And then her eyes caught the back of his head as he leaned down. His collar had shifted, exposing the curve of his neck right beneath her fingers. And for a heartbeat, she didn't feel like a human. Her eyes flashed with a dark, jagged impulse, with a sudden horrible thought; that had no origin and no reason at all.
She imagined pressing the burning, orange tip of her cigarette against that skin, marking him, staining the perfection that made her feel so small. It was a flash of pure, raw human ugliness, the urge to destroy something beautiful and vulnerable just for mere devilish pleasure.
But before this intrusive thought of hers could take root, his voice cut through her malice like a slap.
"Don't you dare drop them!"
Her hand had been drooping, her fingers loosening their grip on the candy without her even realizing it. She snapped her arm back up, her face heating with a mix of embarrassment and fury.
"I'm... I'm busy," she snapped awkwardly, her voice cracking as she gestured wildly with the hand holding the lollipops, the cigarette smoke curling around the bright strawberry wrappers.
"Just a second, just a second," he had said, fumbling with the laces. Then, without even looking up at her, he stood, did a quick little jump to test the tightness, and started running away.
"Hey! Your candy!" she yelled over his shoulders. "They're better for the lungs than that stick!" he shouted without turning and disappeared as soon as he had appeared.
Se-na stood there, paralyzed, the cigarette smoke curling around her. She looked at the white stick of tobacco that made her look even more pathetic especially after his comment on lungs, then down at the three bright, crinkly red lollipops sitting in her palm. The contrast felt like a joke, holding a hardened pessimism while clenching the sugary happiness of a seven-year-old in the same hand.
Who does he actually think he is? she fumed. They're my lungs! If I want to blacken them, that's my business. Dawg!
She went to the dustbin her hand hovering over its opening. The logical, cold part of her brain screaming at her to just open her palm and let the colorful things clatter into the waste.
Just drop them. It's trash. He's mocking you.
Her head kept saying, but for some reason, her fingers wouldn't unclench.
She pulled her hand back, her face twisting in frustration. Nah not like this!!! She said to herself and moved to hurl them onto the ground and grind them into the dirt with the heel of her shoe to stomp the sweetness out of them until they were nothing but his shattered goodwill. HELL WITH IT! She said out loud.
But now as she threw them in the ground her foot wouldn't move. She just stared at them, the plastic wrappers catching the light glistening like broken glass shards.
And then with a low, jagged curse, she picked them off the ground and threw them into the bottom of her bag, burying them under her heavy textbooks. "Whatever," she muttered to the empty air, her heart thudding as if she was stealing something, she was telling herself that she'd return them the next day just to show him she didn't need his charity.
But unfortunately or fortunately she never found the right moment. A week later, during a particularly brutal math exam, she found herself unwrapping the first one. It was sweet, artificial, and surprisingly comforting. That was the day she stopped smoking and the day she started finding him interesting.
....
All thoughts were coming to her as she sat with them. The podcast interview was winding down. Ra-ik was bidding goodbye to his fans, his eyes tired but his smile still projecting that relentless, bright warmth like the old days only difference was that he had aged, and well it wouldn't be wrong to say that he was aging like a fine wine.
A shy, tiny smile the kind the world didn't even believe she possessed crept onto her face. She pushed another gold-leafed strawberry jam filled macaron into her mouth, her eyes fixed on the screen until the very last second.
She clicked the TV off, and the room fell back into its usual, expensive, and suffocating silence.
It was strange even absurd that a woman like Maeng Se-na could complement someone. But it wasn't just her. To the world, Do Ra-ik was invincible. He was the hero who always won, the man who turned tragedies into miracles.
Which is why, today years after that podcast when the news hit the screens at 9:00 PM, the country didn't just stop. It broke.
The headlines didn't talk about his latest surgery or his newest brand deal. They didn't show his famous smile. Instead, a grainy, frantic cell phone video played on a loop, an ambulance screaming through the roads, and the blurry image of a man being carried on a stretcher, his face covered by an oxygen mask, his golden skin turned a terrifying, ashen gray.
"The End of a Miracle? Celebrity Doctor Do Ra-ik Found Unconscious in Private Suite."
The idol had fallen. And the only person with hands skilled enough and a heart cold enough to pull him back from the edge was currently staring at him dying every second before her very eyes and before her very meticulous hands she was so proud off.
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