Lies and Secret

Chapter Eight

Choi Hyun’s Soo’s Point of View

The streets are covered with snow as the wintry weather causes a heavy snow storm and makes it very difficult to drive through the blizzard, on the radio we are asked to avoid driving and wait for the blizzard to pass away but I don’t wait.

I cannot wait

Seung Gi needs me

Lee Seung Gi needs me

I tried to hurry up to meet him as I remember his trembling voice through the phone ‘can you come get me’ That sentence alone made me forget that I was angry at him and instead raised a lot of questions but the most important one was is he okay?

I hope he is okay. I don’t know what I would do if he wasn’t

I finally got to the location he had sent me but I do not even turn off my engine as I rushed out of the car, it’s a miracle that I could even see through the windscreen as it was so foggy. As I climbed down my car I saw a person standing in the heavy snow, arms crossed slouching only in a uniform, no winter jacket, no scarf, no head warmer , nothing at all.

Just stood there freezing

It takes me a second to recognize the person to be Lee Seung Gi and my heart crumbles seeing him like that and even worse when he looks up to me, he had a busted lips and bruises all over his face but he still manages to smile at me saying “Hi”

My lips began to slightly tremble as tear began to collect at the lid of eyes, I run up him without saying a word as I removed my jacket and wore it over him, so as my scarf and my gloves. My heart broke into a thousand little pieces and more as I dressed him in my clothes

I am very emotional and as much as I wanted to be in the standard of my gender, where men like me are told to be strong all the time, not show emotions and not cry, I fail every single time to meet this standard and here I was failing all over again as the boy who stirred my emotion looked hurt but still managed to pull up a smile. We do not say a world to each other as I walked him back to my car, opening the car door for him first before going in myself

“I’m sorry” he said trembling “I got hurt again”

I found it very difficult for words to come out of my mouth, I felt like if I uttered a word I will break down instead, the tears doesn’t stop and it was like the more I wiped it off the more it kept on pouring

“I’m okay” Lee Seung Gi assures

How can he be okay? I am not the one who is hurting but I cannot even stop crying, I turned to look at him as my eyes slowly starts to become bloodshot

“Aww Hyun Soo” he removes the gloves from his hands, trembling as he uses his thumb to wipe the tears off my face “Don’t cry. I am the one who should be crying. Why are you crying?” he chuckles

“I can’t help it” my voice cracks “You know I how much I hate it when you get hurt, you know how much…” I become vulnerable in front of this boy before me as I began to cry into my hands.

I hate it

I hate it so much

I hate that he was hurt.

Every time he came to school with a bruise or two, I would ask him what happened and where he got it from but he will always shake it off like he mistakenly hurt himself while working or give some other damned excuse. I felt like I should have invaded that space of his but even friends has boundaries and if he was keeping it from me I should respect his boundaries right?

But how can I do that when he has repeatedly gotten hurt, so hurt that he must have left home or wherever he had been without a winter jacket or anything for warmth in this terrible weather. I felt powerless and unable to protect him and unable to even do the simplest task of comforting him, why was I the one crying so bad? Why was I crying instead of comforting him? Why was seeing him hurt more painful than being hurt myself?

“You promised me you would stop getting hurt” I finally find a little bit of my voice “What is this?” I gesture to this train wreck.

“I’m sorry”

“How long have you been standing in the snow? Why don’t you have a jacket on? Are you trying to commit suicide? Do you plan to die of hyperthermia?” I can’t help the anger that began to rise at the pit of my throat. Seung Gi closes his eyes as he rest on the car seat, he take a deep breath holding his stomach like it hurt there too

I should ask him who did this, I should find the person and make him or her or whoever did this to him wish he was never born but I know Seung Gi would not tell me who did this to him. Like he was protecting the person, I have my suspicious that it’s his father. He rarely goes into detail about his family and talks more about his mom who has passed than his father who was actually living so of course I suspect that man

“Should I take you home?” I try to confirm my suspicion

“No” he replies “Take me anywhere but home”

His father did it. That bastard

I took a deep breath trying to get a hold of myself before I started driving, I have no place to take Seung Gi expect my home but I lived with my parent I don’t have a place of my own, I need to make sure I do by the time I finish high school in case of emergency but for as for today I drove home. The only place I could think of

Lee Seung Gi has never been to my place before although So Ra has multi times and that is mostly because we grew up together and our parents knew each other, it was different for Seung Gi’s case. The first time I saw him he was on his way for the entrance exam unlike everyone who came for the exam with their parents or had been dropped by drivers, Lee Seung Gi came alone. He had no one with him, just that lanky boy with a buzzed a cut who caught my curiosity. Who would have thought years later he would become a very important person to me? That he would become that person that steered up my emotions and made me confused

The drive to my house is filled with silence as I only concentrated on driving through this weather. I got home an hour later luckily both my parent were not in the living room when I snuck Seung Gi into the room, the house maid did catch me going up with him, I thought she would have gone home but the blizzard is making it difficult for anyone to move. She promised she wouldn’t tell my parent that I brought Seung Gi home and I appreciated that

Seung Gi sat on my bed, his hands constantly rubbing his thighs something I noticed he only does when he was nervous, a small smile touches my face for the first time this evening as I brought out some of my clothes that I think would fit him

“This is the bathroom you should shower first” I tell him and he nods standing up from my bed, I hand him the new piece of clothes and a towel and watched him walk into the bathroom, I rush downstairs to look for the emergency medical kit and asked the housekeeper to make him a hot cup of tea. I brought both items back up to the room and waited for Lee Seung Gi to finish taking a hot bath so I could help clean and treat his wound

Lee Seung Gi’s Point of view

Choi Hyun Soo’s clothes fit me perfectly that you would think it is originally mine, I sat down his on his bed as he instructed and watch him take my uniform

“Where are you taking my uniform too?” I asked

“You’re not going to wear it like this tomorrow are you?” he asked then took it out of his room. I sat down alone in his room, finally having the time to scan his bedroom. It was the size of my bedroom and living room combined together and for the first time I thought it must be nice having rich parents, if my parents were rich maybe my mom won’t have died as we would have had enough money to take care of her surgery, maybe my dad would have had a job and wouldn’t be abusive towards my mom and I or maybe if my mom hadn’t married him instead she would have lived a better live with someone else and won’t have died the way she did

If only she didn’t marry him

Even if she might not have given birth to me but at least she would have been happy, at least she would have had a lot of things that made her smile

I look around the room and noticed a picture frame beside his bed side. It was a picture of Hyun Soo, So Ra and I taking a selfie. More like Min So Ra forcing me to take a selfie while Hyun Soo laughed. I can’t believe Hyun Soo put this picture in a frame and placed it by his bed side. I run my hands on the picture and smiled

“You printed this picture out?” is the first question I ask as Hyun Soo came back into his room. He locks the door and walk closer to me with a bowl of porridge and a medical kit in another hand

“Of course, it’s hard getting a picture of you actually smiling” he replies and I chuckle. A sharp pain kick at my ribcage and I groan “Sit down” Hyun Soo instructs and I obeyed sitting on his bed. He brings out some supplies from the emergency medical kits and starts to apply them of my face. I have so many bruises and wonder if this was really going to be enough “Take off your clothes” Hyun Soo instructed as he finished applying a cream on my face

“All of it?” I bite my lips

“What? No I meant just the cardigan”

My face flushed as I slowly took off the cardigan, I am not in perfect shape. I don’t have the luxury to work out or have six packs like other guys hell I don’t even enjoy physical labor. I am nothing but plain old lanky boy Lee Seung Gi

Hyun Soo proceeds to apply the cream on my ribcage, my chest and my back, his hand slides than my body giving me a tingling sensation of pain mixed with something that might be pleasure. My breathing starts to rise as I clench onto the bed trying to control myself. I close my eyes took a sharp breath. I feel Hyun Soo’s hands away from my body so I opened my eyes to see him. He has his eyes glue to my body as his lips tremble

“I’m sorry” I apologized once again

Last year I had promised Choi Hyun Soo that I wasn’t going to get hurt again. I tried my best to ignore my dad no matter what he did, tried my best to avoid getting it and even learn to let him get away with things that he shouldn’t so I could fulfill my promise to Hyun Soo but here I was again all beat up and numb from cold not to mention I caused Choi Hyun Soo to worry once again

Hyun Soo doesn’t reply me even as I apologized and concentrate on what he was doing. I placed two of fingers under his jaw and brought his face up to mine. His eyes was red and it broke my heart

“I’m sorry Choi Hyun Soo” I said again

“Don’t be” he finally replied. His voice trembling “I know it’s not your fault. I know”

I have never actually sat down and told Hyun Soo that I was being abused by my father. It is not something that I am proud of and I just want to hide it from the world, I feel more embarrassed now that Hyun Soo has an idea about it so I decided to hide my embarrassment and shame with something less embarrassing

“Do Min Su and her brother bullies me in school”

“What? Do Min Woo and Do Min Su?” he asked shocked and I nodded

Hyun Soo frowns “Wait, did they do this to you?” I could hear the anger in his voice

“No, no” I shook my head “This was caused by my dad” he sighs but before he could say anything about it I added “The secret I didn’t want Rosaline to tell you and So Ra was that Do Min Su and Do Min Woo has been bullying me ever since I came to the school”

Hyun Soo clenches his jaw “Ever Since? You mean from the beginning? What?” he clenched his jaws “I’ll kill them”

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you or So Ra. You will try to help me and it will become a big fight and I will be the one who will lose the most”

“I can’t just let them continue especially Min Woo. So Ra likes him and doesn’t know that he is this kind of person”

“I know but…”

Hyun Soo grabs my face in his hands staring straight into my eyes. I shift my glance across the room as it was impossible to look into his eyes without thinking of doing things to him. Things that I had imagined, things that I knew was wrong but still want to try “I am sorry” I didn’t expect that to come out from him “I should have been more attentive, I should have known”

“I hid it from you”

He took a deep breath “From now let’s not hide anything from each other” he makes bring his pinky finger toward and I smile linking my pinky finger in his

“I promise”