777 Ways

CHAPTER 7 - THE MORNING AFTER

The next morning Mark had already packed most of his stuff. Since last night, he had already decided to leave the penthouse. He wasn't really surprised to realize that Park Jinyoung was just like all the other men he had met in his life. The author just happened to be richer and much more handsome. He cursed himself for letting his best friend get involved with the author's cousin. Yugyeom looked like a good kid, but Mark knew that Bambam and him had no bright future together. They were from totally different worlds. The Korean's family was obviously pretty well off, and Bambam didn't even know if his junkie mother was still alive. The Thai young man spent years of his life surviving on leftover food from garbage, while the Korean didn't look like he ever had to struggle to keep food on his table. Mark had seen a similar story happen before, and he knew it had no chance of a happy ending. They were better off without those two foreigners in their lives.

Park Jinyoung was still an unnerving mystery to him. A nagging puzzle he wasn't ready to solve. Actually, he didn't even want to. He couldn't tell if the man was serious about going after Bambam, yet, he couldn't risk jeopardizing his friend's safety in that place. Getting them both out of that penthouse was his priority now. He convinced himself that accepting Yugyeom's generosity was a mistake, but wishing to trust Jinyoung's shifty ways was too naïve of him. The American realized that he had gotten ahead of himself when he accepted the Korean's hospitality, and that kind of behavior was pretty much unlike him. Mark wasn't one to make snap judgments, he'd usually analyze each situation carefully, after all, life had already taught him to follow the old and wise warning, 'believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see'. He couldn't understand why he allowed the writer to alienate him from that thought. A blank check, a roof under his head, a job offer, and a trip to the other side of the world? All of that out of the goodness of Jinyoung's heart? For the first time, in a long time, Mark had let his guard down. For him, it was very clear now that since the beginning, that damned foreigner just intended to have fun with him, because he just saw him as some easy American whore. He believed that Jinyoung had probably got off at what he saw at the backroom of 777 Ways. Mark couldn't help but assume that the writer subtly sought to take Daniel's place. The same old story. Special favors in exchange of essential needs. Mark wondered why he didn't see it coming. Red flags were raised, but the real wake up call only came last night, when the writer came up to him and said to his face that the only work he wanted from him was to 'relieve some of his stress'.

He wasn't expecting that the uptight, closeted author would utter something like that. The way he talked about Bambam made Mark's blood boil. He could barely sleep after that blatant threat. His imagination ran wild. Was Jinyoung perhaps into sex tourism? What if the Korean planned to sell him and Bambam to Asian costumers as soon as they landed in South Korea? Could Jinyoung be secretly involved in sex trafficking? Well, his Wikipedia page failed to fucking mention that! Being famous and wealthy never stopped anyone from being a criminal, right? It just made things easier. Just because someone is really good at something, and loved by others because of their brilliance, it doesn't mean they are good people. Moreover, they can be talented at bad stuff too. Perhaps, Jinyoung's extracurricular activities provided him some sort of inspiration for his novels. Who knows? Maybe whenever his fans believed he was in hiatus, he was busy forcing human beings into sexual slavery. If that was the case, the author was worse than an asshole then. And Mark had seen that kind of worse. He also knew how to deal with them. But he'd rather go away than handle Jinyoung. He had to figure out where he would take Bambam now. A knock on his door distracted him from his distressing thoughts. He tensed a bit before he heard Yugyeom's voice calling his name. Mark hesitated but told him to come in. For some reason, he didn't think that boy could present any kind of harm to him or Bam. He didn't seem to be as two-faced as his cousin. The American assumed that the kid had no idea of what human trafficking was about. He didn't think Yugyeom had ulterior motives when he brought them to that penthouse either. He couldn't be in cahoots with the evil writer, but he could be manipulated into helping his cousin without even knowing what he was capable of. Yugyeom could be inoffensive, yet, he was part of the problem.