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Summary: So Yi Jeong is convinced he doesn't need Chu Ga Eul. So why is the news that she is engaged driving him crazy?

Warning: R

PARADOX

He picks up the bottle, the glass lies deserted on the table, fallen, cracked at the stem, deserted. Yi Jeong wonders if he should draw a parallel between himself and the damaged glass before deciding it would be too of an effort. Instead, he presses the bottle against his lips, opens his mouth and tries his best to pour oblivion in.

Once more, he wonders what the hell is wrong with everyone, himself and the world. His best friends saw fit to drop the bombshell that Ga Eul was engaged, to some successful nobody whose name he had blotted out from memory. He hadn't even known she was dating, had chosen to ignore the possibility. He never reckoned on reality coming up from behind to give him a vicious slap in the face. When they mentioned it he had smiled and hidden behind his inscrutable charm. Never mind that they had probably seen through it; what matters is that he can keep up the pretence for himself. Unfortunately, his acting skills have lasted him only until tonight.

Which brings him to what is wrong with him. He doesn't have a little black book. He has little black books and a handphone full of numbers. Digits of faceless, nameless girls whose bodies he knows so well, whom he uses to tell himself that this is what he needs, what he wants. A warm body at night and his friends by day, there's no such thing as loneliness, no gaping emptiness to fill with selectively chosen pleasures. Pleasure without the pain of love, pleasure without responsibilities. He wonders sometimes how long this will last and never answers his questions because he knows he won't like what he finds. If he ignores it long enough, one day the answers won't matter. Or so he hopes. So why can't he make the memory of her go away? Why can't she just go away and leave him alone?

Wetness spills on his shirt and he realises the bottle has slipped from his grasp. Annoyed, he frowns, attempts to brush it away while making it worse. Red spreads on white, wine oozes through cotton and he feels a wild urge to start ripping away at the wine stained shirt that is defying him. Nothing is turning out the way he wants it to but this is what he planned for. Again, he wonders what is wrong with himself.

And because nothing is right now, the world, his world is one gigantic screw up that is closing in on him. Somewhere, his father must be laughing. The son that hates him the most is turning into an identical version of him, younger but equally fucked.

A sound at the door gets his attention and he waits to see who it is. Either it's his father with his latest paramour, in which case he fully intends to throw the bottle and glass at them, if only for the hell of seeing if he will be able to hit them and also to see what his father will do, or it's Ga Eul. And since she has forgotten him, he thinks it is the former. He hopes it is. Some pain, either caused by him or inflicted on him, might be a nice distraction now.

Unfortunately, and in answer to the small tiny hope lives somewhere in his secret heart, it is Ga Eul. She walks back in, after three years of mutual avoidance. Her hair is even longer, she no longer wears those black tights. She has a sensible blouse with tiny pearl buttons and a sensible knee length black skirt. It's only when she comes a bit closer that he realises there's a very tantalising slit up the side.

"Go away," he mutters. It is both warning and plea. His nerves are on edge and his patience with himself and everything else is worn dangerously thin. Tonight he would like to hurt something and he wants her out of the line of fire because more than anything else, it would gratify him to hurt her because she has hurt him without trying to.

"You're drunk," she says almost flatly.

The only emotion he senses from her is disapproval. "Little Miss Prim and Proper," he drawls mockingly. "After three years, this is what you have to say?"

She hesitates and he realises that there is more. "You still miss me," he says softly, his coal black eyes fixed unwaveringly on her, his voice dangerously low. "Shouldn't you run along to your fiancé now? Young ladies shouldn't play with fire."

Her chin goes up and her expression turns hard. "I'm not the one sulking in my workshop and drinking from a bottle." There is a wealth of accusation in her voice and he hears what she is actually saying. He gave her up and is now regretting it.

"Well, you aren't exactly going to be smiling when you vow eternal faithfulness to him either."

She flinches as though he has slapped her. Very gently, he puts the bottle down on the table.

"Isn't this why you are here? To see if I'm going to beg you not to marry him? Or perhaps you think that if you can walk away from me it means you truly love him?"

He sees her gaze slide to the door as she bites on her lip. She's afraid and that makes him glad. But she doesn't run, and that is when he makes up his mind.

Though inebriated, he still moves with more grace than those who are sober. "You could always see through me," he whispers in her ear as he reaches her side, his hand pushing back a tendril of hair from her face. "But tonight, I know exactly what you came here for. Let me give you what you want."

His mouth is rough when it crashes down on hers. There is nothing gentle about his kiss. It's a brutal claim. He enjoys the way she squirms against him, he pulls her handbag from her shoulder and throws it somewhere to the side. She whimpers softly, her hands pressed against his chest in a vain bid for some space. Deliberately, he backs her up against the wall, cushioning the back of her head with his hand even as he uses it to keep her in place as he slants his lips desperately over hers again and again.

He wonders why it is that to love her, he has to hurt her. His hands grip the edge of her blouse tighter and he gives an almost vicious tug, wishing that he could shred that thought as easily as the material he is holding. Buttons fly, he swallows her alarmed cries and then his hands are on her smooth, smooth skin, hungrily reaching for what he has told himself he does not want.

Amazingly, she recovers and proceeds to pull at his clothing with equal fervour and anger, though with not as much force. When she bites his lip, he tastes blood faintly and returns the favour by scoring his teeth on the tender skin of her neck. Her hands are everywhere, on his chest, his back, pushing down his pants even as he rids her of her skirt. Twisting his fingers around the band of her panties, he gives a sharp pull and delicate silk rips and falls to the floor near her abandoned skirt.

"Is this your first time?" he asks as he lifts her up so that she can wrap her legs around his waist.

She looks him in the eye and says it is not. He doesn't know which emotion he feels more: the bitterness that comes with hearing that, satisfaction that he broke her patience to wait for him, or his anger with both of them.

He is not gentle when he enters her, penetrating as roughly and deeply as he can. She cries out loudly, maybe screams as she arches her back, her throat exposed and white in the harsh light. Punishment mixes with pleasure as he withdraws and does it again, this time eliciting deep groans from her. Her long legs tighten around his waist, squeezing him as he grinds against her almost desperately, thrusting again and again. Sweat coats their skin and the sound of their harsh breathing fills the workshop. She clings tightly to him as he buries his face against her neck, unable to stifle his own moans as he approaches climax. Suddenly, his fingers bite into the curves of her flesh and he cries out, his body shuddering as his hips pump quickly, emptying himself deep inside her.

He tries to support both of them but they end up sliding to the floor, breaking apart as they sit side by side, limp, spent and exhausted. He can smell the musk in the air from the sex; he refuses to think of it as lovemaking.

As they try to catch their breaths, he notices the way she fingers her blouse. It's irreparably damaged, torn along the edges and the buttons are all over the floor. Maybe he'll pick out a new one and send it to her before the next day is over. To his disappointment, she eventually makes the first move. He doesn't know what he expected though, for them to lie frozen in that moment, suspended in time or for her to tell him the marriage is off.

Instead, she proceeds on unsteady feet to dress herself, forcing him to do the same. When they are both done, they stand there for a moment, looking uncertainly at each other.

"Did you get what you wanted?" It's a flippant question, one designed to give her an escape route. Of course, she's welcomed to say otherwise and he'll entertain that as well.

Instead, she smiles and it's so haunted that it makes his heart hurt for a moment. "Yes," she says quietly, pushing the hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ears. "I should go now."

"Wait." Reaching for his jacket on the floor, he picks it up, shakes it once and quickly, wraps it around her shoulders the way he did once, a long time ago when they had been more innocent.

"Thank you." She looks as though she wants to say more, but when she presses her lips together instead, he knows that he'll never get to hear her thoughts. And then the door is swinging shut gently; she is gone, leaving her absence there like a gap he fears will keep growing.

Moments later, the sound of glass breaking is heard. Yi Jeong sits, his head buried in his hands as he ignores the spreading pool of red on the floor. He remains that way for the rest of the night.