by Asia Olanna
She simply walked across the street, head held high, her nose pointed towards the sun.
I kind of hated her, but I couldn’t too much. She was risking her life for us, just by having us around.
“Roll down the window,” I said, as Hae-il pulled up to the curb. “Kyung-joon!”
He came around to my window. He said, “I’ve got them. Do you have the money?”
“You already bought them for us? How kind of you.”
He told me the price.
“I don’t think the tickets are supposed to be that expensive,” I said. “You’re trying to trick me here. Kyung-joon, seriously, that’s not cool.”
Kyung-joon blushed, and then he shook his head. “You’re free to go get your own tickets if you want. You don’t have to get them from me. I’m risking myself for you—I’m helping you out here. You’re either going to get them or not. And through me it’s the safest way.”
Bit-na forked over the cash. I gawked at the price, counting every single won, even though it was a complete loss and better to look away.
Now I began to hate Kyung-joon, wanted to grip his throat in my hands. Wanted to command Hae-il to get at him, take him down.
But then I caught Henrietta staring at me—maybe she saw the rage boiling up again— and that stopped me in my tracks, from lashing out at Kyung-joon, from causing a scene. “Here,” I said, still somewhat peeved. “I don’t have anymore. We are not rich, you know?”
Kyung-joon nodded, seemingly guilty, his hands in his pockets, stuffing the cash as fast as he possibly could. “Thanks for helping us,” he said.
Then all of the gears in my head clicked together.
Him and Eun-jung…
He has a girlfriend…
“You’re dating Eun-jung? And she doesn’t like you because you’re helping me? That’s what’s happening here, isn’t it? You’re her boyfriend, and she’s your girlfriend.”
Now Kyung-joon turned extremely red, so hot to the point that I could probably cook an egg on his face.
I wanted to crack a couple across his forehead, to knock some sense into him.
Because at the end of the day we were all in the same basket. We were all in the same league.
But he did not see himself anymore as a gangster. He saw only a man in the mirror who wore professional clothes, came into a 9-to-5 job and checked out at the end of the day with a pretty girl around his arm.
“Fine,” I said. “You can do whatever you want. Thanks.”
“I don’t owe you anything. It’s not like I have to help you,” Kyung-joon said. “But I want to. I know that times are tough for the Double Dragons. Everyone is going their separate ways. Everyone’s trying to figure out how to get back on their feet. I want to be compassionate—but you’ve got to understand, I’m in my own dire situation. My own special hell.”
“I understand, I guess. I have to. I have no choice. I’ve got your number and everything, so we’ll see if I’ll be needing you.”
Kyung-joon nodded. “We’ll be seeing you.”
I didn’t ask any more questions from him. I could only hope that life would get better in the end for all of us.
I ushered Hae-il to go forth, and then Kyung-joon walked away, waving at us, as we pulled from the hospital parking lot, down the road and for another motel we would stay in.
Henrietta didn’t say anything else until we were deciding rooms, and she said, “I don’t mind sharing it with you, after what you told me.”
Together, in the same bed, we would share heat and energy.
Calm and quietude.
No longer being chased or hassled this way and that, forced out on the road like a bunch of bandits.
Hae-il and Bit-na resented us.
They wanted to stay in the room themselves as well—and we invited them to come—but they seemed to prefer the truck, I think because me and Henrietta were going to be there.
I wondered if there was a burgeoning romance they were hiding from me.
Did they fuck at night?
Did they find each other attractive to the point where they could not keep fingers and hands away from lips and mouth?
They seemed to prefer the truck, even though they protested otherwise. Doth thou…
Anyway.
They did not want to come and join us, so into our private room we went.
But the moment the door closed behind us was the moment that Henrietta suddenly became shy and wary.
As if she was switching back to her old personality when she had been stuck in the house, the burning house.
Like she had been only putting on airs for Bit-na to safeguard her own ego.
“I’m scared and I’m everything else,” Henrietta said, sitting down on the bed. “I’m sorry that I’m acting like this in front of you. I don’t want to be a mopey mess. I know that I am deadweight. And that you need to get rid of me as fast as possible. But…”
“Speak to me more. Tell me what’s troubling you.”
I sat down next to her, wrapping my arm gently over her shoulder, slowly at first, but when she did not flinch, I moved all the way down with my hand to her own hand.
Pumping her palm as she did mine. Making her feel as safe as possible, so that she could rest her forehead on my shoulder.
And she did so, hesitantly, and then expectantly, as if she knew I would be there—a strong wall or a place of solitude.
“I don’t want you to fret like this,” I said. “Just tell me what’s going on in your head. And I can help you solve it out. I had a lot of hardships in my life—I promise you, this won’t be the end for you.”
“I was supposed to come here to Korea to showcase my artwork. I was supposed to prove to everybody back home in Lincoln that I would be somebody. That I was going to be a famous person worthy of merit. My father—he told me how art was useless, or rather, that I would not be able to pay my own bills. And here I am, stuck and leaning on somebody else for support. I hate it. I wanted so badly to showcase everything—my favorite pieces, all gone.”
“Henrietta,” I said, rubbing her shoulder, making her face me, slowly tilting her waist, that curvaceous and beautiful waist. “I know that everything is really hard. I know. Look at me.”
She did so. And I pointed to my eyes, my nose, my jaw. I had not been eating properly. I had not been living as I normally did when I was tour, on-point always.
I still looked like an echo of myself, but I was only a husk.
“I can walk around in public and no one even recognizes me,” I said. “Did you notice how we were in the middle of a public hospital and no one even called me out. My face is probably all over the media, but it’s a fall from grace. I’m not the pop singer that you knew. Not right now. So I know what it’s like to have everything stripped from you. I do.”
In fact, we had a TV in the room. So we turned it on, and although the reception was pretty scratchy, we managed to get a couple of channels through. What we saw was pretty mundane though.
No crazy headlines.
As usual, the media had moved on. If they ever mentioned me and the Twin Swords, they would do so only in a tiny segment, which Henrietta and I saw briefly. Only in bits and pieces did they talk about the Double Dragons.
And me.
A star with so many rumors swirling around. The anchors on every channel that we flipped to didn’t have a complete consensus about what had gone on behind the scenes. I turned off the TV and sat back in bed.
“See?” I said.
“I know you’re part of this Double Dragons—or were—from what I can understand. I just… want to go home… I want to have what I came here for also though. I said I got you before, but now the picture’s becoming clearer.”
“You want to have it all. But sometimes you have to make compromises.”
I was not sure what was going in her mind. She seemed definitely starstruck, but then cognizant of her situation.
Were we meant to even be together like this?
Were we even supposed to have met one another?
Ironically enough, the Twin Swords tried to keep us apart, but they only brought us closer.
“Day by day,” Henrietta said. “Day by day then.”
“Do you feel safe with us?”
“I don’t feel safe in Korea at all. With all of my belongings gone? Everything stolen from me. I don’t know where anything is. My passport, my credit cards, my phone, my laptop. And who would believe my crazy story? That some underground gang set me up?”
“Not many,” I said. “They know about the gangs, the police do, but I’m not sure that they would take a foreigner’s word. They would probably brush you off like the American woman that you are.”
“Is it because I’m…”
“Some people can be discriminatory as well,” I said. “The times are changing though. We can get you out. You can live your good life again.”
Henrietta shook her head. “You know what’s really bothering me the most?” She stood up, pacing around the room, her body becoming rigid and her voice furious. “It wasn’t just having all of my artwork destroyed. It wasn’t just being duped. It wasn’t just being abducted and taken away. No. It was the fact that he stole my humanity. He conducted all of this and duped me. And I fell for it. Me! I want to go home, but I know now what’s making me so uncomfortable is that I want… I want revenge.”
“Oh?” This was a new occurrence to me. Henrietta had seemed wishy-washy, meek, and shy. She seemed slightly peeved sometimes, here and there. But she never flashed fury and rage at me. And I was expecting to it to arise eventually, but when she was thinking about everything in retrospect. When she was back home in the United States, I expected her to become angry there.
The fact that she was voicing her opinions now?
A new development.
“I don’t want him taking other people. Because he will take other people. I know he will.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Maybe I… I don’t want to go back to the United States just yet. Maybe I want to come with you and take Oh-seong out. Get back at that guy!”
I arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know about that, Henrietta. Sit down here for a moment and think. Do you know how to fight anybody? Have you ever been—”
“Stop,” Henrietta said. “Stop it. I know you’re trying to be comforting to me. But I want to hold that man’s face against a flame. I really… I just want him here so that I can have him for myself to torture. What he dragged me through—no one should ever have to encounter that again.”
“Settle down for a moment,” I said, patting the bedside. She did so, huffing and puffing. I watched the way her breasts heaved forward, upwards and then downwards. I’m embarrassed to say it, but she aroused me when she was so angry like this. There was a fire in her, a vivaciousness I had not seen before.
A certain liveliness that turned me on. “Why don’t we get some rest? We can think about all of this revenge stuff later. Right now, we still have to go to Japan. Recalibrate and make sure that we’re on the right track for things. I know that Oh-seong’s gang is going to be looking out for us. Him and his cronies. Hyun-jun.”
Henrietta fell backwards against the bed, huffing and puffing still. She turned to face me, her eyes delirious with emotion. “I can’t believe he took me like that,” she said.
“I can’t believe it either,” I said, relaxing back into a pillow. “But what’s done is done. What’s done is done.”
“Will you let me have revenge on him?”
There was a poetic justice about having the abductee hurt Oh-seong. For all of his crimes and wrongdoings, Henrietta would be the one to get him back.
It would be perfect, in my eyes.
“I wouldn’t mind,” I said. “But will have to think about it first.”
“I don’t know how to prove my worth to Bit-na,” Henrietta said. “She’s so leery of me.”
I yawned. “One day at a time. Maybe tomorrow she won’t even be here anymore. She’ll ditch us or something.”
Henrietta slid across the bed slowly. She smiled at me, and then wrapped her hand around mine. “I never did thank you for saving me. Not properly. So thank you for taking the fall. Thank you for helping me out back there.”
“I thought it was only right for such a beautiful woman,” I said, my voice low and husky. “And you are a beautiful woman.”
Henrietta giggled. “You’re still really attractive,” she whispered. And then, while closing her eyes, she said, “You still look like the album cover to me.”
As she went to sleep, I felt my heart pulse. And then I thought about her in my dreams, how gracious and gorgeous Henrietta truly was.
HENRIETTA
I rolled over in my sleep. In the middle of the night, I woke up.
Jong-soo was staring at me, sleepily, his eyes a little bit open. “It’s not time to wake up yet,” I said. “Is something wrong?”
Jong-soo pressed himself against me, my breasts tight and warm. My nipples full of tender sensation. I’m not going to lie, I was having an orgasmic dream. The same one I had had nights ago in the bathtub.
And now that I was awake, I was staring at the man who I idolized, who I…
No.
Was I really going to have sex with him now?
Was this the right time?
But his hands were rough and soft, gentle around my waist.
He pressed closer and closer, until his face was against mine, and I felt the hot breath of his throat achingly stretching deep down into my lungs.
I inhaled him, all of his scent, his erotic fervor.
The way his hands stretched underneath my breasts, touched for my nipples, his index fingers caressing the outer edges of my areolas with simple strokes and flicks of his wrists.
“I… I…” I didn’t have words, only a body language that he understood and knew.
That he had been watching the entire time since he met me.
From the moment we laid eyes on one another, we knew how to fit and interlock our bodies mentally. Because the way he touched me made me feel as if he had planned this interaction, waited for the right moment, the subliminal message that I would send in my sleep.
Maybe I whispered to him nearly silently at night, a strange call to his dreams.
And then he was brought awake from his own dreams and ready to go.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered. “You must have a boyfriend back home. I don’t know if I should touch you like this. Or should I?” He grinned, and I saw all of his straight white teeth, his dapper jaw line, the way his nose was long but not too long or squat. A strong brow line, and a broad forehead, but with thick hair at the top as to make his face framed perfectly in black spikes. He brushed over his hair, and I went with his hands there, feeling the roots of his scalp.
“And you’re so handsome,” I said. “It’s no surprise to me that you are. I figured that they would need a lead singer who knew how to dress well and everything. Even when he’s a vagabond.”
“If you think that I look good now,” he said, “then you just wait later.”
I gasped, his hands underneath my belly, feeling upwards to my nipples again, twisting around the centers, feeling around the sensitive core.
My flesh buzzed with a thousand shards and fragments of energy bursting throughout my spirit. My head bounced up and down on the bed and my breasts heaved, my chest unable to keep up with the momentum of air rushing inside of my throat, down into my body.
“Do it again,” I said.
Jong-soo pushed his hands flat against my breasts now, my bra still on, and then he moved on top of me, straddling my hips.
He lifted my shirt all the way up until it was stretched over my head, and then fitted my hair on through.
With a toss of his arms, he threw aside my shirt.
Then he reached backwards with one hand, and fiddled with my bra strap. A click and then it was gone.
He threw it aside, and my breast
s spilled out from their restraints.
Throbbing and hot and heavy.
Ready to be absolutely taken by him.
I wondered what he was going to do with me.
What he might have in mind.
“What do you like?” Jong-soo said, gasping. “I want to pleasure you and give you everything that you desire. All of your thoughts for a true fan.”
I nodded, saying, “Can you… I want you to put your cock between my breasts.”
