Chapter 75 - The Darkest Hour

"Why don't you just go away ?!" Ye Rim grunted, not wanting to open her eyes as her hand reached the silver rosary wrapped around the headboard. Still half asleep, half awake, she sat with the relic curled in her fingers. "Honestly, I was trying to sleep here. Damn it!"

Rubbing her hair with dismay, she turned on the light by the bed. The damn "Big Mouth Monster" had appeared again in her dreams; and as always, the only thing she could do was wake up. It wasn't as if she remembered the dream, just knew that 'he' was coming and would appear soon… So as Ye Rim had been doing since she was a child, she thought about the rosary that her father's sister had given her, and woke up.

The room was cold_ in a specially humid and displeasing type of coldness_ and Ye Rim thought about turning on the heater, but the singer also thought it was good to save money and it wasn't so cold that another blanket didn't do the trick.

It was one of those particularly silent nights that can be filled with the monsters a delusional mind can produce ... And God knew there were many delusional minds out there about to see monsters in every shadow and recess.

Like her own mother.

But now she realized she was not going back to sleep, and would probably spend the rest of the night thinking nonsense about her childhood. And one thing she was sure about was that she definitely didn't want to spend the rest of the night brooding over a ridiculous and painful subject.

She unwound the rosary carefully, for it was fragile, made of a fine weblike thread of small spheres and a delicate cross. Her aunt, and Ye Rim's father, quarreled over this object; but Ye Rim never really got rid of it, despite her father's opinion.

Ye Rim was sure that her need for that Christian amulet was only a childhood habit. She felt safe as a child that something her aunt had instilled in her mind. Just as some children have their stuffed animal or favorite blanket, without which they cannot sleep.

Ye Rim had talked to Eun Ha a few times about this. Her unnie was superstitious and into mystical things; but Ye Rim knew that people believed in what they wanted.

Hadn't it been that way with her mother?

"Aish, no. No no. No way. I'm not going to stay here thinking about her," she snorted, and reached for the phone to check what time it was. It must be 3 am, she calculated, before seeing it.

Before she even put her hand on it, her cell phone on the headboard lit up with a silent message. Was it an annoying automatic business message, or something important?

"Uh?" She checked at the message, which said:

KJH: "You must be sleeping now, so you will see this message in the morning. I decided to go by train to Zurich, and just got off. Is cold! It would be nice to have someone to talk to during the trip, but my best girl friend yelled at me and asked me to stop calling every 5 minutes. And she must be sleeping comfortably and without guilt right now."

KJH: "She's unfair. Because I only called three times and at good intervals before she lost her temper."

KJH: "European coffee is hot, strong and bitter. Proust!" He sent a selfie, where she noticed a luxurious train cabin, by the details at the bottom of the photo. Jun Hyeon looked pretty warm, close to the window against the night sky with blurry lights, and holding a coffee cup for the camera. She found the photo amateur but nice, and smiled.

She could stare at this handsome man and his smile for a long time.

Friend?

If only she could stop thinking of him as a man, maybe.

Ye Rim put the phone down, and reached for the fantastic historical novel she was reading before sleep.

"Let's see if both of us will be smarter this time, Le-Anne," she said to the fantasy heroine of the love misadventures book.

The Big Mouth Monster and the bitter memories that created it were forgotten for now.

…

The gentle rocking of the modern train on its six-hour journey, plus boredom and darkness, as well as tiredness, quickly swept away Kim Jun Hyeon's hyperactive disposition. The surgeon had spent an atypical day just planning and executing his plan to annoy Nam Ye Rim until she admitted she was wrong about her smug statement.

He didn't want her — that ambitious sassy woman, ​​who was so arrogant that she thought she could classify men according to a fantasy of girlpower. Did the singer's self-confidence border on narcissism? Oh really? Did she have so many men at her feet to choose from? And where were they now? Because he had only seen seniors around him: what was she after all, the Aegyo Princess of the Elderly Men?

She kept sending him wrong signals: with her eyes, with her body, with every bit of her_ and now did she still want them to be 'friends?'

Did she really mean to put him, Jun Hyeon, in friendzone?

The juvenile excitement that had not been on him for a long time gave way to seemingly innocent drowsiness. Soon his eyes were heavy and Dr. Kim felt too lazy to get up and grab a blanket to cover himself. After breakfast he had had dinner and a glass of wine, which contributed to the feeling of comfort and drowsiness. He just leaned his head against the back of the seat, and without looking at the nighttime landscape that was passing at a constant speed outside, closed his eyes without realizing:

"Jun."

"What?" a slight irritation at being interrupted when he was almost asleep.

"Do you remember?" she said, almost in a whisper.

"What?"

"Do you remember?" she insisted, in another unidentifiable tone, close to his ear. Jun Hyeon raised his arm to go over her shoulder and bring her close, but she quickly broke away.

"Shhh…" he called for silence.

"You need to go back and get me."

"Ji…" he opened his eyes, squinting at the empty armchair beside him in the exclusive cabin.

Of course, she was not there. There was nothing there.