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The troublesome part of this is that there’s still beauty in the world. He’ll miss that, won’t he? Next year, when the cherry blossoms bloom, or the water lilies. He’ll miss the girls in summer with their hair pulled away from their beautiful necks, their legs bare under sundresses. It’s been years since he had a girl hang around longer than it took to finish a transaction, whether the payment was in cash or in a blowjob or whatever. No one wants to be with him for long, you know, washed up musician, coasting on fame he never achieved. He’s a fucking shameful excuse for a human being, actually. Maybe his old man was right: His mom should’ve sucked him out of the womb. He should never have been.
Well, he’s about to not be. Subong takes a long pull from his little fifth of liquor. Is it a funny situation, the one he’s in right now? Could there be inspiration on it? He tips his head up to look at the sky and halfheartedly expels a couple breaths through his teeth in an attempt to make a beat, you know, just in case he could conjure something up in the last few minutes of his life, but there’s nothing there.
He remembers the early days, the turn of the century, when he was a teenager and everything felt exciting. He was writing tracks, producing, making moves behind the scenes. God, he was still using his government name back then. He slept in the studio, ate convenience store shit, took the bus. He’d run errands for some of the manager-nim types, delivering this brown paper bag to this restaurant or that envelope to that bathhouse. That was his education, how money was actually traded in the city, how it was made in the industry.
Then in the 2010s a track he wrote hit, like hit big. It got performed by some poser idol group on a fake-ass music show with piped-in crowd noise, but the people loved it, because the people love pig shit. After that, after his years of running errands for shady dudes, the staircase to Seoul’s underground opened wide and welcomed him warmly, gave him a performance space, gave him drugs and girls, some boys, and stacks of fucking cash. Just wads of it, bills and checks, he could fan himself with everything he was bringing in. He took on the persona of Thanos because it sounded cool and he was a bad dude in the movies, but it made sense, you know, kind of a fuck you to his old man who used to beat the shit out of him and his mom. You don’t fuck with Thanos.
He used his money to buy his mom a house and a little dog to keep her company. For himself he got some ostentatious shit that’s hilarious in hindsight. Chains and jewels, rings, dumb shit. He bought himself a crown. Fuck, that’s funny.
As he leans against the barrier drinking his nasty strawberry liquor, Subong laughs aloud. What a failure. All around him, from the night sky to the bottom of the river, there’s beauty, there always has been long before he was born, before his parents, before Joseon, before Korea had been formed. Before the world existed, there was a perfect silent universe. Subong was granted time on this earth to do something significant and he bought himself a silly fucking gold crown. A crown for a clown. He’d sold the dumbass thing a year ago for a fraction of the original price, closer to the emotional value of the thing. Rock fucking bottom.
He’s been vaguely aware of the late night crew on the bridge. Couple nurses walking home after second shift and some homeless dudes just wandering through with their carts. He doesn’t pay them any mind and likewise they don’t look his way. None of them would be able to stop him. It’s quiet now. He should probably be getting on with it. Soon the sun will start to rise and he’ll —
“Excuse me.”
Subong looks to his left and there’s just a guy. There’s a guy there. Subong answers, “What.” Can’t this guy tell he’s trying to kill himself after some Socratic internal dialogue? Damn.
“I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t but by any chance, are you him? Are you Thanos?”
Are you fucking — “Whoever you are, you’ve got bad timing, bro.”
“I knew it was you,” the guy says. He sounds mild, not like an enthusiastic fan at all. Maybe his son’s into him, he knows him from that. Maybe he just followed Subong’s bankruptcy proceedings in the news like everyone else in this fucking country. “I’m pleased I found you when I did, goodness, you could’ve jumped and we wouldn’t have met.”
Subong feels an itch in his spine. Who the fuck? He screws the lid back onto his fifth and shifts his grip to the short neck. He’s opening his mouth to speak when the guy interrupts him: “Before you, what, bash my brains in with that bottle? I think you’ll really want to talk to me.” He balances his briefcase between the railing and the barrier and clicks it open. There’s money in there. The type of money Subong used to make in the rap game, tidy stacks of bills. There’s got to be 10 mil in there. He could just smash this creep’s head in and make off with it, but then he’d have an assault charge, another court case, and he’d end up in prison with no chance to end his life cleanly.
“Right,” he says. He sets the bottle down. “Go quick,” he says. “I’ve got stuff to do.”
“Ah.” The man produces two paper squares from the case. Lmao. This dude’s wild. What a fucking world. “I’d like to play a game of —“
“This look like a playground to you? Fuck off.”
“There’s money in it. A hundred thousand if you win. You’re going to die anyway,” he reasons. “Why not try your luck?”
The funniest part is that like a minute ago, like thirty seconds ago!, Subong wasn’t thinking about money. For the first time in probably ten years, money hadn’t even entered his mind. He was thinking about the carp in the river and the flowers on the bank, his mother’s worried eyes, girls with short hair, the way gold glints in the sun. He was thinking fondly of a world he was in the process of shuffling off like an overcoat. Now, though, there’s money in front of him. That ₩10m could fix a few of his most urgent problems, right? He could wipe the worry from his mom’s face and get the cruelest creditors off his back.
He says in English, “Okay.”
The man replies in kind, “Okay. I’ll let you play first.”
Subong wins the first three games. The guy’s a gracious loser, paying him on the spot, peeling bills off the stack in the case. Every win sharpens Subong’s hunger for another one and then another and another. He’s fucking good at this, he sees sparks with every success. He isn’t even thinking about what’ll happen if he loses when he loses.
“Hey,” he shrugs. “You’re shit outta luck, pal. You picked the wrong guy to gamble with. I’m broke.”
“Pardon?”
“Broke. What, are you deaf? I haven’t got shit.” For emphasis, he turns out his pockets, then shoves them back in.
“Oh,” the guy says. He has this expression that’s not a smile, but it’s not not a smile. “I’ll accept payment with your body.”
Whoa. “Whoa. I don’t —“ He’s on the edge of saying that he doesn’t fuck strangers for money, he’s not a whore, but the man cuts him off.
“Please, Choi Subong-ieya. Don’t lie to yourself.”
His anger sparked in an instant, Subong wants to live. He’s pulling his fist to his chest, ready to hit, ready to uppercut this motherfucker, sock him right in the jaw, when there’s a sound and his lights dim out for a sec. He’s been hit.
“Hey, fuck you.”
“See? Now you don’t owe me anything. That’s all I mean. Did you think I meant something else?”
“You hit me, what the fuck.”
“It’s your turn, Choi Subong.”
Subong takes the blue tile and throws it full-force to the ground where it glances off the red tile and then lies inert on the pavement.
“Ah,” says the man. He shakes his head. “Another loss, I’m afraid.”
Subong puts his fists up. Like hell he’s letting this dude smack him again. You don’t fuck with Thanos. His heart rate’s up, his veins and arteries singing with life, life, life. In a flash he doesn’t see coming, the man lashes his leg out to crack against Subong’s knee, and down he goes. Shit, fuck, motherfucker, goddamn that hurts like he’s been hit with a steel pipe. He lands on the red tile. The man clucks his tongue at him and says, “You need to move so I can play.”
“Gimme a minute, man, you just shattered my fucking leg.”
“It wasn’t that bad. It distracted you from the slap to the face.”
That makes Subong laugh. It’s unexpected, embarrassing. He shouldn’t be giving this guy an inch. The man reaches down and retrieves the red tile and takes his turn, and, blissfully, a loss. The game goes on like this, with Subong trying his best to strategize a game of chance. Sometimes he wins, he takes the money and shoves it away in his pocket where no one can reach. He’d shove it in his underwear if he were wearing any.
“You know,” said the man as he examined his tile. It’s his turn, and Subong is impatiently waiting for him to take it so he can know whether or not he’ll be slapped. “There’s a place where you can play these games and make a lot more. Billions, from what I hear.”
“Don’t talk to me about gambling dens. I know every one in the city. Every laundromat, every run-down noodle joint. I learned there,” he switches to English, “the house always wins, motherfucker.”
The guy puts on that expression again, which is no expression at all, amd yet it’s enigmatic, condescending. “These are different,” he assures Subong. “They’re a hundred percent chance. No cards to count, no way to cheat.”
Billions, is what the guy said. Even his biggest night in Macao was a few hundred million. Tonight, even with a busted leg, he managed to whip this guy’s dumb ass more than he lost. It might be worth it, right? He’ll take a couple weapons with him so he’ll actually be ready if he gets jumped. If he could win billions, he could pay his debts off easy and then get out of this stifling country. Go someplace like LA or Phuket, Lagos, Buenos Aires. Someplace he could get drunk and toasted, insane food, maybe get his dick wet, and then write some good shit, some good songs like he used to write. He could do it right this time, start a new clock for himself. Rebuild his armor and earn the name Thanos again. He can see it all clearly, clear as day, the postcards he’d sent to mom. Billions, man.
Subong regards the man. He’s still mild, unruffled. The moon has traveled since they started and now he’s shadowed from the opposite side. His complexion is placid, it’s a mask he’s put on. Subong can’t divine a single thing about him, if he’s telling the truth or playing a prank, recruiting for a cult, or what’s happening. He just knows he’s been offered a way out of his current situation, an actual ladder to the surface. Then he can pick his way back to the yellow-brick road.
He can’t put much pressure on his leg, but he manages to hobble up to the guy. “I go there, where you’re talking about, and it’s just a gambling house, I’m gonna find you and tear your balls out. Okay?”
“Of course,” comes the easy reply.
A business card is extended and accepted, they shake hands, and the man collects the paper tiles and closes his briefcase. He and Subong observe each other in silence for a moment until the man finally says, “Cheer up, Choi Subong. There are plenty of reasons to live.”
He departs. Subong watches him go, watches him turn, watches him disappear in the purple streets of Seoul. What he fuck. What the fuck. There’s so much beauty in the world.