@bethelbound
ost / finestra di espiazione
Someone once said that art and war are best observed from a distance. If you take a step back, you will be able to see the picture much better.
It isn’t a particularly charming line, Vincenzo thinks, but it’s certainly effective.
It takes thirty seconds for Kim Yeowon to take one step back, and then one more. It takes a minute, after, for Vincenzo to fall into step just behind her, velvet voice low as he points out the details of the painting before them. Three flags, hidden in plain sight. A warrior at the center, leading her people at the helm. He can see the way the doctor’s spine straightens, the way her shoulders drop. She fits demurely into the space he creates, nearly cheek-to-cheek with him now, and from here he can smell the expensive perfume that she wears.
“Tell me, do you like the opera? If I help you, would you... care to accompany me to a show?”
He knows, then, that this battle has already been won. Kim Yeowon would be their warrior at the helm. If Delacroix had La Liberté on the battlefield, Vincenzo would have Kim Yeowon in the courtroom by noon tomorrow.
And, for a very, very brief moment, Vincenzo stands at a loss for words. The battle is nearly won, victory just within arm’s reach -- but a dream stands even closer still. His vision tunnels and his stomach twists. For all of his meticulous planning, he had never, ever prepared himself for this.
In the glass display case to his left, he can see her reflection. Not Kim Yeowon, not La Liberté. No, a ghost of a memory -- a vision, a dream -- stands three paces away.
Her face is half-obscured, body turned away from him as she studies a painting on the other side of the room -- ...but he’s certain he could recognize that mouth in his sleep. Could recognize it in death, could recognize it blind. Could recognize it, now, too many years later in a country that feels entirely too wrong.
Kim Yeowon’s voice rings like a church bell in the nearly silent art hall. He swallows thickly. He knows that he’s been found, he knows that she will have heard.
(He wonders what she will see, when she turns to look at him. Will she see a familiar man, admiring old art? Or will she see a bloodied man in the middle of a battlefield, still at war?
Vincenzo is always at war.)
He recovers, after. Yes, I would love to accompany you to an opera. Yes, please take my business card. As if underwater, his motions come slow, but his voice remains as steady as the ocean tide. Kim Yeowon leaves, none the wiser, charmed and entirely too easily won.
It isn’t until she’s gone, that Vincenzo realizes that there is an even more difficult battle up ahead.
He doesn’t bother stalling. He does not try to hide. Rounding his shoulders, he goes to her, instead. Falls into step right beside her. Pretends to study the painting she’s standing in front of, pretends as though his heart is not between his teeth, his mouth filled with blood.
“It’s been a long time,” he says quietly. His knuckles are white around the handle of his leather briefcase. “Darlene.”
