Pop Singer: A Dark BWAM / AMBW Romance (26 page)

“Our life is totally different than your privileged one,” Bit-na said, dropping her cigarette, stamping it out. “You Americans don’t have any perspective, do
you
?”

I backed away from her. Jeeze, she was so aggressive now. Before? She teetered between friend and enemy. Now?

“I’m not trying to start anything with you,” I said. “I’m looking out for your guy.”

“He’s not mine. He’s already taken to you.”

Bit-na walked to the passenger door. In Korean, they spoke to one another, her, Hae-il, and Jong-soo. And then it was settled: we would go to the hospital, and I would go with him.

“If she wants,” Hae-il said, turning the key to the car. I went around the back, helping Jong-soo inside. Bit-na sneered at me.

“Whatever,” she said.

In the back of the truck, I returned the favor, massaging Jong-soo’s legs. I smiled at him, soothing his skin with strokes of my hand down his neck. “Is there a reason why she’s so angry at me now?” I whispered to him. Outside, the featureless land became green again with trees, the rolling waves of leaves in the wind. I blinked, staring at the beauty of flowers growing out of the soil, the perfectly paved asphalt. A climbing sun, the wind in my hair as Hae-il sped up the vehicle. “I feel like she’s nice to me, and then sometimes she’s indifferent, and then sometimes she… I think she hates me?”

Jong-soo smiled. “I think she hates me too.”

“She’s not part of your crew, is she?”

“No, she’s not. She’s actually from the opposing team: the Twin Swords. She used to play for them, but she’s gotten bored of them, I guess. Or maybe something bad happened. I'm predicting the latter.”

“She hates me for some reason. And I don’t know why.”

“It’s probably because she’s just gotten out of a… relationship.”

“Was she abused?”

Jong-soo shrugs. “So she says. But in the underground, you can never be too sure.”

“What you mean?”

“I wouldn’t even trust Hae-il. He saved my life once, but that doesn’t mean that I feel for him the same way I might if he was a civilian.”

“A civilian?” I was confused about his sudden military injection. “What you mean by that?”

“A ‘regular’ person. He’s been with me for a long time. And he’s done lots of things I wouldn’t have approved of if I had been in control from the beginning. My parents were okay with him killing here and there. But I’m not sure if he ever felt bad about it. Not in the end. But at the same time, I still feel like he’s someone who’s fallen into a hard world. He doesn’t have any parents. He never did. He grew close to mine for support.”

It seemed like Jong-soo was thinking about something deeply now. Internally, the gears of his head were cranking away at a point in his life, a memory of sorts.

“I’ve never thought about it in that way,” he said. “I’ve always thought of him as the type of person to be opportunistic. But I think he really loved my parents like family. Which is why he came to save us—there was infighting within the Double Dragons. And he tried to save them.”

“Your parents died at the Twin Swords’ hands.”

“And a lot more going to die if I don’t stop Oh-seong and his league of bandits. Even if my gang has collapsed, his gang has to be ended. Rear-ended, if it can be helped. Already, defectors like Bit-na dismantle him, but someone needs to stop the head honcho straight on.”

My eyes widened. “You’re not thinking about going after him?”

I’m not sure if I really cared about Jong-soo on a personal level, if I feared him, or if I was becoming a house gossip. Maybe I liked the lurid details he was giving me because they were racier than my average everyday life back in the United States. I hated myself for being so… wanting for juicy info. But I couldn’t stop asking questions, couldn’t stop feeling a flutter in the center of my stomach—if he went to go take this Oh-seong out, well, it sounded exciting.

Not that I thought about going with him.

Not at all, not at that instant in time.

I just wanted… more info.

Besides, Jong-soo was easy to talk to.

“I don’t know if I want to go after him,” he continued. “But it might have to be something that’s done. After all, someone has to stop him. If it’s not me, it’s going to be this person or that person. And I’m not sure if I want that person to be a civilian. A regular, average everyday soul. Someone like you. I wouldn’t want someone like you to get involved. Or even the innocent officials. They shouldn’t have to put up with nasty men like him.”

I relaxed my fingers around the crook of his elbow. With my hands, I rolled my palms against his skin. Feeling his muscles, all the way down to his thighs.

He flinched.

Imperceptibly, but I noticed.

“I’m glad you gave in,” I said. “You can get real treatment.”

“It’s not going to be easy. We’re going to be dealing with Eun-jung and Kyung-joon. And they may not be even there anymore.”

“It’s better than not doing anything at all. You’ll only fester and get worse.”

Jong-soo shrugged. Trying to be manly again, but I knew he understood the implications of not getting treatment. We all needed treatment. Going onward to Japan would be a death sentence anyway if one of them suddenly fell ill. This was the better option, no matter how much Bit-na hated me for slowing us down.

When we arrived at the hospital, pulled into the farthest corner of the parking lot. Hae-il got out, helping Jong-soo. He would stay behind with Bit-na, and I would go in with our main patient.

“Me and Bit-na can get some help for our cuts and stuff in the outpatient center,” Hae-il said. “Meet back here in two hours.”

We walked off, our separate ways, the sun blinding me, the heat of the day really pouring down on our bodies.

Finally, we came to the hospital’s double door entrance, double doors that opened automatically. Jong-soo leaned on me and hobbled all the way up to the front desk.

The woman at the desk seemed to recognize Jong-soo. Tall and lanky, she had a pixie cut and large glasses. “What are you doing here?” she said to him. “What happened to you?”

“There’s no time to talk,” Jong-soo said. “I need help.”

I looked at the woman. She stared at me, studying my face. “I’ll get Kyung-joon, just sit in the lobby.”

I led Jong-soo over to the waiting area. We sat down, and I stared into his eyes. He was so tired. So ready to be done with the day already.

“You really don’t want to be here,” I said.

“No,” he said. “It’s going to be painful and long.”

“I’ll be with you,” I said. “I promise.”

JONG-SOO

But I wasn’t sure if she was really going to be with me all the way. Why would she even bother? What was in it for her?

I could not help but feel a sense of paranoia towards Henrietta. Maybe she worked undercover for Oh-seong? A plant?

Although, if she was a plant, she wasn’t very convincing.

I did not want to hold bad feelings against her. The probability was that she was a normal woman from the United States. A regular girl who had come here for some sort of contest. To meet me. To showcase her sculptures.

I wanted to dislike her. Being so nice made it difficult to do that though.

Not to mention, Henrietta had an extraordinary beauty about her. Whenever she walked—I don’t think she noticed it herself—but the way her hips swayed, the way her dark skin caught the light. Beautiful. She seemed like the embodiment of femininity, gracing herself as she strode across the floor, the asphalt, or whenever she got into the truck. Even when she was stressed out, frowning and whining, tormented by nightmares—she seemed like the incarnation of beauty, passion, nature.

“If you leave my side,” I said, “I wouldn’t blame you.”

Henrietta shook her head. “I’ll be with you here. Don’t worry.”

Now she was telling me not to worry? I raised an eyebrow, smirking at her. “Now,
you
don’t worry. I’m not worried at all.”

She smiled at me, finally showing me all of her teeth. I don’t think I ever saw her scrunch up her mouth except when she was making a nasty expression: fear or otherwise. “I’m a feisty girl,” she said, “so I’m not going to back down now. Don’t you worry.”

I shrugged, shaking my head, and looking back at Eun-jung, who was on the phone, presumably calling Kyung-joon. “Whatever,” I said, laughing. “I like it when you smile like that by the way. It’s really pretty. Jeongmal areumdawoyo.”

Henrietta was about to say something—she seemed to understand completely, by the way she was blushing—but then Eun-jung started walking towards us, and then Kyung-joon appeared from one of the hallways leading into the foyer. Together, they approached, and Henrietta stood, helping me onto my feet.

“Long time no see,” Kyung-joon said, shaking my hand. He wore scrubs, teal scrubs and a stethoscope around his neck. Very official. “Come with me, Jong-soo.”

All business, as his disguise was to be. As my best undercover agents—the best agents for all of the Double Dragons—he and Eun-jung could never break their act in public. For all anyone knew, they were hospital professionals.

We walked down the hallway, so many other patients about us. They really were able to abstain from revealing anything: since they were actual doctors in their previous lives, Eun-jung and Kyung-joon never had a problem with integrating themselves on actual medical teams. They never let on that they were a part of the Double Dragons.

Kyung-joon had expertise running his own private practice on the other side of Busan. Eun-jung once owned her own place as well, but she decided to take on lower level work. She didn’t like the stress of having to constantly lord over people, telling them to take their medication or how to feed themselves properly. Intubation, that kind of stuff. It stressed her all out. Getting a malpractice lawsuit? It could ruin you completely. Eun-jung hated the shadow of a malpractice lawsuit. It hung over nearly every professional’s head as an option for the most ornery of patients who had vendettas against doctors. And there were many patients like that.

Many who were out for money grabs.

“This way,” Kyung-joon said, pointing to a door in a white hallway. We were still on the ground level, but deeper inside of the hospital now, past the front desk where Eun-jung retreated to. She did not seem interested in talking to me. For whatever reason. I hoped nothing was going on. Although I realized our situations had all changed in the events that followed the bombing of my concert.

Inside of the room, it was hot and glossy, as if a mist hung in the air. I glanced around, looking for the signs of a trap.

Nothing.

“And here we are,” Kyung-joon said, closing the door. He turned to face me and Henrietta. He inspected her first, looking her up and down, giving her the once over. “Is this your girlfriend or something?”

Henrietta glanced at me, and then shook her head. “No, I’m not.”

“Who are you then?”

“She’s a friend,” I said. “What have you been up to?”

“I could ask you that. We tried looking for you all over Korea—we practically crossed the border over into Pyongyang. I swear. The things we’ve tried doing for you.” Kyung-joon walked around the room as if he were a fish in a bowl, trapped with sharks. He held a clipboard in his hands, and then whipped out a pen from his pockets. Using quick motions with his wrist, he pretended to diagnose me. “You don’t look like you have a cold. Checkmark. And you don’t seem like you’ve got any signs of melanoma. Nope. Just a case of, what? A bunch of mysterious bruises? Some nasty cuts here?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything. Just treat some of my wounds?”

Kyung-joon knelt down against a drawer near Jong-soo’s leg. He said, “Move aside for a  moment. I need to get some equipment out.”

I stepped over to the table where a long and thin sheet of paper rested. I sat there, waiting for Kyung-joon to figure out what to do with me.

“You can forget about the last methamphetamine shipments or those heroin shipments,” he mumbled. “I swear, we were panicking about you.” He stood now, going over my chest with the stethoscope, holding onto a couple of Band-Aids and ointment creams. Would that really solve my pains? And no doubt about it, I was in a decent amount of pain. Not unbearable, but quite a bit.

“Oh-seong kept me in a bind. I was imprisoned somewhere in the middle of Korea. I don’t know what part, near and close to Daegu. That’s all I could figure out.”

“We tried first looking in Seoul, but no one turned up. And then the network started crumbling. People heard rumors tied to you. That you had sabotaged the entire concert in order to make the Double Dragons fall. And then we heard about Hae-il, how he had been captured there. Taken somewhere far away, to the south. Me and Eun-jung tried looking for you,” Kyung-joon said, wincing at my chest, a large laceration there. “Ouch. This is going to hurt.” He applied the ointment down and around my nipples. I groaned in pain. “But we just couldn’t find what we needed. The person of interest. Our head CEO.”

“What happened to the Twin Swords while I was away?”

“There was a lot of chaos on their end too. And then radio silence. Until we heard chatter about you getting out. And Hae-il. We figured that you would come to us. That you would eventually find us again.”

“Good thing this lady over here got me to you,” I said. Henrietta glanced at me, crossing her arms, smirking. “She can understand you, you know?”

“Only a little bit,” Henrietta said.

“Who is she?” Kyung-joon said, spraying me down with some Neosporin. He ripped open another package of Band-Aids, going over a bunch of cuts down on my thighs. He scraped away some blood, and then wiped over my skin with antiseptics. “She’s definitely not from here. She American? Accent sounds strangely like someone from CNN.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s American. And apparently the Twin Swords set her up. There was some sort of contest she entered, a prize about me. She was supposed to meet me, have a date or something. Something like that. And then she was abducted, taken away, held captive as prisoner. I found her just as I was freeing Hae-il.”

“Jesus,” Kyung-joon said. “Are you going to get her back?”

“Since we don’t have any ties with the police anymore,” I said, thinking. “Do we? Or has everyone gone their separate ways?”

“I’m pretty sure everyone’s gone their separate ways now. Me and Eun-jung are the only ones who could remain in plain sight. The police contacts that we had? The diplomats that we knew? They wouldn’t want to tie themselves to your abduction. It would get too messy. The fine details, oh, it would get so messy. Even Eun-jung is really not too keen about having you here in the hospital. She wanted to get rid of you the first moment she saw you. Honestly.”

My heart sunk. So my gang really was falling apart. A good thing, because that’s what I wanted. But it would be the end of a regime. The end of a legacy.

But at the same time, I ached for the loss of power. No longer would I be able to control the seas—I had a target on my back, I had to figure out how to get it off.

“That’s all done,” Kyung-joon said, patting my leg down. “Now let’s check your arms. Lift them up for me?” Kyung-joon searched around over my biceps, and then underneath for my triceps. With a sweep of his hands, he scanned about my rib cage, going down my sternum, feeling my belly, and then around my Adonis belt. “She seems really calm.”

I glanced over at Henrietta. Yeah, she seemed calm enough here in the doctor’s office. I wondered why she wasn’t screaming her head off. Was she developing Stockholm syndrome? It’s not like we had abducted her. We were the ones trying to get her home.

I
was.

Although I knew the others had their apprehensions. Bit-na and Hae-il. They wouldn’t want Henrietta squealing to the world about where we were, who we were, where police and officials could find us…

“How are you planning to take her back?” Kyung-joon said.

“Japan,” I said. “That’s our only plan for now. You want to come along? It would be like old times.”

“I don’t want to get myself tangled up anymore,” Kyung-joon said. “I’m sorry, but I’m sure you can understand my point? This job is all I have now for stability. If I were to leave, I wouldn’t have a source of income anymore, couldn’t pay my bills, and then there’s my girlfriend…”

I raised an eyebrow as he draped his hands over my chest. I never knew that he had anyone in his life. I had a lot of people under my control, but we never talked about our personal issues that often. Eun-jung and Kyung-joon were no different. Even Hae-il, I did not know extremely well, having no idea about his early childhood or how he was brought up. The less people knew in the world of gangs, the more power you had.

“I want to take out Oh-seong,” I said, ignoring Kyung-joon’s personal life. It wasn’t important anyway. There were bigger fish to fry. “Can you help me at least do that?”

“I’m not sure how I can. Eun-jung—like I said—is already stressed out having you here. It’s really different now. I know it’s hard to believe in only a couple of months, but the game has changed dramatically. The Twin Swords rule the streets. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re following you or already have here.”

“You can give me some supplies, can’t you? For the road.”

“Do you have more in your crew right now than this girl over here?” Kyung-joon eyed Henrietta again, grinning at her now. “Do you have others?”

“I have Hae-il with me. And another woman from Oh-seong’s leagues. She hasn’t told me a lot about herself, except for hinting at abuse she took from him.”

“Is she injured?”

“Bit-na hasn’t said much.”

Kyung-joon did not recognize her name. So she wasn’t exactly a powerful woman then. Probably someone who was battered up, taken to be a sex slave, human trafficked.

“I’ll figure something out,” Kyung-joon said. “I can get you whatever tools you need. But remember, I can only help you so much. I don’t know how long I’ll be at this hospital. Or if I’m even going to be working here next week.”

“Do you expect to get fired or something? I thought you said this job was supposed to be stable?”

“I’ve got a rash of anxiety,” Kyung-joon said. “I want to believe that this job is stable. But I don’t know if it truly is in the end. Of course, Eun-jung is a wreck of nerves as well. She wants to believe that she has something going on here too. But I don’t know, everything is up in the air.”

“You should come with us,” Henrietta said, somewhat excitedly. We both glared at her, staring at her strangely. What was she on about? She shrugged. “It was just a suggestion.”