Pop Singer: A Dark BWAM / AMBW Romance (33 page)

JONG-SOO

I can remember walking along the shorelines of Korea’s beaches.

Yangyang countryside.

The sun high in the sky, and my parents driving a small convertible. Back then, they were still practicing the ideals of being “respectable citizens.” Sort of, at least.

“I don’t want us to harm too many people,” my mother would always say. I was still very young, enough to cling to her shoulders, to wrap myself completely in her arms. To be totally embraced by them both. “But you see,” she said to me, “times get rough. And when you need to make a little bit of money, there’s nothing wrong with the five finger discount.”

“Nothing wrong at all,” my dad would chime in.

We sometimes combed the beaches for bottles to turn in for extra money, but when my parents figured out that stealing from department stores or local shacks paid better than ever— well, they turned their petty theft into a long-standing ordeal of consistent robberies.

The first robbery we had accomplished was when I was about ten years old. I was standing in the middle of the mall, a very shady and rundown mall in a very bad part of Yangyang.

My dad and my mom were dressed up in clothes they had stolen from one of the previous department stores we had visited a couple miles away. Just a suit and tie for dad and a chiffon skirt for mom.

No one caught us.

I didn’t understand how they were able to maneuver so quickly about with no one catching a whiff of what was going on.

“We have to teach you and show you how,” my mother said. She guided me into another store, one for children’s clothes. My dad was standing outside, right near the entrance. He was keeping watch over my mother told me. She led me further inside as my dad followed us inward, guarding us from afar.

He would alert us if there was any sort of trouble.

My mother collected a bunch of clothes and stowed us inside a changing room. She put me into a T-shirt and jeans, changed me into a pair of slacks and a button-down shirt. “You look so nice like this,” she said. “Yes, you look great.”

She would say the same thing later, when my parents started up LBC Records. That record label that had scored us so much money laundering ability—God, we were able to make bank like that.

“Let’s go outside now,” my mother said, guiding me from the changing room out into the public world. My father was still waiting in the middle of the department store. Then he walked over to the sales associates by the front, capturing their attention with his talk.

My mother had stripped the clothes of tags, labels.

While the sales associates were busy with him—he asked to know where the women’s clothes were so he could pick out something for “Valentine’s Day”—we slipped out unnoticed.

I’m sure the cameras caught us, but my mother and father never took me to that store ever again.

“There’s little reason to go back to the same places,” she said. “The entire world is our oyster. There’s so much out there for the taking. And it’s so much easier than having to work at an actual job, isn’t it, Jong-soo?”

I nodded, understanding that it was indeed easier to take.

Later on, I had to disagree, because running away blossomed into an actual job. I think that’s how my parents lost control of their business in the end—they simply didn’t know how to work at it.

They took and took and took, but they never knew how to properly build control once they had it.

The Double Dragons grew organically and outward, and it spiraled out of their hands.

Out into the open world for sure.

HENRIETTA

“Wow,” I said. I guess we really didn’t have much time to actually sit down and talk about each other’s lives, but I had not been expecting that kind of story. “I’m sorry that you had to go through all of that. That sounds kind of awful. No, really awful, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” But Jong-soo simply stayed put. He wasn’t shaking like I would have been if it were me telling and talking. He wasn’t crying. No, he seemed to have a sort of deep-seated hatred boiling underneath the skin. But then a mix of love storming across his eyes.

“I really did care for them,” he said. “My parents bought me so many nice things and took me to so many nice places. They always looked out for me in the end. They knew how to. Because they had to.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “My father also did a lot of things he didn’t want to. And had to.”

I wrapped my arms around Jong-soo’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry if I ever doubted you,” I said. “But Bit-na was feeding me lines. She was telling me that you were an awful guy, this and that. I can understand
you
telling me that Bit-na is awful: she’s clearly displayed herself as such.”

“I don’t trust her one bit,” Jong-soo said. “She has her ulterior motives at stake. Or maybe she’s just a damaged woman. But she never reveals anything. She wants to keep her side of the power equation.”

“Whatever she’s capable of doing,” I said, “I think we should keep a sharp eye on her. Because when she lashes out at us—it’s going to be because she wants to on her terms.”

“Exactly.”

Suddenly, the bag rocked back and forth with a sharp momentum. We slammed against the ground, Jong-soo’s body thrashing against mine. He mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” I said.

And then I heard a crack.

We were off.

Bit-na and Hae-il were rolling the bag across the ground, and me and Jong-soo’s asses slapped against the hard pavement, rocks clattering against our bodies.

I flinched. It sounded as if our eardrums were struck with the actual instruments of war, swords and gunfire.

Jong-soo put his hands over my ears. I did the same for him. We rattled back and forth together, shaking violently, until we hit the inside of the dock terminal, the wheels rolling gently and gracefully up escalators and tile flooring.

“We’re in,” Jong-soo said. “We’re in the checking station. There shouldn’t be too many people this time of year. I think most tourists will prefer airplanes.”

“How long do you think it will take for us to get through security and stuff?”

Jong-soo shrugged. “It could take us a couple of hours. Or it could just be an hour. Or it could be several minutes. I’m not really sure.”

All we could do was sit in the darkness and…

Wait.

Wait for the beginning of a new life abroad.

Or for more terrors to begin.

JONG-SOO

We sat together for what seemed like an eternity.

Scrunched inside the bag, neither me nor Henrietta had any comfort.

We contorted ourselves into a myriad of positions, what felt like twenty thousand.

We were playing a game of pretzel, my arm underneath her leg, her leg over my shoulder, my hand against her breast.

“I don’t mind your hand there,” she said, giggling.

I shushed her, smiling. “Don’t make too much noise. Other people might get suspicious.”

From the outside, there came a ruckus.

The beating of hands.

A signal that Bit-na and Hae-il were giving to us.

The bag opened up a crack. Bit-na’s eye swam up against the zipper hole. She whispered, “I don’t want to hear any more noise from you guys. We’re about to enter security.”

“How much more time?” I said.

“That doesn’t matter. It’s been about an hour. You’re going to be inside there for a lot longer, so get used to it.”

I sighed.

It was true enough, and, well, there wasn’t much we could do.

This was the situation we had on our hands, the plan we formulated and had to carry out.

“Just be as comfortable as you can be,” Bit-na said, smirking. Then she zippered the bag up.

I knew Bit-na reveled in the idea of us crammed together. She especially wanted Henrietta to be in pain.

I didn’t get why she hated Henrietta so much though, other than her privilege of as an American.

I think she was jealous of her “easy” life abroad.

The concept of Americans in Korea was that everyone in the United States lived a fabulous lifestyle, easy and without struggle.

That’s because of the image brought to us by popstars and Hollywood. By the handsome politicians in the media, and by virtue of all of the talk about NASA or big investments on Wall Street.

America had all sorts of attention in a way Korea did not. We were like primitives compared to them or at least that’s how I thought.

Of course, the way we in Korea showed ourselves was high fashion, haute couture to the world. That’s how Henrietta—and fans like her—saw me.

“Don’t mind Bit-na,” I said. But I was only giving platitudes to Henrietta. I would have to figure out how the two of them could get along if we were going to get back at Oh-seong. We couldn’t be like this all the way for three days and some.

“I’ve tried asking her why she doesn’t like me,” Henrietta said. “But it’s whatever. I’m not a child anymore. I really don’t care if that bitch doesn’t.”

I smirked. “So that’s how you see her, eh? She
is
one. I don’t like her either, like I said. We just need to keep an eye out for her movements.”

There were more hands on the bag again, tapping and rattling and making noises. Hae-il and Bit-na. Me and Henrietta stayed quiet then, smiling at one another, like we were holding a secret inside of ourselves, away from the rest of the world.

Like little children.

I kept my voice down low, to the point where I only mouthed words. “Just listen to what’s going on.”

We heard a hush of voices outside of the bag. Hae-il in a low grunt. Bit-na, playing the role of a bimbo traveler with her husband in tow. They talked together with another man, probably an official. I heard the sounds of dark discussion.

The kind you might hear at a street corner with a drug dealer.

Someone exchanging hands, lots of money, a sort of secret password. An acknowledgment between two parties that something was going on.

Something that shouldn’t.

“We’re in,” I said. The lights between the zipper teeth of the bag flourished inside. I saw Henrietta’s face, the way she seemed momentarily alert, then drowsy, as if checking out from reality.

What was she thinking? I held her chin, touched her curvaceous neck. Let my hands go down her shoulders, the back of her body.

I woke her up with my touch, my darling touch, in the way I knew how to please women.

“Don’t be scared,” I said, the lights passing overhead. “We’re almost done with this.”

HENRIETTA

I didn’t know whether I was about to faint or not. I think Jong-soo could tell though, by the way he was calming me down. He had his hands all over my body, but not in a sexual way, in a comforting, soothing manner.

As if he knew deep down inside by reading my face and my eyes and my body language what was going on with me.

Anxiety, anger, confidence.

Confidence in the future, anger at Oh-seong, anxiety at being caught.

What was I doing here?

Was this really right?

Latasha would’ve surely called me a loser, right?

I shook my head.

Why was I even thinking of her? I told Jong-soo that Bit-na did not matter to me. She was being a child.

I sighed.

Jong-soo’s hands moved underneath my ass and my breasts, my chin.

Then he played his lips against mine, like a gentle and soft waves of the ocean, lapping up my saliva, pressing his tongue deeply into me.

I closed my mouth around his, kissing him back. I nodded, understanding that I had to stay quiet.

To make any sort of noise would…

Give us away.

And I did not want to have Bit-na’s wrath in my face. I imagined her screaming, shouting at me for ruining everything.

She had the same kind of anger that I did.

Maybe against this Oh-seong man who wronged her? Jong-soo had hinted at this idea in passing, here and there. From what I picked up in half-Korean.

“I think it’s safe to talk now,” Jong-soo said, looking up into the outside world through the zipper teeth. “Yeah, it’s definitely much safer now.”

I relaxed immediately.

A rush of pleasure struck my head, the center of my mind. As if I had been suffocated, and then someone finally let go of my throat.

I rested against Jong-soo’s chest, my legs uncomfortably stretched beneath me. I moved around in the bag, suffocating on the warm air.

“Put your mouth against the hole,” Jong-soo said, pressing my head towards the zipper opening that they had left behind for us to breathe by.

I inhaled as much oxygen and fresh air and nitrogen and everything else as best as I could.

“We’ll be able to have more room in a moment,” Jong-soo said.

“How do you know?” I said.

“Because after taking us into the holding container, we can open up the bed, and stretch ourselves for real.”

I waited for that precious feeling of freedom.

I only needed that: to feel like we were making headway.

And when I heard a bang—a door opening—and the slam of my ass against steel and metal, I knew we were inside the hull.

Of the ship.

Of the future I imagined.