Loveboat in 서울

𝟚𝟜

All that's gone. I don't care what baggage they dragged over the ocean. They have no right to make me carry it the rest of my life.

As I enter the lobby, catcalls and whistles shatter the air.

A hundred eyes leer from every corner: guys at the Korean chess game, the pool table, the foosball box. The automatic doors glides apart to admit Sohee, prim in her tangerine dress and arm in arm with Kwong Jiyong, a guy dressed in Chanel attire, and another guy whose name escapes me.

Sohee halts in the doorway, takes in the scene, and smirks.

This is what I'll face the rest of my stay. The price of my last days of freedom.

But even as I whirl toward the stairs, as I grip the rail, intending to bolt for my room, a flood of anger surges through me.

These guys know me.

They've broken out with me over the catwalk. Danced at the clubs and even gotten advice on med school from me, for crying out loud.

How dare they treat me like a piece of meat now?

And how dare Sohee?

Releasing the rail, I march up to her, ignoring the boys.

"That was my property," I say. "You had no right."

Sohee makes lewd kissing noises. "Please don't play innocent little victim."

"I'm sorry." A flush rises in my cheeks. I'd underestimated her. In so many ways. "But that silk rug in our room is also mine. So you don't play victim either."

She stiffens.

I glare around the lobby, and suddenly no one will meet my eyes. "If you guys want a live viewing someday from a girl you actually care about, then maybe instead of doing a hundred push-ups a day and ogling a photo that doesn't belong to you, you should man up and be the guy who deserves one. So anyone with my photo, hand it over now."

I hold out my hand, palm up. I hate that it trembles.

No one moves.

My heart sinks. Can they really be so piggish and low?

Then Sungwoon crosses from the foosball table and places a photo in my palm.

"Sorry, Suzy," he murmurs, and drifts away.

My entire body trembles but I keep my chin high as seven more photos grow in a stack on the first. There were only a dozen or so guys in the lobby after all.

"How many are there?" I hold up the stack.

Sohee's lips thin into a line. She won't say.

"Don't even think about sending these to my university. Or Dartmouth will get a letter, too." Her eyes flicker—with fear? Anger? Still shaking, I shove the stack into my pocket. "Look around, Sohee." The lobby's emptied out. "No one's left on your side."

Then I walk away.

ʕु-̫͡-ʔुྉ*ᴸᵒᵛᵉᵇᵒᵃᵗ✲ﾟⁱⁿ*。⋆ 서울。⋆ *

I drop by the infirmary, only to be informed by the nurse that due to her flooded store room, thanks to the latest typhoon, she had to send Joohyuk and Kang to the local clinic. My photo has grounded me for life. I can't even go after them.

The afternoon darkens to evening as I wait anxiously on a couch of silk pillows in the boys' lounge, three doors down from Joohyuk and Kang's room. I don't know who will return first, of if they'll return together, just that so many things have gone wrong since the staff fight and Joohyuk's fingers on my chin: I've lost Odette and my parents are pulling me home. Then there's Kang, and the fistfight, and whether Joohyuk's angry with me for doing the one thing he asked me not to do, and why couldn't he freaking stand up to his family for Rosie in the first place, and why I took that God-awful photo, and how many are still out there and is one going to end up on social media or make its way to University of Phoenix, and did I subconsciously sabotage myself by losing Odette because it would only make the titanium prison of the burglar's lantern more unbearable, and can I ever, ever go back to being the daughter my parents want me to be?