Chapter 8

The moment she boarded the plane, Gayeon froze.

The passport he had prepared in advance was a forged one meant to shake off the government agents watching her.

Up to that point, she could accept it well enough, but on the plane, the man she had naturally assumed would sit elsewhere sat down beside Gayeon.

A comfortable private jet.

His subordinates were seated here and there, and most of the mercenaries in America seemed not to have boarded with them.

What made Gayeon freeze was what he did next.

The man—Kiril—was staring fixedly at her profile.

At first, pretending nothing was wrong, she turned her gaze to the newspaper that a flight attendant had brought over with a polite smile, but his gaze was so blatant and so intense that the side of her face almost stung.

Vrrr.

The plane doors closed, and perhaps takeoff clearance had been granted, because it slowly began moving down the runway, and Gayeon shut her eyes.

She clenched into a tight fist the hand resting on the armrest.

The twenty or so minutes from takeoff until the plane climbed to altitude and settled into stability were t*rture for Gayeon.

Strangely, during exactly that span of time, she felt the urge to jump out of the plane.

“Please stop staring.”

The plane’s engines made a great roaring noise as it sped along the runway for takeoff.

Still facing forward, Gayeon, who habitually ran her tongue over her lips, spoke to Kiril.

The man, who had not even fastened his seatbelt and had fully turned his upper body toward her, resting his chin on his hand, answered leisurely.

“Why did you…… my back like that?”

Because of the rattling noise of the plane, she could not properly hear what he said.

“What?”

“I asked why you did that to my back.”

The man’s hand patted Gayeon on the shoulder.

Only then did she realize he was talking about what had happened in the bathroom.

Why was he asking about that now?

“Come to think of it, isn’t that something you only do for a baby?”

Gayeon’s gaze turned to Kiril.

By no stretch did he look like a baby or anything close to one.

“It’s common sense to rub the back of someone who has an upset stomach.”

“But I didn’t have an upset stomach.”

“Then let’s just say someone who was vomiting.”

His palm, still resting on her shoulder, slowly rubbed over the rounded curve there.

Looking at his face, still not withdrawing his hand and seemingly sunk in thought about something, why was the saliva in her mouth drying up so badly that her throat felt parched?

The plane had already started taking off, and even the flight attendants were seated with their seatbelts fastened.

Thirst burned at her throat.

“If you keep licking your lips with your tongue like that, what do you think I’m supposed to think while sitting right in front of you?”

Gayeon, who had been moistening her dry lips, stopped moving.

Unable to draw her bright red tongue fully back inside in time, she found herself facing Kiril.

Just like Gayeon, Kiril stuck out his tongue.

Blatantly, he licked his lips.

The moment she saw the gleaming moisture on those lips, her gaze dropped downward.

“I’d like…… you to turn your head away.”

“Why should I?”

His voice carried a trace of laughter in it.

From that voice alone, it was impossible to guess his mood.

She looked around, intending to ask someone for help, but everyone was seated far away from them in other places.

As if they were deliberately avoiding them.

For the first time while on a plane, she was thinking about something else.

She was so conscious of him that she had not even noticed the seatbelt sign had been turned off.

Gayeon pressed the call button for a flight attendant.

“Is there something you need?”

A beautiful Russian flight attendant approached and asked, bending at the waist.

Even as she did, her gaze swept over Kiril first.

Even Gayeon, sitting beside him, understood the meaning hidden in that discreet look, so there was no way Kiril had failed to notice it.

“Please bring me some water.”

“Yes. Please wait just a moment.”

As the flight attendant straightened from her bent posture, her fingertips blatantly brushed over Kiril’s knee.

When Kiril’s gaze turned toward her, she smiled brightly.

“Mr. Belov, if there is anything you need……”

Kiril smiled at her gently.

Then the hand that had brushed him closed around his knee.

Embarrassed to watch, Gayeon turned her eyes toward the window.

“I guess you didn’t hear how your predecessor quit.”

“What?”

“She tried to bury her face between my legs, so I almost snapped her neck.”

The face of the flight attendant, who had failed to understand those words for a moment, turned pale white soon after.

A man from farther back hurried over as the atmosphere took a disturbing turn.

“My apologies. We were desperate to find someone on short notice, so……”

The flight attendant who had handled the flight into America had been someone else.

As the man, who had been frantic trying to find a new attendant in half a day, bowed his head, Kiril crossed his legs.

Gayeon, who had been looking out the window, also belatedly grasped the meaning of his words and wanted to cover her ears.

Elin’s warning drifted through her head.

“I didn’t kill her.”

It was not to the flight attendant, who was frozen stiff and repeatedly apologizing, but to Gayeon that Kiril spoke.

His face, faintly reflected in the window, was still smiling.

Did he really have to face her directly to say such a thing?

“……I see.”

“It’s true.”

“I believe you.”

He was not the kind of man who would bother telling her that he had not killed someone.

She did not think he was the sort of person to hide a killing if he had done one.

Since he kept insisting on his innocence, she gave him a perfunctory answer and adjusted the seat to recline as far back as possible.

Whirr.

It was not as good as a bed, but once she confirmed the seat had tilted back into a cozy position, she turned her body fully toward the window and shut her eyes.

“Here…… I brought it.”

The flight attendant who quickly returned held out the water to Gayeon with a trembling hand, but the one who took it was Kiril.

The water in the cup sloshed with the attendant’s trembling.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mr. Belov.”

Water splashed onto the back of Kiril’s hand.

While Gayeon half rose from her seat and found herself absurdly wondering whether she should take the water herself, the flight attendant had already run away into the distance.

In the end, only after the attendant serving the other side switched places with her did his threat of if you don’t want to die, don’t touch my body fade away.

“That was my water.”

“I thought you were going to sleep and not drink it.”

Watching him, having already drunk about half the water, Gayeon swallowed dryly.

In the end, because she did not want this kind of thing to happen again, she decided not to call a flight attendant once more.

After staring fixedly at the half-empty cup, Gayeon soon pulled the blanket all the way over herself to the top of her head and shut her eyes.

His fingers stubbornly tugged the end of that blanket back down to below her neck.

“Why on earth……”

“I told you not to go out of my sight.”

He tossed out those words indifferently and drank the rest of the water.

There was no sign that the gaze pouring over her face would be withdrawn.

She felt herself growing warmer and warmer.

When Gayeon, her face flushed red, turned her head away again, Kiril looked at her hunched shoulders.

His hand habitually stroked beneath his chin.

To the woman, he was a brute and an intruder.

But the way she had stood in front of him before the bear, blocking his path, or the way she had patted his back in the bathroom, were unfamiliar things to him.

To dismiss those as mere goodwill shown because he had only refrained from killing her employees would not explain the first one, which had involved a life at stake.