XV
DICHOTOMY
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IN RETROSPECT, THIS WAS A BAD IDEA.
Minni was beginning to see most things that way. In retrospect, the party had been a mistake and her nosiness when it came to Somin's death had been a death sentence.
In retrospect, Minni may have completely gotten Yeosang wrong.
That was what made him so uniquely frustrating. He was the only outlier in The Night. Unreadable. Unpredictable.
He acted out of character so much that it spurred her to do the same, just to up the ante. To stick her neck out for someone she had once been so certain didn't deserve it.
Now, she couldn't be so sure.
The brick wall against her spine was rough enough to scrape at her even through the fabric of the dress. She let it, too afraid to give up her position where she was crouched behind the narrow end of a dumpster.
There was a lot of unnecessary vitriol and aggression to be found in Newhurst. Any scholarship student with a lick of sense knew that, be it from experience or spectating.
Yeosang was not a scholarship student.
He found himself surrounded like one anyway.
Unpredictable, like she said.
She counted four figures—all of them dark smudges just out of reach of the streetlights. Paces ahead, three men formed a circle around the lone outlier—Yeosang.
The violinist had been literally backed into a corner, leaned against a wall. On the surface, he seemed calm. She could not make out his face, but the lazy set of his limbs made him look untouchable. Unreadable.
Minni knew better than that. Even if she couldn't parse it out now, she'd seen his fear, knew it always lurked somewhere within him just as it did in everyone else.
"What do you want?" he spat, voice impressively stable despite the circumstances. The silence grew heavy, broken apart only by the distant sounds of traffic and then, a cold laugh.
Something was swung upward in a split second, clattering against the wall and narrowly missing the side of his skull. The sound bounced off the walls, loud and metallic, ringing in her ears. The tallest of the strangers loomed over Yeosang now, his shadowy form almost swallowed by the others.
"Let's get one thing clear, yeah?" The stranger, decidedly male and very obviously infuriated, hissed. "You don't get to ask questions. Got it?"
Yeosang laughed mockingly, but his voice wavered with each word as if he couldn't get enough air. "A baseball bat? Really?"
Fear rose in her so fast that she clapped a hand over her mouth. It clogged her throat. She had to force herself to sit still.
The stranger dragged the head of the bat across the brick and with each echoing thump over mortar, Minni imagined how much damage getting bludgeoned with it could do. She hated Yeosang, despised him and everything he stood for with every inch of her being.
Not for the first time, she was scared for him too. That dichotomy left her dizzy.
In a rare stroke of luck, the stranger let the weapon drop back to his side. "We're not fucking around with you. Is that clear?"
Internally, Minni was begging Yeosang to shut the hell up, to go along with it so she would not have to witness more bloodshed.
For once, he obliged. "Crystal."
The three men backed away, but the tension did not ebb. It lurked between every ounce of air, like a timebomb slowly ticking down to zero.
"Your dad can't protect you out here," one of the men said, a short, murky shadow on the edge of her vision. Laughter followed.
Something about the dig made her throat close up. It wasn't aimed at her, but it hit too close to home anyway.
"Maybe he wouldn't want to though. With your mom dead and his campaign going the way it is..." The tall one drew in a breath, air whistling through his teeth. "You might be one less problem on his hands."
She swallowed thickly. That had to be public information, but she never thought to look for it. She missed Yeosang's reaction to that, but she could guess it wasn't pretty.
One of the men chortled. "I think you're pissing him off. Look at 'im."
"What? You gonna swing or something?" taunted another.
She tensed, wholeheartedly expecting Yeosang to act on that obvious provocation. He again defied her expectations.
"Are you done yet?" he asked instead. His blasé attitude was just as puzzling as the entire situation to begin with. She didn't know where he got the gall, but god, she wished she had even an ounce of that stupid sort of courage for herself.
The men, predictably, laughed at him again.
She caught the one thing everyone else was missing. Yeosang was slowly slipping his way toward the mouth of the alley. One slow step at a time, in the gaps between sentences where they were too distracted to notice.
The tall shadow tossed his bat over a shoulder. "We're done when we say we're done."
Yeosang hardly reacted at all to that. "What do you want?"
"Ah, this smartass-" one of the men grumbled. Minni couldn't see which. Their forms were all muddled, the three gathering in a more organized formation of looming shadows. The hair on the back of her neck stood up.
The air itself seemed to shift with their mood. Their patience had clearly run out, almost down to the exact second he'd started asking questions. Imagine that.
They'd started to walk toward him, speaking in lower tones that she couldn't quite hear from where she was hidden. A bad, bad feeling settled in her stomach.
She could have chosen that moment to up and leave, to be done with it all. Not for the first time, she stayed. The image of Somin plummeting like a star was seared permanently behind her eyelids. She didn't want a repeat of that night to happen ever again. Not if she could help it.
Her body moved before her mind did. Her hands fumbled about in her clutch. She scurried forward, heart thudding in her ears, each step enough to make her knees wobble.
All four heads snapped in her direction at once. Surprise stiffened their figures, but not a single one had the decency to fear being caught or any other sort of reproach. Then again, why would they?
They had bats. She was just Minni, a half-baked ballerina with a tiny blade.
Now that she was there, stood in front of them, she immediately regretted whatever impulse drove her forward to begin with. She was far from a convincing threat. Her two-handed grip on the switchblade shook with nerves, slippery with sweat. She couldn't protect herself, let alone anyone else.
One of the men laughed, the sound bellowing and echoing off the brick. She didn't even have the energy to feel humiliated.
"Who the hell is this little thing?" one of the shorter ones, cooed. His voice dripped with a mocking sort of sweetness that felt all sorts of wrong on her ears.
Yeosang was stiff at her side, fists clenched and eyes wide. His bewilderment was clear. He didn't know what to say—much less do—with her.
That made two of them.
"Aw. Your little girlfriend come to save you?" All of her alarm bells were ringing as one of them, their unspoken leader, took a step forward. Her eyes dropped to the white-knuckled grip he had on that bat.
The metallic sheen of it caught the light of a passing car. What might that bat look like slick with blood? The thought alone knocked some sense into her.
Fuck it—
She grabbed Yeosang's hand, spun on her heels, and ran.
Minni may have spent her time in the city tiptoeing the line between life and death as if she were invincible, but she was not stupid. This was a fight neither of them could win.
She was no main character, nor a hero. She had no plot armor, just pockets full of spite and an unyielding will to live.
Yeosang had a death grip on her clammy fingers. Somewhere in the chaos, he had pulled ahead of her, tugging her forward as they darted along empty sidewalks past dark storefronts. The thundering footsteps of their pursuers echoed behind them.
She couldn't shake the fear of them breathing down their necks.
She spared only a brief glance over her shoulder, streetlights providing pockets of light among the blackness of night. Even with shaky vision, she could tell. The men were too plain, their clothes too casual to be anything special.
They weren't scholarship students made hired hands like whoever had followed her into Dailee's. No, they looked a little too old for that. They weren't students at all.
The weight of what that meant almost pulled her under. She tripped over a break in the concrete, snapping the heel clean off of a Mary-Jane.
"Come on!" Yeosang righted her in an instant, his eyes as wide as the moon above. There it was again. That same face he'd shown in that damn photo. It only put more knots in her stomach.
She numbly pushed her legs harder, ignoring the burn in her legs as he yanked her toward a set of descending stairs. She had enough sense left to recognize the safety of the subway and hurriedly tuck her switchblade in her pocket.
The station was nearly empty and she noticed that she couldn't hear the footfall of their pursuers anymore. Still, they only relaxed when they managed to slip into a train car just before the doors closed.
She peered through the glass, ignoring the stark fear she saw in her own reflection as the train took off and the station passed them by. They hadn't been followed. At least, not this far.
They fell silent, remembering where they were at once. Their breathing was a little too loud amongst the quiet rattle of the tracks. The car was nearly empty, except for a few passengers who were staring. An older woman clutched her bag a little tighter and it took everything in Minni not to scowl at her.
Yeosang stepped in front of Minni, his body blocking out the bright lights and the judgmental stares of strangers.
She was aware of how crazy they looked, rushing onto the subway this late. One of her heels was broken, her hair was probably all over the place, and Yeosang looked as mean and tired as he always did.
Still, they'd all chosen her to glare at. Maybe she should just count her lucky stars that no one called the police on her.
"Thanks," she said half-heartedly. The words seemed to nudge whatever brief, unspoken alliance that had manifested between them out of place.
He regained his senses impressively fast, dropping her hand as if he'd only just remembered he was holding it. His usual scowl settled into place, but it lost all of its bite. All for show. No real anger behind it.
"I told you to stay in the park."
Of course that was what he'd say. She was stupid to have even half-expected a little gratitude. Instead, he looked at her like she'd grown another head and started speaking to him in another language.
He couldn't figure her out? Good. She was out of her element with him too.
Min rolled her eyes, letting her head thump against the closed doors as she loosed a breath. "You don't tell me what to do."
"Right, I forgot. Stubborn, nosy, infuriating Minni Lee doesn't ever listen."
She sneered. "Not to you."
He fixed her with a look, but fortunately, said nothing. Neither of them had the energy to argue. Not after tonight.
She was coming to realize that they were similar in that regard. Quick to burn, even quicker to fizzle themselves out. The rest of the ride was spent in silence.
They emerged ten minutes later onto another nearly empty platform. She limped after Yeosang unthinkingly, trying to get her stupid, cracked phone screen to turn on. In all of her paranoia, she'd forgotten to charge it.
He turned to face her, nodding his head at a bench. "Wait here."
"Why?" She blinked at him quizzically, looking between him and the empty bench. For all she knew, maybe they had hit him with the bat and she hadn't heard it. Because he'd have to be out of his mind to think she'd let him leave her alone with no way of getting home after all of that.
He sighed and gestured at her broken shoe. "You can't go anywhere like that."
She followed his gaze. Aside from the heel missing on her right shoe, the backs of both feet were rubbed raw, blood spotting frilly, white socks. The sight made her dizzy and she was quick to look away.
She calmed marginally. "Oh."
"Yeah. Oh," he deadpanned. "Sit."
Her face soured at his tone. He unfortunately walked off, disappearing behind a row of white tiled columns before he could see her flip him the bird.
She fidgeted with her charm bracelet while she waited, trying and failing to ignore the barrage of stares of people as they passed. It was late, and the number of passersby was few, but that fact did little to comfort her.
Yeosang came back after fifteen minutes or so, a pair of fresh white sneakers hanging from one of his hands.
"Put these on," he urged, setting them by her feet. "You'll make it worse if you don't."
When she only stared at him mutely, he moved to kneel as if he would do it himself. That was enough to spur her into action. She slid her aching foot into one of them, face pulled into a grimace.
"I can't pay you back," she grumbled, not looking at him. Something about tonight felt different, and she knew nothing would be the same anymore. Not when it came to them. "So don't ask."
"I know." To her surprise, his voice lacked the mocking intonation she had grown to expect from him.
"Good."
He shrugged. "Good. Let's go."
···✧···
FLUORESCENT LIGHTS BUZZED OVERHEAD.
They flickered, the silence loud enough that she could hear it. She flinched, instinctively kicking her foot out when a hand grabbed her ankle.
"Sit still," Mingi scolded, starting to disinfect the cuts she had worked up on the back of her feet. Blood tainted the soft edges of cotton balls. It was almost nothing compared to how much had leaked out of Seungmin last time she was here, but it made her stomach turn anyway.
She glared at Yeosang. The man was standing silently in her periphery, lost somewhere in his own thoughts. She hadn't expected him to drag her here after leaving the subway. He hadn't called his driver again, just wordlessly hailed a taxi and helped her into the convenience store while mumbling something about her limp.
She wanted to argue with him about it—maybe demand to be taken home or to a hospital if he thought it was so serious—but she was sure he had his reasons. Even if he never so much as voiced them.
Mingi looked up at her, likely catching the way she was biting her lip raw.
He drew a hand into his pocket, tossing something to her. She barely caught it in time, eyes widening as she honed in on the logo of a candy brand. She was struck with the image of a fussy child being coaxed with sweets at the doctor's office.
"What-" She frowned, and he used the distraction to dab at her wounds some more. She hissed sharply, but didn't move this time.
"Focus on that. Eat one. Read the back. Something." He raised a brow when she stared blankly at him, but his features remained soft. "Blood makes you squeamish, right?"
Minni opened her mouth and closed it when no words came.
She didn't know what to make of the fact that he'd remembered that. She didn't even know how to handle kindness anymore.
Yeosang didn't react to this information, to the fact that she and Mingi had already met. Which only confirmed her first theory. They did know each other. That also meant that Mingi had probably snitched on her the second she brought Yeosang's name up.
She wrinkled her nose and tried not to be petty about that.
"Stop moving."
She gritted her teeth, narrowly resisting the urge to kick both of them. "I'm trying."
It struck her as odd that Yeosang was still here. She could have been off his hands the second they left the subway. Yet, he hovered, like a ghost or a guardian. She couldn't decide which. Not when he always wore that stupid scowl like he hated the world and everyone in it.
"There," Mingi murmured, pulling her back to reality a moment later. "All good. Not broken. Probably just rolled it. You should be fine if you stay off it for a bit."
She looked down, observing his handwork. The cuts had all been bandaged and while her ankle was still sore, he looked confident enough that she felt no need to argue. Not that she had the strength for it now anyway.
"Where'd you learn to do that?"
"School."
Her eyebrows shot to her hairline. She'd prejudged him. She saw now why he and Yeosang were acquaintances, or maybe even friends. Just like him, Mingi was nothing like what he looked either.
"So you're studying to be a doctor, then?"
"For animals, yes." He caught her skeptic frown and his lips twitched into the ghost of a smile. "Humans and animals aren't all that different."
As illogical as that statement was, she couldn't argue when it felt like there were wolves on her heels daily.
"If you're both done, we should probably talk," Yeosang interjected, his eyes heavy and arms crossed. He looked exhausted. Like everything he'd been running from caught up all at once and the fight had run out of him.
Mingi looked between the two of them, decided whatever he saw was better left untouched. With a grunt, he stood and left the small employee's lounge to return to his usual spot behind the cash register.
In his absence, Yeosang left his place in the corner to take his seat. The room was too tiny. The air was too quiet. The chair squeaked as he pulled it across the tile and she tried not to think back to the memorial, the grief she'd seen painted all over him just hours prior.
When he sat, he was close enough that their shoulders brushed.
It hit her then that she had no idea how to approach this. It was like standing in calm waters, waiting to see if they'd stir enough to drag her under or not. She hadn't even begun to touch the tip of the iceberg that was Yeosang, and she was already out of her depth. She wasn't sure what she'd find if she went any deeper.
Tonight had humanized him too much.
The quiet was pulled taut between them, a band close to snapping. His fingers stalled on the bandages on his fist and his face slipped out of its usual stoic state as though barely holding something back.
"Why did you do that?" he blurted.
"Do what?"
"Jump into a fight that wasn't your own." His jaw tightened. "What was it? Heroics?" His face soured. "Pity?"
Minni wouldn't have framed it that way, but she figured it didn't matter what she said. A thick cloud of doubt would hang over anything she spoke. Everyone at NHU had the habit of looking a gift horse in the mouth, herself included. Trust issues were a given in a place like this.
She could have been honest and told him. She refrained. There was no way she was going to go into detail about just how much Somin's death haunted her. How much the ghost of a dead girl swayed so many of her decisions.
She frowned. "You could just say thanks like a normal person instead of interrogating me. Does it even matter?"
"It matters." He rubbed exhaustion out of his eyes. Min found herself scowling, entrenched in unwanted guilt for the second time that night.
"They could have killed you," she blurted in lieu of a real answer.
"Probably not." His voice sounded confident enough, but his eyes seemed too shifty for her to trust it.
"Not even you believe that." She turned the candy box over in her hand, staring at it intently and pretending to read the nutritional content on the back. His eyes were too intense, made worse by his proximity. "They must really hate you."
The weight of his stare settled on her forehead, dragging across her face in some nonverbal analysis. "You're less tolerable when you dance around what you mean. Just ask."
She sighed, but when he made no further objections, she continued to try her luck. "Do you know who those people were?"
"I don't know." He sighed, mistaking her unwavering stare for suspicion. "Sorry if that's not good enough for you. I forgot to shake their hands and ask for their names while they were threatening me."
"How rude of you," she said monotonously.
He blinked, thrown off kilter by the humorless joke. Still, a little tension seeped out of his shoulders and then her own by association.
Her eyes dropped to the bandages wrapped around his knuckles. They were always on him, just as much a part of him as his eyebags. She had assumed he was picking fights like the rumors said, but she had been wrong before.
She'd been wrong a lot lately.
"Is this common?" she asked.
A note of bitterness wriggled its way between every word he spoke. "What? Getting jumped or being sent to my ex's memorial with someone who thinks I did it?"
Hearing it all out loud stung even if it was the truth. She averted her eyes to the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.
"You know what I meant."
"Do I?" he muttered, raising an eyebrow almost boredly. This was another side of him she despised. No one paid her much attention and she preferred it that way, but Yeosang always looked like he was trying to place her. "As evil as you think I am, I can't read your mind, Minni."
A part of her clambered inside her chest, poised to argue, but he was right. She had believed he was evil. She at least had thought he was capable of pushing Somin off a building in anger. A part of her still wanted to believe it. It was easier to reckon with that way.
Yet, the more she heard him speak, the less likely it seemed. Juyeon was either a fool for not seeing that or even more of a cruel, lying manipulator than she'd initially thought.
"Why..." she trailed off, reaching for words to form the question that had been bothering her for a while now. It was like a burr that had burrowed into her side. "Why stay?"
His eyes narrowed. "What?"
"They send people to jump you. They taunt you with her death. Obviously, they want to destroy you. So why are you still hanging around them after all that?"
The silence thickened. His face was infuriatingly straight, his eyes blank at a spot on the far wall. Just as she had resigned herself to not getting any answers, he finally spoke.
"It's not that simple. You're underestimating them."
Underestimating them?
She frowned, feeling as if she was just dunked into a vat of cold water. It was her personal belief that one of them had killed Somin and clearly, they had the means to do it again. Even if she was doing a poor job at saving her skin, she thought she understood the danger well enough.
Yeosang was just as wealthy as the rest and, regardless of his reputation, just as influential. If even he couldn't walk away, Minni might as well be as good as dead. Sensing this, her throat tightened.
"How? Can't you just...stop the game?"
A breath left him as he gnawed at his lip in silent deliberation. She had never seen him wear uncertainty so openly. If his anger was like fire, his fear was like kindling. She was burned in seconds, the curiosity flickering to life in her.
He was bad news, undoubtedly, and she felt a little too eager of a journalist at that moment. For reasons that went beyond Juyeon's orders.
"We're not the only one's playing."
With that, he stood. Whatever part of him had opened up shuttered just as fast. She spiraled, mind exploring a million avenues to decipher what he meant, but she kept hitting dead ends.
Before she could think better of it, her hand grabbed at his wrist to stop him from leaving. She needed answers, even if she knew he wouldn't give them to her. Even if she knew she shouldn't ask.
She'd never been able to help herself when it came to him.
He frowned deeply, parsing over every detail on her face. "What now?"
She hesitated. Reaching for him had been instinct alone, but backing away now seemed more embarrassing than seeing it through.
Her mouth parted and her thoughts left her freely, foolishly. "You're...not like the others. I want to know why."
His chest rose with a low breath. He knew exactly what she meant. If he wanted her to fix all of this, to abandon whatever twisted machination Juyeon was brewing, she needed a reason to trust him.
A reason he would not give.
He pried her fingers off of him with a surprising amount of care. "I only said as much as I did because, for whatever reason, you stuck your neck out for me tonight. I don't owe you anything."
She reeled back, ego predictably hurt by the immediate rejection. "I don't owe you either."
"No," he whispered. "You really don't, Minni."
She stared at him a moment longer, his tone more genuine than she'd ever thought him capable of. She couldn't put into words what she saw in him then, but it mollified whatever protest she could possibly scramble up.
He'd turned to leave when she blurted out, "Wait, Yeosang." His eyes were in heavy slits, a clear mix of irritation and exhaustion clinging to his every feature. They lost their edge when her next words came. "I'm not...I won't say a word about tonight. To anyone."
She thought back to Somin's memorial, the grief on Yeosang's face forever immortalized in her head. It was too intimate a moment to share with Juyeon, especially considering the lengths Yeosang went to act unaffected. Minni did not like him, but she still had enough morals not to kick a man who was already down.
She almost didn't hear the muffled sound of his voice as he left the room. The two words she'd been pestering him over finally reaching her ears—
Thank you.