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CHAPTER 10: 1952
“Jaehyung please!” Hyerin laughed as she laid her hands over her husband's, which covered her eyes.
“Don’t you trust me?” She heard the grin in his voice, closer to her ear, as he gently nudged her forward.
As soon as it started, his hands dropped from her eyes, and he spread his arms as wide as his smile, gesturing to a small blue home in front of them.
Hyerin stared at it with wide eyes, a hand bringing itself to cover her mouth as she too, smiled brightly. Yes, it was small, but was two stories and had pink roses planted under the front window, small enough and quaint enough for her little family.
Jaehyung leaned and took her hand to pull her into him, one arm around her waist as his free hand settled on the growing bump that was their child, sleeping peacefully in her stomach. He dipped his head to kiss her, a smile still etched into his lips.
“He needs a better home than that apartment” Jaehyung declared, rubbing a little circle on her stomach “Three months princess. We’ll be a family”
Jaehyung’s hand trembled when he got the mail on a December afternoon.
A lawyer knows better than to let his composure falter, but the envelope in his hands terrified him more than a courtroom ever could.
So innocent, the white envelope seemed. Clean, with a government emblem on it, glaring at him darkly, almost mocking him, as he stepped inside.
He set the less offensive pieces of mail on the table and quietly slipped around the house, in search of his wife and son. Upstairs, in the baby’s room, Hyerin is kneeling with him on the floor, toys…
Life was good for Park Jaehyung.
Fate just had to come and tear everything he loved away from him.
He looked down at the envelope again, just realizing that he had since he opened it and slipped the papers out. There wasn’t much reading required to know what it was. He knew, but he never wanted to allow it. He wouldn’t leave his wife and child.
But he had to.
The war in their own country raged on, but it seemed a world away as Jaehyung came and went from work, kissed his wife and played with his son, day after day, over and over and over again…
War. Papers. Family. Papers. War. War. War. The word repeated itself, banged around his head, clogged his throat, tightened his chest.
He choked.
“I’m going to war”
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