Chapter Text
“We have to go,” Somyung says, taking her former best friend’s hand and trying to signal this is important without conveying, my mother is a killer and a psycho and I think I'm going insane.
That… would be off-putting.
If “we have to go” in the middle of the night wasn't off-putting enough.
Because Namsoo is a teenage girl, a normal teenage girl, one who'd never learned how to hide and never found out that there were worse things than not having a new dress for a new date—her eyes, after glimmering in confusion, turn big and bright after a minute.
“Okay,” she agrees immediately, a small, giddy grin growing on her face. She whispers, “I have to get some stuff, though.”
Somyung nods.
And when Namsoo is dumping out the contents of her pink bookbag, Somyung is throwing her back against the wall and trying to breathe.
It's tossed over her shoulder as she strides out, pajama bottoms tossed out in favor of faux-denim jeans, her shirt aged and worn, barring the name of some kind of fashion camp.
Stylist, she said from so far before, before anger and lies and jealousy, her hands in Somyung’s hair, braiding it, caressing it, loving and gentle and innocent. I want to become a stylist.
“I got, like, tons of stuff,” Namsoo says, heading out the door.
She hasn't changed much since she was in Middle School, still the same Namsoo Seo. She walks alone now. Her skirts are still short, fingertips still glossy and glittery.
Namsoo does not ask how Somyung knows where she lives.
(Her brother never asked how Mom knew—how she knew, how she knew, how she knew, everything.)
“When did you get a car?” Namsoo asks in awe.
Since I came up with this half-baked plan and stole money for the first time, was the answer.
“Quiet,” Somyung warns, guardedly. “You're too loud. You're drawing attention.”
“There's barely any people here,” she tsks, instead of listening for once. As if to prove her point, she spreads her arms wide and shouts to the street, “Come on! Nobody cares!”
Somyung bites her tongue hard enough for her to taste iron.
“Get in the car.”
And so they do.
Namsoo is sixteen and doesn't ponder where they're going. She simply puts in an earphone—”it’s my brother’s, it doesn't even work in the other one”—and gazes out the window.
Something is sixteen and thinking about crashing the car and killing both of them, if only to escape her mother. If only to save Namsoo.
But she doesn't.
Because Somyung is driving away, and there's no trackers on her car. She doesn't have her phone anymore—merely a cheap burner she'd bought from a street vender in clothes too baggy.
She can save Namsoo.
(There'll be no rivers where she's going.)
Roads are mostly inactive, it's dark. Namsoo preens for stars, and the sound of whatever pop music—“it's teen-rebel ambiance”—she’s blasting through one ear.
“You're going to get tinnitus.”
Namsoo pretends she doesn't hear her, and they fall back into (almost) silence.
Somyung looks out for any signs of cameras.
Namsoo begs her to stop at a convenience store.
“I'm hungry,” she complains. “We've been driving for so long. You must be hungry too. Somyung !”
Somyung, to her credit, does not crack. She's been hungry for far longer than a few measly hours—she had always been good at control and management and regulation.
“I'm not hungry.”
“Please?”
Somyung does not falter.
“No.”
They end up stopping at the next convenience store; the food is cheap, hot, readied in the microwave, and they eat quickly inside.
“Ooh!” Namsoo squeals. “They have boba, Somyung!”
“Keep your voice down,” she’s about to say, but then—she catches Namsoo’s sleepy eyes, her hair pulled into a loose ponytail, her pajama pants. Something gets caught in her throat; she thinks it's guilt, perhaps, for the image that flashes in her mind.
Namsoo, laying in dirt and rocks. Namsoo, bloodied. Namsoo, eyes staring up at the sky blankly, dimly, dead.
Namsoo.
Somyung inhales slowly. “Fine.” She tosses over the money and feels a slight amount of pride in the gratefulness that passes over Namsoo’s face.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she cries out, taking in Somyung for a—a hug. Namsoo was always the more physically affectionate of the two.
Somyung tenses before forcing herself to relax.
Namsoo does not smell like rot. She smells of roses and perfume and there's still shampoo clear in her hair.
The cashier glances at the both of them. He is teenage, a mask covering the lower-half of his pimpled jaw, and he is suspicious.
He knows, is her first thought. He knows her and he knows her mother and he'll tell someone. He'll tell her mother. (Her mother will kill her. She'll kill them both.)
But she takes a slow breath of air and reasons. He's just a cashier who's a little wary of two teenage girls in the middle of the night.
If anything, she and Namsoo are the suspicious ones.
She sighs. Namsoo is still babbling.
“Come on,” Somyung says, dragging her out by the hand, making sure her hat is firmly hiding her eyes.
“This is my favorite flavor,” Namsoo sings, a bright smile splitting her pink lips open. Her seatbelt isn't on as they begin to drive again.
“Is it?” Somyung muses, as if she doesn't already have that fact engraved in each receipt she kept underneath her desk.
She pictures her mother rummaging through it all, spreading out every little piece of trash, searching for clues. Cop cars swirling her house as her mother told enough truth to get them invested in her case.
Namsoo’s family would not call the police until a few days later. It would be a while before the police would come to the conclusion that they ran away together.
It’s all okay, Somyung thinks. She never stops planning but, for now, she indulges in taking a sip out of Namsoo’s straw.
“Are we going to Tokyo?” Namsoo asks in a faraway voice, empty plastic bags crowded to the left of her seat, lolling against the headrest as she sprawls herself out.
Somyung’s eyes feel blurry. “No,” she answers. “Why would we be going to Tokyo?”
“Didn't you say we have to go far?”
She’s definitely sleep deprived because she can't help but find that sentence funny. “Tokyo’s the farthest you can think of?”
Is she teasing Namsoo?
Somyung thinks she's teasing Namsoo, like they're friends.
Realization dawns on Namsoo. She crosses her arms. “We aren't leaving South Korea.”
“...No.” Somyung bites her lip. I don't have a plan for that. “Do you want to?”
Namsoo shakes her head, slightly. “I don't.” Her voice is small and uncertain. She closed her eyes and hums along to the new song playing.
Namsoo falls asleep, all flushed cheeks and baby-soft skin and stray hairs.
Somyung is still awake for hours. She never stops watching her out of the corner of her eye.
The next morning passes into a week. Somyung’s favorite parts of the day are when it turns into night; Namsoo perfects the early times.
“It's relaxing,” she insists, the fear of being seen and reported never crossing her once.
Somyung searches for a place to get petrol.
Namsoo spends the morning brushing knots out of her hair, judging the people who cross by the car, and slathering lotion onto her arms.
They drive for another few hours.
Eventually, they stop somewhere abandoned and empty.
Somyung is finally able to get some rest. Namsoo doesn't wake her up or otherwise make her presence known. Even still, she ends up dreaming of the girl anyways.
“Can we get hot water anywhere?” Namsoo complains to the sky. She stretches her arms out, arches her back. “God! It's–it’s horrible, it's torture !”
Somyung swallows her spit, licks her teeth. She inhales, exhales.
She thinks of her baby brother being left outside in the cold for hours, she thinks of the last words her father must’ve gasped out. She thinks of her brother’s killer taking her to swim practice when she was younger. She thinks of cameras. She thinks of apple juice every morning.
Namsoo does not know what torture is.
“I'm trying my best,” Somyung gets out, somehow. Short nails dig into soft palms, the hands muscled slightly from years of playing the violin. “Can't you see that?”
Namsoo’s eyes go wide.
She huffs.
“Sorry,” she says. She is pointedly not sorry.
Somyung does not say anything. In a way, she can't—everything she may say is either nonsensical or hateful, and Somyung did not survive her mother’s firm, authoritative grasp by being reckless with words. In another, she won't, because everything that comes into her mouth is a secret she can't tell.
Somyung, in both ways, is made of self control.
“I learned this, you know,” Namsoo says as a way of apology. She has a sparkly-pink, cheaply-made pouch, slightly opened, revealing its contents spewed out across the car roof's lid. She holds a fluffy-ended brush between her two fingers, brushed with
Interest swirls in Somyung’s mouth, her tongue still tasting like cherry. “Where?”
Namsoo’s face screws up, her nose twitching, bunny-like. “On a K-drama.” Strawberry-brown hair falls in large curls down her front as she hunches over.
She has terrible posture.
Somyung fights with a smile.
“Glitter isn't very inconspicuous,” Somyung muses.
Namsoo rolls her eyes. “It's fucking hot .”
The makeup brush tickles her skin. Somyung pretends that's the reason why her lips end up curving.
They can't stay in the quiet lot any longer. They have to move, leave, escape. Somyung doesn't know if they'll ever not be on the run.
She doesn't know how long it took her mother to give up on her father. She thinks it'll take a longer time for her.
Perfect, her mother would whisper, lovingly, devotedly, stroking her straight, shiny hair. Her hands always feel cold. In a way, Somyung and her are both bloodless.
Somyung has the makeup still on her face, sticky and thick. She'll be going out, searching for permanent spots in public later on.
“What was your brother’s name?” Namsoo asks, facing the sky, cheek pressed against the car window. It's a useless endeavor, as there's too many buildings to see the stars. The moon hides from them.
The engine starts up.
“Myungjin,” Somyung replies. Her heart feels empty when she says it. We'll go where there's no more danger, she thinks.
But, then again, is there not danger everywhere and anywhere?
The traffic light blinks ahead of them.
Somyung begins to drive.
The sun rises and the firmament is painted in bleeding oranges and durian yellows. The city they're in begins to wake, the hustle of life—whatever life was left to die off with only ghosts to feast on—slowly, sleepily getting back together.
“It's like a movie,” Namsoo sighs blissfully. She bumps Somyung’s shoulder, like she used to do when they were students.
Yeah, Somyung thinks wryly. Horror.