Superheroes

by Margaret Ronald

  That was interesting. Not so perfect after all, huh? Jang Won thought, and shifted his attention back to his own table. He glanced at Lee, whose was talking seriously about something boring. Jang Won felt his face burning, and he knew it was bright red from the soju. He could swear he was hearing Neko sweetly calling his name.

  “Jang Won! Mr. Park! Mr. Park Jang Won-sshi!”

  He turned, realizing that he really was hearing his name being called, but not by Neko. Some of the office girls were gesturing to him, and he realized what song was coming next. It was his old standard, the song he always sang at every party, and which was considered, among his co-workers, famously his.

  He excused himself, rose on wobbly legs, and hurried to the open space beyond the tables with moments to spare. Grabbing the microphone, he scrunched up his face and sang so hard that his throat itched inside, and his heart actually ached: Oh Seagull! Oh Seagull!

  You know the pain in my heart!

  Oh Seagull! Oh Seagull!

  Go and tell her, tell her ears my secret fascination!

  Opening his eyes, he crooned and implored until he caught himself gazing blearily into Neko’s eyes. He saw the look on her face—awkward, amused—and slammed his eyes shut again, opening them only when he heard Director Lee behind him, furiously shaking a tambourine and screaming the backing vocals at the top of his lungs.

  When the next tune started, someone else—some office girls Wonjjang had never met—hurried up to take their turn at singing.

  “Y’know,” Director Lee said to him, “When management decided that we needed a ‘Globalized Shoopah’ team, I doubted we’d find anyone to run it. Not many men could deal with a bunch of foreigners like that. And I had my doubts about you. But you’ve done well with your team! Maybe you might be able to recover after all … ”

  “Recover?” Jang Won asked him, shaking his head to clear it.

  “Never mind … ” Lee quickly said, smiling awkwardly. “More soju?” he offered, holding up a full bottle.

  Jang Won shook his head. “Excuse me, sir,” he said apologetically, his stomach feeling suddenly upset.

  “Yeh, yeh,” Director Lee slurred, removing his arm from around Jang Won’s shoulder. As Lee sat down, Jang Won made his way to the foreigners’ table, where his team was seated, and plonked himself down right beside Neko. He felt everyone’s eyes on him as he asked her whether she was having a good time.

  “Yes, boss,” she said stiffly, “but … ”

  “Yes?”

  “Um … Where is the powder room, here?” she asked anxiously in well-spoken Korean.

  “Over there … ” he said, gesturing with his head, but it lolled so much that she wandered off in the wrong direction. Jang Won wondered if she was trying to escape him.

  That hurt, but he said nothing as he watched her stop a waitress and get proper directions. When she was gone, Jang Won turned to Kevin, and said in English, “We’re friend,” pointing at himself and then sticking a finger in Kevin’s chest.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Friend,” he repeated, slowly and emphatically. “You country, me country, it’s a friend,” he said, and clasped his hands together demonstratively. “USA … is a … help Korea. Many time before … I … someone is doesn’t know. But I am know. Help! And now you and me is a special friend country. And you and me too.” Claiming himself a full, abandoned little glass of soju—Neko’s perhaps—he hoisted it high. The American smiled magnanimously, clinked glasses with Jang Won, and then they knocked their soju back.

  Kevin made a face as if he didn’t like the taste of the stuff. That troubled Jang Won, suddenly.

  “You momma is … very missing?” Jang Won asked Kevin. It was another miracle of soju—it could make a man ask any question, in any language, to anyone.

  “Uh, dude … Do I miss my mom, you mean? Or does my mom miss me?”

  Jang Won nodded and lost track of everything else the American said in response. “Unh,” Jang Won nodded affirmatively. “You missing momma is very … yes?”

  More gobbledygook poured out of Kevin’s mouth.

  “So, you are make a love for … it’s a Neko … yes?”

  Kevin’s expression changed. “I’m sorry, what do you mean, sir?” He looked as if he were just about to get angry, but wasn’t sure whether he had understood correctly.

  Jang Won’s interest in the conversation waned. Suddenly everything slowed, and he felt a deep, powerful clarity.

  A mumbling sound to his right drew Jang Won’s attention, and when he turned he saw that E-Gui was explaining something to Kevin, in English too complicated for Jang Won to follow. Jang Won really wanted to hit E-Gui, then … for saving Kim, for making him feel small, for getting in his way.

  “No, no, no … you no … understand … ” Jang Won slurred at Kevin. “You … love her is not, and very! Not trust … She Japan girl. Can’t trust. You, me, friend. You no trust her, trust me, only, okay?”

  “She’s my teammate, sir, I need to … ”

  “No! You country, she country make … boom!” he gestured dramatically, sloppily, and a few empty bottles scattered. Nothing of what he was trying to convey came across: the Japanese imperial occupation of Korea, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese shoopah-attacks on Hawaii and Seoul and Beijing and California a few years after the war … Didn’t Kevin know any history?

  Jang Won struggled to listen as Kevin spurted gobbledygook again. “Yes, I know. I’ve thought … Hiroshima … mutation … impossible … destined … ” Jang Won caught only random words. He gulped down another glass of soju and chased it with some grilled pork while someone refilled the cup. The kid was still talking. Americans were so damned talkative. Kevin’s expression was less annoyed, though, and more thoughtful.

  “Kevin!” Neko’s voice called from outside the room, like heavenly music. “Come on … get out … promised … ride home … ”

  Kevin smiled, bid Jang Won goodnight in polite, atrociously pronounced Korean, and rose to leave. Jang Won howled after him, but then he felt hands on his shoulders again and heard the intro to another of “his” songs, though he couldn’t remember which one it was. The office girls were calling his name: it was time to stand.

  He sang … sort of. Singing, yelling, muttering—it was a manic blend of all three, but the basic feeling must have come across, because his co-workers cheered for him enthusiastically. He swung his hips, raised his free hand dramatically, wailed his heartbreak. Someone handed him another shot of soju as the song ended, and Jang Won passed the microphone over his shoulder to the next guy, whom he assumed to be a junior employee. He drunkenly mumbled, “Here you go, kid,” not bothering to look at who was next in line.

  “Kid?” A blow connected with his cheek, jolting him into clarity. “When were you born, you son of a bitch? You slobbered all over the mike, too, you filthy drunken gaesaeki!” This was delivered in a voice reeking of soju, and “gaesaeki”—literally, dog-baby—was one of the worst insults there was in the Korean language. Worse, the karaoke machine was between tracks, so everyone had heard it.

  Jang Won looked up to see who’d insulted him. It was Keun Dwaeji! The Keun Dwaeji! Now, sure, he was just a portly old pig-headed man—literally, a man with a pig’s head—in a leather jacket. A washed-up desk jockey with a record tarnished by helping the Park and Chun dictatorships suppress the pro-democracy movement in Kwangju. But he’d also once been the legendary shoopah who’d led Team Hanguk against the Medvyed Mafiya in Vladivostok, who’d saved the island of Ddokdo from the Japanese back in the 1980s. Jang Won had pissed off a national hero.

  Keun pulled his enormous black custom sunglasses off his snout and flexed his arms inside his huge brown cow-skin jacket. “And they call me a pig?” His curly pink tail trembled with rage.

  Jang Won weighed his options, with all the rationality of a filthy-drunk superhero in trouble. After a moment, he simply shrugged and leaped at the pigman. He slammed his left fist, and then his right, into t
he pig’s head. “You … ” (jab) “might … ” (kick to the crotch, and Keun’s yellowed tusks flashed) “be … ” (left hook) “older … ” (a chop to the throat; the slow old hog’s hoof slammed into his chest, but he couldn’t feel it) “but—”

  He was about to leap up and bring all of his weight down onto the pig’s snout when a dozen very strong shoopah arms grabbed at him, holding him still. Dwaeji was being restrained, too, but not as vigorously.

  Jang Won looked around, and saw the shock on everyone’s faces. Director Lee was shouting. Keun Dwaeji had been Lee’s teammate back in the 1970s; once, in a single day, they’d saved both Jeju Island and the president from a Communist attack. But Jang Won wasn’t feeling apologetic. He lunged again but couldn’t move at all. A string of cuss words spewed from his mouth, and then he went silent and stared the pigman in the eye.

  The music had stayed off after the fight had started, and the room was utterly silent. Jang Won inhaled deeply, defiantly. Then he horked up a gob of phlegm, and spat.

  The glob landed right onto the tip of Dwaeji’s snout, amid shrieks of disbelief.

  Jang Won snarled fiercely. “That’s how old I am,” he shouted, “Old enough to know washed-up when I see it! Who caught Kim Noh Wang, hmm? Me! I did!” he roared, looking around proudly. Keun Dwaeji struggled again, but Jang Won ignored him. He was looking at the faces of his team, staring in disbelief: E-Gui, and Laotzu, and … Kevin and Neko? What were they doing back here?

  His pride deflated, punctured by shame.

  Had he just claimed sole credit for the capture? Surely people would understand what he meant. He scrambled, trying aloud to piece together what he had meant. Their faces were so … disappointed. His head swirled with pride, anger, embarrassment, regret, and a strange, taunting lust for Neko.

  That is, until he landed face-down on the sidewalk outside the karaoke diner, and the doors slammed shut behind him.

  4. I’m Do It’s My Job Jang Won sat up suddenly, karaoke songs and nightmarish chittering still swirling around in his head. He was on his bedroom floor.

  After his morning pee, he stumbled to the kitchen. Soju was wonderful, but the day after hurt, same as with any other liquor. Maybe worse. Jang Won’s mouth tasted like a month-old soup, forgotten in the back of a bachelor’s fridge.

  He sat down at the kitchen table and thumbed through a catalog that the matchmaker had apparently left behind the night before. It was page after page of beautiful smiles. He had to wonder whether marriage wasn’t such a bad idea.

  “Rhee Ryang Hee,” he read aloud, gazing admiringly at her face. It was hard to judge her body type, for she was in a traditional Korean gown that furled out from the bust, but she was probably lovely. “Hobbies: singing patriotic songs; studying our Dear Leader’s speeches; performing traditional Korean music on the keomungo.” Strange, he thought. It’s a North Korean instrument, isn’t it? A Korean proverb about who was most attractive, “Nam Nam Buk Nyeo,” ran through his head: Southern men, Northern women. In the blur of his hangover, it had a nice ring to it. He thumbed through the book enthusiastically, until his empty stomach grumbled for breakfast.

  A bowl of kimchi stew sat on the table, right at his usual place. He spooned a little into his mouth and grimaced. It was cold.

  “Umma!” he called out.

  No response came. Sunlight streamed through the window, onto the counter where she’d left the dishes and pots and half-chopped vegetables sitting. She’d never have done that. He called out to her again, and when no response came he rubbed his eyes and stared at the stew.

  Then he saw it.

  In the middle of the table sat a note written in Korean, in scribbly blue ink: To Park Jang Won, The knockout drugs have worn off, finally? Your dear and darling Umma will be blown to pieces if you don’t capitulate to the demands on the back of this page, all of them, in the next forty-eight hours. Fail in any way and your mother dies. Meet us at the top of Mount Halla at noon two days from now.

  From: A Friend of Kim Noh Wang He flipped the page over, and his heart sank. The demands included money, experimental equipment from top-secret LG techlabs, and the release of a long list of Kim Noh Wang’s Nork buddies and associates.

  His heart raced. How was this possible? What about the complimentary LG alarm system and the apprentice-shoopah guard detail? He’d given up on having a secret identity, in accordance with the LG business plan, because of these safeguards. He imagined his poor umma, vicious but frail, arguing with some North Korean henchman. The Nork wouldn’t stand a chance in an argument with her, of course.

  But then, he wouldn’t have to. One little injection would shut her up … forever.

  A wave of guilt passed through him, the only son, the only one she had in the world.

  Jang Won knew what his mother would say, if he rescued her: “You see? If only you were married, like a normal man, this wouldn’t have happened!” A pang of guilt went through him: if he had come home early, sober, maybe he could have protected her. He cussed at himself and hurried to the shower.

  About half an hour later, in his best black three-piece suit (and with a clean uniform stowed in his briefcase), Jang Won finished his last officeward bound and landed on the ledge outside the window he always came in through.

  It was closed. It was never closed, not even when he was late like today. He pounded on it until Big Myoung finally showed up to open it for him. The telepath had tears in his eyes.

  “Oh, Little Brother,” Big Myoung said, aloud for once. “What’ll we do?”

  “What’s wrong, Elder Brother?” Jang Won looked around at all the long faces, wondering if maybe everyone had heard about his mother already. The Junior Sisters of Not-Inconsiderable Vengeance—the toughest team on staff—gazed over at him, dark runny mascara trails beneath their eyes. Men he’d worked with for years sat hunched at their desks in rumpled suits and sagging uniforms, looking broken-spirited.

  “Park Jang Won! Manager Park! Come into my office now, please,” a Director Lee’s voice boomed from the intercom system.

  Jang Won braced himself as he passed rows of desks and depressed shoopahs. On the way, he caught a glimpse of a newspaper headline: KIM NOH WANG RELEASED FROM LG CUSTODY!

  NEW SUNSHINE POLICY DIRECTIVE STRAIGHT FROM PRESIDENT!

  Jang Won gaped but didn’t break stride. Sunshine! Wonjjang bristled. He’d never believed the policy would actually be enacted—hell, “policy” wasn’t even the word for it! The strategy boggled his mind: what was the point of being nice to North Korea, whether they cooperated or threatened war? Just hoping that they wouldn’t keep their promise to turn Seoul into a sea of fire? It made no damned sense at all. He’d laughed off the looming threat of the policy as mere rhetoric, just campaigning, but now his worst nightmare had come true. He had no idea how a shoopah was supposed to save the world by just being nice.

  “Welcome, Team Manager Park,” Director Lee greeted him mildly as he entered the office. “Please sit down.” He gestured at the chair in front of his desk, and it slid back. Lee had powerful telekinetic powers, but Jang Won had never seen him use them before. It was mildly unsettling.

  “Thank you, Director Lee,” he said without sitting, “but I believe time is of the essence. My mother has been kidnapped and … ”

  Lee wasn’t listening. “We’re downsizing our office, and bringing in new blood to change our operational dynamics and image here at LG Shoopahs Division. I wanted to announce it last night, but it was decided that we should have one last wonderful night together before announcing it.” Lee eyed him on that word, wonderful, and Jang Won knew he’d made the night just a little less wonderful. He remembered enough to know that much. “However, in your case, there is a special consideration … ”

  “Director Lee! My mother’s been kidnapped!” Jang Won’s eye strayed to a framed photo on the wall behind Lee, showing the director twenty years younger, in his famous white robes, shaking the hand of the last dictator to rule South Korea, that bastar
d Chun. “What happened to the security—”

  “Ah, yes. Cutbacks on familial security protocols proceeded last week. You were supposed to make your own provisions. Didn’t you receive that memo?”

  “What memo?”

  “About three weeks ago.”

  “I was in Thailand then. Undercover, remember?”

  “Oh, how unfortunate,” Lee said. “But I’m sure it was emailed to you … ”

  “I was tracking the world’s most dangerous criminal mastermind. I was busy.”

  “Well, you really should check your email every day, Employee Park. In any case, I regret to inform you that due to the recent shift in direction of government policy in terms of Inter-Korean relationships … ”

  “How am I going to get my mother back?”

  “ … LG cannot afford to keep you on staff at the present. Especially since the North Korean Government has specifically demanded that you be fired.”

  “But they’re the North Korean Government!” Jang Won pleaded. “Of course they want me fired. My team’s caught half their supervillains … ”

  “Jang Won … please be reasonable. We all know these people are not nice guys. Do we have to actually call them ‘supervillains’? Because you’re the leader of the team who captured Kim Noh Wang, I have no choice. It’s just … the current political climate, you understand. Besides, using local shoopahs isn’t really economical anymore. Not with all the mutation experiments in China and Myanmar, and the toxic spills and nuclear waste facility accidents in Shenyang, Nepal, Tibet … Nepalese shoopahs work for wages no Korean shoopah would ever accept,” Lee sighed. “It’s modern economics.”