at those grotesque marks on his precious skin, the joy fled from her face. And tears filled her eyes as she imagined the tiny boy he had once been. He merged with the beautiful teenager she had met when she was seven years old. She winced as she imagined every beating, as she saw all the years his appa’s belt had damaged his skin. How many marks were here? Too many to count quickly.
She leaned forward and brushed her lips across the nearest scar. “I love you,” she whispered to his skin.
Eunho tensed. Something had just begun to shatter inside of him. That first brush of her lips had cracked the mirror he carried around within his soul. Her tender words had widened the fissure. It fractured further as her lips touched another laceration and again those beautiful words sounded in his ear. She continued to devastate the inner image of himself that he had spent years building. Her tender assault decimated that looking glass, and he felt all the broken pieces sliding to the floor of his soul as she planted kiss after kiss across his back.
No one – not even his eomma – had ever been this gentle towards him. He had no grid for his wife’s sweet behavior. He finally reached for his pillow and shoved his face into it so that something would catch the tears that had begun to stream down his face. But Haewon could feel his shoulders shaking beneath her lips. She understood that she was devastating him. But she knew that this man needed to be devastated by love.
—
Eunho found his wife lounging in the lobby an hour later. She had her nose buried in a book.
“You like to read?” he asked with a twist of his lips.
She nodded.
“I’ve found no liking for it. Ever.”
“Books are the only way I’ve ever escaped from my dreary life,” she murmured. “From the time I was a tiny child, I would lie in bed and travel the world through the books my appa would read to me. As soon as I was old enough to read, I began to devour books.
“I’ll tell you a secret about me, Eunho,” she beamed up at him with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “I crave adventure. Books have long supplied me with as much adventure as my appa would allow me.”
“But, my love, I have brought you to the beautiful island of Maui to enjoy a true adventure. So, come, get up. Let’s go for a walk, at least.”
She grimaced. “Eunho.”
Something in the tone of her voice alerted him. He glanced sharply down at her. “What is it?”
“The flight really took it out of me. I’m going to need a day to recover. At least.” She gazed up at him then with tears in her eyes. “Do you think my appa was right? Am I too sickly to enjoy a vacation in an exotic locale?”
“No. Absolutely not.” He shook his head. “Even if I have to carry you, you’re going to enjoy Hawaii, Haewon. I promised you the time of your life, and I will deliver it. If you wish to lie on this couch reading all day, then you can do just that. I will pull up a chair and review some reports for Appa. He’ll be pleased with me for getting some work done on vacation. And when you’re ready, we’ll grab a bite to eat.”
She gave him a tremulous smile. He sat down on the edge of the couch and bent over her to brush his lips across her ear.
Then he whispered, “And if you grow weary of this couch, I’ll carry you upstairs to our room. We can always spend our entire vacation lying in bed together. I’d be very happy to delight you again.”
She blushed to the roots of her hair. And marveled that a man who had so ruthlessly used other girls could be so infinitely kind to her.
For his part, Eunho was also remembering their wedding night. He had taken great pleasure in simply kissing her. And brushing his lips across certain areas of her skin. He had found something precious with Haewon. Something he had never before known existed. He had the distinct impression that it was wrecking him. He was also still recovering from the kisses she’d planted along his back. In fact, he would have sworn that even now he could feel her delicate lips dancing across his skin and burning holes through the scars his appa had given him. He wondered how many of her kisses would be required to eradicate the whole mess of them completely.
—
After enjoying a leisurely morning in the open air, they headed to lunch at the hotel restaurant. Eunho’s eyes traced the lovely contours of her glowing countenance as she enjoyed her mahi-mahi. Her gaze caught his a moment later as she chewed. Then she blushed.
“Eunho,” she rebuked him. “What are you looking at?”
“You, beautiful.” His lips curved into a smile.
“Are you really enjoying our honeymoon?” she asked him self-consciously after a bit.
“I am.”
“But we haven’t done anything yet.”
“I simply enjoy your company, Haewon. I always have. You’re so…peaceful.”
“I am?” she paused eating to stare quizzically at him.
“Mmhmm,” he took a bite of his own food. “You were always thus. Even as a tiny child. It’s why I enjoyed playing with you.”
“I don’t recall you ever playing with me.” Her eyes slid to capture his again.
“Don’t you? Hmm. I do. I remember giving you piggyback rides and singing with you and chasing you about the garden.”
“That was only one day, and you didn’t chase me. I chased the butterflies. Though, now that I think of it, I do remember you running around with me, trying to help me catch them. You caught one. Do you remember?”
As his eyes took in a floating orange beauty that happened to pick that moment to fly by them, his gaze slid along its wings, and he acknowledged that he did recall that butterfly of long ago. It had been a blue admiral. Known for its stunning beauty. He and Haewon had admired its black wings gleaming like a raven’s feathers in the sunlight. Its blue fringe nearly glowing under the rays of that bright star. He had caught it in the net, but it had brought him only sorrow.
“I damaged its wing. It couldn’t fly anymore,” he uttered mournfully.
That butterfly had reminded him of Haewon. A beautiful creature with a damaged organ which impeded her ability to embrace freedom.
“It made you sad,” she recalled.
“Of course, it did. I destroyed its ability to soar.”
She stared at him. “You are an enigma, Eunho.”
In mid-bite, he stopped chewing. “What?”
“Sometimes, you have the most tender heart I’ve ever encountered. I can’t imagine another boy of my acquaintance caring about a simple butterfly.”
He shrugged his shoulders and continued chewing. But she kept staring at him. Wondering how he could become so overcome by rage at certain moments that he would rape a girl. Yet his harming of a butterfly over a decade ago still had the power to hurt his heart. He must have built up strong walls around that heart over those intervening years.
“Eunho, did your heart grow harder after I left?”
He swallowed and locked eyes with her. “Perhaps.” He had missed her childlike beauty. Even at fifteen, she had still appeared several years younger. She’d been so innocent. She had always been golden. In person. And in every memory of his.
“I just…I cannot reconcile the two sides of your character. Forcing a girl,” she lowered her voice, “and mourning a butterfly.”
“My eomma always loved butterflies,” he murmured quietly as he stared down at his lunch.
“I feel certain she must have loved girls too.”
His eyes flew to hers.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t mean to keep throwing the sins of your past into your face.”
“It’s all right. I quite deserve it,” he comforted her.
Only, he didn’t. His words did not comfort her. His past pained her. And she believed that it was beginning to pain him too. Which was a good thing. But she didn’t wish him to spend the rest of his life stuck in the past. She only wanted it to inspire him to change his future.
“Do you feel the need to absolve yourself?” she whispered.
His eyes held hers. “What do you mean?”
She glanced down at her fish. She wasn’t really very hungry today. She used her fork to push it around her plate, through the delicious sauce the chef had dreamed up.
“I don’t know. Is there anyone you wish to apologize to?”
“Apologize?! What? Like, ‘Hey, I’m sorry I raped you! Hope you get over it soon and lead a happy life’?”
Her eyes met his again. “Yes. Although, without the sarcastic attitude. Something like, ‘I have just come to realize how much I must have devastated you. And I am so sorry. I wish I could take it back. I hope you recover fully and go on to live a happy life.’”
He simply gazed at her. “You cannot believe that a few words can undo the damage I did.”
“Maybe not. But I think they couldn’t hurt. And maybe they would help. I know when someone has wronged me and found the courage to apologize, I’ve felt better.”
“But you’re not talking about a regular wrong. You’re talking about rape!”
“A wrong is a wrong. A violation of another’s will or heart is still a violation. It all hurts.” She paused for a moment to spear a sweet potato and pop it into her mouth. “So…is there anyone who comes immediately to mind?”
“Yunyeong.” He had seen her once, a couple of weeks ago, in his father’s house.
Looking back on that encounter now, through Haewon’s lens, he could clearly see that he had devastated Yunyeong.
“Are you going to apologize to her?”
“I will consider it.”
Which wasn’t true. He wouldn’t consider it. He would find the courage to do it. He already felt like he should say something to the girl he had wronged numerous times. He had lied to her when they’d first met. As soon as he’d discovered she was only sixteen, he had felt the need to fabricate his age. He’d been twenty-two, but he’d led her to believe he was nineteen. He had lied about inconsequential things several more times.
He had slowly led her down a path towards her own devastation too. He had trespassed against her conscience before he’d ever violated her body. He had been able to feel her discomfort with his touches and some of his kisses in the beginning of their relationship. But he had ignored her qualms and pressured her to give him what he desired. He had eventually taught her to enjoy what he did to her.
But such a journey had not come without a price. Yunyeong had learned to quiet the still, small voice that warned her to stop. The same voice he had silenced long ago. Though, occasionally, the pesky thing had returned to haunt him. Since he had begun to seek Haewon’s company of late, that voice had seemed to revive once more. It echoed in his heart quite often these days. But back then, when he was tempting Yunyeong, he had become quite skilled at ignoring it.
Having effectively shut down that warning tone, he had believed Yunyeong was willing to go all the way with him. Until that last night. When she had balked at the gate. But he hadn’t wanted to be stopped, so he had dragged her screaming through it. Not for the first time, he felt truly sick to his stomach as he remembered her. Later that night, after Yunyeong had fled from his house and he had stripped the bloody sheets from his bed, he had lain in the darkness of his bedroom, next to the stain that had bled through to soil his mattress, and wept. He had begun to recall her voice begging him to stop, and somehow it had echoed his when he’d beseeched his father to cease hitting him. That abused, little boy had curled into a ball and sobbed. Because he couldn’t take it back. Just like no one could undo what his appa had done to him.
His father had never shown him any mercy, so he hadn’t shown Yunyeong any either. But in the secret place of his heart that night, he had faced a sad truth. He was sorry he had hurt her. She had handed him power over her, and for a while, it had felt good to be in control. But in the aftermath of the adrenaline rush, he had been forced to admit that cruelty did not become him.
He had never had any desire to become like his appa. In fact, the very notion had repulsed him. But in order to protect himself from his father’s repeated attacks, he had hardened his own heart. He had worked to convince himself that pain made him stronger. Therefore, if he inflicted it on anyone else, he was doing them a favor too.
He had also sunk himself deeper into the comforting world of pornography. Those enticing images had promised him that he would find the solace and pleasure he was seeking in the arms of a willing woman. As he had fallen further down the black hole of internet porn, he set certain strongholds into motion in his mind through his countless hours of engaging with those stimulating images. Coupled with the hardening of his heart that had occurred every time his father’s belt had bruised his skin, Eunho had begun to turn his life – his thoughts, his motivations, his choices – over to that monster. The one he’d spent years becoming.
“You’re asking me to unravel the monster.”
“What?” she squinted at him.
“You’re asking me to become someone else.”
“No. I’m asking you to remember who you really are. The beautiful boy you used to be. The one whose heart was crushed by the accidental injury of a butterfly.”
She was gazing at him with a lovely light in her eyes. “The one who took me to bed two nights ago and gave me nothing but kisses. You’ve given me a beautiful life, Eunho, and I love you for it. This is the person you can be all the time. If you will but choose it.”
His food forgotten, he sat staring at her for a long time, his eyes burning into hers. With all his heart, he wanted to be that man. A man who was worthy of the love she was lavishing on him.
—
They returned to their hotel room so she could nap after lunch. Eunho discovered he was tired too. So he lay down next to her and drew her into his arms. He buried his face in her shoulder as he pulled her back against him. He curled his body around hers and faced a new truth. He wanted to spend the rest of his life holding this woman in his arms. He was more content in her presence than he had ever been in anyone else’s. Just simply breathing alongside her made him happy. He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
She awoke in the late afternoon to find Eunho gazing down into her face. At some point, she had turned towards him. His arm still encircled her waist, though. Her gaze met his. She fell into those midnight pools for several blissful moments. The light in his eyes was undoing her.
“Hello, beautiful,” he whispered.
She briefly wondered how many women he had spoken those exact words to, but she refused to ask him. No one had ever spoken those words to her. Except for him. She wasn’t going to ruin them for herself by thinking of all the girls he’d been with. Willing or unwilling.
“Say it again,” she demanded.
She wanted to concentrate on those winsome words this time. On his intonation and the feel of his breath slipping over her lips.
He quirked his eyebrows before grinning at her. But then, just as suddenly, his smile faded as a serious light invaded his eyes. “Hello, beautiful,” he breathed again.
She let the beauty of those words sail through her before she lifted her face to surrender her lips to his.
Eunho began to lose himself there in the confines of her moist mouth. He reveled in the damp depths of her lips’ embrace. He rejoiced in the sweetness of her lips dancing with his own. He wondered how he had never discovered the mysterious wonder hidden in a kiss before he had tasted Haewon.
—
As she rolled over a few minutes later, she noticed a vase full of red camellias resting on the nightstand near her head.
“What are those?” she asked, turning back towards Eunho.
“Those are for you, my love. Happy Valentine’s Day!”
She frowned. “But I’m supposed to get you a gift today. Chocolate, most likely.”
He grimaced. “I don’t care for chocolate, so don’t bother. Besides, we’re in the United States. Valentine’s Day is a big holiday here. And I believe it’s pretty traditional for a man to buy his wife flowers on this momentous occasion.”
She beamed up at him. “In that case, thank you. Now, I think you deserve a little reward if you’re not going to get any chocolates.”
“Please. I prefer any reward that doesn’t involve that fattening substance.”
“Fattening? Oh, Eunho, I love chocolate! You can always give me yours.”
“In that case, you’d better open that drawer right there.” He pointed at the drawer underneath the table of her nightstand.
She quirked one midnight eyebrow at him. “You got me two presents?”
“We shall see. You won’t know for sure until you open that drawer.”
But, upon opening that drawer, she discovered that she had been quite wrong. Eunho hadn’t bought her two presents. He had bought her three. She turned back towards him to shine the light of her smile upon him.
“Eunho? What did you do?”
“Well, open them and find out.”
She reached for the wide, flat, heart box first. She had a feeling it contained her favorite edible substance. Upon opening it, she discovered the chocolate her heart was craving. She grinned up at him as she popped a chocolate truffle into her mouth.
“Oh, Eunho!” she moaned. “It’s too bad you don’t like chocolate, or I would kiss you right now to thank you!”
“Well, I might make an exception if it means I get to enjoy another of your kisses, my sweet.”
She laughed at his pun before she planted a kiss on his lips.
“Now, open the other one,” he urged her eagerly.
She pulled a velvet box out of the drawer. It was also a red heart. She popped the lid open to reveal a gorgeous, ruby necklace that matched her engagement ring. Her eyes grew wide. She gasped. Then her gaze flew to his.
“Eunho! It’s stunning!”
“I bought it at the same time I bought your ring. I thought you should have the set.”
“Now you’ve given me your heart twice over,” she smiled as she drew the silver chain out of the box. Its crimson heart hanging to glimmer up at them.
“Let me help you put it on.” He reached out to take the necklace from her before threading it around her neck and latching the loop into its clasp. He let go of the necklace, and the ruby fell to hang between her breasts. “It’s beautiful on you, my love.”
She glanced down at it and reached up a hand to finger the ruby. “It’s so beautiful. Just like my ring.” She looked up into his eyes. “Thank you.”
She leaned forward and gave him another sweet kiss. This time he tasted the chocolate in her mouth. He pulled back as he grabbed her hand.
“Come on. I’m taking you to dinner! There’s got to be something better than chocolate to eat on this island!”
She snickered at his disgust of her favorite candy. But she was still beaming with joy. Eunho had just filled her heart to overflowing with his love.
—
They took a walk along the beach as the sun was setting that evening. They watched the tide coming in. As the waves continuously arced gracefully before battering the beach, Eunho waxed eloquent.
“My love for you is like that.” He pointed at those ceaseless waves.
Her eyes traced the arcs of blue water as they raced towards the shoreline before emptying themselves upon the ivory beach. She was particularly captivated by the frilly swath of white foam that crowned each wave. Its bubbles burst upon the beach as it slapped the landfall.
“Oh, yes? How so?” she breathed.
His eyes caught hers then. “Like that ocean, it is endless. Constantly crashing towards you, my love will pursue you, chasing you down, overwhelming you for the rest of your life. It’s steady, like the beat of my heart pounding in your chest, reminding you that my love courses through your veins. And I am but a breath away from you.”
She considered him. “Eunho, do you perhaps house a poet in your soul?”
He chuckled at her suggestion and shook his head. “You just bring out the best in me.”
But his words comparing his love to his faithful heartbeat kept resounding in her ear. She sobered as she turned to face him and set her hand over his heart. Then, unsatisfied, she removed her hand and bent her head to lay her ear over that steadily beating organ. She could feel the strength of that healthy heart. She could hear its heavenly cadence too. Tears filled her eyes.
“It’s a beautiful heart, Eunho.”
“I wish I could give it to you, Haewon.” He meant those words with all of that powerful heart.
“You already have, haven’t you?”
She glanced down at her hand which had once again come to rest over his heart. Her heart-shaped ruby sparkled in the light of the setting sun.
“I want to give you so much more than that puny ring, Haewon.”
“Puny? Have you seen this ring? That’s a whole carat I’m wearing on my finger!”
“It’s nothing,” he declared passionately. “I want to give you a long life. A healthy one. A happy one. And children to make you laugh. And whatever your heart desires.”
“My heart desires you.”
She was gazing up at him as though he had set the sun in the heavens. But he knew he had not. He knew he was but a mortal man. Incapable of giving her the one thing she truly needed. A new heart.
So he would revel in the time they had left. And try not to think about tomorrow. Or the endless line of days he was preparing to face without her.
