Pop Singer: A Dark BWAM / AMBW Romance (23 page)

How was I supposed to feel about this all in the end?

I had no judgments to make. I wished I did, but coming across them would be difficult. Instead, I had to formulate a feeling in my head. I had to let my feelings percolate.

And that would all take time.

Panicking would be the least of my concerns. Because panic would show fear, and to fear these people who were helping me—that would do me no good. They might have stifled my concerns, and then become more conservative in dealing with me. Telling me less and less about their plans—which they already did not detail very well.

Not that I blamed them for doing so. They had to be secretive. And, of course, they had gotten me out. So I could not blame them for being mysterious.

Who knew? They were operating on a wavelength I was only beginning to become receptive to.

“Here they come,” Jong-soo said, pointing out the window. Bit-na and Hae-il brought back noodles, some dried-out sushi. Not the highest-class of places, but what could I expect being a practical refugee? In the arms of my captors, I had to go with whatever they could give. Even if that meant the lowest rate, base quality.

Chewing on my dried-out sushi, I listened in on their conversation. Hardly being able to understand them, I pretended to piece together their exact feelings on the situation. But I didn’t need to do that—the body language told me everything: they were tense, nervous, anxious, unlike before. There was a sense of escape, that they had gotten out of a really bad situation. They looked like prisoners on television, embarrassed, but at the same time proud of what they had accomplished.

I didn’t know whether or not to be scared of this, their body language.

Should I have been?

Would the average person?

I’m not the average person though,
I thought
. I’m a girl from Lincoln, Nebraska. I’m a black woman from the United States. So in the context of a Korean society, I’m nothing but extraordinary. I came from what would be perceived as the middle class, but I did have contact with what others might see as “the ghettos.” I was in contact with people who had rougher lives. I knew what went on in the gross sides of town, the places no one wants to go to. So that makes me special somehow, right? I think it does. And maybe I can understand them better, if I empathize with them from my perspective.

They had killed someone in front of me though. I had never expected that. I had never encountered that in my life, truthfully.

No one—no one in my life had to go to the length that Jong-soo and Hae-il and Bit-na had for me.

I trembled as I considered the person they took dead. The entire house of people who collapsed underneath the brick and fire.

Even though I was not particularly religious, I prayed for them. Feeling for them in the ether of the universe.

I hoped that wherever their souls went, they could find peace. They could not be completely damned—I knew how difficult life was struggling as a poor person.

And how so many people fell on hard times. How they—those who felt desperate regardless of their income—had to make difficult decisions for themselves.

I ate my sushi in silence, as they chattered on and on.

“Is the meal good?” Jong-soo said, wrinkling his nose. “I know it’s not the best. But I have to say, it’s better than nothing.”

I still mostly understood only him in our pidgin. But I was already beginning to acclimate to standard Korean, being able to parse out certain words from sentences, the meanings and syntaxes, basic grammar.

Good.

Because I would be with them for a much longer time than even Jong-soo anticipated.

“We still have to drive over to a hotel,” Jong-soo said, as Hae-il pulled back onto the main road. Jong-soo offered his hand to me, and then his shoulder. “You can sleep on me if you want. We’re still a far ways away.”

I declined him, saying, “I’ve had enough sleep for now. I think I’ll stay up.”

And stay up I did. I watched as Bit-na relaxed into her seat, not speaking anymore, turning her head to the side. Jong-soo himself closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against the back of Bit-na’s headrest.

They slept like babies.

“How are you feeling?” Hae-il said. I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. He adjusted it. I was surprised, because we had not communicated much back at the house. Even though we were trapped together, we stayed silent in our imprisonment. We could’ve tried to use Morse code or come up with our own system—but I was too scared of him, honestly. Looking back, he instilled a certain fear in me.

“I’m okay,” I said, not wanting to wake up the others. “How are you doing?”

The fact that I even had words to say…

I wanted to say nothing. Then again, I had to be strong. We all experienced trauma, and talking about it would probably be the best for all of us.

“I’m exhausted,” Hae-il said, using the same linguistic construct me and Jong-soo had come up with. “Truly exhausted.”

We stayed silent, and then he continued, saying, “If we’re all kind of rough around the edges, it’s because we’re all dealing with shit.”

I nodded, not knowing how to convey my empathy. “I understand,” I said.

“It’s a tough deal,” Hae-il said. “This life is. I’m sorry that you got caught up in it.”

I stared at him in the rearview mirror, catching his gaze, making sure that he saw me smile. “I’m sorry you got caught up in it as well.”

He smiled back at me, turning for the road. We did not talk anymore.

What was there left to say?

I think both of us were just too tired for anything serious. It’s not like I wanted to talk about philosophy in the middle of our harrowing situation.

Instead, I noticed the darkness of the night, and the stars, so pretty and pointed. A multitude of stars that I would otherwise never see during the daytime in the United States. Unless you want out into the country, you never saw them.

City lights obscure the stars—and sometimes even the moon—to the point where you don’t even feel like you are on planet earth anymore.

You are instead surrounded by a veil of darkness, impossible to get out, impossible to penetrate.

“How do you feel about going to Japan?” Hae-il said. I was looking at the Big Dipper as he said this. I turned to him, regarding his hands. Calloused and hard. They were the kind who could strike a man down with one punch.

I would not want to be caught between his grip.

His difficult fingers.

“It’s definitely not where I expected to go,” I said. Why was I becoming so comfortable with him? I guess I felt a sort of kinship with my fellow former captive. We might have only been together for a couple of hours, but there was something about what we had just gone through that drew us closer.

For some reason, I did not feel that way about Bit-na. Having seen her wrestle a man down, I was unsure of how she actually felt about me.

I did not sense goodness in her heart towards me.

“I think you’ll like it,” Hae-il said. “It’s much more peaceful these days. Very beautiful when you go to Tokyo. It’s a little bit less stressful, I think. There’s more space to breathe. Even though the archipelago isn’t large or anything like the Philippines, there’s still a lot more open space. Lots of cherry trees.”

I envisioned those cherry trees. They would be large, and blowing in the wind. I would dip my toes in the river. Listen to the sound of wind chimes.

Okay, overly stereotypical. But I knew Hae-il was trying to paint a calm picture in my mind for me to latch onto. So I would no longer be nervous about where we were headed towards.

“Thanks,” I said. “But I will just have to wait to see how things play out. It’s impossible for me to feel comfortable with what’s going on. I mean, I’m with a couple of strangers I’ve never met before. I’ve just seen a house burned to the ground with people inside of it. Running away, stragglers. I was kidnapped...”

My voice shook, and it began to warble. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my hands around the woman who had taken me out—but Bit-na…

Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh on her,
I thought
. After all, she did save me too. A kick-ass woman like her? It would be good to know more about her background.

“That’s understandable,” Hae-il said. “I would be scared like you are. If I were you.”

“Are you not scared?”

Hae-il grinned. In the darkness of the mirror, he seemed like an owl, sagely with wisdom, but at the same time dangerous with talons, his incisors pointing out from the root of his gumline. Straight white teeth. Perfection like a knife. “Not at all,” he said. “Sometimes people think that I’m scared. But sometimes I’m faking it—you never want to reveal your full flush hand. Not in these kinds of environments. You never know when you’re last moments will be either—the last thing I want to die by is my fear.”

I nodded, understanding him. So maybe he wasn’t scared. So maybe there wasn’t an anxiety in the air between Hae-il and the rest. “How much longer before we reach the hotel?”

“We’re going to be pulling up on it just about now…”

Hae-il pulled off from the road, wandering down a lonely lane. It had gravel on it, and woke Bit-na and Jong-soo up—the constant crunching of rocks underneath the tires made so much noise, I had to put my hands over my ears.

The sounds were like gunshots, reminding me of what I had just experienced.

I closed my eyes, trying to shut out those bad memories.

Gunshots, fire.

Cinderblock, the weight of the roof falling down on me.

“It’s okay,” Jong-soo said, holding me tight. I had not even realized it, but I was screaming. Just screaming.

Bit-na stared at me from the passenger seat, her head cocked over the headrest. She stretched her arms, saying something in Korean. “I’m working on it,” Jong-soo said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. The truck had stopped.

We were immobile, in the middle of the parking lot. A neon green sign hung overhead, gleaming in the windshield. It read: BEST BUSAN.

“I’m going to go get us some rooms,” Hae-il said. “But I don’t have any money.”

Bit-na pulled out a wallet. She said, “Here.”

And that was all I understood. Hae-il immediately left, getting out from the driver’s seat, rolling down the sidewalk and past a wooden door.

We waited about ten or so minutes, and then he came back with the news.

“They say they’ve only got one room available,” he said. “So we’re going to have to share. It only has one bed, by the way.”

Jong-soo tightened his grip around my shoulders. I had also not realized that he was holding onto me there, sinking his fingers into my flesh, rolling the tips gently to calm me down. “I’m fine with anything,” I said, to no one in particular.

“We can split up,” Jong-soo said. “Have someone sleep in the car.”

Bit-na frowned. “Me and Hae-il can sleep in the car. But the American girl can go inside with you, Jong-soo. She looks attached to you at the hip already.” Bit-na said this in pidgin, almost with purpose. She wanted me to understand her, to know her resentment towards me. Or at least her antagonism.

Hate-love relations were blossoming in the air.

She might have liked saving me, the idea of saving me. But she did not want the responsibility of me.