Chapter Fifty-Three: Enemies & Banana Milk
The mansion was too quiet. It was the kind of silence that felt heavy, like the air itself was waiting for something to happen. I'd spent the morning drifting from room to room, a ghost in silk pajamas. I'd run my fingers over dusty bookshelves, rearranged a vase of flowers until it looked worse, and even tried to start an argument with one of the stoic suits by the door. He just stared straight ahead, ignoring me.
I was bored. Dangerously, creatively bored.
That's when Kim Junho appeared in the archway of the living room, leaning against the frame like he owned the space. Which, technically, his brother did. But Junho carried himself like he owned the shadows in it.
"You look miserable," he announced, not bothering with a hello. His voice was a low rumble, still edged with the suspicion from last night, but now layered with something like grim amusement. "Like a pretty bird staring out of a gilded cage."
"It's a very nice cage," I retorted, not turning from the window. "Luxury imprisonment. Five stars. Would recommend if you enjoy being watched all the time."
He snorted. "Fresh air. Let's go."
That got my attention. I glanced over my shoulder. "Go where?"
"Out. A park. Somewhere with sun that isn't filtered through bulletproof glass." He pushed off the doorway, his black boots silent on the marble. "You're making the guards nervous with all your… looming."
"I'm not looming. I'm contemplating existential dread."
"Same thing." A smirk, sharp and fleeting, touched his lips. "Come on. I'm doing my brother a favor. Get you out of his hair before he decides your brand of crazy is cute and starts adopting more of you."
As if summoned by the mention, Taehyun's calm voice cut in from the hall. "You're taking her?"
He stepped into view, impeccably dressed as always, adjusting the cuff of his shirt. His eyes moved from Junho to me, a silent question in their dark depths.
Junho shrugged, a lazy, fluid movement. "She's a coiled spring in here, hyung. Gonna snap and redecorate the west wing with her angst. A walk. Some sunshine. Maybe an overpriced coffee. We'll be back before you finish terrorizing your stock brokers."
Taehyun's gaze lingered on me. I saw it—the brief war between his obsessive need to control my environment and his understanding that even a prized possession could suffocate. He trusted Junho with his life, but with me? I was a new, volatile variable.
"Stay close to him," Taehyun said finally, the command soft but absolute. His eyes locked with Junho's. "Don't let her out of your sight. And don't…" He paused, searching for the right word. "…scare her."
Junho's smirk returned, wider this time. "No promises."
A strange flutter went through me. Not fear, exactly. Anticipation.
---
The car Junho drove wasn't one of the sleek, silent sedans Taehyun favored. It was a powerful, dark muscle car that growled like a living thing. The city blurred past the windows, a stream of concrete and neon. The silence inside was thick, charged with all the things we hadn't said on the bridge.
He tossed a cold bottle into my lap without looking. Banana milk.
I stared at it. "What's this?"
"Peace offering," he grunted, eyes on the road. "Or a bribe. I haven't decided."
I took a slow sip. The sweet, creamy taste was a shocking slice of normalcy. "You're tense," I observed. "Is this your version of a friendly outing? Brooding silence and dairy-based bribes?"
"You're chatty for someone who might not exist," he muttered, his grip tightening on the wheel.
"And you're paranoid for someone named after a cartoon rabbit."
That earned me a sharp glance, but no laugh. The air in the car grew heavier.
We were on a long, elevated bridge, the river a grey ribbon far below. The traffic was thin. The sky was a flat, pale white. It felt like the edge of the world.
Suddenly, the car swerved and jerked to a violent stop on the wide shoulder, tires screeching against the asphalt.
My heart leapt into my throat. "Junho? What—?"
My door was wrenched open before I could finish. A large, strong hand closed around my upper arm, and I was hauled out of the passenger seat with terrifying ease. The wind off the river was cold and sharp, whipping my hair across my face.
I stumbled, my free hand bracing against the cold metal of the car. "Let go of me!"
He did. But only to step back. And in his hand, appearing as if from nowhere, was a gun.
It wasn't pointed at the sky. It was leveled directly at the center of my chest.
The world narrowed to that dark circle of metal. The hum of distant traffic faded. There was only the wind, the cold, and the deadly stillness in Kim Junho's eyes. All the mocking suspicion from the mansion was gone, burned away to reveal something cold, hard, and professional.
"Now," he said. His voice was different. Flat. Empty. The voice of a man who asked questions he already knew the answers to, or didn't care about them. "We talk. No games. No wide-eyed innocent act."
My breath came in short, sharp pants, fogging in the cold air. I was trembling, but I forced my spine straight.
"Who are you?" he asked, each word a chip of ice. "Really. Who sent you? CIA? Interpol? One of my brother's less imaginative rivals?"
"I don't know what you're—"
"Don't!" he barked, the gun never wavering. "Kim Taehyun doesn't fall in love. He doesn't hold hands. He doesn't paint nails. He takes. He breaks. He owns. But you?" He took a step closer, and I fought the urge to shrink back. "You waltz in with a blank past and a pretty face, and he melts. He rearranges his entire empire for you. He becomes… soft. So tell me what you did. What drug are you on? What lie did you plant in his head?"
The accusation was so absurd, so terrifying, that a hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat. I choked it down. Fear was a cold stone in my gut, but beneath it, anger began to spark—hot, defiant, and familiar.
I lifted my chin, meeting his deadly gaze. My voice, when it came, was quieter than the wind, but it didn't shake. "Are you going to shoot me, Junho?"
His eyes narrowed.
"Because if you are," I continued, taking a small, deliberate step forward, "you should do it now. Right in the heart. Make it clean." Another step. The barrel of the gun was almost close enough to touch. "But if you don't… if you lower that gun… you'll have to live with the fact that the only thing wrong with me is that I'm the one person your perfect, untouchable brother looked at and saw something other than a threat or a tool. And that scares you more than any spy ever could."
I saw it—a flicker in his stony expression. A crack. Doubt, or maybe just the shock of my defiance. We stood there, frozen in a deadly standoff on the empty bridge, the gun between us.
Seconds stretched like years.
Then, with a muttered curse that was ripped away by the wind, his arm dropped. The gun disappeared back into his jacket as swiftly as it had appeared. He turned away, running a hand through his hair, his broad shoulders tense.
"You're dangerous," he said, not looking at me. The professional killer was gone, replaced by the frustrated, protective brother.
"You keep saying that."
"Not because you might be lying," he said, finally turning back. His eyes searched my face, looking for a trap he couldn't find. "But because you might be telling the truth."
He jerked his head toward the car. "Get in."
The drive back was silence, but a different kind. The threat was gone, but the war wasn't over. It had just moved to a new battlefield: the hell of co-existing under the same roof.
---
The "Park That Never Was" became a running joke. Junho never took me. Instead, he just… hovered. He was my shadow, my irritable, leather-clad guardian who seemed to believe his sole purpose was to make my imprisonment slightly more annoying.
If I sought solitude in the winter garden, he'd appear five minutes later, loudly "checking the irrigation system."
If I wandered into the kitchen for a snack, I'd find him already there, leaning against the counter, eating the very thing I wanted.
And the banana milk. It became our strange, unspoken currency. I discovered his pathetic, secret love for the sickly-sweet drink. He discovered I'd use it as a weapon.
One afternoon, I found the last bottle in the fridge. I held it up, the yellow liquid glowing in the cold light. Junho, who had been "reading" a car magazine in the lounge, was suddenly alert, like a predator catching a scent.
"Want it?" I asked, sweetness dripping from my voice.
He eyed me with deep suspicion. "What's the price?"
"You don't sit in the chair next to Taehyun at dinner tonight. That's my spot."
He scowled. "That's my chair."
"And this is my banana milk." I made to open it. "Last chance. The taste of victory, or the bitter sting of defeat from the other side of the table?"
His jaw worked. With a sound of pure disgust, he snatched the bottle from my hand. "Fine. But tomorrow, I'm sitting in his lap."
"Over my dead body."
"Easily arranged."
From his armchair, Taehyun sighed without looking up from his financial reports. "Do I need to install a separate children's table?"
Mrs. Han shuffled past with a laundry basket. "They're like cats, sir. Hissing and spitting. You brought it on yourself."
The bickering was constant, petty, and exhausting. It was also, in a twisted way, the most honest interaction I had. With Taehyun, everything was layered with intensity, possession, and unspoken trauma. With Junho, it was simple: we disliked each other on principle.
The final straw was the ice cream.
I had been dreaming about the specific, imported strawberry ice cream all day. I'd seen the delivery come in. I waited with the patience of a saint. When the coast was clear, I made a beeline for the freezer.
My fingers closed around the cold, promising tub.
A hand slapped down over mine.
I yelped, more in surprise than pain. "Hey!"
Junho loomed beside me, already prying the container from my grip. "Mine."
"You didn't even want ice cream ten minutes ago!"
"I do now. Strategic acquisition." He smirked, holding it out of reach.
What happened next wasn't my finest moment. I launched myself at him, not to hurt, but to reclaim my frozen prize. A brief, ridiculous scuffle ensued in the middle of the gleaming kitchen—a tangle of limbs, a flying spoon, and a very disgruntled "Oof!" from Junho as I somehow managed to step on his foot.
He escaped, ice cream held high like a trophy, and I gave chase through the hallway, barefoot and furious.
Later, I found him on the secluded south balcony, the ice cream tub half-empty beside him, my stolen banana milk in his hand. The sky was turning a deep twilight purple.
I slumped into the chair next to him, the fight gone, replaced by a hollow weariness. "You're impossible."
"And you're a menace." He took a long swig. "But you fight dirty for a civvy. I'll give you that."
Silence settled between us, for once not entirely hostile. The city lights began to twinkle below.
"Why do you hate me so much?" The question left my lips before I could stop it. It wasn't accusatory. Just tired.
He was quiet for a long time. "I don't hate you," he said finally, his voice quieter than I'd ever heard it. "I hate what you represent. A variable. A weakness. My brother… he's built a life where trust gets you killed. Love is a luxury he couldn't afford. Then you show up." He glanced at me, his profile sharp against the darkening sky. "And he can't afford not to love you. It makes him vulnerable. And in our world, vulnerability is a death sentence. So, if you're a threat, I need to know. And if you're not…" He shrugged, a helpless, frustrated gesture. "Then I have to protect him from the consequences of being happy. Which might be worse."
His honesty disarmed me. It was raw, ugly, and fiercely loyal.
"Help me leave," I whispered, the thought taking shape as I spoke it.
He went rigid. "What?"
"Help me get out. Just… disappear. You want the variable gone? Fine. Help me vanish."
He turned fully to look at me, his expression unreadable. "And break my brother's heart? He'd burn cities to find you. He'd tear himself apart."
"Maybe he'd be safer."
Junho studied me, his gaze piercing. "You really believe that, don't you? That you're the danger." He shook his head slowly. "You have it backwards, little ghost. You're not the storm. You're the shelter he's been fighting his whole life to get to. Leaving wouldn't save him. It would destroy the only good thing he's ever allowed himself to have."
He stood up, crushing the empty banana milk bottle in his fist. "I won't help you run. But I'll watch you try. And if you make it past the front gate without looking back…" He gave me a last, long look. "Then you're a fool. And this was all for nothing."
He walked back inside, leaving me alone with the twilight and the terrifying weight of his words. The enemy wasn't trying to get rid of me anymore. He was forcing me to see that, in this dark, twisted world, I might have become the one thing they couldn't afford to lose. And that was the most dangerous position of all.
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