These Sainted Seouls | ongoing

section two: Chae Yi

She went through his pockets while he was passed out next to her; of course she did: she was Park Chae Yi, someone pretty and clever and half-drunk. When foreigners came to her uncle's nightclub they would lean into her and whisper that she looked like a Geisha; it was conventional praise, so she liked it, just as she liked making any man's blood rise into lust. But the foreigners were so stupid it almost wasn't worth the compliment. She justified it: how were they to know that her grandparents had been raised to not say a word in favor of the Japanese, and that she remembered these old-fashioned things even now because they were the odd, heavy parts of her childhood. Still. A Geisha--a woman of power. I am all this and more, she thought. She was feeling the alcohol sliding down her veins, as if there were minnows and tadpoles leaping up through her and making her head so terribly light. She slipped the man's wallet out of his pocket and flipped it open into her lap. It was leather, Gucci, stamped with some other foreign trademark.

You might think you're different, she thought. But you're just another rich man.

They were in the taxi, whizzing through the bright grey streets, neon coming past the windows in sexual greens and blues and pinks. A giant advert of a model, lit up from the inside, flashed by for a moment, and then slipped away. Another model--and then a trio of iron-dipped skyscrapers. The night like a separate sacred city, something to fade with the dawn.

But not his city. What had he called it again? She couldn't remember. But he knew something about her Second Seoul--about the crackling things that slipped through her reality. He had to be more than he seemed.

In the wallet there was mostly money: careless wads of 50,000 won notes, and then three credit cards. A few slim business cards, all for his father's firm. His driver's license, I.D. She studied the picture closely; he had a cold, dead look in his eyes, and she wondered if that was why he had been so intent on his reflection in the black windows earlier, when they were back in the nightclub. After he had thrown his glass at the department head of Yungheong group. Before she had gotten him drunk and tried to seduce him. He had been staring at the window, then, like he was some sort of brilliant mystery.

"Aish," she muttered aloud, feeling the taxi and the pavement and the quickness vibrating up through her thin heels. She did not have friends, but she knew how girls thought. They all wanted an ice prince, a bad boy with a golden heart. But she knew narcissists: she had a scar to prove it, a thin, slicing line down the inside of her left thigh: the remnant of one particular man that had come to her with promise, and left her with his mind slit open and his skeleton revealed. When you could have anyone you wanted--you got unlucky sometimes. That was it; just unluck.

She poked her red fingernails into the wallet and something came out. It was a tightly folded scrumpled bit of paper: she laid it flat over her dress and made out the characters.

things i haete about my brother

by hyun-ki

Hyun-ki...the name was familiar, but it didn't snap for her until the driver turned the radio up. Momoland faded to D4Y: 소울 메이트 maybe 소울 메이트 destiny baby be my destiny--and she had it. Hyun-ki. So Hyun-ki, the lead singer in D4Y. It had been somewhat of a scandal, she remembered now, because his father owned such a massive conglomerate, and because it was rumored that Hyun-ki had skipped his trainee years and slid right into a guaranteed spot in E&P's newest boy's group. It was all a fabulous corporate deal, of course. This, then, was the brother that had the music career: Chae Yi flicked open her phone and held her wallpaper next to the man's perfect, pallid face. Yes, they could be brothers: there was a light resemblance.

Back to the paper across her lap:

1. he doesn't smile

2. he doesn't cry

3. he makes me hurt when i don't listen

4. he says he can see what people can't but he won't let me see it

5. he says everyone is stupid except for him

6.he doesn't think i can be famous

"Some bad blood," she whispered, almost amused. But she did not want to sit so close to the man now. The longer they were in the taxi together, the more he smelled of death. The swimming liquor in her head was not helping; she leaned into the cold window, trying to make out the street. Almost back to her apartment, in all its lonely cement glory. She was thinking carefully of what would come next, hedging the thoughts in around the dripping alcohol, and so she did not notice the man sit up and look around and start at seeing her. She did not see the dark calculation that crossed his face, or the way he fell into himself. All she knew was that when he grabbed her wrist, she fell into his darkness too.

When the taxi driver flicked his eyes up to the rearview mirror, the back seat was empty.

He swore madly under his breath; swerved the car around.

D4Y was still on the radio, and Chae Yi swore she could hear it falling after them: 소울 메이트 maybe 소울 메이트 destiny baby be my destiny--

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a/n: Thank you for reading if you are reading this!!!!...I wanted to do a bit of a slower chapter for some character insight for Chae Yi, but more drama coming up later. Please let me know if you think the story is too confusing. Writing "sci-fi" (it will be more sci-fi-y later, promise!) is a hard line between keeping the reader engaged with the NEW and the MYSTICAL and also not confusing the heck out of  people. Hopefully, this slower/recap chapter helped.

Please comment!!!!! and vote!!!!! (also, what's your favorite kpop group & bias? I want to know!)