(for sara_evac) White Lies [1/2]
For:sara_evac
Title: White Lies
Pairing: Jongin/D.O
Word Count: ~17,000 words
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language and some violence
Summary: Jongin is a misguided youth with a twisted sense of justice. Kyungsoo is a newly appointed police detective with an idealistic notion of justice. The two skirt around dubious identities and expectations to find both each other and themselves.
Author’s Note: I wasn’t originally planning to write a long story, but this kind of took on a life of its own at some point. I hope you enjoy it!
To Jongin, money is confined to the black, printed numbers on checks and digits on blinking ATM screens. Money flows as much as technology allows it to, and it remains painfully intangible on bank statements and electronic receipts, tempting and sullying millions with its convenience and corruption. Jongin knows he’s been spoiled by its accessibility when Sehun discreetly slides a check across the table and the trailing zeros scrawled in the box no longer surprise him.
“This is from last week?” Jongin asks, and Sehun gives him a slow nod while leaning back in his seat. He’s wearing sunglasses inside a restaurant, a habit Jongin refuses to acknowledge due to its sheer absurdity, but the combination of the intimidating, tinted lenses and Sehun’s slicked back hair is undeniably striking.
“I insisted on cash, but beggars can’t be choosers.” Sehun adjusts the frame of his glasses so they sit perfectly aligned on his face. “It was easy money. First timers at the gambling house.”
“Did we split the profits with the house already?” The muffled chatter of diners and sound of clinking silverware against porcelain plates seem to diminish slightly, and perhaps it’s his imagination, a reaction spurred on by paranoia, but Jongin instinctively lowers his voice anyway. “We kept up our end of the deal, right? You remember what happened last time.”
Sehun remains unfazed and simply pushes the check further towards Jongin. “I’ve dealt with it. We split the profits from that night fifty-fifty, just like what we agreed upon.”
“Good.” Jongin slips the check into his wallet, checking the amount one more time before it disappears into its envelope of fabric. He’ll deposit it tomorrow when the bank opens again. He’s learned early on not to carry along extra baggage, and although this kind of money isn’t palpable like cold, hard cash, it’s traceability will only pose complications in the long run.
“You’re always wound up about these deals,” Sehun points out, and he pauses when the waiter glides over to their table and sweeps away their empty dishes. When the waiter disappears behind the kitchen doors, he continues. “We’ve never slipped up before, so I don’t know why you’re so worried.”
“I don’t worry,” he responds quickly, but he knows immediately that it’s a lie. “I think about consequences.” Jongin fiddles with the unraveling seam of his wallet. The leather is a worn, faded black, a sign that it has served its time well. He remembers receiving it from his father as a gift for his seventeenth birthday, and for some indescribable reason, he hasn’t been able to part ways with it. That, Jongin thinks, is the difference between Sehun and him-his tendency to stray into sentimentality and Sehun’s willingness to let the past go. Perhaps this difference is relative, only measurable with the passing of each significant deal, but in the last few months, Jongin can’t push away the sensation that there’s a chasm slowly opening up between them.
Sehun lets out a smug little scoff, one that would grate at anyone’s nerves because Sehun is younger than most in this sort of business, but Jongin’s grown accustomed to his partner’s indifference. “You haven’t changed one bit, Kim Jongin. It’s like we’re still in high school.”
“But instead of trading food during lunch period, we’re making dirty money.” Jongin smiles, and tilts the corner of his lip upwards. “Who would’ve thought I’d end up a rebel like you.”
“What can I say? Our goals changed.” The check for their dinner makes its way onto the table. Naturally, Sehun doesn’t make a move to take it, and Sehun’s pervasive, knowing look aimed towards him prickles his skin, even through his dark lenses. With a sigh, Jongin takes out his wallet once more to retrieve a few crumpled bills.
“Are they going to change again anytime soon?” Jongin asks, frowning at the disappearing cash currently in his possession. “We weren’t always rebels you know. You’ve been doing this longer than I have, but even you weren’t one to begin with. It’s not a lifestyle someone can adopt long-term.”
There’s a silence between them that’s only accentuated by the thin veil of customers’ murmurs tables away. Sehun’s mouth is pressed into a straight line, and it’s an oddly juvenile expression on a face shaped by the bridge between adolescence and adulthood. Jongin knows he’s said something wrong when Sehun assumes his notorious poker face.
“This is real.” he finally replies quietly, and maybe those were the words Jongin prepared to hear-they have echoed in his mind during each weekly trip to the bank-yet actually hearing them from Sehun confirms the budding hesitation that keeps him from taking the checks slipped to him. “I don’t plan to stop. We’re in this together, right?”
Sehun’s muted confidence is blinding, reassuring. Jongin nods and Sehun smiles as if there weren’t a hitch in their conversation in the first place. Money is invisible, a fantasy, an elusive idea that festers in the mind. Jongin is used to the lack of permanence, the lightning-fast exchanges and transactions. Currency is constantly in motion, and he’s convinced he’s simply easing it along, filling in deficits by relocating and redistributing. Nothing should be a surprise anymore, and rarely does anything go wrong, as he’s been reassured. But there’s an uncertainty blooming behind each of his calculated schemes that he can’t deny, and he doesn’t see the same uncertainty plaguing Sehun’s decisions. He doesn’t know if he’s the only one who can see this doubt dividing them, pooling liquid in the cracks and crevices of what they used to be, until they’re oceans apart.
“So we’re good then. Let’s get drinks later?” Sehun stands up and brushes the lapel of his crisp blazer. “I’ll pay this time, since you covered dinner.”
Jongin bumps against his shoulder as he walks past Sehun towards the exit of the restaurant, and he doesn’t want to admit that it’s getting harder to do so because they’re no longer the same height. “Really, you’re offering to pay?”
“Offering-that’s the key word. I wouldn’t mind if you paid.”
“You brat.” Jongin laughs, and for once, he’s grateful that at least that hasn’t changed.
x
Jongin wants to believe that he’s mastered the art of deception. It requires a natural talent he realizes he possesses. He switches between facades like they’re masks of black and white, pulls them so tightly around himself that they start to feel like a second skin. Sometimes, during evenings when he’s a little drunk on the rush of flowing poker chips and whiskey, he has to think twice before remembering that he still exists as Kim Jongin and not Kim Jongin, world-class poker player, or Kim Jongin, top-ranking businessman; this forgetfulness, he’s learned, is a welcome inevitability for a con man.
He had started off small, performing pigeon drops at corner cafes. He was a high school student with too much time on his hands when he wasn’t helping out at the family restaurant-a borderline delinquent, but a charming one. The cashiers never saw anything out of the ordinary. They were too focused on the 10,000 won bills Jongin waved around and his rapid-fire orders for muffins, raisin bread, and the obligatory morning Americano. He flashed his charismatic smile, radiating innocence, and they didn’t suspect a thing, even after they were left a few bills short. It was all too simple, to the point where Jongin was convinced that there had to be drawbacks, and maybe if the cashiers had scrutinized him more, looked past the pressed uniform and bright eyes, they would have seen the tremble of his fingers and the false confidence worn thin like transparent film.
But no matter how many blueberry muffins he pilfered, no matter how many 10,000 won bills he managed to save, Jongin always walked away with a fraction of what he had obtained. He never forgot to split his pastries with Old Man Kim, who swept and cleaned the local storefronts, amassing piles of littered flyers on the ground at the end of each day. When Jongin stopped to hand him his coffee on his way back home, he felt the rough calluses on Old Man Kim’s hands, worn from years of hard labor, and he assured himself then that the guilt eating away at him was worth it.
Trips to neighborhood cafes escalated into more complex schemes. Jongin had never planned to do more because his conscience warned him through peripheral thoughts that bled to the forefront of his mind, but every time he lapsed into another round of scamming, he convinced himself that desperate times called for desperate measures. There was a fine line between conning out of amusement and conning out of necessity, and although he didn’t fit in either category, opting to remain in a grey zone designated for his own case, meeting Sehun again had eliminated any room for neutrality altogether.
Jongin’s confidence tricks took a drastic turn on one balmy August evening. He was officially working, no longer a fresh high school graduate still green around the gills on the streets of Seoul. He had dropped by a middle tier bar in upmarket Apgujeong after his long afternoon shift at Blue Record. It was a bar Chanyeol frequented and strongly recommended solely because his friend was the bartender and was able to whip up no-nonsense drinks in the blink of an eye. Jongin had been reluctant to go at first, partly because he would be going by himself while Chanyeol manned the register for the evening shift, but his apprehension mostly came from a strange kick of adrenaline in his veins that told him something was going to change that night. The bartender did indeed deliver his specialty concoction as promised, discount and all after Jongin briefly mentioned Chanyeol’s name. The drink was pleasantly sweet in his mouth, but he still felt out of place in a crowd limited to office dwellers and regular businessmen. He was a boy in an oversized work polo, frantically grasping onto the fringes of maturity as it rushed on by. It wasn’t until he felt someone clasp a hand onto his shoulder that the foreignness melted away.
“Hyung, it’s been a while.” And there he was, his old friend.
Life after high school had done good things for Oh Sehun. He still had the same gangly physique, the same half-moon eyes, and the same impassive expression, but there was a guaranteed self-assurance in his movements that hadn’t been there before. Jongin swatted his hand away with an easy grin and retorted something along the lines of you’ve never called me hyung before, so why start now? Later, when Sehun’s brought him back to his table, they slipped into an uncomplicated conversation, as if it hadn’t been three years since they’ve last seen each other at graduation. Although Jongin wanted to make up for the time they’ve lost, possibly waxing nostalgic with old memories of pranks in the classroom and endless complaints about the workload, he stowed away the urge because it was clear that they weren’t quite the same round-faced, rebellious youths they were years ago.
Sehun introduced him to a world of deceit that evening. He claimed it was strictly business on his end, that he was simply an agent for anonymous clients and faceless benefactors, but the slight smile that crept onto his face told him otherwise, reminding Jongin of his own every time he had successfully pulled off his small scheme at the coffee shop.
“It’s good money,” Sehun told him. “It’s enough to support you and your family. You should give it a try.” He hesitated for a fraction of a second before continuing. “It wouldn’t be your first time.”
Deception was enticing, a double-edged sword shrouded in the appeal of risk-taking and toeing blurred lines for the sake of success. The allure coexisted with his conscience, and even if his guilt resurfaced every now and then to conceal everything else, Jongin knew the allure never truly disappeared.
“Okay.”
x
On most days, Jongin loses himself in the rush of urban madness. He floats from one destination to the next according to his shifts at work and haphazard meetings for cons, but every now and then, he stops to breathe because he’s anchorless with the occasional brief respite. Jongin finds his sanctuary away from Gangnam’s bustling streets and Seoul’s concrete jungle in the form of a quaint bar. Woodstock is tucked away in a row of neon signs and expansive advertisements, and although it’s easy to stroll right past the door, Jongin knows exactly when to turn and enter because Gangnam is as familiar to him as the back of his hand. When he steps into the bar, the warm air from the heater is pleasant against his cold cheeks, Jongin feels like he’s setting foot into a different time period to a November evening forty years ago. The wooden chairs and tables glow orange in the cozy lighting. On the walls are shelves upon shelves of vinyls and old posters with frayed corners-the hidden library of a music lover’s dream. The edges of the vinyl cases are worn from frequent use, and even as a repeating customer who’s seen the same scene time and time again, Jongin still has the urge to ghost his fingers along the spines and soak in the legacies of recent and bygone artists. Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” flows through the speakers of a turntable near the front-he only knows it because Chanyeol insists on looping it in the mornings at the store-and the acoustic melody stirs something vaguely comforting around in his mind.
There are more customers than usual judging by the way their animated conversations in Korean and English float over Bob Dylan’s voice. A cluster of foreigners sitting by the bar spontaneously lets out noisy peals of laughter that seem to shake the ground. Jongin slinks past them, making his way to the end of the bar to the seat he always chooses, but he pauses when he sees another man’s back instead. He’s alone, bundled up in his black, wool coat and studying his drink as if it’s the most intriguing thing in the world, and Jongin doesn’t have the heart to ask him to move, even though the seat he’s currently occupying is his favorite spot. An icy breeze slips through the entrance as the door opens again, punctuated by the owner’s hearty welcome, and there’s a flash of a recognizable face-thick eyebrows and focused, piercing eyes. Instinct drives Jongin to quickly turn away and pull out the chair next to his routine one. He holds up a finger to the bartender and orders his customary beer, careful to keep his voice low.
When Jongin operates his scams, he takes preventative measures to make sure that he doesn’t come across the same mark twice, both intentionally and unintentionally. There are boundaries lies can’t erase no matter how misleading his disguises are, and those are boundaries defining human memories. But here, in this microscopic niche of a larger-than-life city, he’s found Wu Yifan, one of the victims from his more recent scams. Although Jongin isn’t facing him, he feels Yifan saunter by, barely a hair’s breadth away from his back. The taste of adrenaline, of lingering uncertainty, is exhilarating on the tip of his tongue.
Gambling, Jongin remembers as the bartender sets a full glass and bottle down in front of him. It’s always gambling that catches the unwary ones who are too accustomed to winning, but if there’s one thing Jongin has learned since he’s entered the business, it’s that no one can win all the time. He had swindled a hefty sum of money out of Yifan a few nights ago at the gambling house, surprising both Yifan and himself. He took Jongin as a novice, too fresh-faced and young to manipulate each factor of the game, too inexperienced to emerge victorious. And maybe that is the case, but Jongin knows never to play games without an advantage in the first place. He doesn’t operate on sheer chance alone. Sehun had taught him how to maintain a perfect, detached expression, and after a record of ruining every gambling scam he’d tried to initiate, Jongin finally managed to pull one off.
He remembers the complex combination of reactions that appeared on Yifan’s face at the time, but the most striking one was his impressive look of disbelief. “It’s too bad it had to be you.”
The man beside him clears his throat audibly. “Did you say something?”
“No, sorry.” Jongin brushes away his embarrassment with a sip of beer. The liquid slides smoothly down his throat, just the way he enjoys it. The stranger’s gaze is fixated on him now, eyes wide open like dark marbles, and perhaps it isn’t the man’s intention to stare so blatantly, but Jongin still wonders if the man recognizes him from somewhere, an unsuspecting victim of another previous scam. “I tend to say things I don’t mean to say.”
The stranger turns away, giving a reserved nod in reply. He’s studying his drink again, some concoction of gin and tonic. His hair is inky black, even in the warm lighting, and he almost blends in perfectly with the rest of his attire. “It’s alright. We all do that every once in a while.” A noncommittal, polite response.
Jongin finds himself relaxing in his seat, traces of alcohol unfurling and warming his belly. Yifan’s deep voice slices through the air from somewhere behind him, loosely shielded by other people’s chatter, and it prompts him to shift in his seat. “So, what brings you here-”
“Do Kyungsoo.” The man offers a hand, which is cold from the condensation on his glass. He hesitates for a fraction of a second before proceeding to shake Jongin’s hand. “Have we met before?”
“Kim Jongin,” he returns, making sure his grip is firm and assured. “I don’t believe we have.”
Kyungsoo tilts the corner of his lips upwards in contemplation. “My mistake then. You look familiar for some reason.”
“It’s not the first time someone’s said that.” Jongin shrugs and pours the rest of his beer into his glass, filling it up to the brim again. “I do come here often, so maybe you’ve seen me around and I didn’t notice, but it seems unlikely. I would have noticed if someone’s taken my usual seat at the bar.”
There’s a hint of a smile on the verge of appearing on Kyungsoo’s face, and Jongin has the urge to see it break through his reticent, unapproachable exterior. “I wasn’t aware of barstool claims.”
“They aren’t official,” Jongin points out. “I just happen to be attached to the chair you’re sitting in right now.”
“Is that why you’re talking to me?”
“No.” The bartender drops the piece of glassware he’s polishing and it shatters behind the counter into a thousand, unseen fragments. The sound is jarring and violent, and Jongin still can’t shake the sensation that he’s being watched, so he slinks lower in his seat, hoping it comes across as unnoticeable. “As much as I like my regular spot, you seem interesting enough.”
Kyungsoo looks unconvinced, which Jongin thinks is justifiable because every sentence he says sounds suspiciously like a part of a painfully long and unintentional pick-up line. “I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not.”
“Consider it a compliment,” Jongin says, and Kyungsoo finally does let a smile escape, one that’s toothy and shines through his heart-shaped mouth. It’s infectious, and Jongin is torn between turning away and forming a smile of his own.
“Are you avoiding someone?” Kyungsoo asks, removing the lime wedge from the rim of his glass and gingerly setting it aside on a napkin. “A scorned ex perhaps? I wouldn’t blame you for striking up a conversation with a stranger then.”
“Is it that obvious?” The music changes to something upbeat, and the grittiness of the guitar riffs provides ample background noise for Kyungsoo to lean in a little closer. “No, I’m not avoiding a scorned ex, but I wouldn’t say my situation is any better.”
“Sounds like bad luck.”
Jongin laughs, maybe a little too loudly, and the bartender glances at him quickly in the midst of cleaning broken shards of glass. “Some people believe in bad luck when it seems like everything in the world is conspiring against them one day. It’s kind of unreasonable when you think about it.” Poorly played cards, lost change, misplaced trust-it all comes down to bad luck, and that’s why people like Jongin exist to perpetuate the cycle, blot out losses, and reap the benefits.
Kyungsoo scrutinizes the remnants of his drink and sloshes the liquid around. “So you don’t believe in it?”
“No,” Jongin responds, “of course not.” Kyungsoo sets down his drink and gives him a quick, unreadable look.
Jongin decides Do Kyungsoo is a bit of an enigma, unremarkable on the surface, but frighteningly perceptive. He’s wrapped up in monochrome shades of black, a shadow nursing a drink fit for the typical white-collar worker and sporting a neat haircut to match-the picture-perfect image of the average civilian. Jongin has stopped noticing people who look like Kyungsoo a long time ago. They’re on every street corner and rush hour train, surviving redundantly on mundane schedules and fixed on a one-way path towards what they hope is a stable future and the fulfillment of their dreams. Every one of them is a shadow like Kyungsoo, hurrying in the same direction so they don’t miss the last train of the night. Jongin ignores them now because he knows he can’t quite force himself into the same rigid mold, can’t blend in as another prospective employee confined to cubicles and office buildings. He’s learned to stop trying the moment he called Sehun after their encounter, trading in one lifestyle for another.
In the pockets of silence between them, Kyungsoo simply nods. “So, Kim Jongin, what do you do?”
Jongin lifts his head in mild surprise. “What do I do?”
“Besides linger in bars and avoid people, I mean.”
“I work at my family’s restaurant,” he replies. “And during the times I’m not doing that, I work at Blue Record.” The response has been rehearsed and repeated so many times that it rolls off Jongin’s tongue without a second thought, and although he’s stating nothing but the truth, Jongin feels like he’s spilling dulcet lies instead.
That seems to pique Kyungsoo’s interest. “You work at a record store?”
“In Apgujeong. It’s easy to miss.” Another gust of early winter wind passes through as a group of people shuffles through the exit, still flushed and rambunctious from their evening of drinking and socializing. Jongin catches Kyungsoo buttoning up his coat as indiscernibly as possible. “What do you do, Do Kyungsoo?”
Kyungsoo coughs and shrinks into himself a little more until the door closes and the warmth in the bar is slowly restored. “I’m a detective. Surprising, right?”
Jongin’s breath catches in his throat for a fraction of a second and there’s a nervous tenseness winding up in his chest coupled with a telltale rush of a thrill. Did he slip up somewhere? Did Sehun? This is the moment he’s been anticipating, he thinks-meeting the catalyst that would unravel his plans, his routine. It isn’t the inevitable scuffle that would result from a run-in with Wu Yifan and his crowd. It isn’t even the consequences that closely accompany a failed scam. Never did he expect that the person who could potentially bring him down would seem completely unassuming and ordinary.
Jongin picks up his bottle and tips it into his glass, only to realize that it’s empty. He hopes Kyungsoo doesn’t notice the slight tremble in his fingers. “You work for the police?”
“Just recently,” he says. “I handle the cases the officers higher up don’t want, mostly ones related to average civilian crimes.”
“It sounds boring.”
“Sometimes it is, but I convince myself it isn’t because there’s a reason for every case.” There’s a spark in Kyungsoo’s wide eyes and a hard edge of conviction in his voice. “I believe in maintaining justice in all situations. It’s why I wanted to become a detective in the first place.”
“I see,” Jongin says, but he doesn’t see. In fact, he will never see eye-to-eye with Kyungsoo because they’re already from two entirely different worlds, destined to meet discordantly again and again. He meets Kyungsoo’s eyes, catches a glimpse of the intensity embedded within them. “So what is justice to you?”
“I find truths hidden behind lies. It takes time to peel away the layers to reveal the facts, but I don’t mind investing the time because I believe every person deserves the chance to prove his or her innocence,” he says, “and that includes you and me. Isn’t that what justice is about?”
Jongin doesn’t have an answer.
x
Kyungsoo takes off first when their conversation reaches its natural end, claiming that he doesn’t particularly enjoy small talk on a regular basis.
“Neither do I,” Jongin had told him. “People should say the things they mean.”
Kyungsoo hummed in agreement. “I have to admit, though, I don’t mind small talk with you.”
Kyungsoo leaves in his place a glass still a quarter of the way full and a somber quietude that keeps Jongin from gathering his thoughts properly. He probably won’t see him again, and if that’s the case, then he doesn’t have a reason to worry about the long-standing consequences he’s tried to push aside in order to accomplish his assigned tasks. But the glint buried in Kyungsoo’s eyes upon the mere mention of justice stays with him as he waits at the bar for another hour, carefully watching for Yifan’s retreating back through the door before he moves to leave, and it continues to stay with him when he finally returns to his apartment for the night. It’s still there when he closes his eyes, and he wonders what exactly are the truths Kyungsoo’s referring to if the lies have already been in place for so long.
There’s pounding at his door at an ungodly hour. Jongin doesn’t stir at first, but when he hears the distinctive pattern of the knocks, he shakes off just enough sleep to let Sehun in. He’s covered in a light dusting of snow. The icy flakes blend into his light hair and cling onto his bangs, and if Jongin had the sufficient energy to do so, he’d tell Sehun that he looks like a picturesque poster boy for the holiday season.
“Did something happen?” Jongin suppresses a yawn and walks over to his heater. The warmth is soothing and makes him even drowsier.
Sehun fiddles with his scarf and drops onto the sofa. “I think they’re on to me.”
“They’re what?” The uncertainty that rises and falls every time he’s with Sehun returns at full force, and suddenly the room feels too warm. Jongin turns down the heat a notch. “I thought we were being careful.”
“We were, but hear me out. I may have borrowed some money.” Sehun is staring at the grey, peeling wallpaper, the scuffed up floor of the apartment; he’s looking everywhere but at Jongin. “I know-I know I shouldn’t have, but it was necessary at the time.”
“What was it for?” Jongin asks slowly. “Who lent you the money?” But deep inside, he already knows.
“Damn it, Jongin. I honestly didn’t know-”
“Who was it?”
“They were loan sharks.” Sehun’s voice cracks and he bites his lip. Just like that, he morphs back into his high school self, and the boldness he’s built up over the years, the foolish bravery Jongin had once wished to emulate, dissipates into nothing. “I was borrowing money to fund the next con, but the interest was so high, and I couldn’t pay it back in time, and shit, I’m sorry.” He rubs at his eyes with the back of his hands. “I’m sorry.”
Jongin doesn’t waver, even though he’s disturbed by the cracks showing through in their well-established routine, cracks that are as thin as the strands of a spider web, but still detrimental in the end. “What are you apologizing for?”
“They’re going to look for you when I disappear. They have ways to track me down, track both of us down. Even if it takes a long time, they have what it takes.” He lets out a winded sigh.
They’re both silent. Sehun doesn’t move, doesn’t even lift a finger as he anticipates Jongin’s response. “How long do we have then?”
“About a week for me before they launch a full investigation, since I was-I was being careless. But it should be a while before they start looking for you. A few months. They might not even find you if you lay low.”
“Lay low,” Jongin mumbles. “Alright.” A numbness spreads throughout his body as he sits at the other end of the sofa, and it takes away from the initial panic. He shouldn’t be so calm about the situation. It’s Sehun’s first slip-up-their first slip up because Sehun’s actions are usually calculated and deliberate enough to cause a chain reaction-and the stakes are unavoidably high, but it’s as if he’s extracted himself from the situation and all he sees is Sehun seething in tumultuous confusion within the confines of his dingy apartment.
“This isn’t how things are supposed to turn out,” Sehun notes, jumping back to his feet and pacing from one end of the room to the next. “I thought I planned everything out. I took all the usual precautions when I secured contacts, but somehow they caught me.”
“Things happen. Maybe it’s bad luck,” Jongin says a little too bitterly, shrugging, and he thinks Kyungsoo still has it wrong because bad luck doesn’t exist for people like Sehun and him when they already have an unrestrained fearlessness that drives people to err. He’s never been a superstitious person anyway. “I never imagined we’d run into loan sharks.”
“I didn’t either.” Sehun replies, grimacing, and the distress continues to weigh him down. “It’s not safe for me to stay here in Seoul. I was thinking about going to Beijing. I have some friends there who could help.”
“Beijing is far,” Jongin comments, but what he truly means is, Beijing is too far and why are you leaving me here? “Do you even speak Mandarin?”
“No, but I’d rather be lost in translation than mugged on the street.”
“You can still get mugged on the street in Beijing.”
Sehun pins him with a weary look. “But no one knows me. There’s promise there, a fresh start. I can call you when it’s safe, but we have to wait things out first.”
There’s a pattern in the way things turn out, Jongin discovers, and it’s not due to simple misfortune. The prospect of uprooting his life for Sehun materializes again and again, one too many times for it to be a coincidence, but Jongin still listens, still nods along and relents when Sehun takes his phone from him and wipes out his contact information for extra security. He still pulls out the bundle of old blankets from the closet and sets it on the sofa for his friend because it’s been done in the past; it’s almost expected. And he still waits to hear Sehun’s labored breathing lull into something softer before he returns to his own bed.
“You’ve always been reckless, you brat,” Jongin had told him, throwing Sehun his phone. “There are risk-takers who touch the line, but don’t cross it, and then there are idiots like you who barrel straight into things without seeing the repercussions at all.”
“Believe me, getting us both caught is the last thing I want,” Sehun had replied, hitting the delete button on Jongin’s phone, and in the blink of an eye, Sehun’s name had vanished, as if he’d never existed at all.
x
He’s been told to stay reserved, to stop conning altogether, so he does. Jongin rejects offers left and right-deals guaranteeing rewards dripping in opulence, but dangerous deals nonetheless-and he receives plenty more due to Sehun’s absence, but unlike Sehun, he knows when the appropriate time is to take the plunge. Jongin’s never been able to hack away at an ingrained regimen without feeling incomplete. He still has phantom limbs that sense everything and reach out at nothing in the distance, the result of bad habits that die hard. It doesn’t occur to him that he’s adjusted well to the business in a span of a few months, but it becomes clearer the longer he’s separated from fraudulence. Sometimes, he’s still immersed in it when he makes his long walks between his apartment and Blue Record-he doesn’t have money to spare for the taxi anymore and he doesn’t dare to touch his accounts at the bank-and he thinks he sees Sehun with his platinum hair, walking on the opposite side of the street, but it’s an impossibility because Sehun is long gone in an entirely different time zone.
But other times, he’s lost in a crowd of shadow pedestrians, and when he turns the corner, he has to pause mid-step because he’s convinced he’ll suddenly run into Kyungsoo, who blends in perfectly with everyone else in a collective sea of black on black. Something about Kyungsoo, the way he speaks about broad themes with sweeping, romantic generalizations, makes him stick, even more so than Sehun does. The more Jongin goes over their conversation in his mind, the more perplexed he becomes because no person can be that dedicated to a concept when he hasn’t experienced it first-hand. Maybe, at one point, Jongin begins to hope that they’ll cross paths again, but he catches himself from following that thought further.
For the first time in a while, Jongin has free time, too much of it for his own good, so whenever his days are vacant, he drops by the family restaurant. When he enters, he sees that nothing’s changed, not that he expected to see anything different. Everything from his childhood is still in place-the delicate scroll paintings hanging on the walls, the carved wooden characters on the placard in the front, even the pungent aroma of spices wafting from the kitchen-and Jongin bites his lip as a wave of homesickness creeps up on him surreptitiously.
“Hello.” His mother hurries to the front of the restaurant, not bothering to look up when she’s focused on balancing a bowl of steaming samgyetang. She looks tired, the lines on her face a little more prominent than before, but even now she’s as determined as ever. Jongin doesn’t realize he’s missed the familiarity until he naturally makes a grab for the samgyetang in assistance. “How many-oh, Jongin.”
“Sorry, mother. I’ve been busy these past few weeks. Something came up at work.”
“I don’t remember having a son who only visits once a month,” she says, tilting her head away from him. “You must be mistaken.” There’s a smile playing on her lips, though, and Jongin doesn’t flinch when she swats at his head. “What did I tell you about not visiting often enough?”
“I know, I’m really sorry. Now where should I put the soup?”
Home is a complex abode. When Jongin returns home, he returns to forget and recuperate, to temporarily abandon anticipated movements, sums earned, and justified deals that don’t seem quite justified enough, but just as he steps through the door, his reasons for leaving falter and he doesn’t quite remember what they are anymore.
“How has father been?” Jongin asks later when the last few customers are on their way out. He dips a rag into a bucket of water his mother gave him and starts to wipe down the tables. It’s a soothing, methodical chore from his childhood.
His mother heaves a sigh and sets down her broom and dustpan to sit down at a nearby table. Beads of sweat glisten at her hairline, but Jongin doesn’t find the restaurant particularly warm. “He’s doing alright. His knees are hurting less these days, but the doctor still recommended him to avoid heavy lifting. You know how your father is, though. Even when everyone in the world tells him not to do something, the workaholic goes ahead and does it anyway.”
“He’s stubborn like that.” He dips the rag back into the bucket, wrings out the water, and wipes. Rinse, lather, repeat.
“He’s just like you,” she adds, and Jongin grins. “He’s headstrong.”
“He didn’t work today?”
“He only works half days. You would know if you came by more frequently,” she admonishes gently. “He’s upstairs sleeping right now, but he would’ve been excited to see you. Both of us are always happy to have you home.”
A knot forms in his throat, and Jongin tries to swallow it down. “I admit I’ve missed helping out here. You and father have been running the restaurant for years now. Aren’t you tired?”
“We can take care of it,” his mother assures him, and she stands back up slowly to ease her cracking joints. “No matter what happens, we’ll stand by this place because it’s home.”
“Home,” he echoes. “Right.”
“I should be asking about you. How is work going? You don’t talk about your new job much. All I hear about is that music store. What is it called again-Blue Music?” She grabs his chin with firm fingers and examines him with keen eyes. Up close, Jongin can see that age has definitely left its mark on her without him noticing, but even with deeper crow’s feet and greying hair, his mother is still remarkably beautiful. “Look at how thin you are. I bet you aren’t eating proper meals.”
Jongin brushes her away and resumes his scrubbing, and the lump in his throat only grows larger. “It’s Blue Record, mother,” he points out, and she dismisses him with a smile and shake of her head. “My work is hard to describe. It’s all business. The workload is going to be lighter these next few months,” he mentions. “I can drop by more often, just like you want. And I can wire some money over to you to cover any outstanding fees for the hospital visits or the restaurant.”
She sucks in a breath and pushes a table out of the way to sweep the area underneath it. “You do plenty already, you silly boy. Ever since you were in high school, you’ve always been worried about money.” She reaches under the chair by Jongin’s feet with her broomstick, and the bristles scratch against his ankles. “I know you want the best for us, but more than anything, we just want to see you.”
“Well, I’m here now.”
His mother clicks her tongue and hands him the broom and dustpan to finish off the rest of the restaurant. “You are. But we want to see you happy.”
“I am,” he insists, and he’s certain of it because he can have anything he desires if he searches hard enough, but the way he forces the words out sounds odd. His mother can pick up on it too, his hesitation and the way his voice comes out unevenly, but she chooses not to remark on it.
“Finish sweeping for me, okay? Since you showed up today, I’ll make sure to get as much work out of you as I can.” She dusts her hands with finality and tucks the loose strands of hair that have fallen out of her bun behind her ears. “I know I don’t say this a lot these days, but you’re always welcome to come back home.”
“I know.”
x
Jongin had almost lost his home the summer after his graduation. The events that led up to that one night were like something out of a Thursday evening drama, complete with culminating debts and empty threats, an avoidable situation dragged out as messily as possible, and all Jongin could do was watch from the sidelines as the casualties multiplied.
At some point, the restaurant was losing more than it was earning, and to balance out the expenses, Jongin’s father had borrowed money. He had tried to search for reliable companies to take loans from, ones that other nearby restaurant owners swore by, but the monster hidden in what seemed like a simple, foolproof plan soon reared its ugly head.
Jongin had never seen his father cry until that night. He was woken up by the sound of shattering glass, a strangled yell, and then deafening silence, but he wasn’t sure at the time if he was surfacing in reality or trapped in the realms of a lucid nightmare. When he crept down to the first floor to investigate, he saw that his parents were already there, standing between the gaping holes that used to be the restaurant windows and the staircase where Jongin was hiding. There were broken tables and chairs strewn everywhere, perfectly orchestrated chaos topped off with millions of shards of broken glass. A burglary, Jongin had thought, compelled to find out more, but his father’s rough sobbing had glued him to his spot. He realized belatedly that there was a well-dressed man standing at the entrance. The first thing Jongin noticed was the snake curved along the contours of his neck and up his defined cheekbone, imprinted on his skin in black ink. The door had been blown off its hinges as if a whole pack of men had mowed it down rather than one person.
“I don’t have the money yet.” His father’s voice was nearly indistinguishable, muffled by his tears. “Please, give me more time. I beg you. Please.”
His mother stepped forward towards him, shoulders shaking, when his father collapsed on the ground, limbs folded up in a haphazard bow. Jongin’s mind swam with possible ways to intervene-run up and fight, scream, or kneel on the ground next to his father and beg for reasons unknown in front of a man he’d never seen before-but he wasn’t able to budge a centimeter, and the swimming in his head only intensified. He might have blacked out from the shock, which he thought was a shame because he could have done something, anything. His mother found him huddled on the last step, her eyes red and her cheeks tear-stained.
“Jongin, what are you doing here?” His mother asked. Her hand was warm when she combed through his hair with quivering fingers. “Did you hear everything?”
Jongin didn’t respond, but there was a mutual understanding, and that was enough.
The subsequent days were hardest for the business. Word on the street was that their restaurant was responsible for a few extreme cases of food poisoning. They lost customers by the dozens, and by the following week, only one or two actually made it through the repaired door before turning back, intimidated by the restaurant’s total vacancy.
“We can’t live like this,” his mother announced one day, and it was probably meant to be conveyed in secrecy to his father, but it was loud enough for Jongin to overhear from the next room over. “We have to fix this situation soon or else we’ll have to close down for good.”
“I’m trying. I have everything under control.”
“No you don’t. They’re going to come back again. They won’t stop.” A sigh had permeated the wall between Jongin and his parents, and Jongin thought he’d never heard so much exhaustion embedded in a drawn out breath before. “Think about Jongin. His future. We can’t do this to him.”
The conversation broke off when Jongin moved away from the wall, but he’d heard enough.
Time eventually healed the damage inflicted upon the restaurant. Through a collective effort, they paid off their debt, bit by bit, in exchange for a few sacrifices. Jongin had long given up on personal savings-he told himself he still had years to work anyway-so instead of stashing the money away like usual, he presented his meager paychecks from the music store and a little additional money to his father at the end of every week. He was rewarded with a grateful smile and a pat on the back each time, but it wasn’t something to be particularly proud of. His two sisters, who had moved out a while ago, also tried their best to chip in what they could. One of them was on the path to marriage, but she postponed her plans to help out the situation at home.
“It’s alright,” she’d insisted when she visited to assess the state of the restaurant, “I can’t turn my back on family.” And Jongin understood because he’d give all the money in the world if he could to erase the image of his father on his hands and knees, holding back muffled sobs, but it was already permanently seared into his mind.
The customers returned gradually, trickling back in groups as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened and all the scathing reviews of the restaurant were for naught. Jongin’s father made the necessary repairs to the cracked windows and destroyed furniture, and soon, everything was put back in their designated places. If Jongin hadn’t been there to witness the destruction in person, he would’ve sworn that the door they replaced was the same one they’d had for years. But even when he performed the same motions as before, scrubbing away at the food scraps on new tabletops and pushing in the heavier, improved chairs, Jongin was afraid that the ordeal would repeat itself, that the chilling man with the snake tattoo would return and crush their lives underneath his feet a little more because he didn’t administer an adequate punishment the first time around.
His family was simply a blip on the radar, a dot on the face of the earth. It was a harsh reality check-society was never truly kind; it never played by its own rules. Since that was the case, Jongin believed he didn’t have a reason to follow them either.
x
Jongin may be dubious about bad luck, but he can’t quite question fate in the same way because it sneaks up on people in the most unexpected ways. His mother had given him the afternoon off to rest, and although Jongin relented at first, offering to take plates back to the kitchen, she had chased him out with a spatula coated in gochujang. On his way out, he sees one customer lingering near the entrance, waiting to pay for his take-out meal, so he spares a few minutes to help him. Something in his chest springs to life when he recognizes his large, observant eyes.
“Kyungsoo?” Jongin rings him up quickly, and Kyungsoo dumps a handful of coins into his open palm. The brush of his fingers against Kyungsoo’s is barely detectable, but Jongin jerks back from the contact.
“I didn’t know you work here. Is this your family’s restaurant?”
“It is. I don’t come here as often anymore, but I still try to help out when I have time.” He rifles through the bags of cartons to find Kyungsoo’s order and finally picks out the Do scrawled on the top in his mother’s bold handwriting. “Are you on a lunch break now?”
“Actually, I have the rest of the day off.” Kyungsoo begins fidgeting with the edge of his carton when he receives it. “This usually doesn’t happen, but my supervisor’s wife went into labor today and he was feeling generous.”
“I thought detectives like you wouldn’t have time to pick up take-out. I guess I was wrong.” Jongin suppresses the laughter directed towards Kyungsoo’s confusion.
“It’s a rare occasion, but it happens.” Kyungsoo bites his lip, musing as if he’s carefully piecing together his next words. “Are you going on a break soon?”
Jongin gives him a knowing smile, the same smirk that delights café cashiers and provokes scoffs from everyone else. “Why? Did you want to talk? More small talk?”
Kyungsoo blinks at him. “Well, honestly, yes, because I don’t feel like I’m suffering when I’m engaging in small talk with you.”
“You’ve caught me at a good time then,” Jongin unties the apron wrapped around his waist and neck and drapes it across the chair of an unoccupied table. “I was just about to leave.”
They walk aimlessly down a few blocks, talking about nothing in particular as they breeze past bustling shops and flocks of university students returning to their campus after lunch. Kyungsoo, Jongin finds, is pleasantly quiet at the right moments, a natural conversationalist. After Sehun’s disappearance, he’s grown accustomed to the same circle of people, the immutable routine day after day, and although he’s appreciative of the interlude in his high-paced life, Kyungsoo’s reappearance is a welcoming change. Kyungsoo still carries with him a hint of danger, an intimation of dire ramifications, but it’s offset by everything else-from the way he clutches his take-out box to the way he seems to hum under his breath whenever he isn’t speaking. As they walk together, side-by-side, the remnants of any suspicion Jongin harbors melt away.
“I thought a lot about what you said last time.” Jongin rubs his hands together in the blistering cold and tucks them into his pockets. He regrets not bringing a pair of gloves with him. “I don’t think I know anyone who sees justice the way you see it.”
“Really? You think about these things a lot when you’re working in a field like mine.”
“It’s very idealistic.” Jongin glances at Kyungsoo and sees him burrowed nose-deep in his thick scarf. “Maybe I’m just not as optimistic as you.”
“What do you think then?” Kyungsoo asks, lifting the scarf away from his face to take a deep breath. He coughs a bit when he breathes in the icy air, and Jongin finally lets his laughter bubble out. “It’s so damn cold today.”
“I don’t know if I should tell you,” he replies, and Kyungsoo groans. “It probably goes against your entire detective philosophy.”
“Go ahead,” Kyungsoo challenges. “I want to hear it.”
“You might not want to talk to me anymore,” Jongin jokes.
“I doubt it’s that offensive, but go on.” Kyungsoo prods him with the gloved hand that isn’t carrying his cooling food.
“I think justice only exists when it’s favorable to the people on top. To ordinary people like me, there’s no such thing as justice.” Jongin stops walking when Kyungsoo slows down. “It must be awful to hear, right? I just shattered your philosophy.”
Kyungsoo shakes his head and exhales, letting out a stream of white condensation, and from a certain angle, it almost looks like Kyungsoo’s breathing out flurries of fine snowflakes. “That’s not awful at all. I respect your opinion.”
“That’s it?”
“What do you mean?”
Jongin turns around until they’re facing each other on the busy sidewalk. The pedestrians behind them veer around them with annoyed expressions, but he pays them no mind because he’s suddenly bursting at the seams with a strange urge to tell Kyungsoo everything he’s not allowed to say, everything he’s been storing and fighting from building inside him. “We think differently, not just about justice, but about a lot of things. There’s not a lot we have in common. You’re a detective after all, and-”
“Ha, Jongin. You have a lot of stereotypes about us detectives.” Kyungsoo nudges him out of the way to keep walking forward. They’ve walked far enough to spot the Han River in the distance. “We don’t sit around and pass on judgment whenever we feel like it. There’s a delicate process involved. A lot of lies blend in with truths, and all we do is try our best to separate them to make a case clearer.”
“Do you enjoy it? Your job?”
Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I do,” he says, but the hesitation reveals underlying, unspoken things. “I enjoy a lot of things and my job is just one of them.”
“What else do you like?”
“Music,” Kyungsoo replies, a slow smile spreading across his face, and the way his face lights up makes Jongin feel like he’s watching something special unfold before him. “Sometimes I like to sing, but singing isn’t meant for me.”
“You know,” Jongin adds, “when you tell me more about yourself like this, it’ll help break apart those assumptions I have about detectives. You don’t seem as boring as you look anymore.”
Kyungsoo nudges him a little harder, nearly pushing Jongin into a woman walking from the other direction. “I thought you said I was interesting.”
“Mildly,” he corrects him. “But you’re definitely more interesting now.”
There’s a strong gust of wind that whips at Kyungsoo’s scarf and numbs Jongin’s cheeks until he feels the rawness deep in his bones. The weather is already slightly overcast, but a patch of dark clouds blots out the straggling rays of sun, an ominous indicator of rain or snow, and it turns down the vibrancy of the world around them.
Kyungsoo shivers and shrinks into his oversized coat. “I should head home soon. It’s going to snow again.”
“Do you need me to walk you back?”
“It’s okay, I’ll call a taxi. I don’t live that close to the Han.”
They part just as the first clumps of snow begin to fall. The miniscule crystals dust Kyungsoo’s eyelashes and fall into his hair, dispersing white on black, and Jongin can’t help but stare because the contrast is captivating. Jongin waits for Kyungsoo to board his taxi before walking back, gripping his phone in his hand the entire way.
If you like music, you should visit the store sometime.
Jongin glares holes into the screen, but he forces himself to stow his phone away until he reaches his apartment, refusing to revert to a high school student eagerly awaiting a text message. When he arrives, he takes a deep breath and slides his phone out, wiping away the melted droplets of snow from the screen that collected when it sat unprotected in his pocket.
Ok. I’m expecting a nice collection of vinyls!
A while ago, Jongin would have claimed that nothing is more exhilarating than the pump of excitement he receives when he’s dangling at the precipice of legality, filled with an unconventional sense of pride from knowing that he’s helping others, albeit rather indirectly. He’s lived for the premeditated bluffs, the rehearsed lines, the massive amounts of currency transferred over from one person to the next with a flick of a pen or a few keyboard strokes; however, reacquainting himself with his old, uncomplicated lifestyle has shifted his perspective, reorganized his vision into kaleidoscopic fragments. There is still a thrill bound to half-truths and deception, but when he’s walking alongside Kyungsoo on semi-frozen streets, the thrill dwindles, and for a while, Jongin forgets it exists.
part two
Title: White Lies
Pairing: Jongin/D.O
Word Count: ~17,000 words
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language and some violence
Summary: Jongin is a misguided youth with a twisted sense of justice. Kyungsoo is a newly appointed police detective with an idealistic notion of justice. The two skirt around dubious identities and expectations to find both each other and themselves.
Author’s Note: I wasn’t originally planning to write a long story, but this kind of took on a life of its own at some point. I hope you enjoy it!
To Jongin, money is confined to the black, printed numbers on checks and digits on blinking ATM screens. Money flows as much as technology allows it to, and it remains painfully intangible on bank statements and electronic receipts, tempting and sullying millions with its convenience and corruption. Jongin knows he’s been spoiled by its accessibility when Sehun discreetly slides a check across the table and the trailing zeros scrawled in the box no longer surprise him.
“This is from last week?” Jongin asks, and Sehun gives him a slow nod while leaning back in his seat. He’s wearing sunglasses inside a restaurant, a habit Jongin refuses to acknowledge due to its sheer absurdity, but the combination of the intimidating, tinted lenses and Sehun’s slicked back hair is undeniably striking.
“I insisted on cash, but beggars can’t be choosers.” Sehun adjusts the frame of his glasses so they sit perfectly aligned on his face. “It was easy money. First timers at the gambling house.”
“Did we split the profits with the house already?” The muffled chatter of diners and sound of clinking silverware against porcelain plates seem to diminish slightly, and perhaps it’s his imagination, a reaction spurred on by paranoia, but Jongin instinctively lowers his voice anyway. “We kept up our end of the deal, right? You remember what happened last time.”
Sehun remains unfazed and simply pushes the check further towards Jongin. “I’ve dealt with it. We split the profits from that night fifty-fifty, just like what we agreed upon.”
“Good.” Jongin slips the check into his wallet, checking the amount one more time before it disappears into its envelope of fabric. He’ll deposit it tomorrow when the bank opens again. He’s learned early on not to carry along extra baggage, and although this kind of money isn’t palpable like cold, hard cash, it’s traceability will only pose complications in the long run.
“You’re always wound up about these deals,” Sehun points out, and he pauses when the waiter glides over to their table and sweeps away their empty dishes. When the waiter disappears behind the kitchen doors, he continues. “We’ve never slipped up before, so I don’t know why you’re so worried.”
“I don’t worry,” he responds quickly, but he knows immediately that it’s a lie. “I think about consequences.” Jongin fiddles with the unraveling seam of his wallet. The leather is a worn, faded black, a sign that it has served its time well. He remembers receiving it from his father as a gift for his seventeenth birthday, and for some indescribable reason, he hasn’t been able to part ways with it. That, Jongin thinks, is the difference between Sehun and him-his tendency to stray into sentimentality and Sehun’s willingness to let the past go. Perhaps this difference is relative, only measurable with the passing of each significant deal, but in the last few months, Jongin can’t push away the sensation that there’s a chasm slowly opening up between them.
Sehun lets out a smug little scoff, one that would grate at anyone’s nerves because Sehun is younger than most in this sort of business, but Jongin’s grown accustomed to his partner’s indifference. “You haven’t changed one bit, Kim Jongin. It’s like we’re still in high school.”
“But instead of trading food during lunch period, we’re making dirty money.” Jongin smiles, and tilts the corner of his lip upwards. “Who would’ve thought I’d end up a rebel like you.”
“What can I say? Our goals changed.” The check for their dinner makes its way onto the table. Naturally, Sehun doesn’t make a move to take it, and Sehun’s pervasive, knowing look aimed towards him prickles his skin, even through his dark lenses. With a sigh, Jongin takes out his wallet once more to retrieve a few crumpled bills.
“Are they going to change again anytime soon?” Jongin asks, frowning at the disappearing cash currently in his possession. “We weren’t always rebels you know. You’ve been doing this longer than I have, but even you weren’t one to begin with. It’s not a lifestyle someone can adopt long-term.”
There’s a silence between them that’s only accentuated by the thin veil of customers’ murmurs tables away. Sehun’s mouth is pressed into a straight line, and it’s an oddly juvenile expression on a face shaped by the bridge between adolescence and adulthood. Jongin knows he’s said something wrong when Sehun assumes his notorious poker face.
“This is real.” he finally replies quietly, and maybe those were the words Jongin prepared to hear-they have echoed in his mind during each weekly trip to the bank-yet actually hearing them from Sehun confirms the budding hesitation that keeps him from taking the checks slipped to him. “I don’t plan to stop. We’re in this together, right?”
Sehun’s muted confidence is blinding, reassuring. Jongin nods and Sehun smiles as if there weren’t a hitch in their conversation in the first place. Money is invisible, a fantasy, an elusive idea that festers in the mind. Jongin is used to the lack of permanence, the lightning-fast exchanges and transactions. Currency is constantly in motion, and he’s convinced he’s simply easing it along, filling in deficits by relocating and redistributing. Nothing should be a surprise anymore, and rarely does anything go wrong, as he’s been reassured. But there’s an uncertainty blooming behind each of his calculated schemes that he can’t deny, and he doesn’t see the same uncertainty plaguing Sehun’s decisions. He doesn’t know if he’s the only one who can see this doubt dividing them, pooling liquid in the cracks and crevices of what they used to be, until they’re oceans apart.
“So we’re good then. Let’s get drinks later?” Sehun stands up and brushes the lapel of his crisp blazer. “I’ll pay this time, since you covered dinner.”
Jongin bumps against his shoulder as he walks past Sehun towards the exit of the restaurant, and he doesn’t want to admit that it’s getting harder to do so because they’re no longer the same height. “Really, you’re offering to pay?”
“Offering-that’s the key word. I wouldn’t mind if you paid.”
“You brat.” Jongin laughs, and for once, he’s grateful that at least that hasn’t changed.
x
Jongin wants to believe that he’s mastered the art of deception. It requires a natural talent he realizes he possesses. He switches between facades like they’re masks of black and white, pulls them so tightly around himself that they start to feel like a second skin. Sometimes, during evenings when he’s a little drunk on the rush of flowing poker chips and whiskey, he has to think twice before remembering that he still exists as Kim Jongin and not Kim Jongin, world-class poker player, or Kim Jongin, top-ranking businessman; this forgetfulness, he’s learned, is a welcome inevitability for a con man.
He had started off small, performing pigeon drops at corner cafes. He was a high school student with too much time on his hands when he wasn’t helping out at the family restaurant-a borderline delinquent, but a charming one. The cashiers never saw anything out of the ordinary. They were too focused on the 10,000 won bills Jongin waved around and his rapid-fire orders for muffins, raisin bread, and the obligatory morning Americano. He flashed his charismatic smile, radiating innocence, and they didn’t suspect a thing, even after they were left a few bills short. It was all too simple, to the point where Jongin was convinced that there had to be drawbacks, and maybe if the cashiers had scrutinized him more, looked past the pressed uniform and bright eyes, they would have seen the tremble of his fingers and the false confidence worn thin like transparent film.
But no matter how many blueberry muffins he pilfered, no matter how many 10,000 won bills he managed to save, Jongin always walked away with a fraction of what he had obtained. He never forgot to split his pastries with Old Man Kim, who swept and cleaned the local storefronts, amassing piles of littered flyers on the ground at the end of each day. When Jongin stopped to hand him his coffee on his way back home, he felt the rough calluses on Old Man Kim’s hands, worn from years of hard labor, and he assured himself then that the guilt eating away at him was worth it.
Trips to neighborhood cafes escalated into more complex schemes. Jongin had never planned to do more because his conscience warned him through peripheral thoughts that bled to the forefront of his mind, but every time he lapsed into another round of scamming, he convinced himself that desperate times called for desperate measures. There was a fine line between conning out of amusement and conning out of necessity, and although he didn’t fit in either category, opting to remain in a grey zone designated for his own case, meeting Sehun again had eliminated any room for neutrality altogether.
Jongin’s confidence tricks took a drastic turn on one balmy August evening. He was officially working, no longer a fresh high school graduate still green around the gills on the streets of Seoul. He had dropped by a middle tier bar in upmarket Apgujeong after his long afternoon shift at Blue Record. It was a bar Chanyeol frequented and strongly recommended solely because his friend was the bartender and was able to whip up no-nonsense drinks in the blink of an eye. Jongin had been reluctant to go at first, partly because he would be going by himself while Chanyeol manned the register for the evening shift, but his apprehension mostly came from a strange kick of adrenaline in his veins that told him something was going to change that night. The bartender did indeed deliver his specialty concoction as promised, discount and all after Jongin briefly mentioned Chanyeol’s name. The drink was pleasantly sweet in his mouth, but he still felt out of place in a crowd limited to office dwellers and regular businessmen. He was a boy in an oversized work polo, frantically grasping onto the fringes of maturity as it rushed on by. It wasn’t until he felt someone clasp a hand onto his shoulder that the foreignness melted away.
“Hyung, it’s been a while.” And there he was, his old friend.
Life after high school had done good things for Oh Sehun. He still had the same gangly physique, the same half-moon eyes, and the same impassive expression, but there was a guaranteed self-assurance in his movements that hadn’t been there before. Jongin swatted his hand away with an easy grin and retorted something along the lines of you’ve never called me hyung before, so why start now? Later, when Sehun’s brought him back to his table, they slipped into an uncomplicated conversation, as if it hadn’t been three years since they’ve last seen each other at graduation. Although Jongin wanted to make up for the time they’ve lost, possibly waxing nostalgic with old memories of pranks in the classroom and endless complaints about the workload, he stowed away the urge because it was clear that they weren’t quite the same round-faced, rebellious youths they were years ago.
Sehun introduced him to a world of deceit that evening. He claimed it was strictly business on his end, that he was simply an agent for anonymous clients and faceless benefactors, but the slight smile that crept onto his face told him otherwise, reminding Jongin of his own every time he had successfully pulled off his small scheme at the coffee shop.
“It’s good money,” Sehun told him. “It’s enough to support you and your family. You should give it a try.” He hesitated for a fraction of a second before continuing. “It wouldn’t be your first time.”
Deception was enticing, a double-edged sword shrouded in the appeal of risk-taking and toeing blurred lines for the sake of success. The allure coexisted with his conscience, and even if his guilt resurfaced every now and then to conceal everything else, Jongin knew the allure never truly disappeared.
“Okay.”
x
On most days, Jongin loses himself in the rush of urban madness. He floats from one destination to the next according to his shifts at work and haphazard meetings for cons, but every now and then, he stops to breathe because he’s anchorless with the occasional brief respite. Jongin finds his sanctuary away from Gangnam’s bustling streets and Seoul’s concrete jungle in the form of a quaint bar. Woodstock is tucked away in a row of neon signs and expansive advertisements, and although it’s easy to stroll right past the door, Jongin knows exactly when to turn and enter because Gangnam is as familiar to him as the back of his hand. When he steps into the bar, the warm air from the heater is pleasant against his cold cheeks, Jongin feels like he’s setting foot into a different time period to a November evening forty years ago. The wooden chairs and tables glow orange in the cozy lighting. On the walls are shelves upon shelves of vinyls and old posters with frayed corners-the hidden library of a music lover’s dream. The edges of the vinyl cases are worn from frequent use, and even as a repeating customer who’s seen the same scene time and time again, Jongin still has the urge to ghost his fingers along the spines and soak in the legacies of recent and bygone artists. Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” flows through the speakers of a turntable near the front-he only knows it because Chanyeol insists on looping it in the mornings at the store-and the acoustic melody stirs something vaguely comforting around in his mind.
There are more customers than usual judging by the way their animated conversations in Korean and English float over Bob Dylan’s voice. A cluster of foreigners sitting by the bar spontaneously lets out noisy peals of laughter that seem to shake the ground. Jongin slinks past them, making his way to the end of the bar to the seat he always chooses, but he pauses when he sees another man’s back instead. He’s alone, bundled up in his black, wool coat and studying his drink as if it’s the most intriguing thing in the world, and Jongin doesn’t have the heart to ask him to move, even though the seat he’s currently occupying is his favorite spot. An icy breeze slips through the entrance as the door opens again, punctuated by the owner’s hearty welcome, and there’s a flash of a recognizable face-thick eyebrows and focused, piercing eyes. Instinct drives Jongin to quickly turn away and pull out the chair next to his routine one. He holds up a finger to the bartender and orders his customary beer, careful to keep his voice low.
When Jongin operates his scams, he takes preventative measures to make sure that he doesn’t come across the same mark twice, both intentionally and unintentionally. There are boundaries lies can’t erase no matter how misleading his disguises are, and those are boundaries defining human memories. But here, in this microscopic niche of a larger-than-life city, he’s found Wu Yifan, one of the victims from his more recent scams. Although Jongin isn’t facing him, he feels Yifan saunter by, barely a hair’s breadth away from his back. The taste of adrenaline, of lingering uncertainty, is exhilarating on the tip of his tongue.
Gambling, Jongin remembers as the bartender sets a full glass and bottle down in front of him. It’s always gambling that catches the unwary ones who are too accustomed to winning, but if there’s one thing Jongin has learned since he’s entered the business, it’s that no one can win all the time. He had swindled a hefty sum of money out of Yifan a few nights ago at the gambling house, surprising both Yifan and himself. He took Jongin as a novice, too fresh-faced and young to manipulate each factor of the game, too inexperienced to emerge victorious. And maybe that is the case, but Jongin knows never to play games without an advantage in the first place. He doesn’t operate on sheer chance alone. Sehun had taught him how to maintain a perfect, detached expression, and after a record of ruining every gambling scam he’d tried to initiate, Jongin finally managed to pull one off.
He remembers the complex combination of reactions that appeared on Yifan’s face at the time, but the most striking one was his impressive look of disbelief. “It’s too bad it had to be you.”
The man beside him clears his throat audibly. “Did you say something?”
“No, sorry.” Jongin brushes away his embarrassment with a sip of beer. The liquid slides smoothly down his throat, just the way he enjoys it. The stranger’s gaze is fixated on him now, eyes wide open like dark marbles, and perhaps it isn’t the man’s intention to stare so blatantly, but Jongin still wonders if the man recognizes him from somewhere, an unsuspecting victim of another previous scam. “I tend to say things I don’t mean to say.”
The stranger turns away, giving a reserved nod in reply. He’s studying his drink again, some concoction of gin and tonic. His hair is inky black, even in the warm lighting, and he almost blends in perfectly with the rest of his attire. “It’s alright. We all do that every once in a while.” A noncommittal, polite response.
Jongin finds himself relaxing in his seat, traces of alcohol unfurling and warming his belly. Yifan’s deep voice slices through the air from somewhere behind him, loosely shielded by other people’s chatter, and it prompts him to shift in his seat. “So, what brings you here-”
“Do Kyungsoo.” The man offers a hand, which is cold from the condensation on his glass. He hesitates for a fraction of a second before proceeding to shake Jongin’s hand. “Have we met before?”
“Kim Jongin,” he returns, making sure his grip is firm and assured. “I don’t believe we have.”
Kyungsoo tilts the corner of his lips upwards in contemplation. “My mistake then. You look familiar for some reason.”
“It’s not the first time someone’s said that.” Jongin shrugs and pours the rest of his beer into his glass, filling it up to the brim again. “I do come here often, so maybe you’ve seen me around and I didn’t notice, but it seems unlikely. I would have noticed if someone’s taken my usual seat at the bar.”
There’s a hint of a smile on the verge of appearing on Kyungsoo’s face, and Jongin has the urge to see it break through his reticent, unapproachable exterior. “I wasn’t aware of barstool claims.”
“They aren’t official,” Jongin points out. “I just happen to be attached to the chair you’re sitting in right now.”
“Is that why you’re talking to me?”
“No.” The bartender drops the piece of glassware he’s polishing and it shatters behind the counter into a thousand, unseen fragments. The sound is jarring and violent, and Jongin still can’t shake the sensation that he’s being watched, so he slinks lower in his seat, hoping it comes across as unnoticeable. “As much as I like my regular spot, you seem interesting enough.”
Kyungsoo looks unconvinced, which Jongin thinks is justifiable because every sentence he says sounds suspiciously like a part of a painfully long and unintentional pick-up line. “I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not.”
“Consider it a compliment,” Jongin says, and Kyungsoo finally does let a smile escape, one that’s toothy and shines through his heart-shaped mouth. It’s infectious, and Jongin is torn between turning away and forming a smile of his own.
“Are you avoiding someone?” Kyungsoo asks, removing the lime wedge from the rim of his glass and gingerly setting it aside on a napkin. “A scorned ex perhaps? I wouldn’t blame you for striking up a conversation with a stranger then.”
“Is it that obvious?” The music changes to something upbeat, and the grittiness of the guitar riffs provides ample background noise for Kyungsoo to lean in a little closer. “No, I’m not avoiding a scorned ex, but I wouldn’t say my situation is any better.”
“Sounds like bad luck.”
Jongin laughs, maybe a little too loudly, and the bartender glances at him quickly in the midst of cleaning broken shards of glass. “Some people believe in bad luck when it seems like everything in the world is conspiring against them one day. It’s kind of unreasonable when you think about it.” Poorly played cards, lost change, misplaced trust-it all comes down to bad luck, and that’s why people like Jongin exist to perpetuate the cycle, blot out losses, and reap the benefits.
Kyungsoo scrutinizes the remnants of his drink and sloshes the liquid around. “So you don’t believe in it?”
“No,” Jongin responds, “of course not.” Kyungsoo sets down his drink and gives him a quick, unreadable look.
Jongin decides Do Kyungsoo is a bit of an enigma, unremarkable on the surface, but frighteningly perceptive. He’s wrapped up in monochrome shades of black, a shadow nursing a drink fit for the typical white-collar worker and sporting a neat haircut to match-the picture-perfect image of the average civilian. Jongin has stopped noticing people who look like Kyungsoo a long time ago. They’re on every street corner and rush hour train, surviving redundantly on mundane schedules and fixed on a one-way path towards what they hope is a stable future and the fulfillment of their dreams. Every one of them is a shadow like Kyungsoo, hurrying in the same direction so they don’t miss the last train of the night. Jongin ignores them now because he knows he can’t quite force himself into the same rigid mold, can’t blend in as another prospective employee confined to cubicles and office buildings. He’s learned to stop trying the moment he called Sehun after their encounter, trading in one lifestyle for another.
In the pockets of silence between them, Kyungsoo simply nods. “So, Kim Jongin, what do you do?”
Jongin lifts his head in mild surprise. “What do I do?”
“Besides linger in bars and avoid people, I mean.”
“I work at my family’s restaurant,” he replies. “And during the times I’m not doing that, I work at Blue Record.” The response has been rehearsed and repeated so many times that it rolls off Jongin’s tongue without a second thought, and although he’s stating nothing but the truth, Jongin feels like he’s spilling dulcet lies instead.
That seems to pique Kyungsoo’s interest. “You work at a record store?”
“In Apgujeong. It’s easy to miss.” Another gust of early winter wind passes through as a group of people shuffles through the exit, still flushed and rambunctious from their evening of drinking and socializing. Jongin catches Kyungsoo buttoning up his coat as indiscernibly as possible. “What do you do, Do Kyungsoo?”
Kyungsoo coughs and shrinks into himself a little more until the door closes and the warmth in the bar is slowly restored. “I’m a detective. Surprising, right?”
Jongin’s breath catches in his throat for a fraction of a second and there’s a nervous tenseness winding up in his chest coupled with a telltale rush of a thrill. Did he slip up somewhere? Did Sehun? This is the moment he’s been anticipating, he thinks-meeting the catalyst that would unravel his plans, his routine. It isn’t the inevitable scuffle that would result from a run-in with Wu Yifan and his crowd. It isn’t even the consequences that closely accompany a failed scam. Never did he expect that the person who could potentially bring him down would seem completely unassuming and ordinary.
Jongin picks up his bottle and tips it into his glass, only to realize that it’s empty. He hopes Kyungsoo doesn’t notice the slight tremble in his fingers. “You work for the police?”
“Just recently,” he says. “I handle the cases the officers higher up don’t want, mostly ones related to average civilian crimes.”
“It sounds boring.”
“Sometimes it is, but I convince myself it isn’t because there’s a reason for every case.” There’s a spark in Kyungsoo’s wide eyes and a hard edge of conviction in his voice. “I believe in maintaining justice in all situations. It’s why I wanted to become a detective in the first place.”
“I see,” Jongin says, but he doesn’t see. In fact, he will never see eye-to-eye with Kyungsoo because they’re already from two entirely different worlds, destined to meet discordantly again and again. He meets Kyungsoo’s eyes, catches a glimpse of the intensity embedded within them. “So what is justice to you?”
“I find truths hidden behind lies. It takes time to peel away the layers to reveal the facts, but I don’t mind investing the time because I believe every person deserves the chance to prove his or her innocence,” he says, “and that includes you and me. Isn’t that what justice is about?”
Jongin doesn’t have an answer.
x
Kyungsoo takes off first when their conversation reaches its natural end, claiming that he doesn’t particularly enjoy small talk on a regular basis.
“Neither do I,” Jongin had told him. “People should say the things they mean.”
Kyungsoo hummed in agreement. “I have to admit, though, I don’t mind small talk with you.”
Kyungsoo leaves in his place a glass still a quarter of the way full and a somber quietude that keeps Jongin from gathering his thoughts properly. He probably won’t see him again, and if that’s the case, then he doesn’t have a reason to worry about the long-standing consequences he’s tried to push aside in order to accomplish his assigned tasks. But the glint buried in Kyungsoo’s eyes upon the mere mention of justice stays with him as he waits at the bar for another hour, carefully watching for Yifan’s retreating back through the door before he moves to leave, and it continues to stay with him when he finally returns to his apartment for the night. It’s still there when he closes his eyes, and he wonders what exactly are the truths Kyungsoo’s referring to if the lies have already been in place for so long.
There’s pounding at his door at an ungodly hour. Jongin doesn’t stir at first, but when he hears the distinctive pattern of the knocks, he shakes off just enough sleep to let Sehun in. He’s covered in a light dusting of snow. The icy flakes blend into his light hair and cling onto his bangs, and if Jongin had the sufficient energy to do so, he’d tell Sehun that he looks like a picturesque poster boy for the holiday season.
“Did something happen?” Jongin suppresses a yawn and walks over to his heater. The warmth is soothing and makes him even drowsier.
Sehun fiddles with his scarf and drops onto the sofa. “I think they’re on to me.”
“They’re what?” The uncertainty that rises and falls every time he’s with Sehun returns at full force, and suddenly the room feels too warm. Jongin turns down the heat a notch. “I thought we were being careful.”
“We were, but hear me out. I may have borrowed some money.” Sehun is staring at the grey, peeling wallpaper, the scuffed up floor of the apartment; he’s looking everywhere but at Jongin. “I know-I know I shouldn’t have, but it was necessary at the time.”
“What was it for?” Jongin asks slowly. “Who lent you the money?” But deep inside, he already knows.
“Damn it, Jongin. I honestly didn’t know-”
“Who was it?”
“They were loan sharks.” Sehun’s voice cracks and he bites his lip. Just like that, he morphs back into his high school self, and the boldness he’s built up over the years, the foolish bravery Jongin had once wished to emulate, dissipates into nothing. “I was borrowing money to fund the next con, but the interest was so high, and I couldn’t pay it back in time, and shit, I’m sorry.” He rubs at his eyes with the back of his hands. “I’m sorry.”
Jongin doesn’t waver, even though he’s disturbed by the cracks showing through in their well-established routine, cracks that are as thin as the strands of a spider web, but still detrimental in the end. “What are you apologizing for?”
“They’re going to look for you when I disappear. They have ways to track me down, track both of us down. Even if it takes a long time, they have what it takes.” He lets out a winded sigh.
They’re both silent. Sehun doesn’t move, doesn’t even lift a finger as he anticipates Jongin’s response. “How long do we have then?”
“About a week for me before they launch a full investigation, since I was-I was being careless. But it should be a while before they start looking for you. A few months. They might not even find you if you lay low.”
“Lay low,” Jongin mumbles. “Alright.” A numbness spreads throughout his body as he sits at the other end of the sofa, and it takes away from the initial panic. He shouldn’t be so calm about the situation. It’s Sehun’s first slip-up-their first slip up because Sehun’s actions are usually calculated and deliberate enough to cause a chain reaction-and the stakes are unavoidably high, but it’s as if he’s extracted himself from the situation and all he sees is Sehun seething in tumultuous confusion within the confines of his dingy apartment.
“This isn’t how things are supposed to turn out,” Sehun notes, jumping back to his feet and pacing from one end of the room to the next. “I thought I planned everything out. I took all the usual precautions when I secured contacts, but somehow they caught me.”
“Things happen. Maybe it’s bad luck,” Jongin says a little too bitterly, shrugging, and he thinks Kyungsoo still has it wrong because bad luck doesn’t exist for people like Sehun and him when they already have an unrestrained fearlessness that drives people to err. He’s never been a superstitious person anyway. “I never imagined we’d run into loan sharks.”
“I didn’t either.” Sehun replies, grimacing, and the distress continues to weigh him down. “It’s not safe for me to stay here in Seoul. I was thinking about going to Beijing. I have some friends there who could help.”
“Beijing is far,” Jongin comments, but what he truly means is, Beijing is too far and why are you leaving me here? “Do you even speak Mandarin?”
“No, but I’d rather be lost in translation than mugged on the street.”
“You can still get mugged on the street in Beijing.”
Sehun pins him with a weary look. “But no one knows me. There’s promise there, a fresh start. I can call you when it’s safe, but we have to wait things out first.”
There’s a pattern in the way things turn out, Jongin discovers, and it’s not due to simple misfortune. The prospect of uprooting his life for Sehun materializes again and again, one too many times for it to be a coincidence, but Jongin still listens, still nods along and relents when Sehun takes his phone from him and wipes out his contact information for extra security. He still pulls out the bundle of old blankets from the closet and sets it on the sofa for his friend because it’s been done in the past; it’s almost expected. And he still waits to hear Sehun’s labored breathing lull into something softer before he returns to his own bed.
“You’ve always been reckless, you brat,” Jongin had told him, throwing Sehun his phone. “There are risk-takers who touch the line, but don’t cross it, and then there are idiots like you who barrel straight into things without seeing the repercussions at all.”
“Believe me, getting us both caught is the last thing I want,” Sehun had replied, hitting the delete button on Jongin’s phone, and in the blink of an eye, Sehun’s name had vanished, as if he’d never existed at all.
x
He’s been told to stay reserved, to stop conning altogether, so he does. Jongin rejects offers left and right-deals guaranteeing rewards dripping in opulence, but dangerous deals nonetheless-and he receives plenty more due to Sehun’s absence, but unlike Sehun, he knows when the appropriate time is to take the plunge. Jongin’s never been able to hack away at an ingrained regimen without feeling incomplete. He still has phantom limbs that sense everything and reach out at nothing in the distance, the result of bad habits that die hard. It doesn’t occur to him that he’s adjusted well to the business in a span of a few months, but it becomes clearer the longer he’s separated from fraudulence. Sometimes, he’s still immersed in it when he makes his long walks between his apartment and Blue Record-he doesn’t have money to spare for the taxi anymore and he doesn’t dare to touch his accounts at the bank-and he thinks he sees Sehun with his platinum hair, walking on the opposite side of the street, but it’s an impossibility because Sehun is long gone in an entirely different time zone.
But other times, he’s lost in a crowd of shadow pedestrians, and when he turns the corner, he has to pause mid-step because he’s convinced he’ll suddenly run into Kyungsoo, who blends in perfectly with everyone else in a collective sea of black on black. Something about Kyungsoo, the way he speaks about broad themes with sweeping, romantic generalizations, makes him stick, even more so than Sehun does. The more Jongin goes over their conversation in his mind, the more perplexed he becomes because no person can be that dedicated to a concept when he hasn’t experienced it first-hand. Maybe, at one point, Jongin begins to hope that they’ll cross paths again, but he catches himself from following that thought further.
For the first time in a while, Jongin has free time, too much of it for his own good, so whenever his days are vacant, he drops by the family restaurant. When he enters, he sees that nothing’s changed, not that he expected to see anything different. Everything from his childhood is still in place-the delicate scroll paintings hanging on the walls, the carved wooden characters on the placard in the front, even the pungent aroma of spices wafting from the kitchen-and Jongin bites his lip as a wave of homesickness creeps up on him surreptitiously.
“Hello.” His mother hurries to the front of the restaurant, not bothering to look up when she’s focused on balancing a bowl of steaming samgyetang. She looks tired, the lines on her face a little more prominent than before, but even now she’s as determined as ever. Jongin doesn’t realize he’s missed the familiarity until he naturally makes a grab for the samgyetang in assistance. “How many-oh, Jongin.”
“Sorry, mother. I’ve been busy these past few weeks. Something came up at work.”
“I don’t remember having a son who only visits once a month,” she says, tilting her head away from him. “You must be mistaken.” There’s a smile playing on her lips, though, and Jongin doesn’t flinch when she swats at his head. “What did I tell you about not visiting often enough?”
“I know, I’m really sorry. Now where should I put the soup?”
Home is a complex abode. When Jongin returns home, he returns to forget and recuperate, to temporarily abandon anticipated movements, sums earned, and justified deals that don’t seem quite justified enough, but just as he steps through the door, his reasons for leaving falter and he doesn’t quite remember what they are anymore.
“How has father been?” Jongin asks later when the last few customers are on their way out. He dips a rag into a bucket of water his mother gave him and starts to wipe down the tables. It’s a soothing, methodical chore from his childhood.
His mother heaves a sigh and sets down her broom and dustpan to sit down at a nearby table. Beads of sweat glisten at her hairline, but Jongin doesn’t find the restaurant particularly warm. “He’s doing alright. His knees are hurting less these days, but the doctor still recommended him to avoid heavy lifting. You know how your father is, though. Even when everyone in the world tells him not to do something, the workaholic goes ahead and does it anyway.”
“He’s stubborn like that.” He dips the rag back into the bucket, wrings out the water, and wipes. Rinse, lather, repeat.
“He’s just like you,” she adds, and Jongin grins. “He’s headstrong.”
“He didn’t work today?”
“He only works half days. You would know if you came by more frequently,” she admonishes gently. “He’s upstairs sleeping right now, but he would’ve been excited to see you. Both of us are always happy to have you home.”
A knot forms in his throat, and Jongin tries to swallow it down. “I admit I’ve missed helping out here. You and father have been running the restaurant for years now. Aren’t you tired?”
“We can take care of it,” his mother assures him, and she stands back up slowly to ease her cracking joints. “No matter what happens, we’ll stand by this place because it’s home.”
“Home,” he echoes. “Right.”
“I should be asking about you. How is work going? You don’t talk about your new job much. All I hear about is that music store. What is it called again-Blue Music?” She grabs his chin with firm fingers and examines him with keen eyes. Up close, Jongin can see that age has definitely left its mark on her without him noticing, but even with deeper crow’s feet and greying hair, his mother is still remarkably beautiful. “Look at how thin you are. I bet you aren’t eating proper meals.”
Jongin brushes her away and resumes his scrubbing, and the lump in his throat only grows larger. “It’s Blue Record, mother,” he points out, and she dismisses him with a smile and shake of her head. “My work is hard to describe. It’s all business. The workload is going to be lighter these next few months,” he mentions. “I can drop by more often, just like you want. And I can wire some money over to you to cover any outstanding fees for the hospital visits or the restaurant.”
She sucks in a breath and pushes a table out of the way to sweep the area underneath it. “You do plenty already, you silly boy. Ever since you were in high school, you’ve always been worried about money.” She reaches under the chair by Jongin’s feet with her broomstick, and the bristles scratch against his ankles. “I know you want the best for us, but more than anything, we just want to see you.”
“Well, I’m here now.”
His mother clicks her tongue and hands him the broom and dustpan to finish off the rest of the restaurant. “You are. But we want to see you happy.”
“I am,” he insists, and he’s certain of it because he can have anything he desires if he searches hard enough, but the way he forces the words out sounds odd. His mother can pick up on it too, his hesitation and the way his voice comes out unevenly, but she chooses not to remark on it.
“Finish sweeping for me, okay? Since you showed up today, I’ll make sure to get as much work out of you as I can.” She dusts her hands with finality and tucks the loose strands of hair that have fallen out of her bun behind her ears. “I know I don’t say this a lot these days, but you’re always welcome to come back home.”
“I know.”
x
Jongin had almost lost his home the summer after his graduation. The events that led up to that one night were like something out of a Thursday evening drama, complete with culminating debts and empty threats, an avoidable situation dragged out as messily as possible, and all Jongin could do was watch from the sidelines as the casualties multiplied.
At some point, the restaurant was losing more than it was earning, and to balance out the expenses, Jongin’s father had borrowed money. He had tried to search for reliable companies to take loans from, ones that other nearby restaurant owners swore by, but the monster hidden in what seemed like a simple, foolproof plan soon reared its ugly head.
Jongin had never seen his father cry until that night. He was woken up by the sound of shattering glass, a strangled yell, and then deafening silence, but he wasn’t sure at the time if he was surfacing in reality or trapped in the realms of a lucid nightmare. When he crept down to the first floor to investigate, he saw that his parents were already there, standing between the gaping holes that used to be the restaurant windows and the staircase where Jongin was hiding. There were broken tables and chairs strewn everywhere, perfectly orchestrated chaos topped off with millions of shards of broken glass. A burglary, Jongin had thought, compelled to find out more, but his father’s rough sobbing had glued him to his spot. He realized belatedly that there was a well-dressed man standing at the entrance. The first thing Jongin noticed was the snake curved along the contours of his neck and up his defined cheekbone, imprinted on his skin in black ink. The door had been blown off its hinges as if a whole pack of men had mowed it down rather than one person.
“I don’t have the money yet.” His father’s voice was nearly indistinguishable, muffled by his tears. “Please, give me more time. I beg you. Please.”
His mother stepped forward towards him, shoulders shaking, when his father collapsed on the ground, limbs folded up in a haphazard bow. Jongin’s mind swam with possible ways to intervene-run up and fight, scream, or kneel on the ground next to his father and beg for reasons unknown in front of a man he’d never seen before-but he wasn’t able to budge a centimeter, and the swimming in his head only intensified. He might have blacked out from the shock, which he thought was a shame because he could have done something, anything. His mother found him huddled on the last step, her eyes red and her cheeks tear-stained.
“Jongin, what are you doing here?” His mother asked. Her hand was warm when she combed through his hair with quivering fingers. “Did you hear everything?”
Jongin didn’t respond, but there was a mutual understanding, and that was enough.
The subsequent days were hardest for the business. Word on the street was that their restaurant was responsible for a few extreme cases of food poisoning. They lost customers by the dozens, and by the following week, only one or two actually made it through the repaired door before turning back, intimidated by the restaurant’s total vacancy.
“We can’t live like this,” his mother announced one day, and it was probably meant to be conveyed in secrecy to his father, but it was loud enough for Jongin to overhear from the next room over. “We have to fix this situation soon or else we’ll have to close down for good.”
“I’m trying. I have everything under control.”
“No you don’t. They’re going to come back again. They won’t stop.” A sigh had permeated the wall between Jongin and his parents, and Jongin thought he’d never heard so much exhaustion embedded in a drawn out breath before. “Think about Jongin. His future. We can’t do this to him.”
The conversation broke off when Jongin moved away from the wall, but he’d heard enough.
Time eventually healed the damage inflicted upon the restaurant. Through a collective effort, they paid off their debt, bit by bit, in exchange for a few sacrifices. Jongin had long given up on personal savings-he told himself he still had years to work anyway-so instead of stashing the money away like usual, he presented his meager paychecks from the music store and a little additional money to his father at the end of every week. He was rewarded with a grateful smile and a pat on the back each time, but it wasn’t something to be particularly proud of. His two sisters, who had moved out a while ago, also tried their best to chip in what they could. One of them was on the path to marriage, but she postponed her plans to help out the situation at home.
“It’s alright,” she’d insisted when she visited to assess the state of the restaurant, “I can’t turn my back on family.” And Jongin understood because he’d give all the money in the world if he could to erase the image of his father on his hands and knees, holding back muffled sobs, but it was already permanently seared into his mind.
The customers returned gradually, trickling back in groups as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened and all the scathing reviews of the restaurant were for naught. Jongin’s father made the necessary repairs to the cracked windows and destroyed furniture, and soon, everything was put back in their designated places. If Jongin hadn’t been there to witness the destruction in person, he would’ve sworn that the door they replaced was the same one they’d had for years. But even when he performed the same motions as before, scrubbing away at the food scraps on new tabletops and pushing in the heavier, improved chairs, Jongin was afraid that the ordeal would repeat itself, that the chilling man with the snake tattoo would return and crush their lives underneath his feet a little more because he didn’t administer an adequate punishment the first time around.
His family was simply a blip on the radar, a dot on the face of the earth. It was a harsh reality check-society was never truly kind; it never played by its own rules. Since that was the case, Jongin believed he didn’t have a reason to follow them either.
x
Jongin may be dubious about bad luck, but he can’t quite question fate in the same way because it sneaks up on people in the most unexpected ways. His mother had given him the afternoon off to rest, and although Jongin relented at first, offering to take plates back to the kitchen, she had chased him out with a spatula coated in gochujang. On his way out, he sees one customer lingering near the entrance, waiting to pay for his take-out meal, so he spares a few minutes to help him. Something in his chest springs to life when he recognizes his large, observant eyes.
“Kyungsoo?” Jongin rings him up quickly, and Kyungsoo dumps a handful of coins into his open palm. The brush of his fingers against Kyungsoo’s is barely detectable, but Jongin jerks back from the contact.
“I didn’t know you work here. Is this your family’s restaurant?”
“It is. I don’t come here as often anymore, but I still try to help out when I have time.” He rifles through the bags of cartons to find Kyungsoo’s order and finally picks out the Do scrawled on the top in his mother’s bold handwriting. “Are you on a lunch break now?”
“Actually, I have the rest of the day off.” Kyungsoo begins fidgeting with the edge of his carton when he receives it. “This usually doesn’t happen, but my supervisor’s wife went into labor today and he was feeling generous.”
“I thought detectives like you wouldn’t have time to pick up take-out. I guess I was wrong.” Jongin suppresses the laughter directed towards Kyungsoo’s confusion.
“It’s a rare occasion, but it happens.” Kyungsoo bites his lip, musing as if he’s carefully piecing together his next words. “Are you going on a break soon?”
Jongin gives him a knowing smile, the same smirk that delights café cashiers and provokes scoffs from everyone else. “Why? Did you want to talk? More small talk?”
Kyungsoo blinks at him. “Well, honestly, yes, because I don’t feel like I’m suffering when I’m engaging in small talk with you.”
“You’ve caught me at a good time then,” Jongin unties the apron wrapped around his waist and neck and drapes it across the chair of an unoccupied table. “I was just about to leave.”
They walk aimlessly down a few blocks, talking about nothing in particular as they breeze past bustling shops and flocks of university students returning to their campus after lunch. Kyungsoo, Jongin finds, is pleasantly quiet at the right moments, a natural conversationalist. After Sehun’s disappearance, he’s grown accustomed to the same circle of people, the immutable routine day after day, and although he’s appreciative of the interlude in his high-paced life, Kyungsoo’s reappearance is a welcoming change. Kyungsoo still carries with him a hint of danger, an intimation of dire ramifications, but it’s offset by everything else-from the way he clutches his take-out box to the way he seems to hum under his breath whenever he isn’t speaking. As they walk together, side-by-side, the remnants of any suspicion Jongin harbors melt away.
“I thought a lot about what you said last time.” Jongin rubs his hands together in the blistering cold and tucks them into his pockets. He regrets not bringing a pair of gloves with him. “I don’t think I know anyone who sees justice the way you see it.”
“Really? You think about these things a lot when you’re working in a field like mine.”
“It’s very idealistic.” Jongin glances at Kyungsoo and sees him burrowed nose-deep in his thick scarf. “Maybe I’m just not as optimistic as you.”
“What do you think then?” Kyungsoo asks, lifting the scarf away from his face to take a deep breath. He coughs a bit when he breathes in the icy air, and Jongin finally lets his laughter bubble out. “It’s so damn cold today.”
“I don’t know if I should tell you,” he replies, and Kyungsoo groans. “It probably goes against your entire detective philosophy.”
“Go ahead,” Kyungsoo challenges. “I want to hear it.”
“You might not want to talk to me anymore,” Jongin jokes.
“I doubt it’s that offensive, but go on.” Kyungsoo prods him with the gloved hand that isn’t carrying his cooling food.
“I think justice only exists when it’s favorable to the people on top. To ordinary people like me, there’s no such thing as justice.” Jongin stops walking when Kyungsoo slows down. “It must be awful to hear, right? I just shattered your philosophy.”
Kyungsoo shakes his head and exhales, letting out a stream of white condensation, and from a certain angle, it almost looks like Kyungsoo’s breathing out flurries of fine snowflakes. “That’s not awful at all. I respect your opinion.”
“That’s it?”
“What do you mean?”
Jongin turns around until they’re facing each other on the busy sidewalk. The pedestrians behind them veer around them with annoyed expressions, but he pays them no mind because he’s suddenly bursting at the seams with a strange urge to tell Kyungsoo everything he’s not allowed to say, everything he’s been storing and fighting from building inside him. “We think differently, not just about justice, but about a lot of things. There’s not a lot we have in common. You’re a detective after all, and-”
“Ha, Jongin. You have a lot of stereotypes about us detectives.” Kyungsoo nudges him out of the way to keep walking forward. They’ve walked far enough to spot the Han River in the distance. “We don’t sit around and pass on judgment whenever we feel like it. There’s a delicate process involved. A lot of lies blend in with truths, and all we do is try our best to separate them to make a case clearer.”
“Do you enjoy it? Your job?”
Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I do,” he says, but the hesitation reveals underlying, unspoken things. “I enjoy a lot of things and my job is just one of them.”
“What else do you like?”
“Music,” Kyungsoo replies, a slow smile spreading across his face, and the way his face lights up makes Jongin feel like he’s watching something special unfold before him. “Sometimes I like to sing, but singing isn’t meant for me.”
“You know,” Jongin adds, “when you tell me more about yourself like this, it’ll help break apart those assumptions I have about detectives. You don’t seem as boring as you look anymore.”
Kyungsoo nudges him a little harder, nearly pushing Jongin into a woman walking from the other direction. “I thought you said I was interesting.”
“Mildly,” he corrects him. “But you’re definitely more interesting now.”
There’s a strong gust of wind that whips at Kyungsoo’s scarf and numbs Jongin’s cheeks until he feels the rawness deep in his bones. The weather is already slightly overcast, but a patch of dark clouds blots out the straggling rays of sun, an ominous indicator of rain or snow, and it turns down the vibrancy of the world around them.
Kyungsoo shivers and shrinks into his oversized coat. “I should head home soon. It’s going to snow again.”
“Do you need me to walk you back?”
“It’s okay, I’ll call a taxi. I don’t live that close to the Han.”
They part just as the first clumps of snow begin to fall. The miniscule crystals dust Kyungsoo’s eyelashes and fall into his hair, dispersing white on black, and Jongin can’t help but stare because the contrast is captivating. Jongin waits for Kyungsoo to board his taxi before walking back, gripping his phone in his hand the entire way.
If you like music, you should visit the store sometime.
Jongin glares holes into the screen, but he forces himself to stow his phone away until he reaches his apartment, refusing to revert to a high school student eagerly awaiting a text message. When he arrives, he takes a deep breath and slides his phone out, wiping away the melted droplets of snow from the screen that collected when it sat unprotected in his pocket.
Ok. I’m expecting a nice collection of vinyls!
A while ago, Jongin would have claimed that nothing is more exhilarating than the pump of excitement he receives when he’s dangling at the precipice of legality, filled with an unconventional sense of pride from knowing that he’s helping others, albeit rather indirectly. He’s lived for the premeditated bluffs, the rehearsed lines, the massive amounts of currency transferred over from one person to the next with a flick of a pen or a few keyboard strokes; however, reacquainting himself with his old, uncomplicated lifestyle has shifted his perspective, reorganized his vision into kaleidoscopic fragments. There is still a thrill bound to half-truths and deception, but when he’s walking alongside Kyungsoo on semi-frozen streets, the thrill dwindles, and for a while, Jongin forgets it exists.
part two