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December 24, 2010 (Eight Years before The Negotiation)
The snow fell hard and fast in flurries, sheets of white coating the pavement and houses, but just barely brushing the metal peaks of the skyscrapers that loomed above New York City. On this Christmas eve, the Big Apple was bursting with good cheer. Couples walked together with their hands held through mittens, children picked up pieces of snow to throw at their siblings. Rockefeller Center was filled with skaters, Frank Sinatra boomed on the speakers, and merriness reigned supreme.
But away from the center of the city - far from the tourist attractions and the Christmas carols - there was a grimy dive bar, the streetlight outside it broken and sending flickering orange light through the windows. The orange light mixed strangely with the bar's sickly yellow lighting inside.
To see the establishment, one would not have known it was Christmas except for a thin string of red lights strung up over the bar, a limp and wilted bunch of mistletoe that hung above the grimy entrance to the bathrooms in the back.
Surprisingly to no one, the bar was nearly empty. Its sole patron sat bent over a dwindling tumbler of whiskey in the corner of the bar, his well-defined muscles bulging through his white dress shirt. A black blazer was thrown carelessly across the back of his seat, an expensive Omega watch on his wrist. Min Tae Gu had sat there nearly motionless, brooding, for the better part of two hours.
What should he do? He asked himself time and time again.
Min Tae Gu had never envisioned himself as an arms dealer. In fact, he had never envisioned himself as anything. He had never had the luxury.
Since the day his parents had gone out to buy him a bike and ended up killed by the side of the road, his life had always been about survival. Survival for him. Survival for his sister, Hyun-ju, the one with sweet eyes and a voice that had never, ever yelled at him. Not at the age of five when he'd broken her only doll in the orphanage in a fit of rage, not at the age of twenty, when she found out that he had joined a company that dealt arms illegally.
Hyun-ju had always tried to understand him, because she truly believed that all people were good at heart - and no one more good than her wayward black sheep of a brother.
Min Tae-gu had never had the luxury of dreaming of the future. But Hyun-ju dreamed of a house by the ocean, of a good job for him, of a car - a convertible, she told him excitedly, light blue like a cloudless sky. He didn't even know if such a car existed, but he always hoped that he could keep her safe enough so that she could keep dreaming for the both of them.
And so he kept working. In Nine Electronics, Chairman Koo's company, survival was paramount, and Tae-gu was comfortable with how to survive physically. Bullets, beatings, knife fights - he had endured them all. During his most recent operation, he had very narrowly escaped being shot in the head by one of their clients, not even the police! When Koo had heard, he had simply laughed. He said that now that Tae Gu was partner, this sort of thing would be happening much more often.
Partner. It had been perhaps the happiest moment of Tae-gu's life, standing in front of a tiny office that said: Nine Electronics, Partner, Min Tae Gu. No, actually - the happiest moment was when he showed that sign to his sister. After seeing the proud look in her eyes, he thought for a moment that maybe dreams did come true.
What would she think of what the company was doing now?
Min Tae-gu was used to fighting for physical survival, but he was not used to the stunts that Nine Electronics was pulling now. Arms shipments in which half the guns were missing; gunpowder that wouldn't light because it was mixed with sawdust; making dangerous enemies of the underground organizations that purchased arms from them.
Koo said that some cheating was expected in these deals, because otherwise the other guy thought you were a chump. But Min Tae-gu didn't like it.
Perhaps it was paradoxical of him to think that there should be some honor even in illegal business dealings. It was as paradoxical as Hyun-ju's belief that all people were good at heart. And yet... he wanted to believe it anyways.
Now, Tae-gu was sitting in this dimly lit corner of a dive bar in the meatpacking district of New York City, having just wrapped up negotiations for an arms deal to happen in Nicaragua. He knew for a fact that Koo had accepted a great deal of money up front, and did not intend on delivering most of the goods to the revolutionary group who had requested them.
There would be hell to pay. And he would probably be the one to pay it.
Was this really what he wanted in life?
Drowning in the amber glow of his whiskey, Tae-gu barely hears the tinkling of a tiny bell that indicates that someone else has walked into the bar.
He does not pay attention when he hears a body throw itself into one of the stools a few over from his. Nor does he look up when a woman's voice orders a whiskey sour in a tired, but clearly buzzed tone.
He hears the unmistakable pour of liquid from a bottle. The scratching of a glass being slid across the bar. A sudden gasp at the bitterness of alcohol hitting the tongue.
"God," a voice mutters. In Korean. "What do I have to do to get some soju around here?"
At that, Tae Gu finally looks up. His dark eyes take in the woman a few feet away from him with one sweep, moving from her head down to her toes.
The woman is indeed Korean, and it was the first thing he picked up. It was unusual to meet someone from the same part of the world as him at such a place and time. Her dark, thick hair is shorter than the fashion back home, just barely reaching her shoulders. She leans on one arm in the bar and is bent over her drink, her shoulders held tensely together as if she is on alert for something. To his surprise, she wears a full-sleeved white dress shirt just like him, and black pants underneath. A brown trench coat is slung over the stool next to her. The clothing is modest and practical, but it does nothing to hide the fact that she is very beautiful.
This girl does not look like the type to be at a grimy dive bar on Christmas Eve. Rather she looks like someone who should be home in front of a roaring fire, being coddled by family and plied with hot chocolate and sweets.
But from her tired eyes and the fact that she is here, he wonders suddenly if she has any family at all.
Her almond eyes lift from her drink as if she could feel his gaze, and she catches him staring. Tae-gu turns his head away quickly, but it is too late.
"Hello," she says in a voice that is slightly slurred, raising her glass to him. "Merry Christmas."
He smiles wanly, unable to escape. "Merry Christmas," he greets her. The conversation might have ended there, except for his insatiable curiosity.
"What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?" Tae-gu asks her.
She snorts. "Isn't that a movie dialogue?" she questions, turning all the way towards him. "What's a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?"
"I didn't say pretty," Tae-gu points out with a smirk.
"You implied it."
He pretended to think about it for a second.
"Nahhh," he waves his hand towards her, smiling mischievously. "I've seen better." Now she chortles and rolls her eyes, before turning back to her drink. There is suddenly a somber expression on her face, and Tae-gu feels like he's killed the mood.
"No, seriously," he says, clearing his throat. "It's not safe here."
Call it being a good Samaritan. Chalk it up to some vestige of dumb, inborn chivalry. Maybe it was because she was because she was a stranger in a strange land, just like him.
But instinctively, he worries about this girl. He does not think she understands how dark the underbelly of large cities like this could be - how the rottenest filth of mankind slunk through the night and preyed on anything bright and beautiful. What if she was some silly girl out for a drink in the night, trying to be rebellious, and came into contact with one of them?
What if she met someone like him?
"Don't worry about me," she says dismissively. "I live a few streets away. I come here all the time after a hard day of work - or university."
"Doesn't your family worry?" he prods.
She gives a great sigh and takes a calculated sip of her drink.
"Dad is more drunk than me right now," she winces at the bitter taste of alcohol, or perhaps the taste of her words.
"Mom is probably banging pots and pans in the kitchen, ready for a fight. By the time I get home, they'll be screaming at each other. It happens every Christmas. I'll go home in a bit and negotiate peace between them. That's what I do, right? Negotiate at work... negotiate at home..." Her eyes meet Min Tae-gu's as if she's astonished at what she's just revealed.
"Don't misunderstand me," she says to him, although he hasn't said a word. "I love my job. I want to be a police negotiator some day. It's just that... sometimes it all gets to be too much."
Tae-gu internally scoffs at the irony. A policewoman and a criminal, getting a drink on Christmas Eve.
She gets up from her stool and shifts to the one closest to him. He gets a whiff of apples and cinnamon mixed with the whiskey - like she's some sort of hot drink in the cold night. He shivers slightly. His shirt is too thin for this weather. She leans on her arm again and looks at him lazily with her almond eyes, her eyes lingering on his face, and the day-old stubble he knows is there.
"What's your name?" she asks him softly. Almost seductively, although he knows that she didn't mean it to be that way. He searches her chocolate-brown irises for some hint of what she wants from him.
"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," he says, his voice slightly hoarse.
"Ha Chae-yoon," she replies immediately. Trusting.
"Min Tae Gu," he confesses. He could have told her Richard Min; that's what he goes by in most parts of the world. But he can't lie to those wide eyes of hers, glazed over with intoxication, those soft pink lips half open in a slight pout.
To call her pretty would have been a lie, because she is stunning. And he can see that she's drinking him in the same way he is her, looking him over in great gulps, swallowing down the sight.
Loneliness calls out to loneliness.
Her eyes linger on the swell of his muscles in the yellowing light, his jawline that is almost cruel in its straight line. And in turn, he travels over her lovely face and down to the long line of her neck, down, down, where a button is open on her blouse to expose a glimmer of cleavage.
Fire to fire, ashes to ashes.
"What do you do?" Chase-yoon asks him breathlessly, another step in this quickly escalating tango they seem to have found themselves in.
"I'm a businessman." And consequences be damned, if she had asked him then what he sold, he would have told her straight out that he was an illegal arms dealer. That was the kind of hold those eyes had assumed over him. Thankfully, she doesn't ask that.
"Why did you want to be a businessman?" she asks instead, a bit unsteadily, leaning her head on her hand. As if it's gotten too heavy for her to hold up.
Min Tae-gu blinks slowly in surprise.
"I don't know," he admits. "Why did you want to be a negotiator?"
"Easy." she nods at the sour, ancient-looking bartender for another round, and oh, as the liquid enters the crystal glasses, he knows they're in trouble now. "I wanted to be a negotiator because I want to save lives. I think a lot of problems in the world can be solved without violence. I want to be the best negotiator in the world."
The idealism is blinding. It's like he's stepped into the full view of the sun, only to have it shine down upon him and reveal his imperfections in absolute clarity. He suddenly feels inadequate. The way he does around his sister -- and her dreams of a simple peace.
"You shouldn't tell strangers your hopes and dreams," he says, turning back to his glass. "You're too trusting."
Chae-yoon shrugs. "The basis of a negotiation is trust. If I don't trust you, why should I believe anything you say? If I ask people to have trust in me, then I have to give them my trust too."
"Besides, you seem pretty trustworthy to me."
Tae-gu barely keeps himself from scoffing at that one. This woman couldn't have worse taste if she tried. Such blind faith was bound to go before a fall someday, he thought, purposely not looking at her and yet seeing her anyways, somehow, from the corner of his eyes.
"I'm not really good," he says bitterly.
"Shhh," she leans her head on her hands and looks at him from the corner of her eyes. "You shouldn't hate yourself so much, Tae Gu-ssi."
Tae-gu stares at her. If there was some definition of a "good girl", he thinks, then she would be it.
And he would probably be going to hell for what he's thinking about right now.
Yet he couldn't help but admire her idealism. It called out to some impulse deep inside of him, and made him ball his fists in his utter impotency. He couldn't tell her the truth about him. He couldn't do anything, except become further and further embedded in webs of lies and violence.
And, unbidden, the question arises in his mind.
What if he just left it all?
He could live a life where he was worthy of someone like her.
Strange thought, instantly dismissed. This dark road led to nowhere; there was no happiness for someone like him. The underworld would never let him go. Koo had a thousand henchmen, and he would not hesitate to mobilize them all against him. He couldn't just leave.
That tiny persistent flame that has been kindled tonight, though, rises and asks him the treacherous question again.
What if he did it anyways?
No. This time he is the one to gesture to the bartender for another round. Her eyes are drooping - clearly she had one or two drinks before she came here - but Ha Chae-yoon lifts the glass like a champion and they clink them together.
"Cheers," he smiles at her, trying to hide his inner turmoil. She puts the glass unsteadily to her mouth, and a rivulet of whiskey spills on the way to her pouty pink lips. It dribbles down the corner of her mouth, but before she can wipe it away with the back of her hand, Min Tae-gu's fingers are there instead. She looks at him in surprise. And before thinking what he's doing - he puts his fingers to his lips, the bitter taste of alcohol mixing with the sweetness of her lip gloss.
The alcohol - three glasses of whiskey at this point - makes things blurry. Actions are fluid. Their bodies are warm. The yellow light looks less sickly. Someone is laughing.
Min Tae-gu only comes to his senses when he's leaned up against the entrance to the bathroom in the back, kissing Chae-yoon slowly, maddeningly, his soft lips pressed against hers. His body is turned to shield her from the view of the bar.
He's sure, when he presses a kiss against her jaw and Chae-yoon moans audibly -- he's sure that the ancient bartender knows what's happening back here, and certainly doesn't care. Nobody cares. Their tongues mingle together, exploring every inch of each other's mouths. They are more acquainted with their lips than they have become through their words.
She's an excellent kisser, this Ha Chae-yoon, and if she's nearly as good of a negotiator then Tae-gu would give her everything he had and probably thank her afterwards for taking it. She's so much shorter than him, but she's surprisingly result oriented, her mouth and hands travelling over any part of him that she can reach.
When she presses her lips to the underside of his jaw, breathing hot against him, Min Tae Gu swears under his breath and looks up at the ceiling.
And there, his eyes meet a faded and limp bunch of mistletoe, strung up right above them.
Ah, he thinks. So that's how they got here.
He winds his hands around Chae-yoon's waist, and is surprised how quickly he engulfs her. A flicker of boldness rising in him, Tae-gu leans down and whispers hoarsely in her ear.
"You're so small, Chae-yoon-ssi. What are your measurements?"
"Excuse me?" she whispers. Pupils blown wide meet his own dark eyes in confusion.
"Like, in beauty pageants," he mutters. "You know, they have measurements - waist, hip..." he moves his hands over the mentioned parts of her as he talks, but before he can name the last one, her eyes harden and she leans towards him.
"Tae-gu-ssi," she mutters. "Do you want me to slap you now?"
With a hearty chuckle because he had expected nothing less from her, Tae-gu pulls her back up and crushes his lips against hers again. Chae-yoon tastes like spiced cider - like the cinnamon and apples he was smelling earlier, and her arms encircle his neck, pulling him closer.
After a few minutes for them to get reacquainted, a very sour voice drifts over to them.
"Excuse me," it says.
Min Tae-gu pulls Chae-yoon to his chest to shield her, and turns his head to meet the annoyed eyes of the bartender. He's standing at a respectful distance, his bald head shining in the dim light. "We're closing up."
When Tae-gu and Chae-yoon find themselves standing outside the bar, the snow is still coming down in thick flurries. The broken street lamp is flashing its orange light upon the pair of them.
And even though they were just pressed up against each other seconds ago - even though he knows her more intimately than most people in this world - they stand there in the snow, regarding each other like they are strangers.
Because both of them know (or at least they think they know) that their story ends here.
They didn't even have the privilege of a one night stand, Min Tae-gu thinks wistfully. At least that would have been a complete story - a beginning, a middle, an end - her coming undone in his arms and him losing control to her.
Ha Chae Yoon and Min Tae Gu have only a beginning, he thinks sadly.
But with all the warmth he can muster, he turns to her anyways.
"Are you sure you don't want me to walk you home?" he says. The weight of the pistol in his pocket would provide him some assurance that she'd be safe. At least he could give her that. A Christmas present.
But Chae-yoon shakes her head determinedly at him. Her cheeks are flushed from alcohol and the cold.
"I really just live one street over," she says, pointing in the direction of dilapidated apartments. And thinking that perhaps there's another reason - perhaps she doesn't want her parents to see him with her - he subsides.
Tae-gu tries to think of what to say to her, some sort of parting message. Don't trust people so much. Forget that you ever met me.
"I hope you become the best negotiator in the world," he says instead. And he's surprised to know that he means it.
Chae-yoon smiles at that, and pats his arm somewhat drunkenly.
"Min Tae-gu-ssi," she says, a surprising amount of firmness in her slurred voice. She places a small hand on his cheek and leans towards him, looking intently into his eyes.
"165, 34, 24, 35."
What?
"My measurements." she smiles at him. "Merry Christmas."
And with one last rub of her thumb against his face, Chae-yoon is off in the night, leaving him with a stupid half-grin on his face. She stumbles slightly as she crosses the street, and he watches her dark silhouette grow fainter and fainter, until she passes through an alley and is lost from his view.
But in the moment where she vanishes - Tae-gu feels that strange urge again. He feels an overpowering desire to rush after her, to see that she gets home safely. To wait outside her window like a lovesick teenager with his first girlfriend, until she leans out and tells him to get lost. To find an honest job as a baker, or a security guard, or a bartender serving misfits on Christmas Eve. To build a different world, where there would be space for Hyun-ju too, with her delicate dreams and love of blue things.
And in this world, the weapons and the crimes would be left behind, and Min Tae-gu would find some higher meaning. He would find a reason for being.
But then -- under the flickering orange streetlight, Min Tae-gu receives a call. Harsh beeps drive away his fragile dreams like they were nothing but cobwebs.
And Min Tae-gu answers the call. The moment for change has passed forever, vanishing somewhere into the night.
"Chairman Koo?" he says, making his way towards downtown. "What? The Nicaraguans are pulling out of the deal? Ne, I'm on it, Sir."
***
2018, Seoul, South Korea.
Ha Chae-yoon ended up leaving that broken apartment in New York City, with its endless arguments. She left her family behind.
She took her knowledge of negotiation and moved back to Seoul, where she became Inspector Ha Chae-yoon of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department. She lived alone in an apartment overlooking the city of Seoul. She dated men, always preferring ones who were tall and broad shouldered. But often she was the first to break up with them, because she always felt like she was missing something in them. Something which she had never really known.
For Chae-yoon had forgotten about that night.
She remembered that one Christmas Eve, she had gotten particularly drunk and made out with a stranger in the bar across from her house. She vaguely recalled the feel of his arms around her, how he had felt so, so good. She remembered tossing and turning all throughout that night, wanting him with a thirst that could not be quenched.
But in her memories, she could not see his face. The eight intervening years had stolen even their conversation from her mind, except for a feeling that he had wished her well before they had parted.
Now she was left only with a longing which added to her dissatisfaction with her job. When she added up the lives she had saved versus the others, the list of the dying was growing longer and longer. She went to every funeral and remembered each of their names.
Over the last one - a woman named Hyun-ju who died in her arms- Ha Chae-yoon was ready to quit her job. The woman's kind eyes haunted her at night, burning her like the touch of that man from long ago.
And then one day, just after resigning, she was brought in front of a camera. A high-profile case of Korean nationals being taken hostage in the Malacca Straits.
When the camera turns on, instead of seeing the hefty criminal in a mask that she was expecting, she sees a lithe, broad shouldered man in a white dress shirt. He wears a broad grin on his face.
"Hello," he waves his hand at her brightly. "I'm Min Tae-gu."
"I am Ha Chae Yoon," she responds, her eyes wide with uncertainty. He leans forward in his chair, one hand on his crossed leg, and smiles at the camera - at her, it feels like. Like he's sharing a secret with her that only the two of them know.
"So, are you the best negotiator they've got?" Tae-gu asks.
A feeling she cannot name prickles at her. It's like deja vu - although Chae-yoon doesn't know why that could be. She shakes off his question with a modest answer, wondering if she's imagining the look of disappointment in Min Tae-gu's eyes.
But the feeling continues to prickle at her time and time again as they talk.
"They keep saying you're so pretty. But I've seen better."
"What are your measurements? You know, like in beauty pageants." (She hangs up at that one).
And then in the next call --
"165, 34, 24, 35." she responds, a desperate play to dissipate his anger. To save her colleague, Captain Jung, whom he has tied up next to him with a bag over his head.
On the other end of the call, Min Tae-gu knows exactly what she's doing.
Because, unlike Chae-yoon, Min Tae-gu never forgot a face.
Crazed by pain, every particle in him screaming in grief, Min Tae-gu barely remembered anything from the first few days after his sister had been killed. After he had lost Hyun-ju, everything had stopped having meaning. He could not look at the blue sky without feeling like the wind had been knocked out of him. He could not eat. He could not sleep.
And then, one of his associates had brought him the footage from the day she had died. But when he had watched the video, he was shocked to see a familiar face. A girl with chocolatey eyes and shoulder-length hair who had told her, in Hyun-ju's last moments, that everything would be all right.
"I want to save lives. I want to be the best negotiator in the world."
Now, sitting in front of that very Ha Chae Yoon, Tae-gu could see that she had forgotten all about that Christmas Eve and the dive bar in New York City.
Maybe it was for the better, he thought. Even so, he found himself repeating lines from that night time and time again, disappointed every time that she clearly did not remember.
But when she tells him her measurements, he cannot help but chuckle at her wit. She is still the same. Still so good.
"Captain Jung," Tae-gu says to the sack next to him. "I like her. Maybe I should just pack it all up and ask her out."
But the time for all of that is long gone. He knows that now. He's walked nearly to the end of the road, and after just a few steps more it will end in the darkness he had come to expect.
"I'm up for it." Chae-yoon says to him, her gaze wide and honest. Trusting.
Tae-gu feels a strange thrill in his chest. He leans forward in his chair and rolls his gun in between his hands.
In another life...
"How about it then?" he asks, his eyes alight with one last flame. "A drink, you and I?"