Sae-byeok wakes up with a crick in her neck and a spring digging into her shoulder. It takes her a few minutes to realize she’s sleeping on the couch. She’s shivering from the cold, probably because she fell asleep with the windows open. For a moment, Sae-byeok is confused, she doesn’t remember why she’s sleeping there or why she’s in this particular apartment with an uncomfortable couch and an open window that overlooks a small side street. Then she remembers.
Seoul. The games. Ji-yeong.
She sits in a rush, her head spinning as it catches up with the new position.
She didn’t go back to the games. She stayed in her apartment kissing Ji-yeong until her lips had been puffy and red. They stayed on the couch until the night bled into the morning and then they slept together again. Ji-yeong isn’t anywhere to be seen.
It makes Sae-byeok’s stomach turn.
She didn’t go back to the games for her. Because she asked her not to. Sae-byeok, who didn’t trust anyone on a good day, had given up her one chance to get out of this mess for a girl she barely knew.
I’m so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She goes to her room and grabs a towel, walking to their shared bathroom in a haze. She stands under the lukewarm water for longer than necessary, pondering how she’s supposed to get forty million won to get her mother back when all she knows how to do is pickpocket unaware pedestrians in the street. How is she supposed to pay back the money she owes when in her best days she barely manages to get half a million? This is quite possibly the worst decision Sae-byeok has made in her life. And she has made plenty of bad decisions.
After getting dressed without seeing or hearing from Ji-yeong, she starts to wonder if maybe the other girl made a run for it. Maybe she found a way to get back into the games. Maybe she saw what Sae-byeok failed to see the day before: there is no way they can make it without the game money. Maybe she was as disgusted with Sae-byeok as Sae-byeok herself felt.
It didn’t matter. Sae-byeok made her choice. Now she has to live with it.
She leaves without eating anything, grabbing her bag, her phone and her switchblade. It’s going to be a long day.
When Ji-yeong woke up, she was sure that she had been dreaming the whole week. There was no way she had played a life-or-death game and then been allowed to go back to her life without any consequences, right?
She wasn’t sure what woke her up, but she stayed on the couch for a long time watching Sae-byeok sleep. She seemed so small and vulnerable, a child for all intents and purposes. But Sae-byeok came from the North, she was no stranger to pain and difficult life circumstances. She had escaped from the North. It made Ji-yeong feel like she had had an easy life.
She had no one, nothing, and then Sae-byeok came into her life full of sunshine and light and gave her a reason to want to live, not merely exist outside of prison. It’s naïve, really, to think that Sae-byeok will want to stay with her if Ji-yeong doesn’t help her. She promised she would help, but besides sewing and sucking a guard’s cock in exchange of cigarettes, she doesn’t know how to do anything. She didn’t even finish high school.
But Ji-yeong would help. Even if it killed her. Ji-yeong owed Sae-byeok for staying, for living, for seeing her when no one else had.
She carefully dislodges her body from Sae-byeok’s and takes a shower. Then she gets her last won from under the bed and makes the 3-hour trip to Cheongju Women’s Correctional, hoping she gets there before visitation hours are over.
Sae-byeok finds herself outside the horse racing betting window without knowing how she got there. She followed a man who looked well-groomed and competent, the kind that always carries big amounts of cash in his wallet, and queued up behind him when he placed his bets. He was a moderate gambler, but still, Sae-byeok wished she had nicked his wallet before he wasted the money.
She places a small bet to the same numbers the man chose in the hopes that if he wins, she will be able to get the jackpot from him. She follows at a sensible distance as he watches the screens for the race that’s about to start.
He loses, obviously. Sae-byeok loses as well.
The man places another bet, this time a bigger amount. She doesn’t have more money to bet but she still follows him around, hoping this isn’t a waste of her time.
He jumps and screams when the next race starts, he’s frantic and nervous but he still manages to look put together in a way Sae-byeok could never be.
When the race ends, the man yells in excitement. He won.
Sae-byeok follows him as he makes his way to the windows. 591.395 won. He places another bet for half of that amount. She rolls her eyes, knowing that he will lose all of her money if she doesn’t get him soon.
She bumps into him as he makes his way to the screens, pretending to fall. The man makes a grab for her, but misses and she stumbles to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” the guy says as he kneels down to help her up. She takes his extended hand and starts to stand up, putting her left hand on his chest, seemingly to regain her balance, sliding it under his jacket swiftly, grabbing the wallet as she plants her feet firmly on the ground.
“This isn’t a place for ladies,” the man says.
“I was just passing by,” she answers shyly, hiding the hand holding the wallet under her bag.
“Let me get you a coffee, as an apology,” he adds.
“No, no, sir. Please, I’ll be late for the train,” she smiles at him as sweetly as she can manage.
“I’ll take you home,” he insists, putting pressure on her arm where he’s still holding it.
“Thank you, but maybe another time,” Sae-byeok yanks her arm free from him and walks to the door, decidedly.
Jang Ji-hu, Deok-su’s boss, is standing at the entrance, smoking a cigarette. Sae-byeok curses inwardly. She can’t go back to the waiting room where the man has probably figured out she stole his money. She can’t run, they’ll follow her. So she walks out the doors inconspicuously, fake-checking her phone and putting it to her ear.
She’s half a block from the gambling house when a man speaks up from behind.
“I don’t suppose you know Deok-su’s whereabouts, Sae-byeok-a?”
The way the man, Jang Ji-hu, addresses her makes the hair in the back of her neck stand up. Rude motherfucker, she thinks.
“Why would I?” she answers without turning back, still walking.
A man comes out of a side alleyway and stands in front of her. She doesn’t need to see his tattoos to know he’s one of Jang Ji-hu’s kkangpae.
She stops on her tracks two feet away from the man.
“Ah, Sae-byeok-a, aein, you must know something. You seemed to know so much last time,” Ji-hu says, coming to stand in front of her with the other man.
“Last I knew, he was on his way to Busan,” she lies smoothly.
The unnamed man laughs, his face twisting into a sick grin.
“Deok-su killed one of my men last night,” Ji-hu declares, a judge about to give his final sentence, serious and uncaring. “If I find out you’ve been working with him, I’ll find you and I’ll kill you.”
He looks her up and down, but apparently decides she’s not worth his time and gestures with his head to the other man to get going.
“Ji-hu 씨,” she calls when he turns around to leave.
“Yes?”
“Do you have a job for me?” she asks.
Ji-hu laughs at that.
“Sae-byeok-a, you still owe me 85 million. I understand, times are rough, money doesn’t grow on trees,” he puts his hand on her cheek, “you can always pay me back with that pretty mouth of yours.”
Sae-byeok’s stomach threatens to rebel against that. She swallows the bile that rises up on her throat and turns her head away, letting his hand fall.
“Pity,” he says, making a clicking sound with his tongue. “If you try to ask me for money again, I’ll take my dues from you however I can.”
They walk away after that, leaving her with an empty feeling inside her chest.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She needs to get her hands on more money as soon as possible. She’d rather kill herself before letting Ji-hu touch her again.
While Ji-yeong waits for the guard to come back with Soo-min, she takes a seat at one of the tables furthest from the door. She knows there’s some kind of recording device in the room, but at least this way no guard will know for certain what they’re talking about. She doesn’t want to get Soo-min in any trouble.
“Ji-yeong! You came! And so soon!” Soo-min says, sitting down in front of her.
“I missed you, unnie. I don’t know anyone outside who makes me laugh like you do,” Ji-yeong replies, watching the guard take her position at the door.
“You haven’t been out long enough,” her friend replies with a smile.
Soo-min had arrived at the Cheongju prison two years before, after the cops raided the house where she and her friends worked. Apparently, their joint sex work-scamming scheme had targeted someone who had the connections to get the police involved and they had actually followed through it. Half of her friends had been sent to prison as well, all with minor convictions that had them out of the brig within the year. Soo-min had come back less than three weeks later when she was caught after killing a man who had tried to force himself on her. Now she’s serving life.
“What brought you here, sweetheart?” she asks, still smiling, but with a hint of caution underneath.
“Can’t a friend visit another friend without it being suspicious?”
“Maybe. But we became friends in prison, so forgive me if I am a bit suspicious.”
Ji-yeong laughs at her tone. She didn’t know how much she’d miss her cellmates until she was alone in the Cheongju streets after being released. Her cellmates had been the only family she had left and now she didn’t even have that.
“I don’t know how to survive in the real world,” Ji-yeong says sincerely.
“Well, you’ve had no one to teach you what the world is like out there,” Soo-min replies. “Getting to watch a movie once a month doesn’t prepare you for the outside.”
“I don’t know where to work or what to do. All I know is to sew in those old machines that they have at the workshop.”
“Where are you living?”
“Itaewon. In Seoul.”
“How did you get a place in Seoul? Do you have family there?”
“You know I don’t. I-,” she hesitates. She doesn’t want to say it out loud. Maybe that way it won’t be true.
“What?” Soo-min prompts.
“I did some things with a guy. He paid me. Then I slept in the streets until a woman gave me her landlord’s phone number and he let me rent one of his rooms,” she glances at the guard at the door before adding, “I don’t want to do it again, though. What I did. I felt bad after it happened.”
Soo-min has a serious look on her face.
“You don’t do that again, you hear me? I don’t care how much money a guy offers you. Do not take it. One day you’re doing it to pay rent, the next day you’re using your hard-earned won to snort cocaine between blowjobs.”
Ji-yeong frowns.
“I’m not going to do cocaine,” she whispers, feeling the guard’s eyes on her, as if she can hear them.
“You can try making money on the internet,” Soo-min suggests.
“The internet? How? I barely know how to use a phone.”
“You need to set up a bank account that can receive international deposits. I’ll tell Ji-hye to call you,” she says, all businesslike.
“Ji-hye? Wasn’t that-?”
“Don’t say anything. You know they’re listening,” she interrupts before she can complete the question. Ji-yeong remembers Soo-min telling her that her street name was Ji-hye.
“Fine. But it has to be this week. I have to pay rent,” Ji-yeong tells her with a sulk.
“Don’t worry, I’ll set it up. She’ll explain everything, okay? Now tell me about this apartment of yours. Do you have a balcony?”
Soo-min asks her superficial questions until their time runs out, even managing to make Ji-yeong laugh a couple of times. When the guard announces it’s time to go, Soo-min blurts out, “take care of yourself, okay? Don’t work the streets unless you absolutely have to. It’s too dangerous. They’ll bring you back here in a heartbeat.”
She nods as Soo-min stands up.
“What’s your number?”
“I don’t have a phone yet,” she says.
“Your address?” the guard grabs her arm and starts yanking her away.
“Hoenamu-ro 44 ga-gil. Number 3. 2-A,” Ji-yeong adds hurriedly.
“She’ll find you. Now go back and drink a beer for me, will you? I really fucking miss beer,” Soo-min smiles sadly, turning to follow the guard.
“I will! I promise!” she calls out, but Soo-min is already in the other hallway and probably doesn’t hear her.
On the bus back to Seoul, she wonders if Soo-min can be trusted. The thought is fleeting, though. She wouldn’t promise to help her if she was going to betray her, would she?
No, she decides. If anyone can be trusted it is the people who have nothing to lose. Soo-min has nothing to lose now, she’s serving life.
When she gets home and Sae-byeok isn’t there, she wonders if Sae-byeok can be trusted. She has everything to lose.
Sae-byeok spends her day in and out of restaurants, nicking wallets and phones until her bag is filled with goodies. She hasn’t been careful enough and someone was bound to notice. Unfortunately, the man who notices is a heavyweight who’s drunk out of his mind.
“Give me my phone back, girl,” he slurs, cornering her at the entrance of the restaurant, his right hand on the wall behind her, too close to her face for comfort.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir” she says in her best-practiced helpless tone.
“I know you took it. Give it back now or I’ll call the police,” he states, his warm, stinky breath caressing her cheek. He’s too close now, if he gets any closer, she’s going to throw up.
“Please, sir. Let me go,” she pleads, loud enough that someone should hear her.
“Such a pretty face, such a dumb mouth,” his right hand touches her cheek and she shivers, uncomfortable.
She wants to yell at him, to kick him, to punch him, but none of that happens. She stays still, as the man’s left hand reaches to touch her shoulder, pinning her to the wall.
“You could make so much money with that pretty face of yours,” he says. “I could pay you well. But first, I’m going to need my phone back.”
When she doesn’t move, the man’s face comes closer. She can’t see anything but his drunken eyes and lewd smile. She closes her eyes.
“Give me. The phone. Now,” he demands, bringing his face closer. She feels his lips on her ear as he says, “I’ll give you good money if you blow me in the toilets right now.”
Before she can think too much about it, her switchblade is out and she’s slashing the man’s left wrist with enough force to rupture a vein. When she opens her eyes to find blood dripping on her shirt, she realizes this was probably her worst idea yet.
“You bitch!” the man yells, grabbing his wrist to stop the bleeding. Just as she’s about to make a run for it, he grabs her arm and throws her back to the wall. The switchblade slides from her hands and into the pavement with a loud clank. “You’ll pay for this, you whore.”
Her own body lying down in the cold cobblestone street flashes before her eyes. Sae-byeok briefly considers her options but comes up with nothing as the man’s bleeding hand fumbles with the buttons of her shirt. When he finally opens it up, he grins.
“You could’ve done this yourself,” he says, smiling. “Women like you make me sick. You want men to do all the work.”
The man then redirects his hands to her pants and her pulse quickens. She looks around the deserted street trying to find a friendly face that will help her. When the man lowers her fly, she realizes it’s too late for someone to help her. She has to do this herself.
The man gets distracted trying to pull her pants down and she slams her open palm on his nose. He lets out a squeak and stumbles a couple of steps back. That’s enough for her to duck, grab her switchblade and make a run for it, holding her pants up with one hand and her bag with the other.
She runs until her lungs burn and all she can hear is her own heart beating loudly in her ears. She ducks into an alleyway and buttons up her clothes with shaking hands.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
This is what she gets for her thoughtlessness.
She takes a deep breath to steady her hands and sobs when exhaling. This is too much, too soon. She should be with her brother and her parents in a lovely house by the coast. She should be in the games fighting for her life. She should be dead, shot by the border police as her parents escape with her brother for a better life.
She should’ve gone back to the games.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
As Sae-byeok walks back to the apartment, she realizes that she doesn’t know how to sell the phones she stole. She guesses she’ll figure it out another day. Today has been long enough.
Ji-yeong has been pacing the living room back and forth for what seemed like hours when Sae-byeok comes in. She stops in her tracks. Her eyes immediately register the blood on her shirt and a wave of panic washes over her.
“Sae-byeok-a, are you hurt?”
Sae-byeok doesn’t reply, she walks to the sofa and lets her body fall with a heavy thud.
“Sae-byeok-a?”
“I’m fine,” she mumbles. “It’s not my blood.”
Ji-yeong’s thoughts run wild with speculation.
“You know, if we’re going to be partners, you need to tell me what’s going on,” she says, going for nonchalant and failing.
“We’re not partners,” Sae-byeok states, emotionlessly.
The words ring in Ji-yeong’s head. Not partners. Not to be trusted then, she decides.
Instead of arguing with her, Ji-yeong sits down on the sofa, keeping her distance from the other girl.
“I went to visit a friend today,” she volunteers, knowing that it’s always easier to trust someone who freely gives up information.
“I thought you had no one,” Sae-byeok replies after a moment of awkward silence.
“Well, I have no one outside,” she picks at the buttons of her cardigan to distract herself. “She’s in prison, still. Will be for a long time.”
“Ah,” is all Sae-byeok says in response.
When she doesn’t speak for a while, Ji-yeong tells her, “She thinks I should work on the internet. She says a friend of hers can help me. Us. I don’t know how, but I believe in her.”
“You believe in your prison friends?”
Ji-yeong can feel the anger rising in her tiny body, swiftly enough for it to overtake her any minute now.
“Well, I have no one else to believe in, do I?” she bites back.
She regrets her tone the moment she catches sight of Sae-byeok’s trembling hands. She looks one second away from breaking, barely holding it together as it is. Ji-yeong knows that whatever happened to her must have been Bad, capital B.
“Sae-byeok-a, will you tell me what happened to you?”
A single tear falls from one of her eyes and Sae-byeok is quick to wipe it away with the sleeve of her jacket.
“Do you think one of your prison friends could help me sell these?” she says, dropping the contents of her bag on the table. One of the phones falls to the floor with a thud, followed by a couple of wallets.
“Did you steal these?” she asks picking up one of the phones. It’s turned off and she doesn’t dare turn it back on in fear it might attract the police to their apartment.
“Obviously,” Sae-byeok replies, implying it was stupid of Ji-yeong to ask.
“I don’t know. Maybe? My friend dealt in sex and corporate scams, but I’m sure they must know someone.”
“They?”
“One of her friends outside is going to contact me. I wish I had a phone earlier today; it would’ve made things easier.”
Sae-byeok nods, standing up.
“Let me know when she comes. If the pay-off is big enough, I want in,” she’s already walking to her room as she says it.
“So, you do want to be partners then?” she can’t keep the hopeful tone out of her voice.
“Good night, Ji-yeong 씨.”
Ah, we’re back to that, she thinks dryly.
When she goes to bed that night, her mind is working tirelessly to figure out what happened to Sae-byeok. It doesn’t help that she can imagine exactly how bad it could’ve been.
Sae-byeok can’t sleep.
No matter how much she tosses and turns, every time she closes her eyes, she’s back against the wall with that man’s hands on her and his breath hot on her cheek. It gets bad enough that she gets up and starts pacing around her small room.
She isn’t weak. She defended herself. She left him a reminder of what happens when a man messes with a girl who doesn’t want anything to do with him. Still, her hands won’t stop shaking and her mind won’t let go of the encounter.
Eventually, she takes her pacing to the living room, where the phones on the table stare at her, a stark reminder of what she needs to do to get the money she needs to get her life together.
She doesn’t know how long she’s been standing next to the table when Ji-yeong comes out of her room.
“Insomnia is a bitch,” she says, walking to their fridge. She glares at the contents and closes the door. “We need to go grocery shopping.”
We. Sae-byeok’s stomach tightens. There is no we in this scenario.
“Hey,” Ji-yeong calls softly, taking her hand. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She doesn’t. Not to her, anyway. But she doesn’t have anyone else to talk to.
Sae-byeok lets go of her hand and walks to the window, glancing down to the empty street. She can hear music coming from one of the apartments downstairs, the loud bass making the glass throb to the rhythm.
“There was a man,” she starts, her eyes fixed on the neighbor’s mismatched curtains across the street. “He tried to- “
She doesn’t hear Ji-yeong come closer, but she can see the other girl out of the corner of her eye. When Sae-byeok doesn’t continue, Ji-yeong puts her hand on top of hers on the window frame. It’s such a small gesture, but it’s enough to give her the reassurance she needs.
“I take it he took home a keepsake? The blood?”
“Yeah,” she croaks.
“Good.”
They don’t say anything else; they stand there until Sae-byeok’s feet feel sore and she feels cold all over except for the hand Ji-yeong is touching. It makes something warm blossom inside of her. Something warm and soft that makes her feel uncomfortable. She withdraws her hand and turns to Ji-yeong.
“Don’t touch me like that again,” she says. “We’re not friends. We just live together, that’s all.”
Ji-yeong’s face twits into an unpleasant smirk.
“You kiss all of your friends like kissed me last night?” she asks boldly.
“It was wrong. It won’t happen again,” Sae-byeok turns to leave but Ji-yeong grabs her hand.
“You know, you’d be happier if you stopped thinking that way.”
“I’d be happier if I had the 45 billion won from the game,” she yanks her hand free and adds, “it was stupid of me to think there was another way.”
Sae-byeok goes back to her room and gets in the bed. Her hand still tingles from where Ji-yeong touched her. She doesn’t sleep that night.
It has been almost a week since she visited Soo-min in prison when a blonde woman shows up at their door carrying a duffel bag and a Victoria Secret’s bag.
“Please tell me this is the right place, I’ve been knocking on every door in this street looking for Ji-yeong,” is the first thing she says when Ji-yeong opens the door.
“Ji-hye?” she asks, but there’s no one else who would be looking for her.
“Ah, so it is here. Good, good,” she pushes Ji-yeong aside and enters the apartment without waiting for an invitation. “Ji-hye is a codename, by the way. We are all Ji-hye, and yet none of us is. It’s Im Seo-hyeon for you, sweetheart.”
Ji-yeong closes the door and turns to see Seo-hyeon already sitting on the sofa. She’s inspecting one of the phones on the table.
“Soo-min said you didn’t have a phone.”
“Um, I don’t. My roommate stole these,” as she says it, Seo-hyeon drops the phone back into the pile.
“Why am I not surprised? Anyway, I’m here to give you the basics. If you already found someone else to help you get started, then tell me. I could be working now, you know?” Seo-hyeon speaks so fast that she barely has time to keep up. She’s all pent-up energy and sweeping gestures. Ji-yeong wants to be half as confident as her.
“Soo-min said I could work the internet, but I don’t understand how to do it. I don’t understand anything, really,” she admits.
“Ah, that’s why I’m here. Do you have a computer?” Ji-yeong shakes her head. “I thought so. You need to get a laptop as soon as possible. Sadly, I didn’t have any spares, but I’ll help you set up social media first.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Well, it depends on how far you’re willing to go. Do you smoke?” At her nod, Seo-hyeon continues, “some people pay to watch pretty women smoke. No need to get naked. Some people pay to see feet. Some people pay to see you get off on camera. Your first decision is this: how far will you go?”
She thinks of Sae-byeok and the 40 million she needs to get her mother back. She thinks of Sae-byeok’s debt. She thinks of her own father’s debt, but it seems unimportant when Sae-byeok’s brother is alone in an orphanage. The decision comes easy enough after that. Ji-yeong has nothing to lose for going all in.
“I need 40 million won. I’ll do whatever it takes to get it.”
“Goal-oriented, huh? I like you already Ji-yeong. Welcome to the Ji-hye sisterhood.”
Seo-hyeon spends the next hour taking photos of Ji-yeong in several states of undress. It should be awkward, but Ji-yeong is used to having no privacy and Seo-hyeon talks to her the whole time. She tells her about her favorite clients, her time working in Japan, her first time in front of a camera. Ji-yeong lets herself enjoy it. It feels like playing a game, one where she can be whoever she wants.
“We should get a few shots together so I can shout you out in my profile,” Seo-hyeon says after Ji-yeong has taken pictures in all the lingerie sets she brought.
“Together?”
“Yeah, let me get into character.”
She starts stripping in front of Ji-yeong until she’s left in nothing but her black panties. Seo-hyeon sets the tripod in front of the sofa and clicks the camera settings.
“Now, try to look like you’re having the time of your life,” she instructs.
Then she sits next to her with her back turned to the camera and smiles at Ji-yeong. Ji-yeong smiles back, sliding one strap of her bra down her shoulder. Click. Seo-hyeon puts a hand on her face and leans forward. Click. She kisses Ji-yeong softly, nothing but a peck on the lips. Click.
The door opens startling Ji-yeong.
Sae-byeok is looking at them with a blank stare, her lips set in a firm line.
“Sae-byeok 씨,” she greets.
The other girl doesn’t say anything. She walks directly to her room slamming the door closed with a loud thud.
“Your roommate doesn’t seem very friendly,” Seo-hyeon says with a smirk.
“She’s very repressed. That’s all,” she replies. “Should we get more pictures?”
They take photos until Seo-hyeon is satisfied. She connects the camera to her laptop and starts uploading them somewhere. Then she starts creating her accounts.
“So, do you have any preferences for a name?”
Ji-yeong considers it.
“Kang Min-jun.”
“Min-jun? Isn’t that too ordinary?”
“There’s nothing more extraordinary than being clever and gorgeous,” she says confidently.
“Fine by me. Let’s make you famous, Kang Min-jun.”
Sae-byeok had spent the better part of the week avoiding Ji-yeong. It wasn’t exactly easy to do in their tiny apartment, so she went out early in the morning and came back as late as she could while avoiding staying out after the sun set. She didn’t want another situation to arise.
Today, however, she is tired. Tired of walking, tired of stealing, tired of thinking. Especially because she can’t stop thinking about Ji-yeong. It figures that her mind would fixate on the one thing she doesn’t want to think about.
She’s been thinking about saying something to alleviate the awkward tension that set after the night of the situation when she opens the door to their apartment and sees Ji-yeong on the sofa.
Ji-yeong on the sofa wearing nothing but a black see-through bra and matching panties.
Ji-yeong on the sofa wearing nothing but a black see-through bra and matching panties kissing a half-naked blonde.
It makes her feel hot and cold all over. Being stabbed would’ve been preferable, if she’s honest. At least her feelings on it would be clear.
“Sae-byeok 씨,” Ji-yeong says coldly by way of greeting. Sae-byeok 씨, not Sae-byeok-a.
And that, that hurts.
She breathes in deeply and walks directly to her room, slamming the door with more force than necessary. She leans against the door and exhales; her left hand goes to her chest where her heart is threatening to beat out of her ribcage.
Sae byeok feels so stupid.
What is this? She thinks. Why is Sae-byeok freaking out after seeing Ji-yeong? It doesn’t make sense.
She takes a moment to breathe deeply, forcing her heart to behave. When it doesn’t listen, she lays on her unmade bed and screams into her pillow.
She doesn’t leave the bedroom for the rest of the day.
Ji-yeong is playing around with the phone Seo-hyeon gave her the day before when Sae-byeok appears in the kitchen.
She’s expecting disdain, disgust, sadness -something, anything- from her, but instead she receives a curt nod and silence. Sae-byeok leaves before Ji-yeong can offer to buy breakfast.
The previous night she made her first won on the internet after one of Seo-hyeon’s followers offered to pay her for a call. Just a voice call. Seo-hyeon gave her a list of standard rates for a lot of stuff, but not a voice call. Ji-yeong had to go into the Ji-hye group chat to ask for help.
A girl that went by Eun-ji in the chat sent her her own rates and then stayed chatting with her during the call to help Ji-yeong get more money out of the promise of services. The man now has a subscription to a daily Min-jun picture for a month, paid in advance.
Now, Eun-ji is texting her while she’s waiting for a client to show up at her place.
ugh why did I ever agree to a morning date? waking up before 12 should be illegal
Ji-yeong replies hot girls shouldn’t work
you are 100% correct min-jun
She begins to type a response, but Eun-ji is faster hey are you dating anyone? maybe we should collab someday. but I don’t want secret bfs or gfs pissed @ me
Ji-yeong thinks of what Sae-byeok said the other night. We’re not friends. It was enough for her. She’s not going to pine after her not-friend. She’s not 16 anymore.
I think a collab would be great, she texts back.
awesome
girls should help each other in this business
hey the guy is here
I’ll check w/ you later and we’ll set a date
She goes back to answering messages from potential clients until she hears the door open again.
Sae-byeok offers her a cup of steaming coffee and the corners of her mouth tilt slightly upwards, almost a smile. Almost. “You look like you stayed up all night.”
“I woke up too early,” she counters. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to talk. Normal roommate stuff, I guess. Is that too much to ask?” Ji-yeong asks sincerely.
The girl doesn’t reply immediately. Instead, she leans her slim body against the kitchen counter. Her t-shirt rides up slightly and Ji-yeong sees a flash of skin that’s gone way too fast. She swallows involuntarily.
“Did your friend say anything about the phones?”
“Yeah, a Ji-hye will sell them. She took two back to her place. Said to expect the money by Saturday,” she takes a sip of the coffee and her stomach grumbles. “Do you want to order something for breakfast?”
“You have money?” Sae-byeok asks.
“In a way,” she replies vaguely. “I’ll have the real deal when the bank sends me the card. Now I can pay with an app or something. I have to ask one of the girls how to do it.”
Sae-byeok shakes her head.
“Maybe when you have the card,” she says. “Do you want hotteok?”
Her stomach growl is enough answer for her. Sae-byeok pushes herself off the counter and grabs her hand. “Let’s go.”
Ji-yeong doesn’t protest.
For a moment she entertains the idea that she’s dreaming. Sae-byeok said it herself: we’re not friends. It rings in her head whenever she remembers the night they kissed. The way Sae-byeok’s body pushed her against the wall and fiercely kissed her, unleashing the energy of a thousand suns into her veins. How they kissed on the sofa, soft and slow until they were gasping for air. The thought makes Ji-yeong angry.
We’re not friends. We’re not friends. We’re not friends, her mind insists.
Still, she walks to the cart on the main street holding her hand until Sae-byeok lets her go to pay the woman who hands them the pancakes. They walk back to the apartment eating in silence. Ji-yeong wonders if something changed while she wasn’t looking when Sae-byeok asks her, “how’s the internet going?”
“Well, there are a lot of horny men on the internet. Not many who want to pay me yet, though.”
“How much can you make?”
“It depends. The girls say that anywhere from 600,000 to two million a month,” she replies, reaching for the door to the building. She holds it open for Sae-byeok and the other girl nods at her.
“The girls?”
“Seo-hyeon’s friends.”
“Ah,” she starts her way up the stairs when Sae-byeok adds, “how can I help?”
Ji-yeong’s heart skips a beat and her mind goes back to that night on the sofa. Her warm body flush against Sae-byeok’s, her hands on Sae-byeok’s hair, her lips tingling after one too many kisses. She can think of a few ways Sae-byeok could help. All of them naked.
“I need a laptop. For live shows,” she says instead, doing her best not to trip up the stairs.
When they reach their apartment, Ji-yeong opens the door and shivers at the cold breeze. She needs to buy warmer clothes or get someone to fix the heater, especially if she’s going to be naked on the regular.
“Do live shows pay better?” Sae-byeok asks.
“Why the sudden interest? Are you going to get naked with me?” the words are out of her mouth before Ji-yeong can stop them. The idea of having Sae-byeok naked anywhere near her erasing every other thought in her mind.
“Don’t be disgusting, Ji-yeong 씨” she quickly replies.
Ji-yeong makes sure the other girl sees her roll her eyes at her.
“If you say so, Sae-byeok 씨,” and she drags the last syllable longer than necessary, teasing her.
She thinks Sae-byeok will leave now, as she has done every morning since that night she got home in a bloody shirt, so she sits on the sofa with her phone. Not a minute later, Sae-byeok sits on the edge of the sofa, a safe distance from Ji-yeong. She rolls her eyes again.
“Is your friend coming back?”
“Well, she’ll come to get a couple more phones on Saturday. Are you going to keep stealing those?” Ji-yeong asks.
“I don’t think so. I’d rather-,” she’s interrupted by a loud knock on the door. “Are you expecting someone?”
Ji-yeong shakes her head. Sae-byeok stands up abruptly, unsheathing a switchblade. She walks to the door, leaning to check the peephole.
“It’s the landlord. When are you supposed to pay, Ji-yeong 씨?”
“Not until next week,” she says defensively.
Sae-byeok opens the door, keeping her switchblade out of sight.
“Yes, sir?”
“Ah, the girl from the north. I see you’ve settled here quite well,” the man says making his way inside.
“It’s still not the end of the month,” Sae-byeok observes.
“Well, I have to check if you girls are staying or if I should be looking for new tenants,” he walks to the living room, inspecting the furniture. “Why is it so cold in here?”
“The heater doesn’t work,” Ji-yeong says. “You should get it fixed.”
“But it was working when you moved in!”
“It wasn’t,” she says through gritted teeth.
“It was. It’ll be another million to fix it.”
“Another million?” Sae-byeok tilts her head. “How much are you charging Ji-yeong already?”
“A fair price for a convicted felon who can’t get a yearly lease,” he replies.
Sae-byeok moves faster than Ji-yeong can process, pushing the man against the wall and placing an arm on his neck.
“How. Much. Are you. Charging her?” she slips into her northern accent with ease. The way she rounds her vowels shouldn’t be this hot.
“Hey! What are you doing? I’ll have you evicted for this, you commie bitch!”
Sae-byeok puts her switchblade on the man’s neck.
“How much?”
Ji-yeong feels hot all over. She wants to look away but this is a side of Sae-byeok that she’s only gotten glimpses of and she wants to take it all in. Instead of answering, the landlord spits at Sae-byeok. Before the man gets any space to move, Sae-byeok kicks him hard between the legs and he doubles over. He’s about to stand up when Sae-byeok elbows him in the back.
“How much, you piece of shit?” her left hand grabs him by the collar of his shirt, while her right hand presses the switchblade to his cheek. The man stops moving.
“A million a month, okay? It’s only fair, she can’t pay for a proper deposit!” he barks, but the tremble in his voice betrays his true feelings.
“Ok, Mr. Choi. This is what we’re going to do,” she takes a moment before continuing, making Mr. Choi look up at her, nervous. “Ji-yeong and I will stay in this apartment for a while. We will pay you the million you want, but that will cover both of us and you will ask no questions or try to get any extra money from us until we decide to leave this place,” Sae-byeok slides the tip of knife across Mr. Choi’s cheek, softly but firmly. Something inside Ji-yeong can’t stop thinking about having Sae-byeok’s intense eyes on her; it makes her skin prickle and her palms sweat. “And you will fix the damn heater. Is that understood?”
The man barely manages a nod.
“Say it, Mr. Choi. Don’t make me repeat myself,” she says, the tip of her knife digging into the man’s flesh.
“Fine, fine! I’ll fix the heater!” he cries.
Sae-byeok lets him go and he falls to the floor. When he stands up again, he looks positively furious.
“Please let me know when you will send someone for the heater. You’ve got my number. Now, get the hell out of my home.”
If Ji-yeong is honest, she’d do whatever Sae-byeok asks of her if she keeps using that tone.
After Mr. Choi leaves, she turns to look at her, “if he comes by when I’m not here, you greet him with a knife, you hear me?” Ji-yeong nods. “See you tonight, Ji-yeong 씨.”
She spends the rest of the day thinking of the look of determination in Sae-byeok’s face as she stood up to their landlord. And she did it for Ji-yeong. It warms her heart and leaves her longing for something more, even knowing how Sae-byeok feels about her.
We’re not friends, her brain chips in.
That night, when she gets up to get a glass of water, she sees a laptop on the kitchen counter with a yellow post-it that reads for live shows. If her heart beats faster after that, Ji-yeong ignores it.
Kang Sae-byeok is a practical woman. She knows that she can’t make the 40 million won she needs to get her mom from the North by herself soon enough, so partnering with Ji-yeong should be a no brainer. However, every time she’s in the same room with the other girl, half of her brain stops working and actively works against her. Since that time she found her half-naked on the couch, Sae-byeok’s mind is constantly reminding her of the night they spent on the couch kissing until her insides were nothing but molten lava, scorching hot and out of control.
Things only got worse when she brought home the laptop. Now she often gets home to Ji-yeong’s moaning from the next room, fanning the flames that Ji-yeong lights up by the simple fact of existing.
Still, Sae-byeok understands the power of an alliance in times of need, so she sucks it up, covering her head with a pillow at night, averting her eyes from Ji-yeong’s in the morning. It works well as long as Sae-byeok doesn’t think about what her roommate is doing behind the thin wall that separates their rooms.
She’s been the whole day working the Gangnam streets and she’s tired of the looks she’s getting from the people going to their after-work drinks whenever she approaches a new place, as if there was something on her face screaming I’m stealing your shit. She decides to take a taxi back home instead of waiting for the bus and catches a glimpse of Ji-yeong’s friend -Seo-hyeon- as she turns the corner of their street.
She’s glad that she won’t have to interact with the other girl after the mishap the night before. Sae-byeok came home earlier than usual, getting an eyeful of Seo-hyeon as she danced for someone in front of the camera. Apparently, she is teaching Ji-yeong how to film her own stuff and she has to do it naked for some reason.
“You can look, you know? I won’t be mad. I know I’m hot,” Seo-hyeon said later, playing with her hair as she sat naked on their sofa.
Sae-byeok blushed and looked away, making her trip to the fridge as quick as she possibly could.
Now, she feels uncomfortable thinking that Seo-hyeon might have the wrong idea of her, as if she’s one of them. She’s not. She’s normal where they’re, well, not.
Sae-byeok walks the stairs up to their apartment steeling herself for whatever she might find. When she opens the door and there’s no one in the living room, she’s pleasantly surprised. It’s a mess of lingerie and magazines, proof that Seo-hyeon was there at least. She doesn’t see or hear Ji-yeong.
She walks to her room and sees Ji-yeong’s door open. She thinks this is as good a time as any to ask her what she wants to order for dinner. No instant ramen for them tonight. There are some benefits to working the Gangnam streets.
When she gets to Ji-yeong’s room, Sae-byeok freezes.
Ji-yeong is lying on her back, eyes closed, wearing only a white crop top and pink underwear, her legs spread open and her left hand under her panties. Sae-byeok’s mouth dries up and that same heat from the night on the sofa fills her up, magma simmering underneath her skin.
She knows she should leave, she knows this is all kinds of wrong, but she can’t take her eyes off the beautiful girl as she writhes beneath her own hands, her body lean and pliant on the bedsheets.
Her right hand slides under her crop top and she pinches her own nipple, her back curving sinfully and a soft gasp escapes from Sae-byeok.
Ji-yeong opens her eyes and they zero on Sae-byeok’s face, her body still.
She can feel her face heating up, a knot twisting tightly inside of her. She’s going to think I’m one of them, she thinks. Uneasiness fills her up, discomfort settles on her bones like a heavy blanket, yet she can’t look away.
Ji-yeong’s mouth curves in a smirk as she resumes the movements of her left hand. She’s looking directly into Sae-byeok’s eyes and the heat in her belly is spreading downwards, dangerously close to places she doesn’t want to think about.
Sae-byeok wants to apologize, to run, to hide but she’s glued to her spot.
Ji-yeong throws her head back, closing her eyes, and moans loudly.
Before she knows it, she’s running into her own room, slamming the door closed and resting her weight against it, as if to stop someone from trying to enter. No one tries.
Sae-byeok bangs her head on the door two, three, four times, each time harder than the last. Her whole body is burning, urging her to pay attention to the dampness between her legs but she’s determined to get the image of Ji-yeong out of her head.
When she closes her eyes, all she sees is Ji-yeong’s slender body arching as she touches herself.
It’s going to be a long night.
Ji-yeong is still trembling from her climax when her phone rings. She watches it ring as her mind brings back the image of Sae-byeok standing at the door of her room looking at her. She looked enthralled, completely absorbed by each of Ji-yeong’s movements. Her hands were balled into angry fists and Ji-yeong wondered how it would feel to have Sae-byeok’s full hand inside of her. Her orgasm came too easily afterwards.
Her phone rings again. Eun-ji, flashes across the screen.
“Ji-hye,” she says by way of greeting.
“You work in Itaewon, right?” the girl asks.
“Yeah, why?”
“Can I crash at your place tonight? My ex- my ex found me again,” her voice shakes when she says ex. Ji-yeong hates the guy already. “He was waiting outside of my building this morning. I had a neighbor drive me out and they dropped me in the vicinity. So, can I? Crash at your place?”
She thinks of Sae-byeok in the next room, of her reaction when she met Seo-hyeon and her reaction just now. She doesn’t want Sae-byeok to think she’s doing this out of spite, but a part of her wants to make her angry, jealous even. Ji-yeong knows the other girl was looking. She looked like she was enjoying the show.
She gives Eun-ji the address and gets changed into a comfortable pair of pants. Ji-yeong tidies up the living room, picking up Seo-hyeon’s magazines and tries not to think about Sae-byeok. Obviously, by trying not to think about her, her mind immediate fixates on the issue.
What is she thinking? What is she doing? Why was she looking? How long was she looking? Her mind is reeling, unable to focus on anything else. She doesn’t know what to make of this feeling. The way her heart races, her cheeks heat up, her hands sweat, it’s new and pleasant, both exciting and terrifying. She wants to feel like this all the time. She never wants to feel like this again. No, scratch that. She doesn’t want to feel like this with anyone else, whatever that means.
A pounding on the door startles her out of her thoughts.
“Oh, thank god! This neighborhood is a goddamn nightmare. There are at least two number 44’s, I swear,” Eun-ji says coming in.
“They did it to mess with you, specifically,” she replies drily.
“Ha, ha, very funny, Min-jun,” she sits on the couch, leaving her giant purse on the table.
“Do you want a drink?” Ji-yeong offers.
“Sure. Make it alcoholic. My head hurts and I’m tired.”
She brings two bottles of soju to the living room and sits next to her. They drink in silence for a while until Eun-ji says, “it’s just until tomorrow. Jang men are not exactly patient. He’s probably left the building already.”
“It’s fine, Eun-ji. Girls should help each other, right?” the other girl smiles weakly. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“There’s no much to talk about, Min-jun,” she sighs and takes another sip of her drink. “We dated for a while. He got it into his head that we were going to get married. I told him I’d rather pursue my artistic dreams and he didn’t like it. I had to move because the asshole kept harassing the people in the building thinking I was sleeping with them.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Ji-yeong thinks she knows the answer already.
“As if the pigs will arrest the man that pays half their salary,” she replies, throwing her hair back. Ji-yeong doesn’t know if there’s anything she can say to help, so she says nothing.
She’s finished her soju when Eun-ji speaks again.
“It’s stupid, but I really liked him. He’s so damn smart and adventurous. He made me believe the world can be an exciting place or whatever. He’s also a possessive asshole, so there’s that.”
Ji-yeong places a hand on Eun-ji’s arm, “there will be other men.”
“There have been multiple men after him already, Min-jun,” she jokes.
“See? You’ll be fine,” she goes for a light tone and Eun-ji smiles at her.
“So, can we watch a movie or something? All this talk about feelings is making me sick.”
Ji-yeong goes to her room and picks up her computer from her bed. Her thoughts briefly flash her Sae-byeok’s face but she doesn’t linger on it, shoving the remnants of their earlier encounter to the back of her mind.
But as she sits down with Eun-ji, the thought pops back into her mind: will Sae-byeok do something with the image of Ji-yeong in bed? She can’t focus on anything else the rest of the evening.
She’s been at this gambling house before, the day she pickpocketed that man she later saw in the games. It’s not her favorite place, it has too many regulars, people who she has probably stole from already, but the money here is easy. It’s like everyone here lucks out exactly before she gets to them, making the payoff good enough to risk being recognized.
She left the house early when she spotted the girl that came home last night to stay with Ji-yeong. She was beautiful in the way wild foxes are beautiful: cunning eyes, dangerous smile, deadly stride. Sae-byeok’s mind keeps sending the image of Ji-yeong kissing Seo-hyeon her way, replacing the blonde girl with this newcomer, distracting her to the point she doesn’t see the tall man until it’s too late.
Sae-byeok however, is not expecting to see the familiar dragon tattoo in the arms of the man she collides with, a handsome guy with an angular face who could’ve passed for anyone. Except that tattoo can only mean one thing: The Double Dragon. Ji-hu’s gang.
“Can I help you, Miss? He asks, pushing his glasses up his nose with his middle finger.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she says, curt, polite. Everything is fine. He doesn’t know her.
Or so she thinks.
As she turns around, the man seizes her by the arm.
“We were hoping to find you, Sae-byeok 씨.”
She tries to yank her arm away, but the grip on his arm only tightens.
“Please, Sae-byeok 씨. Don’t start a scene here,” his face comes closer to hers and he whispers, “you wouldn’t want to make this little Cheol’s problem, would you?”
Her blood goes cold at the mention of her brother. The man smiles at her and hot, white anger rises inside her chest. They will not touch Cheol, she thinks.
Sae-byeok walks outside with the man, following him down the streets until they’re in a badly lit alley a couple of blocks from their starting point. She sees two men approach her from the other side of the alley. There is no escape.
“Sae-byeok-a, baby girl! Long time, no see!” Jang Ji-hu greets gleefully as he comes closer.
“Will you tell this asshole to let me go?”
Ji-hu clicks his tongue. “Now, Sae-byeok-a, don’t be rude to Yoon-ki. What has he ever done to you?”
The man holding her arm -Yoon-ki- laughs, a honeyed laugh that makes her insides warm. She hates it.
“So, dear Sae-byeok, how is that money coming along? You haven’t been frequenting the same places. It’s become a real pain in the ass to collect your money.” When she doesn’t say anything, he continues, “did Yoon-ki tell you we found your brother?”
“Leave Cheol out of this or I swear to God-“
Ji-hu’s hand grabs the front of her shirt.
“I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I were you, Sae-byeok-a.”
The proximity of the two men and the way they’ve corralled her makes her heart race in anticipation. She’s going to fight both of them if that’s what it takes. They will not touch her brother. She would rather rot in jail before these men touch a single hair in his head.
“I’ll have your money soon,” she says, sounding more confident than she feels.
“Oh, but dear Sae-byeok-a,” Ji-hu looks both ways, as if making sure they’re alone. “I’ve grown tired of waiting.”
Faster than she can see it, his open palm strikes her face with enough force to send her to the ground, if she wasn’t being held tightly by Yoon-ki’s strong grip. Suddenly, the third man is by her other side, grabbing her left arm. The men holding her drag her to the wall, slamming her body and the back of her head against it. The blow knocks the air out of her and she sees stars.
Ji-hu’s hand grabs her throat and he squeezes, cutting her air supply. She kicks and wriggles, pure instinct and anger but it’s not enough to fight them.
“I told you what would happen if you tried to play smart with me, little girl,” his grip tightens and her vision blurs.
Just as she feels the darkness creeping up on her, he lets go. Sae-byeok gasps for air, desperate to get it into her lungs. Her blood is pumping in her ears, loud enough that she feels it must echo in the alley for everyone to hear. The grip on her left arm loosens a bit, the unnamed man’s face has a nasty smile on it.
“We should take this somewhere else, boss,” he says.
Before any of them has a chance to take her anywhere, she kicks the man to her left on his knee. He swears and lets her arm go. It gives her enough space to retrieve her switchblade from her pocket and slash Yoon-ki’s hand but he doesn’t let go.
Ji-hu shakes his shock off and makes a grab for her, but she twists her body around, using her momentum to drive her left elbow into Yoon-ki’s abdomen, then her knife into his thigh, warm blood flows into her hand as she takes the blade out. His grip tightens before letting go as he swears profusely. Ji-hu manages to grab her by the back of her shirt, making her stumble back into his space.
She feels the tip of a blade dig into her back, dangerously close to her kidney.
“Why do you have to make everything so fucking difficult, Sae-byeok? Stubborn, sneaky little bitch,” his breath is hot on her neck and she knows that if she moves the wrong way, he’s going to stab her. She saw it happen multiple times while she worked for him.
“What the fuck, Ji-hu? Help me, I’m going to bleed out,” Yoon-ki says.
“Oh, don’t be a baby, little brother. It’s just a scratch,” he replies offhandedly.
“Just a scratch? You forgot to mention she’s fucking crazy!” Yoon-ki sounds frantic, his pants are soaked in blood. She probably nicked him in the artery. Good. “Hwan, help me out, for fuck’s sake!”
The man she kicked -Hwan, fills in her mind- stands up from his crouch and takes off his sweater, tying it around Yoon-ki’s leg tightly. Yoon-ki grimaces but doesn’t protest as the man wraps an arm around his waist and helps him walk. As they leave, Sae-byeok hears him say under his breath “I’m going to kill that bitch.”
“Our mother will be very pissed at you, Sae-byeok-a. Yoon-ki’s her favorite,” Ji-hu says in her ear. “This is what we’re going to do. You are going to get that money you owe me before the week is up. If I haven’t heard from you by Sunday, expect a call from the orphanage about your missing brother.”
He turns her body around to face him, keeping his hand at her shoulder, gripping tight. Sae-byeok’s hands are sticky with Yoon-ki’s blood as she makes a fist.
“You’re lucky I don’t like Yoon-ki or you’d be going home with fewer fingers,” he cocks his head to the side, bringing his knife closer to her face. “Unfortunately, he’s still a Jang, baby girl.”
The slash comes swiftly, blink and you miss it, but it’s precise. Pain shoots through her and she feels blood trickle down the side of her face, warm and thick.
“See you around, Sae-byeok-a,” he says letting her go.
Her hand touches her face and Sae-byeok winces. The movement pulls at her skin and she can feel the tissue opening up. She takes off her cardigan, bunching it up and pressing it to her face. The knitted sweater is not soft enough and it tickles her neck, but she’s got nothing else on hand. She runs her tongue over the inside of her cheek, checking to see if the knife went through. She doesn’t feel any different, so at least she won’t be walking around with a hole in her face.
Sae-byeok’s face feels warm and tingly. It hurts. So fucking much, she thinks. But Ji-hu clearly pulled back because he expects her to pay up.
Well, he got Cheol into this. He’s got another thing coming.
Through the mental fog of pain, she considers her options. They’re not looking good, but if she doesn’t do anything, Cheol and Sae-byeok are as good as dead.
Her body makes the decision for her as she starts walking.
Luckily, because they’re carrying Yoon-ki’s weight, it’s easy enough to catch up with them. She follows at a sensible distance, pressing her cardigan to her face as firm as she can to slow the bleeding. Sae-byeok thinks she’ll miss them when they get into a car, but they enter a Chinese restaurant half a block away. She waits for a minute, expecting the men to exit any minute. When nothing happens, she makes her way to the restaurant.
Sae-byeok sits in a corner table, with her eyes on the entrance. A petite woman comes over with a menu and idly wipes the table with a ragged cloth.
“Jjamppong for one, please,” she says, without looking at the menu.
“Would you like anything to drink?”
“No, thank you. I’m good.”
When the woman leaves, Sae-byeok scrutinizes the place as thoroughly as she can from her position. It looks like a normal restaurant, with its crowded tables and loud patrons. Just as she’s considering leaving, a tall foreigner walks past her table, sitting down two tables away from her. She notices a blood stain on his leg.
“Seondeok will not be happy that her little one was injured today,” he says with a thick American accent. Another man slips into the seat in front of him.
“Yeah, well, that’s what you get when you let your children play the game,” he’s got the traces of a North Korean accent, too subtle for anyone who’s not from the North to notice. “And Yoon-ki’s fucking stupid.”
They know Yoon-ki. The Double Dragon. She has to grip the table with her right hand to stop herself from looking in their direction.
“Do you think this changes the plans for the Shinhan job?” asks the foreigner.
“Nah, Seondeok is counting on the banking holiday to make a move. You know how she gets with the details of a job.”
The Shinhan job, she thinks. The Shinhan Bank? Ji-hu’s gang is going to hit a bank?
A drop of blood runs down her chin and she hastily wipes it with the cardigan. The left side of her face is throbbing and she knows she doesn’t have a lot of time before someone notices she’s bleeding. Sae-byeok doesn’t dare to throw a glance at the men in the table, but she has to know. She angles her body as if to reach into her bag and looks up, catching a glimpse of the men in the table. They look ordinary, if not for the dark, slithering lines of the tattoos down their arms, neck and even the side of the foreigner’s face.
They’re robbing a bank. Before next week, it seems. Sae-byeok’s mind is reeling.
She could report them to the police, she could destroy the Double Dragon with a single call placed at the right time.
Or she could get to the bank’s vault first.
She stands up too quickly, her head spinning as the blood rushes to her ears. She stumbles to the exit with a few glances thrown her way, but it doesn’t bother her as the cogs in her head start turning furiously.
How much money does a bank have? Billions. Billions. The money they had at the games is not even a fraction of what she could get from Shinhan.
She doesn’t even need to have a plan; all she needs is to steal theirs.
And if Sae-byeok is good at anything, it’s stealing, lying and being a sneaky little bitch.
When Sae-byeok stumbles inside their apartment covered in blood, all Ji-yeong can think is please don’t let it be her blood.
“Sae-byeok-a?” she asks rushing to her side.
“Ji-yeong 씨,” she breathes out, blinking at her.
“What happened?” Ji-yeong touches the damp cardigan and moves it to reveal a deep cut in Sae-byeok’s face, running from the top of her cheek to her chin. Sae-byeok’s hand lets go of the bloody piece of cloth, trembling. Ji-yeong gently turns her face to see the extent of the wound. It looks Bad, capital B, but it’s stopped bleeding. “Who did this to you?”
“You said you knew how to sew?” she grimaces when Ji-yeong touches the edge of the wound. She idly remembers it’s not a good idea to manipulate a facial wound.
“Clothes! With a sewing machine older than me! You need to go to the hospital for this!” her voice sounds hysterical to her ears.
“I brought stuff,” Sae-byeok says lifting the paper bag she’s holding in her right hand.
“We’re going to the ER,” she decides. She grabs the keys from the counter and walks past Sae-byeok to get to the door. Sae-byeok grabs her arm to stop her.
“Ji-yeong 씨, please. Just- I don’t want to go to the hospital. I can do this myself but it would be much faster if you helped me with it.”
Ji-yeong looks at her face and sees determination so fierce it scares her. Whatever is going though Sae-byeok’s mind must be eating her inside out. Still, she’s sporting the kind of wound that ends in necrosis if treated poorly. She’d seen it enough in prison.
She’s about to say something when Sae-byeok’s eyes find her own and she adds, “please, Ji-yeong 씨.”
Ji-yeong folds like a house of cards.
She takes the bag from Sae-byeok’s hand and makes a move to the bathroom, extending her left hand towards Sae-byeok who takes it immediately, following her slowly.
When they get to the bathroom, Sae-byeok takes off her shirt and lets the cold tap water soak it through. She stays there, staring at her reflection in the dirty mirror, eyes unseeing, lips trembling. When she doesn’t move Ji-yeong takes the cloth from her hand and helps Sae-byeok wash the blood off her face.
She tries not to let her eyes linger on the length of her neck or the edge of her collarbone, where a couple of drops of blood have rolled to the curve of her breast. Ji-yeong wishes she could shut her brain off, but this is the closest she’s been to Sae-byeok since that night on the couch.
Now that it’s not covered in blood, the cut looks precise and clean. Not the kind of cut you get accidentally in a fight, but the kind of cut you get as a warning when you’re being interrogated. Or threatened. Whoever did this to her is coming back for the rest, the promise of pain and certain death has been spelled loud and clear.
Sae-byeok turns the tap off and sits on the toilet. Ji-yeong raises an eyebrow at her.
“You’re short,” is all she says by way of explanation. She tries to resist the urge to roll her eyes but can’t.
Ji-yeong takes some gauze out of the paper bag, saturating it with antiseptic. Sae-byeok hisses when it touches her skin.
“You’re the one who didn’t want to go to a hospital. A nurse would know how to do this.”
“I think you’re doing just fine,” she turns her head to the side, exposing the wound -and her neck, and her shoulders- upwards. Ji-yeong swallows.
She gently wipes the cut and applies the antibiotic cream on her cheek, tracing the pads of her fingers down to her chin. It’s not as deep as it looked, but it’s definitely going to leave a mark.
“It will scar,” she says.
“Yeah, I think he was trying to scare me or something,” she’s biting the words through her gritted teeth, as if she’s scared to reopen the wound.
“Who is he?”
“A dead motherfucker, if I have any say in it,” a hint of her Northern accent comes through as she says it, all rounded vowels dragging her words together.
Her heart tightens in her chest, hearing Sae-byeok’s serious tone scares her.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she warns.
Sae-byeok’s lips curve in an almost smile, “why? Are you worried about me?”
“I don’t know how to mend broken bones, that’s all,” she replies as she reaches for a clean piece of gauze. She folds it a couple of times and then places it on Sae-byeok’s face. “Maybe you should buy some butterfly stitches. I don’t know if this will be enough.”
She sticks some tape on the edges, being careful to not pull at the skin around her eyes.
“Tomorrow, maybe. I’m tired now.”
Ji-yeong looks at the shadows under her eyes, at her sagging shoulders, at the nervous way she keeps flexing her hand and makes a decision.
“Let’s get you some soup and you tell me the plan.”
“The plan?” she asks, frowning.
“Well, this guy isn’t going to kill himself, I suppose,” she says drily.
Ji-yeong turns around and hears Sae-byeok mumble thank you. She risks a glance at the other girl. Sae-byeok smiles then, it’s barely there but Ji-yeong will take it.
And if her brain tries to insist they’re not friends, she’ll come back to this tiny, complicit smile and drown all her worries.
Talking to Ji-yeong about the plan is weirdly liberating.
Sae-byeok recounts her encounter with Ji-hu and watches with fascination as Ji-yeong’s face fills with anger on her behalf. She curses and threatens to find Ji-hu herself, which is a funny thought to entertain. Eventually, she gets to the part in the restaurant and she frowns.
“How do you know they’re even talking about a bank in Seoul?”
“I don’t, but I intend to find out.”
“You’re insane,” Ji-yeong says. “You can’t do this alone.”
“I thought you were going to help me?” she asks, but she knows what the other girl will reply.
“I meant two people can’t possibly pull a heist like this on such short notice,” she runs a hand through her hair, messing up her bangs. Sae-byeok quickly looks down to her bowl of soup and hits the brakes on the impulse to smooth Ji-yeong’s hair back down.
“You don’t have to do anything,” she says, hoping her voice doesn’t reflect her disappointment.
“Maybe we can talk about this with the Ji-hye?” the hesitation is palpable in Ji-yeong’s voice.
“No,” she replies hurriedly, “I don’t trust them.”
She doesn’t say that she’d rather die than work with Seo-hyeon. It still stings when she remembers them kissing on the couch. Which is stupid when Sae-byeok doesn’t care about Ji-yeong that way.
Maybe if she repeats it enough, she’ll stop thinking about Ji-yeong’s worried eyes when she came through the door. Maybe if she repeats it enough, she’ll stop feeling her gentle touch as she cleaned the cut on her face. Maybe if she repeats it enough, she’ll actually mean it someday.
“They’ve helped us so far,” Ji-yeong defends.
“Ji-yeong 씨, this is not something that can be done stripping in front of a camera,” Sae-byeok says, serious. “We’re talking about billions of won here. I wouldn’t rob a bank with anyone.”
It’s dangerously close to admitting she trusts Ji-yeong, but Sae-byeok guesses it’s been subtext after the night on the couch.
Uh, oh. Don’t go there, she thinks. This is not the time.
Sae-byeok eats with her head bowed, hoping the other girl can’t see her blush.
“Fine. Tell me how you’re going to get their plan.”
“I thought we could get one of the guys I saw at the restaurant. They seemed pretty involved.”
“How?”
“Haven’t thought that far,” Sae-byeok admits.
Ji-yeong snorts.
“It figures,” she says, but there’s no heat in it. “Let’s run through this again. We’ll think of something.”
We.
She doesn’t want to smile, but when Ji-yeong looks at her with those bright, optimistic eyes, she can’t help it.
When Ji-yeong wakes up the next day, there’s a moment where she’s not sure if the night before was a fever dream or not. As she makes her way to the kitchen and sees Sae-byeok’s cheek still bandaged, she realizes it really is happening. She’s planning a robbery not even two months after getting out of jail.
Perhaps this is where she was always meant to end up, caught in the webs of her feelings following a reckless girl into hell and back. She can almost see Soo-min’s teasing smile as she tells her you’re still so young, yodongsaeng.
“Hey,” Ji-yeong greets.
“Hey,” Sae-byeok says back. She’s adding sugar to a mug and frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Sae-byeok replies, quickly. Too quickly.
She raises her eyebrow at her, fixing her with a look until she glances up.
“What?” she asks defensively.
“I feel like I should know what’s going on, considering I’m risking life in prison for this plan.”
“You don’t have to do anything. I told you.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she walks to stand in front of Sae-byeok, only a couple of feet apart. She adds, “spit it out.”
Sae-byeok bites her bottom lip, nervous. She shouldn’t find it as endearing as she does.
“I should go back to the restaurant. Maybe stake the place out. I know someone in there knows something about Shinhan.”
“You’re thinking about that Seondeok woman, right?”
“Yeah,” she admits.
“Whoever she is, she’s not who we’re looking for. We need someone lower in the totem pole,” she says with a confidence she doesn’t feel. She might not know enough about the Double Dragon outside of prison, but the women in Cheongju who ran with them were not to be messed with. She had seen how violent they were, how protected they were even inside the prison walls. They probably had guards in their pocket as well.
If Seondeok is the one behind this, maybe behind the Double Dragon at large, they should avoid her like the plague.
“I need you to do something for me,” Sae-byeok mumbles.
“What was that?” she heard her, Ji-yeong just wants to hear it again.
Sae-byeok, however, continues as if she was perfectly clear, sipping her coffee. “I need you to talk to your prison friends about getting guns.”
“Guns?”
“Yeah, we can’t do this with a switchblade and a half-baked plan.”
Ji-yeong doesn’t mention that everything about this is half-baked, as she put it.
“I’ll ask Seo-hyeon,” she promises.
“Not Seo-hyeon,” she says through gritted teeth.
“What’s your problem with Seo-hyeon? I can’t ask Soo-min, there’s always someone listening to your calls in prison. It’s suicidal. Maybe it would be faster to go to Cheongju and surrender ourselves before the whole thing.”
Sae-byeok frowns, biting her lip again. Ji-yeong would love to be the one doing the biting. She tries to clear her mind from those thoughts before they run away from her.
“Seo-hyeon will know,” she reassures the other girl.
“Fine,” Sae-byeok bites reluctantly. “But don’t tell her anything else,” she gulps down the rest of her coffee and leaves the mug in the sink.
As Sae-byeok walks to the door, Ji-yeong tells her “Get those butterfly stitches, Sae-byeok 씨.”
“I will. Remember to ask for spare clips.” Then as an afterthought, she says “take care of yourself today, Ji-yeong 씨.”
Sae-byeok gives her a tiny smile as she turns to leave. For that smile, Ji-yeong knows she’d do anything.
The first thing she does is go to a pharmacy and get those butterfly stitches Ji-yeong mentioned. The pharmacy attendant lets her use a small bathroom in the back to clean the wound and helps her place the stitches the correct way.
“You don’t have to stay with him, if he does this to you,” the girl says before she leaves the pharmacy.
“Huh?”
“Your boyfriend. Husband. I don’t know. You can leave, you know.”
Sae-byeok huffs a laugh.
“I’m trying,” she says, touched by the eagerness of this stranger to help her. She puts on the white mask to conceal the wound as well as she can. Sae-byeok glances at her reflection in the mirror behind the counter and thinks she looks older, tired. She doesn’t blame the girl for whatever thought crossed her mind as she saw her.
“Good luck,” the other girl says. “If you ever need something, come by. I’m Na-yeon. I’m here almost every day.”
“Thank you, Na-yeon 씨,” she says sincerely. She doesn’t give the girl her own name.
When she gets to the restaurant, it’s closed.
Sae-byeok curses under her breath, walking up and down the street a couple of times to see if she spots movement. When nothing happens for over half an hour, she walks around until she finds a side entrance by an alley.
She steps over the black trash bags littering the alley and places her hand on the back door handle. It turns effortlessly. Sae-byeok’s eyes dart left and right, making sure there’s no one looking at her and slips inside.
The storage room she’s in is dark and it smells of mildew and soy sauce. She picks up a small container and places it by the door to stop it from closing all the way. Sae-byeok walks throwing glances at the door, until she reaches the exit to a hallway. She can hear faint kitchen noises: a fryer, a knife chopping furiously, people talking loud enough to be heard above the food cooking. Her back tenses and she glances at the door one more time.
She makes her way down the corridor and stops short of the kitchen double doors. To her right, there’s an office with a closed door. Sae-byeok puts her ear to the door, straining to hear anything inside. Once she’s sure there’s no one inside, she tries the door handle. It’s locked.
She swears softly, but doesn’t linger. In the kitchen someone laughs loudly.
“You’re going to piss off Mr. Boss-man if you keep going after his girls,” someone says.
A different voice answers, “it’s not my fault the hookers he hires come to me ‘cause he’s got such a small dick.”
More laughter.
Sae-byeok rolls her eyes, but stays put. She glances back at the corridor. Confident that no one has seen her, she peaks through the round kitchen window. Is this Mr. Boss-man Ji-hu? She doesn’t have to wait for an answer as the first voice -a man in his 40s probably, average height, average build- says, “Ji-hu can’t pay for everything, I guess.”
She ducks below the window when one of the men turns to grab something. The men stay silent for a while, but then start chatting about last night’s Idol Star Athletics episode. When nothing else of interest is mentioned in a few minutes, she turns around, checking the locked office door one more time without any success.
Back in the alley, she softly closes the back door behind her, hurrying to the main street. Sae-byeok walks directly to Noryangjin Station, taking the train in the opposite direction in case someone is following. She switches lines twice until she’s satisfied that no one is on her tracks and gets off two stations away from her apartment.
As Sae-byeok makes her way through the narrow streets, a thought pops into her head. The hookers he hires come to me, said the man. Her tired feet stop as it hits her.
I guess, I’ll have to work with Seo-hyeon anyway.
The plan starts to take shape during her short trip to the grocery store. Sae-byeok noticed about a week ago that Ji-yeong is particularly fond of grape fizzy drinks, so she buys her a couple of cans without giving much thought about it.
Ji-yeong can’t be the one to go after the man, she thinks. In fact, she’s only going wherever I go, she decides. That is not up for discussion.
When she gets home, Sae-byeok finds Seo-hyeon drinking soju on the sofa. Her weariness becomes a dull, throbbing anger. It pulsates inside of her making her organs burn. She hates her. She wants her out of their lives. But Sae-byeok needs her and her connections if she wants this to work.
“Sae-byeok 씨,” Seo-hyeon greets, raising the bottle of soju in her direction.
“Seo-hyeon 씨,” she nods.
She sets the groceries on the kitchen counter, getting a bottle of beer for herself. Sae-byeok sits on the coffee table in front of Seo-hyeon, opens the beer on the edge of the table and says “would you and your friends be interested in a job?”
“What kind of job? A bachelor party or something?”
“More like a bank robbery,” she replies.
Seo-hyeon laughs.
“A bank robbery? Do I look like the kind of girl to get my hands dirty on anything other than a businessman’s cock?”
“You look like the kind of girl who loves a good con and a big pay-off,” Sae-byeok takes a gulp of her drink.
“Yeah? Maybe that’s kind of girl who doesn’t do stupid shit like trying to rob a bank,” Seo-hyeon mirrors her action and takes a sip of her drink.
“We’re not trying. We’re doing it,” she promises.
“And how will we do it, sweetheart? Pussy magic?” her smile tells Sae-byeok just how ridiculous she sounds.
“Something like that,” she reluctantly agrees.
Seo-hyeon raises an eyebrow at that and Sae-byeok takes it as an invitation. She explains the plan with a painstaking amount of detail.
“How did you get this information?” she asks when Sae-byeok finishes.
“Let’s say Ji-hu and I have history.”
Seo-hyeon seems to consider it. She takes a long gulp of soju, then gestures with the bottle in the air.
“This is the kind of shit that gets you killed. Or worse, thrown in jail.”
“That’s not part of the plan,” she answers confidently. Way more confident than she feels, in fact.
Her silence doesn’t last but a moment.
“I’ll talk to the sisterhood on your behalf. Expect an answer tomorrow.”
Sae-byeok knows she can’t push it. If she looks anything but self-assured, Seo-hyeon will refuse. Instead, she asks “so, how was your day?”
Seo-hyeon smiles and tells her about a client that gave her tickets to an art exhibition.
“Sae-byeok-a?” she hears Ji-yeong ask from behind her. She turns around to see her wearing a tight, black turtle-neck sweater and a fire-red mini skirt. Sae-byeok’s eyes follow her legs down to her bare feet out of their own volition.
“Ah, yes, I forgot to mention the exhibition is today, Sae-byeok 씨. Surely you won’t mind if Ji-yeong comes along?” Seo-hyeon is smirking as she says it. She feels like this is some kind of test.
“Why should I?” Sae-byeok replies standing up. She leaves the empty beer bottle on the kitchen counter and starts to her room, swallowing the envy that rises up her throat. Seo-hyeon will spend the rest of the day with Ji-yeong looking like that. She can feel the heat on her cheeks as her stomach clenches with the thought of them together again.
Ji-yeong looks at her, curiosity behind her eyes.
Before she can process the why, her hand comes to rest on the girl’s arm and she leans in to whisper, her lips a breath away from Ji-yeong’s ear. She’s acutely aware of the picture she’s painting for Seo-hyeon. “We need Ji-hye’s help. Play nice.”
When she pulls back, her eyes go to Ji-yeong’s parted glossy lips. The girl swallows and nods once, looking a bit out of it. Out loud, she says, “yeah, we’ll do that tonight.”
Sae-byeok looks in Seo-hyeon’s direction and sees her sly smirk has turned into a pensive expression.
She retreats to her room and lies face down on the bed, Ji-yeong’s legs in that skirt the only thing she can see behind her eyes. This time though, she lets her mind wonder how they’d look around her head.
Sae-byeok is so utterly fucked.