Chapter Text
XVI. WHITE
“Hello?”
“You’re not getting married, are you?”
“—What?”
“I had a dream.”
“…For God’s sake, Jiyong.”
Jiyong shifts his phone to his other ear. He can envision it so well. Youngbae scrubbing his blocky hands over his face. Voice scratchy and posture quiet, the way he gets when he’s tired.
Youngbae is like his voice, is like his hands. Solid, reliable. Hardened but still honest, still somehow honest. He handles cars and Jiyong and god well. Them and all the wild things.
Jiyong has always loved Youngbae more closely than he loves himself.
He closes his eyes. His voice sounds closer in the dark. If it weren’t for the static Jiyong could almost forget the ten-thousand kilometers between them.
“So you’re not.”
“I’m not. Let me just—we can talk about this after I appreciate the fact that you’re alive.”
“You haven’t appreciated it much for about the last ten years.”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t getting shot at for the last ten years. At least not all of it. Where are you, anyway?”
“Back in Korea. Cooped up in some mob doctor’s house. I lie in bed all day. It’s driving me nuts. I’m thinking of doing a prison break.”
“Sure. You’d better make sure you can walk before you try breaking anywhere.”
“Daesung’ll help me.”
“He’s around?”
“He flew back with me. Youngbae, where are you? I’m on a secure line right now.”
“…Why do you have to be on a secure line for me to tell you?”
“Actually, don’t tell me. I don’t need to know.”
Jiyong shifts and his crutch digs into his left armpit. Beneath the thin ice of pain medication, the ache in his leg runs deep. It’ll be too many weeks until he can walk properly again, let alone run.
Wincing, he breathes through his teeth. “They know about the case,” he continues conversationally.
Silence.
Youngbae is waiting for him to elaborate. But there’s nothing more to say.
“So that’s the way it is,” he says eventually.
“That’s the way it is.”
“The boss hasn’t said anything to me yet.”
“If he’s close enough to say anything, you’d better be running.”
A cloud passes over in Korea. Youngbae sounds colder over the line.
“You really think it’s like that, Jiyong?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“But you have a feeling.”
Jiyong swallows quickly. His mouth has gone sandpaper. “There’s no time,” he says curtly. “Is Seunghyun there?”
“I can get a hold of him.”
“He’s going to have to cut the book open. Tell him sorry for me.”
“Wh—”
Jiyong hangs up on Youngbae. He does it brutally, before sentimentality and the better part of two decades get to him. He kills the line between them like he’s slitting a throat.
Youngbae must be Leader, now.
Sometimes you and your brother ride the wasteland like kings, and sometimes you scream at the sky, and sometimes you look at one another and see god in the thing between you that you have built.
Sometimes, too, you and your brother part.
Oftentimes there’s no chance for goodbyes.
XVII. BLONDE
Three years ago:
Those were the young days, the top-of-the-world days. Jiyong’s men scattered and feasted on the tender thigh flesh of civilization. They howled at the sun and rolled time into cigarillos and they took the drugs to make their bodies felt how their minds did. Blown wide-open and so sensitive that every footstep held the edge of a climax.
But Leader, Leader smiles thinly and Leader says little. He is in the grip of rare love; dark love, strong love. He has fallen as helplessly as a little child falls down upon the sidewalk—and he has fallen for his killers, his wolves.
When Jiyong was a child he thought he would care for nothing and live forever. Now he cares too much and death moves next door, downstairs, across the hall. It paces across the ceiling of his eyelids every time he tries to sleep and reminds him that nobody can live perfectly, and that it only takes one mistake.
So Jiyong does not fight death. That’s a fool’s game. Rather, Jiyong plots around him. He treads softly and politely and carefully. He bows and palms guns and knives behind his back. Because Jiyong is only a man but Jiyong is clever and persistent and bites into his ideas like a dog into bone, and in love, Jiyong is discovering, he is to be reckoned with.
Three years ago, he’s in the middle of stitching the book back up when the eldest calls. Jiyong lays his phone on the sand and switches it to speakerphone as he continues to work. He’s surprised he even has signal out here. There’s nobody around for miles; only the moon and the Southern night are present to eavesdrop.
“Hello,” he says.
“Ah. Jiyong. It’s Jiyong, right?”
“Who else would be picking up my phone?” Seunghyun’s voice crumbles in bits and pieces over the line. Even then he sounds unsteady. “Are you drunk? You sound drunk.”
“Hmmm,” Seunghyun hums. “Ji-yo-ng. Where are you?”
“Argentina.”
“Aish. What even happens in Argentina, anyway. Are you riding a turtle?”
“People anywhere don’t do that.”
“You are near the ocean, though.”
“Hyung is sharp as ever.”
“It’s the waves. I can hear them. It should be early there.”
“So early it’s late, actually. It’s two or three at night.”
“That’s not so bad. So what’s up?”
“Well, I’m sitting on a beach right now. I don’t see any turtles.”
“I’d settle for sharks.”
“Maybe. It’s dark out. I wouldn’t be able to see them.”
“Don’t go into the water, then.”
“The water’s a bad situation.”
“And are you safe?”
“I’m not in the water, if that’s what you mean.”
But he is. He’s neck-deep and going under, and he’s prepared to swim. Jiyong shoves the needle through one last time and inspects his handiwork in the moonlight. The cover doesn’t look any thicker than before, despite its new payload. Five thin rubber-banded bundles.
It has taken Jiyong most of two years to sort those bundles out. Five hundred days and five hundred late nights and who knows how many close-mouthed smiles, miles traveled, pounds of stress.
After all that, they seem too small to carry the weight of their own history. He reaches for the glue to finish the job. “Why, are you telling me I should be worried?”
“I’m worried, everybody’s worried. You sneaking off like this… Even Youngbae had no idea where you were. He figured Macau.” Jiyong hears Seunghyun stumble into something. He sneezes and continues. “’Gri called me last night. All the way from the Monte Carlo. He wanted to know where you were. Why you weren’t picking up his calls.”
“You know how maknae’s clingy. Tell him to gamble some more.”
“There’s no point. He won’t forget about you even if you tell him to go away.”
“Then you can let him know that I’ll be back in Seoul soon. If he wants to sneak by.”
“You’re saying it like a joke, but he’ll do it.”
“That’s fine. It’ll be a nice change of pace for him, wasting his money on something other than women and drugs. Maybe he’ll sober up on the plane ride.”
A lull.
“Jiyong,” Seunghyun says. “You have my book.”
“I do,” he answers baldly. Seunghyun can always tell if Jiyong lies to him, and that’ll just make him angry, which will make him reckless, which will mean more trouble for Jiyong when he gets back to Korea.
“I needed it the other night.”
“…Ah, hyung. Keep saying scary things and you’ll take five years off my life. Don’t tell me you killed somebody or something.”
“No,” he says, testy. “But I didn’t know you’d be gone for so long.”
“Sorry. Bear with it a while longer.”
“What the hell are you doing in Argentina, really?”
After a moment, Jiyong says, “Pass. Hyung, I can’t—”
“You always say the same thing to us before jobs. ‘Look out for yourself first.’”
“That’s—”
“But you watch for us,” Seunghyun says heatedly. “Too much.”
“I try for the right amount.”
“Too much,” he insists. “We all think so.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not.”
“Eoh, that’s true.”
“To be honest, Jiyong—”
“Go ahead, hyung.”
“—you’re the most annoying when you keep secrets.”
Jiyong smiles slightly.
“You’re not going to say anything, are you.” Seunghyun sighs. “Whatever. I don’t have to tell you to be careful. And bring that thing back soon, or you might have some bodies to clean up.”
Before he hangs up, Jiyong says quickly, “Hyung.”
“Yeah?”
“I want us all to live. That’s why…”
“Huh? Somebody’s trying to kill us?”
“Everything is always trying to kill us.”
“Aish. Come back quickly,” Seunghyun repeats. “Don’t be sad like that. Sitting by yourself in the middle of the night, being paranoid. Besides, it’s easier to get killed that way.”
“Maybe."
"Feel better."
"I do. Good night, hyung."
“Night, Jiyong.”
XVIII. BROWN
The voices of the choir rise around them like ghosts from water.
Daesung grins, boyish.
“We’re like the Boondocks,” he whispers.
Jiyong takes off his sunglasses. He looks at the stained glass.
Flying back with Daesung is hazy in Jiyong’s memory. Crammed into economy for the sake of a low profile, Jiyong raging with fever and sky-high on pain meds while he’d looped every half hour or so between drugged-out giggling, pain, and uneasy sleep while Daesung kicked at his ankle to keep him quiet.
Maybe God is really here, somewhere between the singing and the gilt cross. Maybe he whispers secrets between the lines of the pastor’s speech. But Jiyong can’t sense it.
If Jiyong has witnessed a higher power, it lies in whatever thing makes five men together greater than five men apart.
He listens to the sermon with half an ear. Thinks of what remains to be done.
When the service ends they exit with the rest of the flock, wandering blinking into the sunlight. Daesung lights a cigarette. Jiyong leans against the church wall.
He watches the families. They look like zoo animals, like aliens. They trill goodbye to one other as joyously as rainforest birds.
“When I was little,” Daesung says, “I burned down a church like this.”
Nobody knows Daesung, and Daesung never, ever talks about himself.
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to believe in God. They tried to make me. But I was a wolf, not a sheep like the other kids. So I stole some gasoline and set God on fire and ran away. And I didn’t think about him for a long time.
“But, you know, something crazy happened when I was hiding out with you. You were bleeding a lot and before I even knew it, I was praying in my head. ‘Please God, please God. Save him.’
“Later I thought, damn, I guess he got me anyway. The bastard. I guess I couldn’t burn him down. But then I thought, isn’t it the choice that makes the difference?”
Daesung lets his cigarette fall. The grass begins to smolder.
“The things people say you’re meant for, you can make them your own. You can free yourself in the end. Maybe it’s the only way to free yourself.”
He brings his heel down. The fire goes out, and death passes. The families will trill on and spin on. Their fragile soap-bubble lives will continue another day in the rough winds and the sun.
Jiyong thinks, good. Let them go on into infinity. He wishes them all the happiness in the world. The meek shall inherit.
“Because we’re humans,” Daesung says. “We have a memory. And we can never abandon the things that have passed.”
Jiyong wonders. He wonders if he can ever be free of the blood in his veins, the blood on his hands, the blood he has chosen and the blood he has shed.
“So?” he asks. “Do you think god saved me?”
Daesung flashes a smile at him. It shines even in the shade.
“Man, the day God lifts a finger for a sinner like you, I’m quitting this thing. Shit’s too crazy to deal.”
Jiyong laughs.
He’d thought as much.
He hands Daesung his notebook, then.
“What’s this?”
“Keep it for me,” says Jiyong.
There were four sets in Seunghyun’s book, and one in Jiyong’s notebook for himself. But Daesung is here, not there.
Things never go as planned. So it goes.
XIX.PINK
Jiyong smells the boss before he sees him. In three years his taste in import cigars hasn’t changed.
He’s out of the bed before the door opens. By holding onto the bedframe, he manages a bow.
The boss inflates into the room like a balloon, stealing all the air. Jiyong is used to it.
“Well,” he rasps. “You’re looking chipper. Shouldn’t you be lounging around convalescing with a pretty nurse on your arm or something?”
“Sir, there’s no nurses here and the doctor is a good man but not much to look at.”
He wheezes in laughter. “Sit back down, before you fall over.”
Jiyong does, but he remains as upright as he can. The boss is giving off a certain mood. Jiyong is wary.
“I don’t like to talk business with you right away, Jiyong-ah.”
“Whatever you’d like.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what’s been bothering me and we’ll see if you can’t help me with it. My problem, not to put too fine of a point on it, is that all your boys have vanished, one way or another. I can’t get ahold of one of them to save my life.”
“I’m sorry for their tardiness in responding to you.”
“Oh, they’re a bunch of wild dogs, as always. But tell me, have you talked to any of them lately?”
“Only Daesung.”
“That’s right. He was here for a while. But he’s gone too, it seems.”
“It seems so.”
“So you don’t know where they are.”
“No, sir.”
“I see. That’s too bad. You see, it’s just that case! It’s really such a pity that it got lost like that. Right at the last minute—totally botched the whole job. Now, of course, if all of you had gotten caught by the cops, it would’ve been worse. In a situation where nobody can escape, I agree, ditching the case and escaping would be better. What I’m surprised at is that such a situation came up. Your crew have always been such professionals—but I don’t have to explain this to you.”
“As their leader, I take full responsibility.”
“You couldn’t lead them out of this mess, though. You were too busy getting shot. I heard you came close to dying.”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember.”
“That’s what I heard. I heard that if you hadn’t gotten picked up as quickly as you did, I wouldn’t have the pleasure of this conversation. Youngbae came to get you, Jiyong-ah. Do you remember that much?”
“I’m afraid I don’t, sir.”
“He did. He drove right over. Of course, he’d already lost the case by then, so there was no reason he shouldn’t do so.”
“I’m very thankful to him.”
“You should thank him properly. If you see him again.”
“I hope I do, sir.”
“You can’t be sure, though.”
Jiyong bows his head slightly.
“Such a pity,” the boss says again. “I wish I could just ask them one more time what happened with that case. That damned case!”
A very long quiet follows.
“What’s on your mind?” the boss asks.
“Sir, I don’t want to presume.”
“Go ahead and say it.”
“Please prepare well if you’re going to kill me. I’m going to put up a fight, and I’d hate to cause you any more trouble than I already have.”
After he says this, the boss’ face goes totally blank. He looks peaceful as a stone Buddha’s, his expression almost sleepy. Jiyong looks into his eyes and reads the end of his life’s lease. Nevertheless his mind is uncharacteristically silent. If he hears anything it is the faint, years-old crash of waves on the beach, the night Seunghyun called him. The conversation they never spoke of again, and all the things that have passed since then.
The smile cracks the boss’ face like lightning cracks the sky.
“I hope you survive another twenty years, Jiyong-ah, if just so you can stand here one day and listen to your juniors give you lip.”
“My apologies, sir.”
“Rest up. Enjoy the break. Then you’re to go back to America. Your boys are waiting for you. Wherever the hell they are.”
“Understood.”
“And learn some respect.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good God. The mouth on this kid. I’ll never see the end of it.”
Leader bows deeply.
Jiyong breathes.
XX. BLUE
LAX is in nosebleed weather, dry and blistering. The low sun and smog floods the arrivals terminal with gold. People’s shadows swim through the orange haze like fish. Around him the last bits of Korean chatter scatter and fade into the smell of exhaust and french fries.
Jiyong’s head is thick. On the plane the sun outside his window had risen for four hours straight. He has been muddled by time.
“Jiyong.”
Still, it’s too early to be dreaming.
He squints through the glare.
There’s a boy in a suit, slim and tall and smiling with his blue, blue eyes. He stands with his hands in his pockets. He waits for Jiyong like it’s the only thing he has to do in the world.
Jiyong gets close and hisses, “Why’re you here?”
“Why not, hyung?”
“Don’t fuck with me.”
As he speaks, Jiyong is busy looking everywhere in the station. Some people walk by too quickly, others too slow. Jiyong’s heart beats hard and he is irate, because all he wants to do is to look at Seungri. All he wants is to bring him down with his eyes.
Seungri should be in Argentina. South Africa. Laos. He should be out of Jiyong’s damned reach. Safe.
“Mathematics,” maknae says.
“Mathematics.”
“Arithmetic.” He holds up his fingers as he talks. “Four sets in America, minus three members, equals one extra. But the extra was in Korea. And I couldn’t balance the equation.”
“You’ve always sucked at math.”
“You’re right there, hyung, but I managed to figure this one out. It’s an inequality.”
“Your brain’s the thing unequal to the situation.”
“You gave Daesung yours, though. Right?” He doesn’t wait for Jiyong to answer. “And what were you planning to do after that? Who exactly is the one who’s unequal?”
“So?” asks Jiyong. He’s just as aggressive. He’s running on jet lag and plane fumes. He still hasn’t quite realized he’s alive. He’s impatient. “Tell me your plan, maknae.”
“I don’t have much of a plan. It’s more of a waiting game. I’m playing a plus-one, waiting for a negative.”
“I’m not going to play.”
“Clearly. You’re here. It’s over.”
“You think you’ve won?”
“No.”
Seungri looks at him so fucking honestly. His heart is not on his sleeve but in Jiyong’s hand, and Seungri was the one to put it there.
Jiyong really doesn’t know how he lasted five minutes in this business.
He supposes he does have the best hyung to protect him.
Seungri palms the documents from beneath his jacket. His hand is warm on Jiyong’s as he passes them over.
“You’re the winner. Zero-sum,” he says.
His voice is far too gentle. Jiyong’s used to being handled roughly. If someone is gentle with him he thinks he’ll break.
He blinks and looks away.
“You dyed your hair, maknae.”
“I did.” Seungri primps like he always does. Maybe Jiyong can begin to believe that they’re alive. “Does it look good?”
“You don’t need me to tell you that.”
“You think this is pretty, wait until we get outside.”
The Lamborghini waiting outside is a gorgeous newborn white thing, crouched like a snow leopard at the curb, windows rolled down and blasting a dance song about shooting people, about fucking people, an invitation at 136 beats per minute. Traffic in nearby lanes has slowed to a crawl as people roll down their windows to gawk and snap photos. And the publicity, the security risk, it’s so fucking uncareful—
But Seungri isn’t looking at them. He looks at Jiyong and Jiyong only.
“You like?”
It’s difficult to keep from smiling. Jiyong manages it.
“It’s alright.”
He likes better the way Seungri opens the door for him. Even better the way he tastes when they kiss inside.
Fin.