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All his life, he had been a coward. He had hidden behind others, been willing to grovel and beg just to be left alone. Why was it that his pride, which had failed him so many times before, reared its ugly head at the worse possible moment? For a split second, as Jiho watched Daniel Park and James Gong fall from the third floor, he felt powerful.
He was the cause of the surprise on their faces. The terror.
They deserved it for looking down on him.
They would have never guessed that someone they thought of as a weakling had the audacity to fight back. Their bodies bounced off the road like broken toys. Jiho quickly ducked back inside the billiard hall. He was breathing as quickly as when he had just finished sprinting in gym class. Sweat beaded on his skin and made it feel clammy and disgusting.
The feeling of power faded as quick as it had come.
He was left with the deep, discomforting feeling that he had done something that could not be undone. He felt like there was a noose around his neck, and his end was only a matter of time.
“What the hell?!” Jiho cried, though there was nobody to hear him. He lay down on the cold tiled floor in a fetal position, shaking. He rubbed at the tears and snot making his face wet and slippery.
He heard sirens, and his heart felt like it would beat out of his chest. They were coming for him already?!
“No… no way! It wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t my fault!”
Exactly, there were no witnesses, a dark voice inside him whispered. He needed to cleanup the evidence, come up with a believable enough story. Nobody would believe that he had the guts to push those two out of the window. “They did it! They fought. I-I didn’t do anything. I don’t know a-anything.” Jiho practiced his lies until he could no longer distinguish them from the truth.
He was a smart boy. He could get away with this.
When Jiho heard from the detective that James and Daniel might not wake up, the dark voice whispered, Better that they don’t.
James Gong? Daniel Park? Who were they? Who cared if they were gone? The world would be better without somebody like James Gong, nothing but a piece of trash, a bane on society. Daniel Park… he had already been far too blessed in this life – good looks, smarts, walking around with his expensive clothes. Jiho bit back a smile. He was only doing God’s work, balancing the world out a little. He comforted himself over and over, as he waited in the police station to be questioned.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Jiho remembered a scene early in the school year, not long after Daniel had transferred.
He had passed Jay on the way to the washroom and found Doo Lee and his friends beaten half to death. Back in the classroom, there were flecks of blood visible on Jay’s collar.
Jiho didn’t say anything. Nobody did.
He learned later that they had threatened to hurt Daniel. Soon after that, evidence of bullying had mysteriously shown up in the principal’s office from a source that could not be ignored. Zack and his friends were expelled a week later. Jiho had always suspected it was Jay’s doing, though there was no evidence. It was effective as a silent declaration that Daniel was under his protection.
Effective until Daniel lay on a stretcher, his neck in a brace, glass shards digging into his skin.
Jiho shook his head, gripping his hands into fists. He had way bigger problems to worry about that weird blond.
Everything started falling apart at the police station.
There was a witness. They found Jiho’s bloody shirt and broken glasses. Jiho tripped over himself, trying to keep his logic straight. He felt faint, like his head and body were disconnected. His tongue felt like it was made of lead.
The detective did not look like he was fooled one iota.
The noose around Jiho’s neck felt like it was tightening.
“Mom! Dad! You’ll get me out, right?! Please get me out of here!” Jiho cried, grasping at the bars of the cell at the police station. All he wanted in that moment was to go home. His parents screamed too, their voices desperate and raw, but he saw in their eyes that they were already mentally preparing for the worst.
They were going to lock him up? Possibly for years? It couldn’t be… No. It couldn’t be!
Looking at the felons in the cell with him, one of which was eating food off the ground, Jiho felt a sudden wave of nausea. He felt deeply that he did not belong here. He had been on the straight and narrow, a studious child that should have gone on to college and some corporate white-collar job. What he had experienced in the last few weeks felt like it was bad nightmare. The appalling stench of his drying piss-stained pants refused to let him wake, however.
Jiho had never been particularly religious, but he prayed then.
He prayed with all his heart.
God! Please… Please… Please don’t send me to jail.
Several days later, a police officer came to the front of the cell. He opened the door and gestured for Jiho to follow him, cuffing Jiho as he came out. Jiho’s heart soared. They probably realized that they had made a mistake! His prayers had been answered!
He followed the police officer behind the station, expecting to see his parents waiting with their family Hyundai. Instead, he saw the police officer bring him towards an unfamiliar black car. A sense of unease shot through him. The gratitude of being released was fading fast.
“W-wait, wh-what’s going on? Where are my parents?”
“They’re at home, worried about you.” The officer stated with dark eyes. Jiho had seen him as a saviour just moments before, but now he was not so sure. “Probably trying to get you the best lawyer they can afford so you can slide off with a couple of years in jail.” The door to the car popped open. It was dark inside. Jiho was struck with the irrational desire to turn and run back to the police station. He pictured closing the cell doors to be protected from whatever lay in the darkness beyond that door.
“I don’t understand. Wh-where is this car taking me?”
The officer grinned, and with one smooth motion, shoved Jiho into the backseat and shut the door. His voice echoed in Jiho’s mind, before he felt a rag stifle his breathing and his consciousness fade.
“To where backstabbing motherfuckers like you all go.”
x-x x-x x-x
When Jiho woke, he registered that he was in some sort of moving vehicle. He couldn’t move at all. His arms and legs were restrained by what felt like a gigantic, tight blanket. He opened his eyes but could not see anything. He realized he was blindfolded. “What the hell is going on?” he asked, just to check that his voice still worked. It did, but his voice came out croaky and he licked his lips, realizing that his throat was parched. “I-is this some sort of interrogation? This is illegal! You better let me go or my parents will sue your station!”
His blindfold was removed, and he blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dark space. There was only a soft light overhead. The figure sitting beside him was unmistakeable. His eyes widened in confusion.
“J-Jay? What the heck are you doing here?” Jiho wanted to back up but found that he could not. He looked down and… “I-is that a straitjacket?”
Jay was always quiet, but it was usually in a harmless, peaceful way, especially around Daniel. Every now and then Jiho noticed Jay wore a particularly dark look on his face and his silence had an edge to it – like just before Zoe transferred, after she had been hitting on Daniel one too many times.
Jiho had never felt the full force of Jay’s dangerous silence directed at him. It caused his imagination to kick into overdrive and sparked more fear than any words could have.
“I didn’t do it, Jay. You have to believe me!” Jiho did not care how pathetic he sounded. The more pathetic, the more convincing he would be. He had to convince Jay, otherwise… he gulped, staring at Jay’s Chrome Hearts rings, remember how he had seen Doo Lee missing several teeth. “Daniel and I are friends, you know! He was just trying to save me! I tried to save him too when James pushed him out the window.” Tears came easily to Jiho’s eyes and desperation easily to his voice. He did not need to fake either, with the sheer terror he felt at Jay simply reaching into his black leather jacket.
He didn’t have a gun, right? You couldn’t just get a gun so easily in Korea, right?
Yet, this man had gotten a police officer to deliver him straight from a police station to his car. Who knew what kind of underworld connections he had?
From inside his jacket pocket, Jay took out his phone. It had a sticker of him and Daniel on the back. Jiho let out a shaky breath. “Look, Jay, listen, I know we didn’t really know each other that well, but we’re still classmates, right? And I know you and Daniel were close… see, he wouldn’t want you tying me up like this.” Jay looked up from where he was scrolling through his phone when he heard Daniel’s name.
Jiho felt like a gazelle before a lion.
“I would never tell him!” Jiho exclaimed, wishing that he could just shut up. He could not stop the flow of words, like a leaky faucet however, because he found the silence – Jay’s silence – unbearable. “I would only say positive things about you to Daniel, I swear. What do you say, man? Let me out, please?” There was a strong sensation of pins and needles in his limbs.
Without a word, Jay showed Jiho a picture on his phone. It was Daniel, lying in a hospital bed, a dozen medical instruments surrounding him.
Jiho was about to tell another lie but found himself tongue-tied as he saw a tear trail its way down Jay’s face. It was uncanny, how he was crying, but his expression was flat, emotionless, like a machine.
He could not back out now. The truth was not going to save him.
“I’m sure he’ll wake up,” Jiho comforted, even though he wished for anything but. If Daniel woke up and testified, if he woke up and told Jay what had happened – “I mean, I’m worried about him too. I know how you feel. When he wakes up, he’ll praise you for what a good job you did helping his friend out of a tough situation!” Jiho wondered if he was going too far. Jay seemed like the type to get jealous. “Th-though of course you’d always be number one to him. He said that to me before, you know.”
Jiho felt Jay reaching behind him and breathed a sigh of relief. He was going to release him from the straight jacket. Jiho forcefully held back a grin from spreading across his features – the blond was so dumb and easy to fool.
Rather than feeling his arms freed, Jiho watched as Jay leaned in closer, with his phone right in front of Jiho’s face. The picture of Daniel in the hospital bed came closer and closer. Jiho forced himself not to avert his gaze. He wished he had, when he cried out in horror as Jay scrolled to the next picture on his phone.
Someone passing by on sidewalk had taken it. It showed Daniel and James mid-fall, and there was somebody’s unmistakeable silhouette in the third-floor window.
He knows, he knows, he knows, Jiho thought, suddenly realizing there had never been any hope at all.
His fate had been sealed from the moment he had decided to mess with Daniel Park.
Jay pulled on something behind Jiho, and suddenly bright moonlight shined into the vehicle. Jiho looked through the window, or more accurately, he looked down.
They were not in a car.
They were in a helicopter.
“Fuck!” Jiho felt his bladder lose control. They were over a large body of water – the Yellow Sea? They were a lot higher up than three floors. Jiho was not an idiot. There could only be one reason Jay had brought him out here in a straitjacket and shown him those photos. He began struggling, but it was to no avail… after all, where could he go except for down?
“Let me go, you crazy fucker!” he screamed, a bestial howl of desperation, even though he knew that no one could come to save him. Not the police, not his parents… and this time, not even Daniel.
Jay put a single finger to his own lips, as though he were sharing a secret with Jiho. A secret that he was confident Jiho would not live to tell.
He reached down and grabbed something attached to Jiho’s ankle.
It was a large weight.
Jiho tried desperately to stop Jay, even for a moment longer. He tried to bite, to headbutt, but he was still weak from the drugs. The blond grabbed his neck and choked him until he saw black at the edge of his vision, looking like his struggles were nothing but a minor inconvenience. Then, the door to the helicopter was being pushed open, strong gusts of wind buffeting them and sending their hair into disarray. Jay lifted and threw the heavy weight out of the helicopter, and it sunk towards the deep dark waters below.
Jiho’s last memory of the world as he fell with a crazed scream was Jay smoothing his hair back. He saw those eyes that had been hidden all this time.
Ah –
The devil stared back.