Kai slammed her door shut behind her, her back pressing hard against the wood as if it were the only thing holding her upright.
Her face was clouded with questions...
"Who was she?"
"Those eyes…"
Her breath raced against her heart, as if the two were competing to see which could go faster.
What had just happened in that room?
Had her gun even been in her hand?
Where had she been standing?
Nothing remained clear.
Nothing but that innocent face.....
a face her heart had mistaken for a heartbeat itself,
a face her soul had already begun to carve into its own being.
For the first time, Kai felt utterly helpless.
She had always been the kind of woman who could master her emotions, no matter how heavy they pressed down on her.
But this.....
this storm inside her was not something she could control.
Almost desperately, she stumbled into the bathroom.
Turning the knob, she let the cold water pour over her.
Outside, the storm still raged in the skies.
But inside, an even greater tempest tore through her mind,
crashing down from her thoughts straight into her heart.
Kai had never imagined she would feel this way.
Yet what she could not understand....
what left her trembling....
was why her tears had come.
She had not shed a single tear at her mother's death.
Not a single one.
And yet now.....
just by seeing a face,
just by looking into a pair of eyes....
she wept.
It was a blade piercing her from within,
a truth so sharp she could not deny it.
For a fleeting moment, she forgot why she had even come here.
Her mission, her duty, her mask.....
all of it drowned beneath the flood inside her.
---
(I have never loved anyone, and perhaps I never will. But I understand love better than most. Love is the flower whose fragrance travels for miles. Love is the tree that bears fruit even after death. Love is the river whose current never ceases. And when a heart begins to beat with love, it fears death more than anything else.....for death is the thief that can tear it away from the one it loves.)