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The new apartment is, in all honesty, not bad for the rent he’s paying. It’s in a low redbrick building on the outskirts of the inner city, within ten minutes’ walk from a convenience store, a small family-owned breakfast cafe and the nearest train and bus station. The apartment itself is on the small side, a two-room with a living area, but given he’s just one person the space is more than sufficient to satisfy his living requirements.
He waits downstairs to meet the landlord so he can collect his keys and ask about the rules of the place. It’s his first time seeing it in real life as usual, seeing as moving between places for him is usually a hurried affair, but the surroundings are more pleasant than he would have dared to expect; the pavements are clean and gray, dotted with tall trees, the building itself is warm and inviting, with clean windows and unstained walls. Sunoo recalls one of his previous living arrangements, a dingy one-room he’d had to battle with cockroaches and rats in, and he counts his blessings over and over again.
Maybe I’ll be able to stay here for a while longer this time.
“Sunoo-ssi?”
Sunoo turns back to face the door, eyes wide at the sound of the unexpected voice. He’s surprised to see that the landlord is an elderly woman; the person he’d conversed with online about renting the apartment seemed to be relatively tech-savvy, well caught up on popular Internet slang of the era, as most of the older generation usually weren’t these days.
“Ah, good afternoon!” He bows politely as he greets, stepping closer to the elderly lady to shake her hand. “I’m here to get my key!”
She holds out a silver key on a ring and smiles brightly, handing it over. “Here you go, son. There’ll be no smoking in the building, and not too much noise after 10pm, is that alright? There are some kids living here, and they need to sleep well.”
“Of course!” Sunoo answers immediately. “I don’t smoke, and I don’t play loud music. The most I’ll do is play my guitar, is that okay?”
“Yes, yes.” The elderly lady doesn’t drop her smile, waving his concerns away. “It’ll be nice to have some music around here sometimes. You’re good at the guitar?”
“Yes, I teach kids as a side job,” Sunoo offers, returning her affability. “I’ll be teaching a couple of classes in the area, that’s why I’m staying here a while.”
“Ah, you teach?” She seems to brighten up upon hearing his last statement. “I have a grandson who could use some music lessons, do you have any free slots?”
“I do! How old is your grandson?”
“He’s seven this year- ah come out here Jungwon-ah,” the lady turns back to call into the house, and a young boy comes running to answer her. He appears at the door beside his grandmother, dark hair cut in a cute little bowl cut around his face, eyes big as he looks up at the new stranger.
“Hello!”
“Hello!” Sunoo kneels to his height to talk to him face to face. “Would you like to learn some guitar?”
The boy is shy enough not to venture a response, but from the way his eyes light up Sunoo knows he’s interested. “I’ll talk to your grandma about when we can start music classes, okay?”
The elderly lady gives him a smile as he stands back up. “It’ll be nice having you here,” she says. “I hope you’ll be with us for a while.”
He thinks about that as he heads up the stairs to apartment #02-03, the third door to the left, his new home for the coming weeks.
For the sake of the nice seven year old boy in apartment #01-01, if not for his own, he hopes so too.
─
Sunoo is on his way back from the furniture store in the city with basic items like toilet paper and cleaning supplies when he bumps into an older man heading into the same building and offers a greeting. He figures this man must have been the one who’d settled the rental of the apartment over the Internet, on behalf of his mother.
“Oh, you’re the new neighbour upstairs.” The man is dressed in typical work clothes; a white neat-pressed uniform shirt and dark slacks, a briefcase in his free hand as he fishes for his keys in his back pocket. “I hear from my mother you’re teaching my son some guitar?”
“Ah, yes I am!” Sunoo answers, grinning. “I’ve yet to sort out the details, but we can do that anytime-”
“Jungwon ends school at one on weekdays,” the man says. “Are Fridays good with you? Maybe two-thirty?”
“That’d be great,” Sunoo immediately agrees, getting his phone out to make a note in his schedule. “Does he have a guitar at home?”
“About that,” the man replies, as if suddenly recalling something he wanted to say. “He doesn’t, and I was wondering if you could take him to the music store in town to pick up one. I’m a lawyer, I don’t know much about instruments and all…” He says the last sentence with some sheepishness and Sunoo immediately endeavours to allay his concerns.
“No worries, no worries! I’ll take him anytime,” he says. “I do freelance, my schedule is pretty flexible.”
“Here’s my number, contact me anytime if you need anything,” the man slips a business card from his wallet and hands it over. The card is crisp, white cardstock, printed in elegant cursive. Jay Park, CEO of JURIS. “I’m Jay, happy to meet you.”
He bids Sunoo a polite farewell before entering the house, and Sunoo smiles as he hears Jungwon’s voice behind the door beckoning his father home. The new apartment building is better than he expected it to be, and he’ll be sad when he has to leave it.
─
Sunoo isn’t in the mood to pack things when he steps into his new flat, and all he does is take the items out of the plastic bag before leaving them on the counter, stepping back outside. There seems to be a sort of rooftop area he saw earlier while waiting, and the night sky is welcoming enough to justify some exploration of his new surroundings.
The apartment block is five stories, no elevators, but a clean tiled staircase connects the fifth floor to the roof area, and he shoulders the metal door open with a soft creak. There’s no installed lighting up on the rooftop, but the glow from the streetlamps are bright enough that he doesn’t need a flashlight to see where he’s going.
The ground is smooth cement, dusted with fallen leaves but clean. Sunoo expects someone must be regularly upkeeping the area, or it would have fallen into dilapidation a long time ago. As he nears the parapet that faces the front of the building and the road, he makes out the silhouette of someone sitting hunched over on top of it, and he hastens his steps to yell out.
“Come down from there, you could fall, it’s not safe!”
The person looks back at the sound of his voice and the streetlights cast a glow over his face, lighting up his features as Sunoo reaches him.
“Hey, come on down, if you want to sit, sit down here instead,” Sunoo points to the lower ledge of the wall that he supposes can function equally well as a long bench.
The boy doesn’t answer for a few seconds, but he seems to change his mind. “I’ll stay here for just a while.”
“Alright,” Sunoo gives up, sitting down on the ledge. “Don’t slip, be careful.”
The next few beats of silence carry a quiet laugh from the other boy, soft enough that Sunoo isn’t entirely sure he didn’t imagine it himself. He doesn’t quite know if the boy has any interest in sustaining a conversation, but the tension between them in their current predicament is too high for Sunoo to be any sort of comfortable.
The boy moves from his position after five minutes or so, turning around and letting his legs dangle so they can touch the floor again. For a second Sunoo thinks he’s about to get up and leave, but after a moment’s hesitation the boy sits down beside him.
“What’s your name?”
His voice is youthful, with the lingering hint of boyishness that has yet to leave him altogether.
“My name is Kim Sunoo,” Sunoo answers. “What’s yours?”
“I’m Riki.” As he plays with the floppy sleeve of his long flannel, Sunoo can see the white edges of medical bandages over his collarbone and one of his arms. “I don’t recognise you. Did you just move in?”
“Just today,” Sunoo says. “I suppose I won’t be here for long, though. A month, a month and a half at most.”
“Hm? Why’s that?”
Sunoo laughs with some awkwardness, trying to figure out how to explain his situation away. “Ah, it’s a long story and a lot to talk about…”
Riki sits back and offers a smile. “I have time, if you do,” he answers. “My mother told me a problem shared was a problem halved, so go ahead, tell me all your problems.”
“What happened to you?” Sunoo changes the subject out of the blue, gesturing towards the area of Riki’s exposed collarbone that was covered by the bandages. “Did you fall, or something?”
“Car accident.”
“Ah…”
That was worse than I thought.
“I’m so sorry about that. Was it recent?”
Riki nods, pulling the collar of his flannel to conceal the bandages again. “I just got back from the hospital today.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be wandering around on your own yet,” Sunoo says, concerned. “Is your mother at home? Your father? You should rest up while you’re still recovering.”
“My parents both died in the accident.”
Sunoo decides then and there that this is no doubt the absolute worst first meeting he’s ever had with someone. He nods, forcing a smile to alleviate the tension.
“I’m very sorry for your loss…” he begins. As expected, one is usually quite unsure of the right reaction to someone falling into sudden orphanhood. “Will there be a funeral? I can accompany you to it, or I’ll help you with anything you need-”
“There won’t be. My sister died in the accident too, so I have no family members left.”
This is really becoming worse and worse by the minute.
Sunoo is wholeheartedly certain that starting this conversation was the worst idea he’s ever had in his entire life. Not because he doesn’t care about Riki’s family dying, but because he genuinely doesn’t know how to react and he knows that Riki can tell.
“I’m so sorry. You’re really young to…” Sunoo knows it’s already happened and he can’t change reality, but he just really doesn’t want to say the words ‘lose your whole family’.
“It’s alright. Things happen.” The sarcasm is so thick that Sunoo can audibly hear it, but Riki doesn’t say it in a scathing way. “Circumstances suck, I guess. You don’t have to apologize for it.”
“If there’s anything I can do, I’ll be glad to help you with it,” Sunoo offers. “I live at apartment #02-03 and I won’t be out too often.”
The silence drags on between the two boys at the rooftop before Riki speaks again. “Actually, there is.”
“What is it?”
“Can you meet me here tomorrow, at midnight?”
“Is there a particular reason?”
“No,” Riki answers. “I just don’t want to be alone.”
There is so much raw emotion in the other boy’s last sentence that Sunoo immediately feels bad for questioning it. “Of course. Tomorrow at midnight, okay?”
“Okay.” He looks down at the watch around his right wrist. He must be left-handed then; most people don’t wear their watches on their dominant hand, given it makes it difficult to write. “I have to go now. I’ll see you.”
Sunoo checks the time. 00:55. Nothing special.
As he makes his way back down the four flights of stairs to his apartment, he realises suddenly that he didn’t ask Riki how old he was, but on hindsight he supposes the boy can’t be more than one or two years younger than him.
He sees the supplies he’d bought earlier still sitting on the table, but he’s too tired to bother with packing it away today. The new apartment building seems to have its fair share of interesting inhabitants, and he can’t help but look forward just a little to the rest of his stay here.
─
Sunoo doesn’t forget about his promise to Riki when midnight strikes close the next day, of course. He finishes up his dinner in a slight hurry after his first lesson with a nice little boy living a few bus stops’ journey away, washing up quickly before heading up to the rooftop. He’s not late; it’s 11:58 when he reaches, but Riki is already there.
He’s seated in the same position he was the previous day, cross-legged on top of the parapet facing the street, and as Sunoo nears he calls out something along the lines of what he said last night. “Riki, I told you not to sit there, come down it's dangerous.”
Riki immediately turns, not shifting from his position but fixing Sunoo with a questioning stare from where he’s sitting.
“How do you know my name?”
“You told me last night.” Sunoo sits down at the ledge, beckoning him over. “Don’t be funny, come on down.”
Riki seems like he’s undecided on whether he should heed Sunoo’s call, but he eventually slides himself down from the parapet and sits down across from Sunoo anyway. “What’s your name?”
“What? My name is Kim Sunoo, have you forgotten it so soon?” Sunoo feigns some offense at Riki’s question, but he supposes it’s understandable. Some people aren’t good with names, and that’s alright.
“Ah, Kim Sunoo. Thank you for telling me.”
“Do you like coming to this rooftop?” Sunoo asks, looking out into the street. “You seem like you come here every day.”
“It’s my first time coming here.” Riki seems a little confused at Sunoo’s statement. “But it’s a nice place.”
They manage, somehow, to talk about everything and nothing as the night stretches on, and as strange as Sunoo finds the boy’s apparent lack of memory of any of the events of their previous meeting, Riki is still the same as he was last night, and conversation flows oddly easily with him.
“Ah, I almost missed it,” Riki says suddenly, looking down at his watch. “I have to go.”
The time on Sunoo’s phone shows 00:55 when he checks it.
“Yeah, you said the same thing last night. What’s so special about 00:55?”
Riki gives him a smile, looking back halfway as he heads for the staircase. “Curfew. Goodnight, Sunoo.”
“Goodnight, Riki.”
He’s starting to think that there’s more than meets the eye about the orphaned boy from his apartment building, but he doesn’t yet know enough about him to figure any of it now. He makes a mental reminder to go to the rooftop at midnight again the next day, just to see if Riki will be there yet again.
─
“Get down, do you have a death wish? You sit there every single night,” Sunoo calls. It’s his third night in his new apartment, and his third night meeting Riki at the rooftop.
“Who are you?” Riki’s tone of voice is more guarded in this one sentence than he usually is, and Sunoo wonders inwardly if he’s the type of person who needs to warm up before starting conversations with people.
“It’s Sunoo. Why don’t you come sit with me?” He supposes he should back off for a while and let Riki recover, and he sits down at the parapet while he waits, slipping his pencil out of his pocket.
“What are you doing?”
Riki looks inquisitively over at the open ring-bound notebook in Sunoo’s hands. In all Sunoo’s absorption in his writing, he’d missed Riki getting off the top of the parapet.
“Hm? I’m drafting lyrics. I work better at nighttime, for some reason.”
“Drafting lyrics...as in, you’re writing a song?” the other boy asks.
Sunoo nods, putting aside his pencil momentarily. “Yes, I write songs for a label, that’s my job.”
“So you can sing?” Riki’s eyes light up as he hears the other boy’s words. “Do you know any Japanese songs?”
“No, not really, I work with Korean music mostly,” Sunoo says. “But is there a song you want to hear? I could learn it for you in my free time, if you’d like.”
“Really?”
“Mhm.”
Riki gestures for Sunoo to hand his notebook over and he flips to the next blank page, writing neatly in English letters. Sunoo doesn’t recognise the title of the song when Riki hands him his notebook back, but he tells himself he’ll listen to it when he gets back home.
“My mother used to sing this song to me,” Riki says.
“Your mother likes Japanese music?” Sunoo asks inquisitively, surprised.
“My mother is Japanese.”
“Oh…”
That was kinda stupid.
“That’s cool. So you’re half Japanese?”
“What?” Riki looks like he wants to laugh but contains himself for Sunoo’s sake. “I’m full Japanese.”
Okay, that’s it. This conversation is a gone case.
“Right. What’s wrong with me?” Sunoo says quietly to himself. “I didn’t know you were Japanese. What’s your last name?”
“Nishimura. What’s yours?”
Sunoo laughs softly. “Kim, and don’t you forget it this time.”
Riki doesn’t argue, merely offering a smile. “We’ll see.”
Sunoo holds his phone screen up when the time shows 00:54. “One minute to curfew. Wanna get a headstart?”
“How’d you know about that?” Riki throws Sunoo a grin as he gets up from the ledge and heads for the staircase. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You’re awfully sure that I’ll be back here tomorrow,” Sunoo quips back, but he already knows he’ll be here again tomorrow night. He sends a quick wave to Jay as he sees his neighbour walk out from the apartment block’s attached garage, dressed in a similarly sleek outfit as he was the day they first met.
Late night at work. Being a lawyer sure doesn’t look like an easy job, and Sunoo wonders how Jay manages to balance his family with his career as he heads back down to his apartment to retire for the night.
─
Sunoo shows up on time at the Park family’s door the next afternoon to take Jungwon to the music store, and Grandma Park welcomes him warmly. “Jungwon is almost done getting ready,” she says, smiling. “Come in for a while, won’t you?”
She invites Sunoo in and offers drinks and refreshments which he refuses graciously, but she manages to get him to accept a small cake and a couple of sweets in the end anyway. “You’re taking Jungwon into town, my son said?”
“Yes, there’s a big music store there where they’re more likely to have a bigger variety of guitars,” Sunoo willingly explains. “It’ll be easier to find one that suits Jungwon, since he shouldn’t be using regular guitars yet. Are you going to join us?”
The elderly lady waves away his question. “I’ve got some housework to do, it’ll do me good to have some quiet this afternoon. Keep an eye on Jungwon, he likes to run about these days. Seven year olds...”
“I’ll take good care of Jungwon, please don’t worry,” Sunoo reassures her generously, taking another bite of his cake. “I’m quite surprised that you would let me take him out alone, though.”
Grandma Park looks him over and answers. “You seem like a reliable type, good with kids. My son trusts you, so that means something.”
“I won’t break his trust,” Sunoo promises. “Thank you for your compliments.”
Jungwon comes running from one of the rooms just then, dressed in a bright blue cloud-patterned shirt and dark shorts, with a little white bag shaped like a stuffed sheep on his shoulder.
“Jungwon-ah, I told you not to bring that bag, you can hardly carry anything in it-”
“But it’s cute! Grandma, please…”
“It’s alright! I’ll carry anything else if he needs it,” Sunoo immediately offers, and Grandma Park gives him a grateful smile.
“Alright then, if you don’t mind,” she says. “Jungwon, say thank you to Sunoo-hyung.”
“Thank you Sunoo-hyung!”
“Don’t worry about it!” Sunoo gives the boy a little smile as he waves him over to the door. “Come on, let’s go now.”
The small bus station is a few blocks’ walk away from the apartment building and Sunoo makes sure to keep an eye on Jungwon as he walks, though the younger boy doesn’t yet seem to be in any troublemaking mood.
“Jungwon, do you like music?”
“Yup!” His sheep backpack bounces on his shoulders as he walks. “My dad sings in the shower a lot, so I learned from him. Grandma says it’s terrible because she can’t get any peace around here, but she likes it. I heard her telling my dad, and he laughed at her and told her I’m just like him.”
Sunoo can’t help but smile. Jungwon is at that age where kids say anything that comes to mind, and the older boy can’t help but find it adorable. “Why don’t you sing a little?” he prompts. “Do you have a favourite song?”
Jungwon seems to think for a second before deciding. “My dad likes Pororo,” he says. “I can sing the opening!”
“Your dad likes it?” Sunoo tries to imagine Jay in his pajamas switching the channel to Pororo the Little Penguin and he wants to laugh. “Don’t you mean you like it?”
“No,” Jungwon looks up at him with the most serious expression a seven year old could muster. “My dad likes it. Ask him yourself.”
Sunoo gives him a look. “What? Deadass?”
“What’s deadass mean?”
A late realisation dawns on Sunoo that maybe he shouldn’t be swearing around his neighbour’s elementary school kid. “Nothing! You shouldn’t say that word, I’m sure you misheard it!”
“I heard you say deadass!” Jungwon insists and Sunoo picks him up by the waist to distract him.
“Let’s take an express ride to the bus station!”
Sunoo takes off running down the path to the bus stop at the highest speed he can muster with a seven year old in tow, and by the time they reach he finds that the younger boy has long forgotten about the whole altercation. Seven year old boys are, he supposes, also ridiculously easy to please, and Sunoo appreciates this as they board the bus bound for the city.
─
They return from town before the sun sets, Jungwon still in the middle of an ice cream cone and Sunoo holding the new guitar in its case over his shoulder. The money Jay sent him for the instrument is much more than what was needed to pay, and Sunoo reminds himself to give the excess back when they next meet.
“We’ll start classes next week,” he says as they near Jungwon’s front door. “I’ll see you on Fridays after school, okay?”
“Okay!” Jungwon is mostly occupied with finishing his ice cream before it drips all over his hands, but he looks up to smile at Sunoo. “Thank you for taking me out today!”
Grandma Park is at the door to receive them, and she conveys gratitude to Sunoo as he sets the new guitar down inside their home and bids a short farewell to the younger boy. “Thank you for taking good care of Jungwon,” she says kindly. “You could drop by for dinner sometimes, you know, if you wanted. We’d always appreciate having someone like you around.”
“Actually, Grandma,” Sunoo begins. “There’s something I’d like to ask you about.”
“Yes? What is it?”
“There’s a boy who lives above me, his name is Riki,” he explains. “What’s going on with him?”
“Ah, that boy…” The elderly lady motions toward the sitting area. “Sit down, there’s quite a long story to be told there.”
Sunoo willingly sits across from Grandma Park, and she continues talking.
“His family has lived here about three years now, a very wonderful family, brother and sister with their parents. It was such a pity when the accident happened; three of them gone, and Riki in hospital for such terrible injuries. He’s just returned from the hospital a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been sending food up to his apartment every day. His parents were wonderful people, and I’m sorry to see them go.”
“Sorry, you said he got back a couple of weeks ago?” Sunoo asks, confused. “He told me he’d just gotten back three days ago. I might have misheard, but that’s what I remember.”
“Oh, yes.” Grandma Park smiles to herself, and Sunoo is no less confused than he originally was. “If you ask him again today, I’m sure he’ll tell you he just returned today.”
“What? I don’t understand, Grandma.”
“Something happened to him during the accident, Sunoo,” she says finally. “Some part of his brain must have been damaged in the impact, I don’t know the details any more than you do. But one thing’s certain, he can’t remember anything past 24 hours.”
─
“Hello, Riki.”
“How do you know my name?”
Sunoo sits down at the ledge, careful not to knock his guitar against the water pipes running along the other side of the wall. “You told me last night, and last night, and the night before,” he says patiently. “I know you don’t remember, so I’m telling you now. My name is Kim Sunoo, and I live at apartment #02-03.”
“You know?”
Riki’s eyes are wide in the moonlight, bright with a mix of confusion and worry and curiosity.
“Yes,” Sunoo answers. “I know. You don’t have to worry about that.”
Riki comes down from where he’s sitting on the parapet. “You play the guitar?”
“Yes,” Sunoo says. “I write songs and I sing, and I have the first verse of the song you asked for last night ready. Do you want to hear it?”
The younger boy nods, the ghost of a smile on his face. “Okay.”
“Rainbows after the rain, and valiantly blooming flowers spread colour about
That day, I fell in love with the you who looked up at the blazing red sky
That one instant, in the scene of the dramatic film
Won’t disappear, because it’s etched in my heart.”
“I like this song,” Riki says as Sunoo finishes the verse. “And I like your voice. Thank you for singing to me.”
“Can I ask you something?” Sunoo says, and the other boy nods.
“Go ahead. What is it?”
“Your curfew,” Sunoo mimes a watch on his wrist. “00:55 every day. What is it for?”
“Ah…” Riki seems surprised. “You know a lot about me. There’s a good reason for those curfews, though there’s no one at home to enforce it anymore.”
“Then, what is it?”
He doesn’t seem inclined to give Sunoo a direct answer. “Do you want to see?”
“Okay.”
They have half an hour give or take before it’s 00:55, and Riki spends the rest of the time asking about Sunoo instead. “Talk about your problems,” he says. “I won’t remember this when I wake up, so you might as well tell me now.”
“Right,” Sunoo agrees. “You won’t remember this when you wake up, so…”
He tells Riki the story of a little boy in a house in Gyeonggi.
─
“Sunoo, come here!”
The boy buried under his thin blankets tries his best not to listen, but as loud as the beating of his heart is in his ears, he can’t drown out the knocking of tables and chairs, the shattering and tinkling of glass on tiles.
“Where’s that bastard? He always doesn’t come when I ask him to. What’s he good for if he can’t even fetch me a couple of bottles from the fridge?”
“That useless little brat. I don’t want to hunt for him again, what a headache. Take this instead.”
“Oh shit, you’ve got the good stuff. I suppose this will do. I’ll kill that kid when he wakes up in the morning.”
They are out cold in the living room when he wakes up in the morning, thankfully, and he squeezes past the furniture to reach the door. Thank the lucky stars for government-mandated schooling.
Sunoo often wonders how people get through difficult times, as he lies in bed during colder nights, the cacophony outside his door louder than ever. Other people say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. They say that you should hold on, and that the tough times will be over one day.
He can’t imagine any of this ever being over.
It’s all he’s known his whole life; angry parents, kitchens full of bottles, countertops covered with dust, needles discarded in odd positions all over the house that he’s learned he should pick up carefully and throw into the trash for the sake of everyone’s wellbeing, but more specifically his own.
In a house of nightmares, it’s each person for himself.
─
Riki is silent and Sunoo can tell he’s unsure of what to say. “It’s alright,” the older boy offers. “You don’t have to say you’re sorry, or anything like that. Like you said, things happen. Circumstances suck, you don’t have to apologise for it.”
“I don’t remember saying that,” Riki answers, but he smiles. “It sounds like something I would say, though. Anyway, I’m glad you’re here, if that means anything to you.”
Sunoo looks up from his guitar where it’s been laying on his lap. “It does. Thank you for that. It wasn’t always easy, but I’m glad I’m here now.”
“It’s almost time for my curfew,” Riki says, checking his watch. “You’re sure you want to see what happens?”
“Sure,” the older boy answers tentatively. “Unless there’s a reason you shouldn’t be showing me, then-”
“No, it’s alright,” Riki smiles, reassuringly. “I’m just afraid you’ll have a bit more trouble tonight. I’ll explain everything when I see you tomorrow. Give me your notebook for a second, will you?”
He writes two words neatly below the song title he’d written the day before. “Say these words to me tomorrow after you remind me we’ve met before. I’ll tell you more about my curfew then. But for now, I live at apartment #04-01, here’s the key.”
Sunoo accepts the key on a ring, identical to his, and keeps it in his hand. He’s confused on what this has to do with anything, but he decides to stay quiet and watch.
“It’s 00:57, actually, not 00:55,” Riki explains when it reaches 00:55 and he hasn’t yet moved from his place. “I give myself two minutes to get back to my apartment before it happens, just to be safe, but today since you’re here, it’s fine.”
As the time on Sunoo’s phone hits 00:57, the boy sitting across from him collapses before his eyes.
─
“Okay, it’s time for you to explain now,” Sunoo says, opening his notebook again the next night. “Nakagawa-kai. What is it?”
Riki’s expression bears some surprise, as if he didn’t expect Sunoo’s words, but the older boy supposes it makes sense. Riki doesn’t remember telling him about it, after all.
“It’ll be a long story tonight,” he says finally. “Here we go.”
─
“We’re home!”
Riki slides down from his bed, still in his pajamas, running for the door at the sound of the voices.
“Mom, Dad!”
“Don’t touch Mom right now, come give Dad a hug?” his father offers, kneeling to match Riki’s height and opening his arms. “You didn’t sleep?”
“I couldn’t sleep without seeing you come home,” the boy says quietly, looking down. “Konon fell asleep, but I had to wait.”
“We’re both home safe now,” his mother says softly. “Go and rest, Riki, okay? Mom and Dad still have things to do.”
Riki doesn’t question the crimson that stains his parents’ jackets and decorates the crown of their knuckles, nor does he question why his mother is walking with a limp tonight. These things are normal in his family, and all he asks for is to see his parents home safe every night.
─
“My parents were part of the upper echelon of the Nakagawa-kai,” he continues, “a yakuza family from Okayama, where I was born. They were important, I suppose. They were always out on missions when my sister and I were young. My mother called them adventures, but as we grew up Konon and I both knew what they really were. We didn’t mind it, though. The rest of the Nakagawa-kai took care of us when my parents were busy, and it was the only life we ever knew. The yakuza have a strict moral code they follow; we don’t commit indiscriminate crime. They upheld their values, and they taught me to uphold mine.”
Sunoo nods, processing everything he just heard. “Why did your family move away from Japan?”
“My parents grew up with the yakuza,” Riki answers. “They didn’t want us to have to do the same. They moved us away from Okayama when I was twelve, and we came here. It’s been more than three years since then. The Nakagawa-kai were kind to my parents. Yakuza tradition dictates that all defectors have to cut off their last finger when they leave, but they didn’t make my parents do that. They knew my Mom and Dad wanted Konon and I to grow up well, and if we wanted to, we would one day return to the yakuza. Not because we were born into it, but because we wanted to.”
“Do you think you’ll go back?” Sunoo questions, and Riki shakes his head slowly.
“Not yet. There are things I need to do before I can return,” he says. “My parents and my sister were murdered, Sunoo. The car accident wasn’t an accident. My best guess is we were targeted as a revenge kill for another family from Okayama, but I can’t remember anything. My mind must have blocked some memories out the night of the accident, but until I find the gang who murdered my family and burn their stronghold down to the ground, I will not show my face to the Nakagawa-kai. It is the least I should do for what they did to my family.”
“The yakuza are scary,” is all Sunoo has to answer. “Is this how everything works in your world?”
“It’s not as far off as you think it is,” Riki says, with a soft smile. “Blood for blood, fire for fire, unity above all. That is the law of the Nakagawa-kai; it ensures that we will always be able to protect our loved ones, and that those who lose their lives will not have done it in vain. Blood will always be repaid by blood. It is our way of honouring those who died so we could live.”
“I understand that,” Sunoo says, and he sits back. “So, the accident wasn’t an accident. There was a hit put on your family and your parents died for it.”
“Yes. And about my curfew,” the younger boy brings up, as if he’s suddenly recalled it. “The impact didn’t kill me, but it damaged some part of my brain that stores memory. Every day at 00:57 I will black out, just like I did on the day of the accident, and when I wake up the next day the past 24 hours will be lost to me. It’s been like this for a while now. There’s not much the doctors seem to be able to do to fix it.”
“I see,” Sunoo says, and the pieces fall into place. “No wonder you ask me for my name every night when I meet you.”
"To be entirely fair, every time I ask for your name is the first time for me."
They let the silence hang. Riki knows Sunoo needs to process, and he gives the older boy space.
“Is there a reason you come to the rooftop every night, then?”
Riki gives Sunoo a glance, and a bitter smile crosses his face. “My sister liked coming here at night. I come up here to forget that she's gone, and sometimes it works.”
“That was oddly sweet,” Sunoo says. “You must have been close. I'm sorry for your loss.”
“It’s alright,” Riki says. “You being here makes a difference, you remind me there are things more important than me in this world I should stay for. That’s all I could ask.”
“Then, I will be here every midnight,” Sunoo promises. “I will find you here every night, and I will remind you about all the things you should stay for.”
“You’ll do that?”
“Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow, Riki.”
─
2 Missed Calls from Jay (Neighbour) 7:34PM
1 Missed Call from Jay (Neighbour) 7:39PM
“Hello?”
“Sunoo! I’m going to have to ask you a big favour, I’m really sorry about this.”
“It won’t be a problem, what is it?”
“Are you at home now?”
“I’m on my way back, five minutes away at most.”
“Okay, thank you. I need you to ask Jungwon and my mother to pack their things, and I need you to take them far away. I’ll send you a number, call it and someone will give you a list of accommodations in the city. Ask for two rooms. Don’t worry about the price, I’ll cover it. Make sure you leave by 8PM, is that okay?”
“Jay, is something going on?”
“Yes, unfortunately. There’s been an issue with customs at the US airport and I won’t be home in time to deal with it, so I have to ask this of you. I’m really sorry, but this is important.”
“Yes, I understand. I’ve just reached the building, I’ll talk to them now.”
“Good. Thank you so much, Sunoo. We’ll talk about your repayment when I get back.”
Sunoo knocks on the Park family’s door, and his confusion reigns at its all time high.
─
Grandma Park and Jungwon don’t seem to be too surprised at Sunoo’s message, and she sends Jungwon off to pack his overnight bag without any questions.
“Grandma, is something happening tonight?” Sunoo’s voice is dripping with worry for the two of them.
“Yes, but it’s not so unusual. My son will explain things to you if he has to,” is all she says before heading off to pack her own things.
Sunoo makes the call to the number he receives from Jay and he gets a confirmation message for two suites at Signiel Seoul, one of the finest hotels in the city. As he bundles some of his clothes into his bag, he wonders how much money Jay has exactly and what’s really going on with the Park family downstairs. Something is amiss about the entire situation, but he can’t put his finger on it just yet.
As he exits his apartment, he suddenly remembers.
Riki.
He sprints for the stairs. #04-01 is directly above, and he finds the door easily.
“Riki? Open up, please!” His voice is desperate as he knocks harder. The time is ticking close to 8PM, and he doesn’t want to know what’ll happen if the family isn’t gone by then.
The boy in apartment #04-01 opens the door finally, and Sunoo has no time for niceties. “My name is Sunoo,” he begins hurriedly. “I’ve met you at the rooftop for days now, I know about your memory loss and your family, I need you to come with me now.”
Without waiting for him to answer Sunoo takes him by the hand and pulls him down the stairs, and to his own credit Riki doesn’t question it. By 7:58PM they’re on an express taxi away bound for inner city Seoul, and Sunoo sends a message to Jay assuring him that he’s done what was asked.
“Thank you, Sunoo. You won’t understand how important this was, but I’ll explain soon. I’m wiring you 400,000won to cover dinner and the ride there, let me know if you need more. I’ll see you when I land in Seoul.”
─
Sunoo and Riki are pacing one of the two suites several hours later. Dinner was ordered through room service just a while ago because Jungwon was too exhausted from jumping around all day to leave the hotel for dinner, and the two of them are left waiting around. Riki plays quietly with his Nintendo Switch in the window seat of the room, and Sunoo unpacks his items from his overnight bag.
“Is there a reason you brought me along?” the younger boy asks suddenly.
“I didn't want to leave you alone today,” Sunoo answers. “I can't go back to the apartment to meet you at the rooftop tonight, so my next best option was to take you with me.”
He seems satisfied with the older boy's answer, and settles back down to play Mario Kart in silence.
“Riki, do you want to take a shower?”
The other boy lowers his Switch and gestures to his empty hands. “I didn’t bring any clothes with me.”
Sunoo takes one of the folded sets of clothes from his bag and holds them out. “I have extra. Go shower if you want, but we’re staying the night here.”
Riki accepts the clothes, setting down his Switch and heading into the bathroom. “Thank you, I’ll be done soon.”
It’s slightly past 11PM by the time the two of them are finished with their respective routines before bed. Sunoo itches to send a message pressing for more information from Jay regarding the events of the night, but he restrains himself. There is a reason he was not made aware earlier, and in this case he can tell it’s probably a good one.
“You won’t remember what I told you when you wake up,” Sunoo says. “Will you be disoriented? You should leave a note for yourself.”
Riki nods and picks up the stationery pad from the nightstand beside the bed, writing quickly. The older boy doesn’t look over to ask what he writes, only moving to settle on the sofa. “You can take the bed. I forgot I’d had to make arrangements for two people, so I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” Riki folds the paper in half neatly and slips it into the pocket of the hoodie he’s borrowed from Sunoo. “We can share, I don’t mind things like that. Back with the Nakagawa-kai the kids used to sleep together all the time when their parents were out.”
“Oh? If you don’t mind, then.” Sunoo takes the side of the bed opposite from Riki and he lies down, careful not to jolt the bed too much. “Actually, there’s something I wanted to ask you, too.”
“What is it?”
“The note you wrote. Why don’t you do this every day?”
Riki’s hair falls across his face when he lays down, and he moves to swipe the longer strands away from his eyes. “Right, that. The therapist assigned to me told me to, at first. I didn’t bother. It didn’t seem like there was any end to this, and what was the point of keeping a record? Every day I’d have one more pageful of words to read, about a life I didn’t remember. It was just...stupid and pointless.”
Sunoo can hear the frustration and exhaustion in the younger boy’s voice, and he sighs. He doesn’t want to imagine how terrifying it must be to wake up every day and not know what happened to himself the previous day. It was like living in an endless loop, a loop that only he himself was stuck in, while the rest of the world moved on like normal.
“It must be frustrating,” he says softly. “I can’t imagine. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. The world is full of bad people, and the good shouldn’t have to apologise for the sins of others.”
Riki’s words are jaded, mature, impartial. As they fall asleep that night, Sunoo wonders how much the other boy has gone through to reach where he is today.
─
“I’m so sorry for all the trouble,” is Jay’s first words to Sunoo, and his next few sentences are all something of a similar sort. “Thank you so much for all your help last minute, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“It’s alright,” Sunoo offers effacingly. “You paid for all of it, I just made a few calls.”
“I suppose I owe you an explanation,” the older man says. “It’s not fair to keep you in the dark about this matter anymore, but I need you to keep this between us. It won’t be safe for you if information of this sort gets out.”
“I understand,” Sunoo agrees. “I’ll keep quiet. What is it?”
Bit by bit, in the sitting room of apartment #01-01, Jay puts the puzzle pieces together, and another mystery unravels itself for Sunoo.
Jay is the CEO of law firm JURIS in downtown Seoul, but part of his firm is a front, for his second occupation. By night he’s one of the three mob bosses of AUREUM, the family that takes care of this part of town, as well as the area around it. For lack of a better term, Jay tells Sunoo straight up that he’s the leader of a mafia family. Along with two others, people he only mentions by name as Sunghoon and Jake, he leads AUREUM in keeping the peace in their part of Seoul, and protects the civilians from the movements of other prominent families in the vicinity.
“I had reason to believe there was a hit put out on my apartment last night,” he says finally. “I needed my family to be taken away to somewhere safe, but the rest of us were on our way back from the US and I was running out of time. Thank you for your help, Sunoo. AUREUM will be behind you should you need anything, from now on.”
“That’s…” Sunoo trails off. “A complicated story. I’m glad I was able to help you last night, then. There is something I hoped you could help me with, though.”
“What is it?” Jay asks immediately. “Anything, name it.”
“Could you look into which families in Seoul have a hit out on members of the Nakagawa-kai?”
─
“Hi Jungwonie!”
Sunoo is punctual for his first lesson with Jungwon, which for various miscellaneous reasons has been postponed until now. The younger boy is excited to see his hyung, happily running to his room to get his new guitar. They sit in the living room, Sunoo with his large guitar and Jungwon with his small one, and he teaches him the beginning chords for the Pororo theme song.
Jungwon, on his part, has a flair for music. He picks up the basics without much trouble, eager to learn and play, willingly listens to Sunoo’s corrections and little instructions.
“Sunoo-hyung,” the boy says suddenly, looking up from his guitar for a second. “Do you think memory is important?”
Sunoo gives him a curious look. “That’s sudden, Jungwonie. Why do you ask?”
“I was thinking of the boy who lives upstairs,” he says, frowning. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to have no family, and to not remember every day that passes.”
Sunoo can’t even bring himself to say that Jungwon and Riki have more in common than the younger boy would have thought. “I can’t imagine it, either. And to answer your question, yes, it’s important. I wish it wasn’t.”
─
Riki seems to return to his previous routine of going to the rooftop every night, except Sunoo doesn’t find him sitting on the parapet anymore. He is usually seated on the low ledge, or pacing and playing with his Switch when the older boy gets to the rooftop. Sunoo even saw him kick around a football one of the nights.
His memory doesn’t improve, but he seems to be more receptive towards Sunoo every day. He still asks the older boy for his name, but there’s something more gentle in his voice. As if, even if he can’t put a name to the face, he knows he trusts Sunoo.
“I have the second verse of Hikaru Nara ready,” Sunoo says, settling down beside him with his guitar. “Want to hear it?”
“I forgot to sleep, and the sun that came out to meet me was so stingingly bright
But even I forgot the tenseness of my headache when I saw you
This stillness is romantic, like sugar melting in black tea
While your voice runs through my whole body.”
“I like this song,” Riki says.
“You say that every time I sing this for you.”
“How many times have you sung this for me?”
“Twice, now. It’s alright that you don’t remember. I’ll sing it for you every night, if that’s what it takes to make you happy.”
─
Diary. I will not write ‘Dear’ because that’s quite stupid.
09-08-21.
Tonight I met Sunoo at the rooftop for the ?th time.
─
“I have some information you might be interested in,” Jay says as he meets Sunoo at the lobby of the apartment building one of the days in the coming weeks. “Can we go up to your place and discuss it? I don’t like to talk about these matters in front of Jungwon. He's too young to have to hear about things like this.”
Jay has a file in a white envelope, and he removes and opens it on Sunoo’s dining room table. The front of the file is emblazoned with “TSUNAMI-TAKAHASHI ALLIANCE”, and immediately Sunoo knows there’s more than meets the eye. He’s nowhere close to familiar with the underworld, as Jay is, but even he knows they’re facing a formidable rival.
“The alliance originated from the Takahashi-gumi in Okayama,” he begins. “The family was established around 1997, one of the newer ones. Some of their members shifted to Korea in 2002 and started a small subdivision of the Takahashi-gumi that eventually became known as TSUNAMI in Seoul. Many people think they’re unrelated, but they’re actually two families under the same entity. They are the biggest alliance with ties to both Okayama and Seoul, and the only mafia family with enough manpower to act against the Nakagawa-kai.”
“What do they have against the Nakagawa-kai?”
“The Nakagawa-kai and the Takahashi-gumi were two strong yakuza families in the same city, so it wasn’t surprising that they ran into conflict. I got some intel from one of my reps in Japan that there was a mass attack operation on the Takahashi-gumi by a joint force of eleven yakuza families in the city, after one of the leaders murdered fifteen civilians. They called it the 2007 Okayama Revolt. Riki’s parents were part of that joint force, leading the entire operation; Nishimura Sen and Yamazaki Keiko, prominent leaders of their own clan. They were likely traced and identified by members of the TSUNAMI subdivision when they came to Korea, for some kind of revenge-killing mission, and they were taken out successfully this year.”
“Just for visualization’s sake,” Sunoo pipes up. “How many members are under the TSUNAMI subdivision?”
“About 300 or so is what I’ve heard so far,” Jay answers. “Nothing special. AUREUM is about five times their size in terms of manpower, and the Nakagawa-kai is more than that. It was a bad idea to mess with us, but I suppose angry people don’t always make the best judgment.”
“Have you found their stronghold?” Sunoo continues. “I’ll let Riki know.”
“My people are working on it,” Jay says. “It won’t be more than a week until we find out where they’re hiding. Tell Riki to be prepared, when the time comes.”
Sunoo brings the first page of the file up to Riki that night when they meet at the rooftop. “Do you recognise this?” he asks gently, holding up the insignia. It is the black and white symbol of a knife in blood, supposedly worn on armbands or concealed somewhere on the body by all members of the family, according to Jay’s file.
Riki takes the paper, glancing over the pattern printed. In seconds his eyes seem to glaze over and Sunoo leans over, worried.
“Riki, are you-”
Sunoo is barely fast enough to catch his head before it hits the ground behind him.
─
“We’re almost home!”
Riki awakens from his drowsy slumber in the back of the car. It’s been a long car ride back from the neighbouring city where they’d been for a weekend road trip, and as the clock ticks past midnight he’s more than tired.
His father glances back to check on him in the backseat. Konon is asleep beside him and his mother is asleep in the front seat. The ride is silent, but the night sky is beautiful in the view from the sun-roof, and Riki looks up to enjoy the unbroken sky whizzing past at dizzying speed.
Headlights flash from a distance behind them, interrupting his reverie. He’s surprised there are people on the inter-city roads this late at night, but then again his family is there too. Riki’s father steps on the gas to put some distance between them and the other car, but as he looks back he can’t seem to shake the feeling that he’s being followed.
As the car speeds past beside them, Riki catches a glimpse of something black, a pattern against the side of the white car. Everything around him moves too fast for him to catch it clearly, but it’s the last thing he sees before the impact.
A knife in blood.
The white car fishtails, cutting clean across their path, and the only thing Riki knows is chaos as the car flips over, plunging him into darkness.
─
“I recognised it.”
“Holy shit, what?” Sunoo sits up suddenly from where he’s lying beside Riki. He’d taken the younger boy back to his apartment since he didn’t have Riki’s key this time and he didn’t know how long he was going to be out cold. “What, what? God, you gave me a fright.”
“I recognise the logo,” he continues, still in a daze. “Jay’s got the right guy. It was them, this-” Riki pushes himself off the bed. “The TSUNAMI-Takahashi Alliance. I remember now. The knife in blood, I saw it the night of the accident Sunoo- I remember it!”
Sunoo is still struggling to shake the sleep from his eyes, but he smiles. The time is 02:43, which means the new day has already started for Riki. He can take the younger boy downstairs in the morning, and confirm what Jay already suspected.
“Sleep now, Riki,” he says, forgetting that the younger boy is in his house and not his own, but on his part Riki doesn’t seem to care. “We have a lot of people to talk to when you wake up.”
“Okay. Goodnight, Sunoo.”
“Goodnight.”
─
Jay gets back to Sunoo and Riki with more intel two days later. His contacts at AUREUM have located TSUNAMI’s stronghold in the city, a small compound sitting further out into the suburbs than the area of Seoul they were living in, a building the gang had taken over a while back.
“AUREUM will be ready for a takeover operation in a couple of days’ time,” he tells Riki. “With your permission, I’d like for us to wear the colors of the Nakagawa-kai. For this mission, we won’t be representing AUREUM. We will represent your family, as revenge for what they have done.”
Riki gives his approval. Armbands bearing the insignia of the Nakagawa-kai, a white koi, and the logo of AUREUM, the Scales of Justice in gold, are handed out before the mission itself, and he reads over the words printed under the combined insignia.
“Justice will shine like gold.”
“Blood for blood, fire for fire, unity above all.”
He thinks of his parents.
─
Sunoo sits at his bedroom window seat, strumming softly at his guitar. It is 11:42PM; he will go up to meet Riki at the rooftop soon, but for now his time still belongs to him and him alone.
A knock at the door sounds.
He puts down his guitar, heading out to the living area. The knocks are irregular, oddly-timed, as if four fists were pounding at the door, but neither of the owners of the fists were entirely coherent.
Sunoo’s heart falls as he presses his ear against the door. He can only confirm what he already knows, and the thing he has most dreaded has come.
“Sunoo, you fucking bastard! Open the door now!”
He has to leave.
Mere seconds pass before he watches the door shake on its hinges from the impact of the two people on the other side. He wonders how they have the strength to push a door down, but never had the strength to get their own beer from their own damn fridge when he was a child.
“Fuck off! I told you to stay away!”
“Don’t be a fucking ungrateful brat, we raised you! Open this door! Open it now!”
Sunoo runs for his room, scrambling to pack everything in a hurry. He should have known this would happen. Something this good could never have lasted so long without something else getting in the way, as tonight has proven yet again.
He stops in his tracks, blood running cold as he re-enters the living room, only seeing two people standing before him. After all these years, their eyes are still as empty as he remembered them being.
“I told you he was here, the stupid bitch can’t run nowhere.”
“I will run,” Sunoo says, his voice steely with resolution. “I will run from you for the rest of your life, and I will keep running. I will never go back to you.”
“Ridiculous. Where do you keep your alc? I’m fresh out.”
He’s fast enough to duck from the flying object as the vase shatters on the wall beside where he was standing. He’s had too much training, he realises bitterly, to not be able to dodge at this point.
Vases are okay. Glasses and plates are bad, but they could be worse.
Please, please don’t let them get to the knives.
As he dodges another object aimed at him, he strains to make out the third figure standing illuminated in the doorway.
No, Riki don’t-
Before the words can leave his mouth the younger boy is inside the house, standing over him, eyes hard. “Riki, get out, it’s da-”
Riki looks back as if to answer him, and in the split second that his concentration is unfocused the bottle smashes into the back of his head. The only thing Sunoo can make out is too much ringing in his ears as the younger boy’s body crumples before him.
There’s a flurry of movement afterwards, but Sunoo doesn’t remember all of it. He recalls Jay and Sunghoon coming in, he remembers shouts and screams and more breaking of things around him, but nothing comes to him afterwards. All he knows is that he has to leave, he has to run now, from the two people standing in his living room, and he has to run far away.
Far, far away again.
He leaves 4,000,000won in cash in Riki’s pocket for the medical bill, letting the paramedics take over, stemming the flow of blood from his head, stabilizing his neck, setting up a stretcher. As much as his heart aches to leave the other boy like this, he can’t process anything except the need to escape.
“I’m sorry, Riki. I’m so sorry.”
Sunoo runs.
─
“Hi, yes, it’s Kim Sunoo!” The poor young man looks tired, and Sunoo’s sorry to have awoken him at such an early hour on a Saturday morning. “I’m here about the confirmation for the apartment rental we talked about last night- yup!”
He had no choice but to leave some of his stuff behind in the hurried move, but he supposes his essentials are all with him. He takes his bags into the new flat. It’s a studio apartment, a wide room with a bed in one corner, a kitchen and an attached toilet, and a sitting area with a television. The rent is slightly higher than the previous building, but Sunoo can afford it.
He sighs as he unpacks whatever he has left of his things again.
─
Sunoo sets his guitar case down. The new student he’s picked up in recent weeks is agreeable and enthusiastic, but he’s nowhere near as cute as Jungwon was, and as much as he tries not to let himself think about the past, he can’t help but wonder how Jungwon is doing. Jay has been messaging him every couple of days, waiting for a response since the day he left, but Sunoo doesn’t have the heart to explain.
He can’t bear to tell them that he’s running away again, like the coward he always was.
He wonders if Jungwon still practices the Pororo theme song on his guitar, and all that fills him is an overwhelming sadness that he had to leave the boy behind without a goodbye.
A knock sounds at his door.
He tells himself if it is who he dreads it to be, he will actually laugh. A person cannot possibly suffer so much bad luck within the span of a couple of weeks, can they?
The new apartment’s door comes with a peephole, thank the lucky stars. Sunoo looks out through the peephole, but the person standing outside is so improbable he steps back to open the door within an instant.
“Sunoo, it’s you!”
─
There is too much that has happened in the past three weeks for Sunoo to comprehend at one go.
“So you’re trying to tell me the injury you sustained that night at my house didn’t harm you severely,” Sunoo begins, trying to make sense of things. “Instead it fixed something inside your head, and removed your memory block? What kind of k-drama am I living in?”
Riki laughs, sitting back. “I wish I could say I was lying. I’m really not.”
“But it just stopped you from forgetting,” Sunoo points out. “It didn’t bring back anything from your past. How do you still remember me, then?”
The younger boy seems hesitant to answer, but he replies in the end. “I started the journal a while ago,” he says. “A while after we met. You asked me why I never wrote one. The truth was that my days were so empty and worthless that I didn’t think there was anything worth remembering anyway.”
“That night you sang to me,” he continues. “For the first time I felt like there was something worth remembering. And so, I wrote.”
─
The day of the arranged attack on the TSUNAMI stronghold is set for two days after Sunoo moves back to his old apartment.
Riki is arguably the youngest person present on the mission, but he’s one of the core four the AUREUM representatives look to for instruction that night. Jay, along with his two other leaders Sunghoon and Jake, clear all moves with him before they begin. Tonight’s operation should be fast. No information collection or recon will be done; they are here for blood, and that is all they will accomplish.
There are seven cars present for the entire operation. Jay tells him there are twenty-two men present today, twenty-two people who volunteered, stepped up of their own volition to fight back for the injustice that was done against Riki’s family. The younger boy nods, but he doesn’t say anything.
He notes that AUREUM is nothing if not organised, as they exit the car. There are people poised at all entrances ready to overtake the compound. There is a nationwide ban on firearms in Korea, but it doesn’t seem to be a concern for any of the members. Almost everyone has a firearm on them, each person seemingly with their own specialised model, unholstered and ready to attack.
At Jay’s signal, the twenty-two of them breach the compound walls, and the operation begins.
Gunshots ring loud in the night, louder than Riki remembered.
─
The soft tap of Riki’s shoes on the cement floor bears with it a heavy finality as he heads for the front door. Jay, Jake and Sunghoon follow close behind, the building silent as they leave. Blood dries sticky on their hands, but they have all grown to stop minding these things.
“Headcount?” Jay says, stopping just past the threshold.
“Twenty-two, all our members are out,” Sunghoon tells him. “The building is clear.”
“Heeseung-hyung just sent a signal,” Jake says, looking down at his phone screen for the briefest moment. “Everything is set. We can leave now.”
Jay turns to Riki and the younger boy nods, his face unreadable.
“There’s another thing I need to do before we go.”
Jake dips into his pocket and hands Riki the white spray paint. He shakes the aerosol can in his hand as they near the far walls of the compound, and writes.
正義. Seigi.
Justice, in the Nakagawa-kai’s signature color.
Blood for blood, fire for fire.
Unity above all.
Riki steps back, letting the white writing dry in the chill night air.
“Burn it down.”
Riki holds his fist up, a signal. The compound lights ablaze as they turn to walk away, the night sky in the distance behind them bright with yellow and orange and dancing gold in the darkness.
They rejoin the rest of the men a distance away, where their cars are still parked. Some of them are injured, as is always to be expected of a mission of this sort, but all of them look up and stand in a show of respect as their leaders return to them.
Riki lets the three leaders rejoin their members, and he faces the twenty-one people alone. Kneeling, he bows deep enough for his forehead to touch the ground before him.
Utmost respect, a symbol of gratitude for the sacrifice they have made to be here with him tonight.
He remains silent on the ride back.
─
Riki accepts the firearm of TSUNAMI’s leader from Jay without a word as he returns to the apartment building. The revolver is sleek silver, printed with the insignia of the knife, the same logo he recognised the night he lost everything, the symbol of a gang who paid the price in blood for their actions.
It is time for him to return to the Nakagawa-kai soon. The revolver is a symbol of his exacted revenge, and with it he can rejoin his yakuza family. There will be a place for him there, as the son of Nishimura Sen and Yamazaki Keiko, but also as himself. He will build his own name as Nishimura Riki.
And he will never let what happened to him happen again.
─
His flight back to Okayama is scheduled to take off in a week's time. Riki's not sure how long it'll be before he returns to Seoul, or if he ever even will, but Grandma Park assures him there'll always be an apartment ready for him if he chooses to come back one day.
“Sunoo, will you go to Japan with me?”
The older boy looks up from his notebook, dropping his pencil for the moment. They’re at the rooftop again; Riki is counting down the days before he has to say goodbye to the place, and he doesn’t forget his old routines even in his final days in Seoul.
“Hm? Is there a reason?”
Riki nods slowly. “My family’s funeral. I told you I wasn’t going to have one, because I didn’t have any family members left. But the Nakagawa-kai have a special tradition for honouring the deaths of their members,” he answers. “I can give them the proper send-off they deserve now. Will you be there with me?”
“I told you I would, on the first night we met here,” Sunoo says, with a smile. “You might have forgotten that, but I haven’t. Of course I’ll be there with you.”
They waste no time in getting air travel arrangements, with the help of Jay and his AUREUM people. Sunoo is surprised to find out that Jay’s mafia family has its own travel agent equivalent, but Riki tells him he shouldn’t be. A family this large should have representatives in almost every profession imaginable.
Grandma Park is sorry to see Riki go. She doesn't tell him anything outright, but she heads up to apartment #04-01 the night before they leave to hand him a bag full of treats; milk candies, biscuits, homemade kimchi and bungeoppang, his favourite waffle snack.
“You better keep safe now,” she says, with a vague warning tone. “Stay in contact with my son, alright? I want to hear about how you’re doing every now and then, don’t forget about your old Grandma Park back home.”
“I won’t,” Riki promises. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. Grandma Park had done so much for him in the weeks after the accident; sending him home-cooked food so he wouldn’t miss any meals, making sure his water and electricity bills were paid, checking on him every so often just to see if he was alright, just like a real grandmother would. He sometimes wondered if Grandma Park basically thought she was raising two grandsons, which in reality wasn’t so far from the truth.
“You, get back here soon,” she says to Sunoo, then turns to Riki. “And you…keep safe, boy. I hope you know we’ll always be here for you.”
“Thank you, Grandma. Be safe and well, while I’m gone.”
─
The Nakagawa-kai’s compound is big, a traditional Japanese style house with many many rooms joined by outdoor breezeways, and dotted with beautiful, clear ponds swimming with pristine white koi fish.
“The white koi are representative of good luck and good fortune,” Riki explains to Sunoo as they enter the gates. “The compound has expanded in the three years since I left, but the koi have always been here.”
Sunoo stays back as Riki bows deep and presents the TSUNAMI ringleader’s revolver to his yakuza family’s boss, a woman with platinum hair and a dark tattoo that snakes up from the collar of her jacket. She accepts the firearm, setting it on the table before her.
“Nishimura-san, welcome home.”
They are shown to one of the rooms towards the back of the compound for Sunoo’s temporary stay and Riki’s permanent one. “This place really is beautiful,” Sunoo remarks, as the younger boy shows him around the estate. “I didn’t expect that.”
“What, you expected guns and knives and blood everywhere?” Riki retorts playfully, and he laughs. “We might be yakuza, but before we are yakuza we are family. Unity above all is our motto, remember? Together we stand, divided we fall.”
“That’s oddly meaningful,” Sunoo says. “I wish I had a family, but no one can have everything in this world.”
“I don’t think you’d be happy in the mafia world,” Riki counters, thinking. “But you’ll always have me, and I will always be here for you. That counts for something, right?”
“Yes,” the older boy answers. “Yes it does.”
─
The funeral service for Riki’s family is beautiful. His parents’ ashes are transferred to clean, white urns engraved with their names, and his sister’s is transferred to a blue one, for children who’ve not yet turned eighteen. The urns are arranged neatly into the room that they call the memorial room, a shrine for all the family members they have lost over the years.
“The blue urns are reminders to us of what we must strive most to protect in this world,” Riki explains to him. “White is for adults. We mourn their deaths too, but they at least have had a chance to live their lives.”
“What do the black urns mean?” Sunoo questions. He’s gathered that pointing to things is somewhat of a taboo in Japan, and he uses his hand to gesture towards a small row of ten or so black urns at the far end of the shrine.
“Those are for people who lived beyond eighty,” Riki answers. “You’d be surprised that there are so few, but people die early in this profession, or they cut ties and leave before they get old. Most of them die, to be completely honest. That’s just how it is.”
They gather all the members in the courtyard when the evening falls.
“In remembrance of Nishimura Sen, Yamazaki Keiko, Nishimura Konon.”
The boss that Riki had greeted when they first got here, a woman who’d been introduced as Nine, stands before the members of the family. Sunoo is taken aback by the sheer number of people present; there are almost two hundred in the courtyard, and another hundred scattered around the compound, looking down from windows and corridors, all dressed in respectful mourning colors. Riki tells him the compound barely houses one-fifth of their members; it’s reserved for those who don’t have a family or a home to stay in. The rest of them are scattered around Okayama, some even further.
Nine lifts the revolver into the air, letting the moonlight illuminate the insignia of the knife. “They have paid the price for our members’ lives,” she announces. “Blood for blood, fire for fire. Unity above all.”
They lift three lanterns into the night sky, two big ones and one smaller one. A final send-off, a proper goodbye for the lost.
─
Sunoo returns to Korea after five days. Riki’s new position in the Nakagawa-kai means he has work to do, and as kind as they were to extend their hospitality to Sunoo as Riki’s partner, he knows he can’t stay for too long. He has a life to return to in Seoul, just as the younger boy had a life to return to here.
“How long do you think it’ll be before you come back?” Sunoo asks, standing in the doorway as he prepares to leave. “You won’t leave me alone forever, will you?”
“Of course I won’t,” Riki says, getting up from where he’s seated on the edge of the bed. He takes Sunoo by the hand, pulling him out into the courtyard.
“It’s a full moon tonight,” he says, looking up. “My mother liked to tell me this, and I’m telling it to you now. No matter how many miles separate us, as long as we keep the same moon in our hearts, we will never be far away from each other.”
─
“In the case of Kim Sunoo against Kim Donghyun and Kim Sewon,” Jay begins, setting down his papers. “I represent my client in requesting for full charges against the couple in question on these grounds; referral to the Child Welfare Act, Act No. 12361 amended on January 28th 2014…”
Jay looks back at Sunoo, and the younger boy smiles.
It is the last thing Sunoo requested for Jay to help him with, and Jay is more than happy to help with it.
─
“Hey, you punk, you promised to call yesterday and you didn’t.”
“Yes hyung, I’m sorry about that. I was otherwise occupied, really I was.”
“I see how it is. You don’t have time for your Sunoo-hyung after you’ve gone back to the Nakagawa-kai, huh? I hate you, go away.”
“What! That’s not how it is…”
“Ah, nevermind. I’m glad to hear your voice again, anyway, I miss you. I can’t believe you’ve already left for two months now.”
“It’s been a long time since you went home, hyung. I miss you too.”
“What are you doing now?”
“I’m in the courtyard, looking up at the moon.”
There’s a pause, and comfortable silence hangs before he continues.
“Hyung, I told you that as long as we held the same moon in our hearts, we would never be too far apart, do you remember? Can you see the moon from where you are?”
“You’re tempting me, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. Is it working?”
“Okay, fine. I’m going up to the rooftop.”
Sunoo doesn’t hang up the phone as he leaves the apartment. The route upstairs is familiar to him by now, after days and days of visiting, and he opens the door without much mind to it.
“Do you see now?”
The boy in the flannel with his Nintendo Switch in hand waits for him at the rooftop with a smile.
─
“It’s you, it’s you! The one who taught me
That the darkness will end
It’s you, it’s you! The one who made me realize
That if we can make even the darkness shine, then it’ll become a night full of stars.”