On the day of the prison break, Yeo wool was hacking another media group site, searching for any information that might have been missed regarding Cap.
By this point, she felt like she knew him almost as well as herself. She had thrown her rule about privacy of friends out the window in hopes to find anything, anything, that could help him. Through social media, she knew what sites he liked to visit, his favorite foods, movies, books. She knew what subjects he did well in at school, what part-time jobs he had held, his preference in women and the names of girls he had dated.
Having found an online picture of him smiling, she sometimes spent hours with it on one of her monitors while she worked, just to feel like he was there. His black hair with a little curl, the strong line of his nose, his masculine cheek bones and firm chin. These she felt she knew as well as she knew the features on her own face. Sometimes thinking of him like this, happy and safe, felt like it stopped her from going insane. He was all she thought about these days and in quiet moments she wondered just how unhealthy her obsession had become.
But she didn't know what else to do. She couldn't banish the thought of him, alone in that hellhole. It ate at her every day.
When the news broke about the prison escape triggered her alert set up to recognize new news about Kwon Yoo, Yeo wool's went from elated to panicked in such rapid succession she thought she might pass out.
Where was he? Was he safe? How could she find him? She had to find him first!
Yeo wool fought against the rising panic. She needed to approach this logically.
Taking a deep breath, she slowed her breathing and analyzed what she knew about Cap and the possibilities.
It wasn't possible for her to get him out of the search zone, but she could misdirect the search, she could give him a better chance of escaping. If he did get out, where would he go?
She knew from her research that other than online gaming, Cap did have any close friends left. Even those he went to school with had publicly disowned him, many of them in very hurtful ways at the trial itself, making degrading statements about his personality and family. She wondered how many of the had paid to say those things, or how many had been threatened. It made no difference what the reason was, they were all going to pay for it one day.
But who did that leave for him to go to?
The answer came to her. The only other person who had visited him at the prison was the public defendant. Her research of the man hadn't uncovered much, he appeared to be an over-worked and untalented defender. His performance during the trial, and the way he had ignored her video and evidence had convinced her that he knew his client was being framed, but she didn't know his level of involvement. The man had also arranged for the funeral of Cap's mother, a surprisingly generous gesture. She had thought at the time it might be out of guilt for being complicit in the cover-up.
In any case, he might be the only person Cap thought he could trust or that might have answers.
With her fingers moving almost blindly fast, Yeo wool entered the commands to find the Defenders address and to tap into the CCTV cameras around it, she then started to watch.
While watching, she laid the groundwork for the next steps. She would need allies for what she intended, and she already had a Team in mind. With her trademark precision, she executed. Making calls, buying supplies, and preparing for the future. She could finally do something for Cap, and she was going to do everything she could.
Ten hours later, her guesswork paid off. With her heart pounding she realized the man that had just walked into the Public Defender's office was her Cap!
She froze the image of his face; he looked so different for only having been gone for 6 months. His features were still beautiful, but had grown leaner and taken on a more mature edge. He had cuts across his cheek and the brow of his nose that she worried over, but the biggest concern was his expression. So cold. So blank.
As she waited for Cap to emerge from the building, She switched to monitoring the police dispatch in the area. Yeo wool was not surprised when the call come through that the murder suspect was in the building. Cap clearly had not fully thought through the risk he was taking, or maybe he had known it, but felt he was out of options. If the only person he thought could help was the man who allowed him to be convicted, perhaps he was right. But as a CCTV at the side of the building captured Cap exiting the building via a stairwell, Yeo wool realized he must have known the risk too and planned his escape route ahead of time.
She followed him via street cams to a small internet cafe, and finally breathed a sigh of relief. If Cap went onto the net, there was nowhere she couldn't find him.
Yeo wool typed in the commands to hack into the internet cafes computer system. Child's play for her.
Cap had just run a search for his own name in the browser, then logged onto his own email account, not even using an alias. Even if she hadn't known he was going into this internet cafe, she would have been alerted he was here. She made a mental note that he would need some remedial training in the future on cybersecurity and cyber tracking. He clearly showed tactical skills, but he seemed to have no understand of just how easy it was to follow someone via a digital trail.
If she could find him so easily, this meant others would know now too. She had to move quickly.
In seconds, Yeo wool had taken over control of his computer screen and the CCTV camera in the cafe. She watched him as she played the video she had made of the evidence to support his innocence. As he watched, she saw him mouth the words "Mr. Hairy", and saw his look of disbelief as he reviewed the footage.
In the corner of the CCTV line of sight, she watched the Manager of the cafe pick up the phone and stare at Cap. From the expression on his face, she didn't even need to monitor the call to know what he was saying. She activated her microphone, and at the last second the voice app for Mr. Hairy.
"Cap." Mr. Hairy's voice came through the line. "Get out of there, the Manager's onto you. Come to namyang cafe in bukchang district. Let's meet there." With those words, she saw Cap stand up and go over to the Manager, yanking the phone out his hands and disconnecting the line, and then he was gone from the cafe.
Yeo wool was a little dazed as she stood up and walked out the door with only her two phones; the burner and her standard phone, in the hoodie she had been wearing since yesterday. This was happening, really happening. It was also so fast it didn't seem real. She had hired a taxi to bring her to the cafe', and the trip seemed to pass in a blur.
Before she had thought through what she wanted to do, wanted to say, she was sitting in the booth across from him and he was asking who she was and what was going on, if Mr. Hairy had sent her.
And just like that she was at a loss.
She had been so focused over the last couple days on finding him, on keeping him safe ,on making plans to protect him. She hadn't considered that to him, she was still a man he had never talked to. Mr. Hairy must still be in his mind a burly, middle-aged man with a beard that for some mysterious reason had collected evidence about him not being framed.
She would have to explain, but how? She recalled the extra burner phone in her pocket and pulled it out, sliding it across the table to him. She called the burner number and activated the voice app on her own phone. "Mr. Hairy" appeared on the burner screen and Cap picked it up immediately asking who she was, if she was trustworthy...
"It's me. The one in front of you. I'm Mr. Hairy." she started.
"But your voice..." he said in disbelief.
"It's an app" she answered, "a voice modulator."
She could see the instant the confusion on his face changed to something between disbelief and another emotion she couldn't fully identify. Something like fear. Something like hope.
The journey back to her home was nearly silent.
She wasn't sure how he would react to her being a woman, but as if of one mind, when she had stood up to leave the cafe, he had mirrored her almost immediately. She followed him back to his vehicle, got in without hesitation, and pointed out the turns as they came up.
Unlocking the padlock on the metal entry, he followed her into the building and she deadlocked the door behind her. If he felt trapped at being enclosed in the dark entry way, he didn't say anything. Instead he followed her down into the jumbled and dark living space, into where she kept her computer system.
Yeo wool sighed inside with relief. He was safe now, she could relax a little.
But what came next?
Walking into her computer room and booting the system, she again felt the loss for words.
In a moment of insight, she realized it had been over a year since she'd had a face to face conversation with anyone. And with the emotions roiling inside of her threatening to take over, she didn't know how to each start making that connection. In the end, she remembered the phone he still held and decided the easiest thing would just be to keep using it for now. It was a little weird, she know, but thought maybe he would understand.
Although he was looking directly at her, he picked up her call and she said the only thing that came to mind.
"Sit anywhere. It's safe here."
And then the proximity alarms went off.
It was bad timing. The alarms were jarring, as she had intended them to be, and she hadn't considered how anxious they might make him feel. In retrospect she wondered if they must sound like the prison, or maybe reminded him of the police.
He flinched badly, turning towards her and for a moment looking as if he had been betrayed. It made her feel a little sick inside. This is what it would look to have him think she betrayed her. She promised herself at that moment, that no matter what happened, she would never do that to him. Even if it meant her life, she would never have him look at her like that.
Thankfully, the delivery man simply announced the rice was there and left. She went up quickly to the door to pick it up, hoping it would put him more at ease. But even after she had come in with the large sack, it was clear he was still panicked. He reminded her of a startled animal, ready to flee at any moment. Finally, as if he had come to terms that he was at her mercy, he sat down.
Yeo wool descended the stairs with the heavy rice bag. Seeing him there, sitting on her couch, somehow suddenly just seemed beyond her comprehension.
Lost in the thought, the rice slipped and she fell ungracefully to the floor. He sprang up from the couch and rushed to pull the weight of the rice from her. He paused after lifting the bag, as if he was lost in the moment too, staring down at the bag as if he had never seen rice before.
"Is this rice?" he asked.
The question seemed to come from nowhere and go nowhere, but she clung to it as he he had said something profound.
"You said that you live alone." he continued."Where do you want it Mr. Hairy?" She couldn't follow his line of questioning, perhaps he meant there was a lot of rice for one person. Perhaps he was asking her if the rice was for both of them. Too many possibilities.
But the last question seemed easy enough. She could answer that without words.
She pointed to the large pot where the rice was usually stored.
As he carried the rice bag effortlessly over to the pot, opened the bag and emptied it into the container, she gazed at him, slowly drinking him in. This was so different from the photographs. So real. She could see the dust on his jacket and the way his hair fell over his eyes as he bent towards the pot, and she wondered what it would be like to brush that hair back behind his ear...
She tried to regain her focus. There were things to do, remember?
Now that she had a chance to observe him, she realized that he was filthy from head to toe. Here was something she could do for him.
She shuffled in the spare bedroom and came back with a clean shirt and slacks both sized for men. She'd had them delivered yesterday and they were new and clean, made of quality cloth, but in the simple style his purchasing records showed he customarily wore.
She came back with the clothes and saw that with the task of placing the rice complete, he was simply standing there. She approached him slowly, her head down, trying to show him that she didn't mean any harm.
With a only a foot between them she placed the clothes into his hands and pointed at the bathroom door. She knew he would find everything he needed in there for a shower. The shampoo and body soap favored, razors, aftershave.
He made no movement at first, and she waited for him to decide his next course of action. She wouldn't force this; too many decisions had already been taken away from him.
But after consideration, he again seemed to come to a decision. He turned and entered the bathroom, closing the door behind him but not locking the door. There was a window to the outside in the bathroom. If he wanted to he could leave at any time. She waited until she heard the shower turn on, and then made her way to the kitchen.
She prepared food for him while he showered. It was a long shower and she briefly wondered if he was okay at points until she heard him moving again at intervals. It felt oddly intimate somehow with him in the shower only a short distance away.
There was a lot of food. She knew they were going to have guests, and she wanted there to be plenty to spare. She wanted it to be good for him, and for the first time she found herself thankful to one of her foster mothers who had forced her to cook for the foster family. Seo-yeon had been a complete bitch who knew that her husband had perverse habits when it came to the young female occupants of his house, but she chose to not see or hear anything. It had been a long and terrifying year that Yeo woo had lived in that house. The only thing good that had come out of it was that Seo-yeon had shown her the basics and then criticized her ceaselessly until Yeo woo's cooking was to her liking.
As a result, Seo wool was confident her culinary skills were up to par. There was soup, green onion pancakes, sweet potatoes, kimchi, chicken, fried eggs, vegetables, and a huge amount of rice with black beans, all well-seasoned and nutritious. She laid each food out on the table in the correct order, then went to bring the rice bowl as Cap emerged from the bathroom.
As he entered the kitchen, Yeo wool noted Cap was using her towel to dry his hair. His hair, dark and thick, spiked up at all angles and his damp t-shirt clung to him, outlining the very masculine profile of his chest.
He was so handsome!
She felt her her heart start to beat irregularly, and the reaction startled her. To hide it, she placed the rice on the table and sat down and immediately started eating.
She didn't look up as she ate, but in short order the sounds of his slurping and chewing came to her as he started to devour the food before him. He must be very hungry she thought. The slurping seemed to get a little louder and with a pang, she realized she was actually hearing something else. Peaking up through her long bangs, she realized that even as he was eating he was also crying.
Tears streamed down his cheeks as he added food to his mouth. He kept chewing, stuffing in the food as if it was his last chance to eat, but he was also crying.
Yeo wool tried not to be alarmed. It couldn't be good for him to eat like this. Surely this would make him sick. She quickly search her brain for a solution.
The last 8 months of waiting for him, thinking of him, all seemed to come down to this moment of seeing him sitting across the table from her. As she looked at him she knew instinctively that in that moment of watching him eat and cry something fundamental inside her had shifted. He had gone from Cap the voice on the 'net' to Cap in the 'real' and he was now hers to protect.
But right now there was nothing to do but be there for him as he ate and cried, so that is what she did. At some point she became aware that her chest had began to hurt, and with wonder realized that it was her heart that was aching for him.
The other's would be here very soon too, she had seen them on the perimeter CCTV even as she had been filling the rice bowl. Perhaps they would be able to help him too. But for now she just sat there, eating with him, crying on the inside with him, being there for him.
At some point she realized he had eaten the last fried egg and stood up almost on auto-pilot to get another. She gently moved the side dishes closer to him as he kept eating, not stopping even as the tears kept coming.
It was just too much.
In a moment of desperation, she picked up her phone and called his again.
"Don't let them see you like this" she begged. "You are still Cap." She wanted to say more, but she knew she wasn't ready to admit that it was her that couldn't bear to see him like this. Her hero, defeated and sobbing over a bowl of rice.