777 Ways

CHAPTER 52 - COMING HOME

FROM: The Bartender Mark Tuan

TO: The Bestselling author Park Jinyoung A.K.A my Korean prince

Annyong, my love!

Are you awake yet?

Have you dreamt of me?:)

I'm writing you this letter because I ought to answer your questions. The ones you've been dying to hear since our reunion in that hotel room. The ones I'm too ashamed to answer directly to your face. This piece of paper shall clarify all your doubts. It might make you sad, and content at the same time. It might seal our future together, or apart from each other. Whatever it was unsaid before, it's described here. All of it.

You're a writer for a living, so I'll assume you have read many books. I'm not sure if you read Clavell though. There's a passage in one of his books that say:

"A man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where."

"I pondered these lines a lot. I wondered what this saying really meant and I interpreted it my own way. I thought about it most of the time I spent away from you. I asked myself if the past me would even contemplate the idea of having a single heart. Throughout years of my life, I considered myself many things, a cold machine, an insensitive doll, a merciless monster...None of these could have a heart, let alone 3. Only after you walked into my life I realized that I still had a pulsing organ pumping blood throughout my body. But if I really have 3 hearts, I believe you have already seen at least 1% of each. I carelessly let you get close to my first heart when you approached me with your biased opinions of who I was. I lied to your face, only showing you a fake version of me that you already expected to see. I recklessly let you reach my second heart when I accepted to leave America with you, when we became more than just enemies, and fell in love with each other. Even though I didn't trust you with all my demons, I let you have a glimpse of my third heart too, and you momentarily had a peek through the darkest spots of my core. It didn't scare you, and it didn't make you turn away. I was impressed. You have already seen most of me, all my three hearts, even though the third one I'm supposed to hide it from the world.

After I left, I wondered which heart I would present to you whenever I saw you again. I wondered if you would be satisfied with any of them, the shallow one, the warm one, or the dark one. I came to the conclusion that it didn't matter which one I showed you first, because you would always see through them. Sometimes, I dwell on the fact that you've learned more about me than I did myself. Since the day I met, you made me realize some things about my adrift existence. I do have feelings. I am able to love and receive love. It's difficult to let that happen, but I can do it. I love you now, I loved you before I left, and I don't think I'm capable of stop loving you in the future.

One year and seven months away from you proved that I am not an insensate being anymore. Believe me, I really wanted to come back to you, but I had old scores to settle. I confronted my past while I was away, I reconnected with people whom I prayed I would never see again. I came to terms with my forgotten sins, and tried to find some sort of redemption too.

I know you're anxious to know where I was and what I've been doing all this time I've been away from you. Where should I start? One important fact that you must know is that the Collector's son, Daisuke Hara, the Japanese man you met at the hotel, is not like his loathsome father. He also has an 'organization', but it is different from Ito's. He tries to rescue victims of human trafficking. I must say that most of the time his 'methods' are much better than the police's, and not always conventional. He uses the inheritance his father left him to do some good in this world. I was surprised to hear his real intentions. He believes that his good deeds might erase the sins of the Doll Collector. I've been helping him, using my 'old skills'. But this time I aimed to locate people who were exploited and trafficked. Hyunjin was one of those people. He was my last 'assignment'. The hotel's security was quite strict, and since we had to make sure that the kid we were looking for was there, we needed to get someone inside that building. That someone was me. It wasn't Daisuke's idea to turn me into an escort, it was mine. He reminded me of what escorts did in that place, and I told him I didn't care. I convinced him I could do it. Then he said that if I did that, he wouldn't ask anything of me anymore. I guess he knew that the guilt I felt for being a Doll Hunter in the past was leading me to do whatever was necessary for this particular mission. Deep down, I felt that if I rescued Hyunjin, I would be rescuing myself.