by Asia Olanna
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.
“Okay,” Jong-soo said, “me and Henrietta will go inside them. Hae-il, hand me the money.”
Hae-il did so, and Jong-soo guided me out from the truck. I watched Bit-na sit there at the front, crossing her arms, closing her eyes.
Shutting down from the world.
“Have fun and there,” Hae-il said to Jong-soo. I wondered what he was even talking about—this was pretty scary to me.
What fun was there to have?
The thought of sex came to my mind, stroking the perimeters of my brain.
If Jong-soo tried any moves, I would not let him lay a finger on me.
I would sleep on the ground instead.
I promised myself this as we walked inside, past the wooden door, and into a foyer with brown carpets, low, yellowed lights.
There was a woman at the front desk, looking bored, playing on her phone. She greeted us, and we booked a room.
Walking down a shallow hallway, we found the interior of the hotel to be shabby, dark, but not the type of place to harbor bedbugs underneath the sheets.
“Thank God,” I said, sitting down at the edge of the bed. “This is nicer than inside of the truck.”
Jong-soo nodded, placing himself about a foot away from my thigh. We were separated by an invisible protocol.
He did not want to cross my boundaries, apparently.
“About what Hae-il said,” Jong-soo said, “forget him.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ve seen his type before. He’s a softie on the inside.”
“I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. So you can make use of the bed first. I might as well sleep on the chair.”
I felt bad for Jong-soo. He had been woken up from his slumber. So I said, “You can go inside first. I don’t feel sleepy.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He got underneath the coverlets. And like a light switch, he simply turned off, his lids shuttering down and over his eyes.
In a couple of moments, he was asleep.
I waited there and then turned off the lights.
Then I sat in the darkness, on the edge again.
Eventually, the sitting made me sleepy. I had nothing to do, and I might as well have rested up more.
Slipping myself next to Jong-soo, I folded my arms over my chest, and tried to bring myself into dreamland.
I was cold though. I didn’t want to move too much to wake up Jong-soo. So I slowly brought the coverlets over my body. While I did so, my hand accidentally brushed up
against the backside of Jong-soo’s ass.
He flinched, turning over and facing me.
I froze in place.
Oops.
That’s not what I wanted to do!
Emotions running high, I needed to just still myself. Calm down. So I stayed put, not doing anything before feeling his hand crawl up my forearm. He wasn’t doing it on purpose— being asleep and all—and I did not resist him anymore.
Why bother? He saved me.
Like Hae-il, and sort of like Bit-na, I felt the connection to him. One I was only beginning to admit to myself fully.
I glanced over my shoulder. His eyes were sort of open, his mouth a little bit wide.
“Is there something wrong?” he said.
I held my eyes on him. I wanted him to hold me. But then I wanted him gone.
Fire.
The house.
Gunshots.
All of it came back to me in flashes and panic. My lungs seized up, and I flapped my hand against my cheek, trying to cool myself off, the heat of night day arresting me.
What had happened traumatized me, and it was coming back as a movie in my mind.
“I’m going to scream again,” I said, almost hysterical.
Jong-soo placed his fingers in my palms, pulling me into his chest. I breathed heavily, my breath wrapping around my nose like a noxious gas.
“I don’t know why I’m like this,” I mumbled. My skin pimpled with goosebumps, and I shook.
All of a sudden, the trauma of the day’s events were now striking me in the heart, giving me seizure of the mind.
I could not move, could not do much besides glance back at Jong-soo, and then to the white bed sheets in front of me, the pillow cradling my head at the edge of my sight. I bit down on my lip, frustrated with myself.
“Just relax,” Jong-soo said, stroking the center of my palm. An energy emerged whenever he did so, rolling his hands into mine, holding them tight, and then pulling me closer until the back of my head was center square in the middle of his chest. “You’re with me now. And I promise I won’t hurt you. I’m not going to be like those bad men and women back there. I’m not going to be anyone but your best friend. I promise.”
The lilting accent of his English and Korean brought a smile to my face. I don’t know why, my emotions were everywhere, but I smiled.
He sounded a little bit funny to me. Foreign, but endearing. Endeavoring and trying to communicate with me, he made a point like he had done already a thousand times.
“I’m just so sorry about who I am right now,” I said. “I wasn’t like this when I got to Korea. I was so excited to see everything and—”
“You don’t have to apologize about anything…”
“You could drop me off at the police station? I think you could, couldn’t you?”
“They might not believe you,” Jong-soo said. “You’re going to have a difficult time convincing people about what’s happened. And then Amanda and Adam…”
I was babbling, I was incoherent. Did I really want to go to the police? He was right. Who would believe me and my story? I was safer with Jong-soo, wasn’t I? With him, at least I knew what would happen next: Japan. Going to the police…Being around the other two…They wouldn’t want me to snitch…
I decided I wanted to handle things on my own. I didn’t want to have to ask for help. Didn’t want to have to submit to my fear; I was so prideful; I had come so far.
I didn’t want to admit how badly my trip had gone either.
Imagine going back home to dad and Latasha, telling them about getting scammed by gangsters.
It would’ve been so embarrassing, so humiliating.
I had too much pride.
Just too much pride.
I turned over to face Jong-soo.
Pushing away his hair, I inhaled his scent, felt his skin.
He was real, and he saved me. And that was enough for that night. I did not need anything else. I did not need anyone besides him—because the reason for my journey to Korea was him.
All of him, including his stories and his background.
I did not need anyone else.
“Can you… I don’t know, is it too much to ask? Can you hold me?”
Jong-soo smiled, gripping my wrists, and kissing the top of my forehead.
“Of course,” he said, his lips draping my shoulders. “Anything for fan.”
We lay there in the darkness, Jong-soo’s hands rolling across my body, touching my skin. He never violated me. Never moved where I did not want him to. When he touched the edge of my breast, I stopped him, grabbing a hold of his arm. When he kissed my cheek, I told him,” I’m not ready for that yet.”
And then…
I let him kiss me. And I let him touch the edge of my breast, edging around my bra strap, feeling underneath for the wireframe material, the soft padding.
Then he touched my skin, my bare skin, and reached underneath my shirt.
“You are a beautiful woman,” he whispered. “I don’t want to harm you at all. But I want you to know that.”
He treated beauty as a subject so delicate and dangerous. He wanted to approach me, to hold me and maybe even fuck me—but he could not say it out loud. He had to tiptoe around the issues at hand.
I wasn’t ready for anything like that. And I respected his respect for me.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you”
And we slept. We fell asleep right there on the bed, thinking about each other as we drifted off to better places.
♦♦♦
Except I dreamt of fire.
Gray shadows and red eyes.
The woman who collapsed on the ground, who died in front of me.
In fragments and flashbacks her face swam up to the forefront of my mind. Her nails clawing the ground for escape. “I didn’t deserve this,” she screamed to me. “I didn’t deserve this!”
I woke up in the middle of the night, Jong-soo holding me, his hands on my shoulders, his lips at the back of my neck, telling me to stay put, that he would go get me a glass of water.
Before I could even process what he was saying, my hands were gripping the edge of the cup, and my lips were pressed forth, sucking on the meniscus of the tap.
Water drawn from the bathroom sink.
“Shh. Henrietta. I’m here with you now,” Jong-soo said, his hands back on my shoulders. His muscular chest pressing up against me. “I’m here for you now.”
“I… I…”
“You were having a bad dream.”
That’s also why couldn’t go back to the police.
How was I supposed to deal with the shame of what I had encountered? Crucify me for saying it: but I really wanted to stay with Jong-soo because he was a survivor of what I knew.
Together, we would be able to surmount difficulties of the mind, in my mind. But if I went to a psychologist, if I went to a professional, a “professional,” they would tell me all the things that were wrong with me. They would tell me to take pills and medications. They would figure out and diagnose me clinical and this and that.
My father would never believe me. Latasha? She might even laugh. Maybe she would laugh. She would laugh out of nervousness, out of anxiety, out of fear about what had happened to me in Korea. No one would take me seriously or really believe me.
Jong-soo Jeup was my therapy. Laying there next to him, his hands now underneath my waist, feeling my belly, rubbing me down, taking away the glass of water from my mouth. He was there for me, and he understood my situation better than anyone else on the outside world could.
I didn’t know it at the time, but he was, in a way, initiating me into gang life. Maybe he didn’t mean to, but he was.
Brutality.
Difficulty.
Hardship.
What Latasha experienced back home in Lincoln was nothing compared to what he knew in his everyday life.
I now knew.
Stereotypes, girl. They aren’t real.
“Please,�
� Jong-soo said. “Press your back into the pillow. Here, I’m going to make a small little pile of them for you to rest on.” He gathered up all of the pillows on the bed sheets together, creating a sort of hard mound for me to lay on. “Don’t stress out too much anymore. Focus on me being here. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
