When A Ghoul Falls In Love

When I open my eyes again, I find myself in my room. The person beside me is Baek Joon Woo.

I can’t tell whether this is a dream or not.

“You are finally awake.” Baek Joon Woo lets out a breath of relief.

His eyes are not golden and his hair is short. The man in my dream was different from Baek Joon Woo, though they have the same face.

He scrutinises my face anxiously when I don’t say a word. “Can you hear me, Nell?”

I nod my head slightly.

“Thank goodness!” He cups my cheek with his right hand. “You finally woke up.”

This is too real to be a dream. “How long has it been?”

“Four days,” Baek Joon Woo answers me. “The doctor came and checked on you, but they said that you would wake up soon… But it took so long.”

“Our child is really gone.” I touch my belly, feeling hollow. My eyes are dry. It feels like I have cried for a long time, but the person who told me that it wasn’t my fault was only in my dream. Still, tears stream out of my eyes.

Baek Joon Woo closes his eyes and whispers, “Nell, don’t cry, please.”

“But you are also crying.” I raise my voice when he tries to hide his face behind his hands. “I will never forgive her!”

“I can’t forgive myself.” He lowers his head. “We should have run away. It’s because I believed that…”

He believed that my mother could be convinced.

“Where is she?” I question him. Why did my mother allow him to enter the house?

“About that…” He wipes his tears with his sleeves. “Maisie called the police when she didn’t let us see you. I told them about what I heard when you called me.”

“Is she in…?”

“No, the police wants to hear it from you.”

The next few hours rush by. One of the policewomen comes to see me. Though I despise my mother, I can’t send her to jail. In the end, I tell the policewomen that I took the abortion pills willingly.

After the policewomen are gone, Maisie visits me and demands to know why I lied.

“Can you send your mother to prison?” I ask her.

Maisie yells at me, “She deserves it!”

“I don’t know.” I hold my head. “I will call this even. I took away her child and she took away mine. We are both murderers.”

We have hurt each other. Our relationship can’t be mended any more.

“Nell, this isn’t a game. What happened back then was a mistake.” Maisie frowns at me. “She did it intentionally.”

“I still can’t send her to prison,” I tell her sharply. “I just want to be alone.”

“You do,” Maisie mutters at me before she leaves the room.

After an hour, Baek Joon Woo returns to my room with food. I don’t want to eat after what I have done.

“I am sorry, Baek Joon Woo.” I mumble, “I should have told the truth, but I…”

“I would have done the same.” Baek Joon Woo replies in a low voice, “I love my parents too.”

“I hate myself.” I curl my fingers. “I should have been cautious. Then, I could have saved our child.”

Baek Joon Woo laughs.

I scowl at him. “Why are you laughing?”

“It’s just that…” He rubs the back of his hand near the corner of his eyes, sniffling as he laughs mournfully. “We are blaming ourselves for something that is not our fault. It was your mother who killed the child. Since when is it someone’s fault to trust a family member? If you can’t even trust your mother who raised you, whom should you trust?”

Baek Joon Woo is right. How is it mine or his fault? We were doing everything that we could. I didn’t expect her to mix something in my food. She is my mother. How could I expect her to do that? Even if I was going against her, I could never imagine that she would do that to me.

He stays with me all night, holding me tightly on the bed, telling me that everything will be fine. Both of us know that it will never be fine.

We can never forget that our first child was murdered before he could have been born.

I don’t know when I fell asleep to his soft whispers. When I wake up, I see the golden-eyed man next to me. His eyes are closed. Is he asleep?

Why do I keep dreaming of this? I feel something soft brush against my fingers.

A cat is sitting near me, licking my fingers endearingly. I scratch his neck lightly.

In the corner of the room, a man with pale blonde hair is watching me with a pained look in his eyes. I blink my eyes slowly. Who is this person? Why am I dreaming of strange people? I am sure that I have never seen him before.

“Nell.”

I turn my head toward the man with golden eyes. Even if he has Baek Joon Woo’s face, I can tell that it’s not him. Everything about him seems different. I question him, “Who are you?”

His lips tremble, but he doesn’t answer me.

“Who are you?” I ask him again.

“Who do you want me to be?” He replies with a shaky voice. “Baek Joon Woo?”

“You are not him.” This is also too real to be a dream. “He won’t look at me like the way you do.”

“How do I look at you?” He leans closer to me. “Is it something bad?”

“It’s just sad.” I blurt out, “You look at me like I am your lost love. Who the hell are you? Are you interested in young girls? I am only eighteen. Find someone your age. I am not into old men and I already have a boyfriend.”

The man smiles at me.

I frown at him. “Are you one of those fae folks? I befriended one and he turned out to be a creep. If you are a creep like him –”

He widens his eyes, clearly surprised. “Whom did you befriend? Do you know his name?”