Notes.
Soundtrack (part 2)
Together (The XX)
Signs (Kalax - the rave-party song, some new 80s vibes and a very sad/soft synthe)
There's No Way (LAUV)
Night Skies (The Midnight, Slowed + Reverb - number two main theme for the whole story)
ACT TWO : THE KNIGHT
PART TWO : CONDENSATION
« I said you don't have to speak
I can hear you
I can't feel all the things you've ever felt before
I said it's been a long time
Since someone looked at me that way
It's like you knew me
And all the things I couldn't say»
(The XX, « Together »)
He and Woon were outcasts. He could think of no other word more appropriate to describe their situation, no expression, no metaphor. They had grown up outside of the others, far away from the groups of friends that were forming all around them, isolated on their own.
Dong Soo by a physical handicap, a malformation of his body due to his perilous birth after ten months of pregnancy, which had caused him to spend the first twelve years of his life enclosed in a full prison of metal splints recommended by doctors to strengthen his bones, and to suffer the mockery of other children in the small working class neighborhood of Seongnam where he had first lived, under the guardianship of Sa-Mo, without ever managing to gain their respect.
Woon was emotionally handicapped by the violence of his upbringing, thanks to which his faculties of empathy, attachment and communication had been irretrievably damaged in their development, keeping him forever away from others, tinting the slightest relationship with a cold and aggressive remugle. The major difference between them, however, laid in the fact that Dong Soo had been surrounded by love very early on, and knew how to love, whereas Woon was completely powerless in that area, and therefore avoided it like the plague, for fear of suffering more blows.
When they had been forced together on the same territory, the whole story had looked like a fight between animals. They were two feral cats then, unable to talk to each other with words, Dong Soo being suspicious of his same age comrades, since they were constantly bullying him, while Woon was just suspicious of everyone. He's your new friend, Sa-Mo had told him the night he had brought Woon back to the old apartment he shared with Dong Soo, which had only two bedrooms, forcing the boys to be around each other much more than they had wanted.
Dong Soo had been hostile immediately. Woon, for his part, had been more diplomatic, but if someone had asked him at the time, Dong Soo would have bet that he had felt absolutely nothing for his roomate, finding him at best rustic, at worst completely stupid. And what about some good ol' aversion, ma'am ? Nope, not a bit. That was Woon's secret, in a way. The Nothing.
In the Genesis, which sped along the main avenues of Seoul in the direction of the address that Dong Soo had given to Jang Tae San, that of a hideout that he kept on hand in case, but also of a place whose sentimental value persisted in spite of the years, Dong Soo was letting his face being cleaned by a fresh cloth, around which Woon's long fingers were wrapped while he was pressing it lightly on his cuts and bruises.
There were three of them in the back of the car : him, Woon, and another soldier whose name he didn't know. Another car followed them, also in the direction of the hideout. As for the rest of the reinforcements, they had gone up to the floors of the Yanoi Tower to find an employee, and snatch the Wifi password. Behind their screens, their hands ready to spread out over their keyboard, the Nephelae were just waiting to storm inside Hong Dae Ju's network, and to unearth all the horrors and the carefully hidden little secrets of the vice minister of Defense.
Woon had initially wanted to take him to the hospital, but Dong Soo had refused, claiming it was the perfect place to get caught, now that their identities and illegal activities were most certainly known to the authorities. As a result, he had gotten into the car with them, and since then, Woon had taken a small medical kit out of the glove box, in front of which Joo Bong was sitting, and was making sure to give him some relief by cleaning his wounds as much as he could.
He had always done this, as had Dong Soo. The rule was implicit : if one of them got hurt, the other one was always around, with bandages, compresses and ninety proof alcohol. The thing had been a little more complicated to set up when Woon had joined Heuksa Chorong for good, but it hadn't disappeared for all that. During their time together, they had spent so much time taking care of each other that they had used to forgot to take care of themselves, and then the care of the other would became all the more necessary, bringing them into a vicious circle.
It's the snake that bites its own tail, Dong Soo thought as he turned his head to the side under the pressure of Woon's cautious fingers, so that he could access his swollen eye, ourobouros. He could see that Woon was visibly affected by his condition, although he did his best not to show it. The problem was that Dong Soo had learned to decipher the tiny signs on his face, in his voice, in his gestures, which betrayed emotions, a turmoil, a discomfort. Sometimes he thought that he probably knew Woon much better than he knew himself (cogito my ass), but it was probably because he found Woon much more interesting both to understand and to look at.
Dong Soo's parents had both died when he was a baby. His father had perished in a shady car accident, which looked like anything but an accident, sometimes a premeditated murder, sometimes a suicide, Dong Soo was never sure. His mother had died when he was born. His father, Baek Sa Goeng, was an NIS agent, and had set the entire Mafia faction attached to Hong Dae Ju against him, by wanting to protect the president's son at a time when he had openly defied China in his political speeches.
Upshot, there had been a price on his head, and once the execution had been carried out, the logical next step had been to target his wife and his unborn son. Dong Soo's mother, terrified, had gone so far as to push the limits of her pregnancy, arranging for the baby not to be born until she was certain of their safety. The problem was that the baby had continued to grow inside her belly, and he had ripped out her insides when he had came out. There was nothing the doctors could have done. One of them had speculated that, despite careful care, she may had simply died of grief at the death of her husband. End of story.
Baby Dong Soo had been hunted down by Hong Dae Ju and his clique, who almost succeeded in killing him when they had found him at the home of his uncle Sa-Mo, a great friend of his father's, a brother by heart if not by blood, and who had taken him in with another NIS agent, named Kim Gwang Taek. Even though they had always refused to tell him how the events had unfolded, he had understood that Hong Dae Ju had kept him suspended in the void between the floor and the thirtieth floor of the Yanoi Tower. He owed his survival to an intervention of Kim Gwang Taek, who had lost the use of an arm in the melee.
The latter had wanted to raise him, but had run up against Heuksa Chorong, who was still directed at the time by Chun, with whom he maintained a kind of rival brotherhood even more eccentric than Dong Soo and Woon's relationship. In particular, he had drawn on him the wrath of one of the leaders, named In Dae Un, for having made him a one-armed man while the latter was trying to attack the house of Baek, and that Dong Soo's mother, pregnant to the ears, was escaping with Sa-Mo through the door of the back garden.
It was because of Dae Un that he had to put down the baby, with whom he was walking home, in a small corner of an alley to protect him, while he was neutralizing his opponent. Nevertheless, in the meantime, the baby had been found by Hwang Jin-Gi, the father of Jin-Ju, a former member of Heuksa Chorong himself, and repentant at the time for more than a year, who was passing by and had thought he had abandoned him.
He was doing a little bit of everything, back then, accepting all the charges that were proposed to him, in the fields, in the building trade, to blend in as much as possible and be forgotten. He had taken the child with him, and made a stop a few hours later in a grocery store in Seongnam. Sa-Mo, who was making purchases there at the same time, had spotted the baby, and especially the blue scarf with his name, which had become his trademark.
"Are you sure he was alone?" He had asked Jin-Gi after getting back to the apartment with the kid in his arms, and after they had talked to clear up the situation.
"Yes," Jin-Gi had replied in a sorry tone.
Sa-Mo had raised Dong Soo, had taken care of his schooling, his food, his moods, his passions, his handicap, and he had been a severe father, but not unjust, strict without being cruel, and a bit of a doting father on the edges, probably to compensate for the absence of a mother. He was a butcher, with a modest income, but his initial training had been that of a South Korean intelligence agent, and he had formed a united group with the fathers of Dong Soo, Woon, the brother of Aunt Jang Mi, and Kim Gwang Taek.
By 2020, four of them had died, two at the hands of Chun, the former head of Heuksa Chorong, one in circumstances that remained unclear, and the last by his own hand. Woon had confessed the last bit of information to him, less than a month after the coup d'état of Hong Dae Ju, but also after their confrontation on the rooftops of Seoul, where he had almost died.
"My father was an alcoholic," he had explained very slowly, as if the words were weighing on him, and without looking at him. "He beat me almost all the time. He committed suicide. I had to kill him to validate my entry into Heuksa Chorong, but I never managed to do it. He solved the problem in his own way."
During his convalescence, in a shabby basement of the prodigiously gifted underground surgeon who had taken him in after the hospital from which Dong Soo had taken him out, they had resumed their old habit of sleeping together in the same bed. Sometimes Woon would turned his back on him. But during other nights, he had pressed himself against Dong Soo's side, sought his touch, accepted it, slipped a leg between his own, his hair under his chin, and his hand with the fingers of a pianist under his shirt.
It's just because I'm cold, he said. Dong Soo let him do it, let him come. He had finally understood that it was much better to wait for Woon to come to him than the other way around, to let him have total free will, to act as if it didn't matter. With him, Dong Soo had learned to apply the principle of "if you want, I'm here", while taking care not to step on his toes. It had taken him a long time, but he knew it now.
In the Genesis, no one was saying a word. Woon had finished cleaning the wounds on his face, and Dong Soo suspected that he would have wanted to take care of the wounds on his chest if he could. When he had been injured in the underground fight club by Hong Dae Ju's yakuza ally a few years earlier, he had discovered that Woon had visited him in the hospital. Jin-Ju had told him. I saw him, she had revealed him, and I asked him to leave you alone.
Dong Soo had thought she was cute, but also that she was an idiot, even if she didn't mean to. People couldn't be blamed for acting a certain way when they only had half the information about a given situation. No one was a psychic. Dong Soo himself had taken years to understand Woon's workings and all the other side of the coin, and some things had only became understandable the moment Woon had been willing to explain them to him.
For that, he had had to wait until they had agreed to express themselves with complete sentences, stopping beating around the bush. Dong Soo talked a lot, but he was frankly lost in front of the really important things, especially when they concerned Woon. Woon spoke very little, and avoided all sensitive subjects. Under such conditions, it went without saying that their patching-up after the coup d'etat was a miracle, or resulted from a divine intervention.
And there were still things in the dark, which they had only dealt with on the surface, and perhaps it was time, with the collapsing of Heuksa Chorong looming minute by minute and its own loss of anonymity, to bring them back into the light of day, or at least into the artificial lights of the capital.
x
Woon had said nothing when Dong Soo had communicated the address of the hideout to his lieutenant, and he didn't react either, at least not visibly, when the Genesis entered a narrow alley, of a macabre and pitiful kind, a sort of bottleneck surrounded by buildings that time hadn't spared, and for which a façade renovation would have been beneficial. The street was deserted. It had always been, on principle. It wasn't the worst in Seoul, but it was also far from being the most prestigious.
It was one of those streets like many others, where all the houses looked wobbly, tired, and where people were looking at the ground when they walked. There were three series of residential buildings that must have had their golden age during the sixties or the seventies, as the city was being rebuilt after the Korean War, but which today were fading in comparison to the highly sophisticated skyscrapers and the more modern and comfortable structures preferred by the inhabitants.
They retained an old-fashioned, nostalgic, and above all financial charm, since the prices of the apartments were much lower than the usual amounts in the capital for something newer and more functional. It was in the second building, in front of which the two cars stopped, that Dong Soo and Woon had lived as roommates for a little over six months, before the betrayal of the latter.
The apartment was an acquisition attached to the orphanage. Sa-Mo and Jang-Mi had heard about the system of assistance for the integration of underprivileged young people that was gradually being set up in Seoul at the end of the eighties, and had submitted a dossier that had been accepted, for an apartment in the center, well located, with a subway station a few meters away.
They had obtained a three-room apartment, a godsend considering the housing crisis that was already hitting the capital at the time, and thus a place big enough to accommodate two people at a reasonable rent. The neighborhood, without having an excellent reputation, wasn't badly famed either, the building was still relatively new and in good condition, and they had undertaken to select candidates from among the kids of the orphanage, sorting according to their educational and professional projects, qualities, affinities, and finally age.
Dong Soo and Woon were opposed to twelve other boys their age. The news that the apartment had been made available had caused a collective wind of hysteria to blow between the old but respectable walls of the orphanage, and had rekindled certain tensions and jealousies between its residents, despite friendly relations on the surface.
"If Tae Yong and Yeong Geol get the apartment, I'm quitting," Dong Soo had decreed a few days after the (rave party), slumped all over Woon's bed as the latter was finishing studying one of the recommended books for the criminology curriculum.
During their last weeks at the orphanage, Dong Soo had spent so much time in Woon's room that Sa-Mo had ended up pointing out to him that he could as well have moved in it.
"Quitting what?" Woon had asked him distractedly, without looking up from his page.
"Life. I'm quitting life, Woon-ah," he had said dramatically. "This apartment would be perfect for us. We're more talented, more serious, and our applications are almost already accepted at the university. I don't even see why Sa-Mo and Jang-mi are bothering."
Woon had just smiled and shook his head. They were just the two of them, as Cho-Rip was absorbed in his application to the Korea University. Even without an explicit confirmation, Dong Soo had guessed that Woon was sharing his opinion. He had looked at the line of his neck, at his legs crossed, had seen him lying on the sheets, arched, splendid (my king).
They had had the apartment, and at times, Dong Soo thought that Sa-Mo's paternal affection for him had played a major role in the equation, but he hadn't thought any further about it. His aunt and uncle relied primarily on Woon's seriousness, who was delaying Dong Soo's deviations and giving him a boost, but also on their two respective liabilities, their fathers having been NIS agents before Yeo Cho Sang's notable dismissal for alcoholism, and trained at the same university as them, which gave them an advantage.
Moreover, they had judged them close enough to live well together, in relative harmony. None of them had any idea what had happened between them a few days before, let alone that it had brought in its wake a change, a sharpening of their perceptions and goals, which made the prospect of a collocation both desirable and frightening. They hadn't talked about it since that night.
It was between them, in the emptiness, in the ether between their bodies and minds, and Dong Soo would have sworn at times that it was alive, totally independent of his will or Woon's. They had moved in together in 2005, during the summer, moving from the calm of the small village of the orphanage to the furious bustle of Seoul, and adapting to it in a synchronized way, helped by their common training and longstanding friendship.
The apartment was on the second floor. Before, people used to crowd into the corridors towards their high-rise dwelling, but since the end of Woon and Dong Soo's cohabitation, and Dong Soo's move to a studio apartment whose interior wasn't as horribly haunted as that of the apartment he had shared with Woon, the inhabitants had left one after the other, as if they had spread the word, leaving the practical but dilapidated apartments to buy something new, and the residence was now almost empty.
There was an elevator, but it had always been broken down : it was practically its default setting. It had been repaired once during the six months they had lived together, and had broke down again less than two hours after its repairs, provoking the anger of all the owners and tenants, some of whom Dong Soo had sympathized with on their doorstep. They had quickly become known as such, Dong Soo as the sociable neighbor, and Woon as the one you almost never saw, and whom you were not especially pleased to meet since he was as talkative and friendly as a wall.
Knowing this, while Woon's men and lieutenants were walking towards the machine shaft, he and Dong Soo, whom he supported with an arm around his waist, spontaneously took the stairs.
"Boss, the elevator..." Jang Tae San started.
Woon shook his head.
"It doesn't work."
"Since the first day," Dong Soo added over his shoulder, to give more weight to the words of the Heuksa Chorong chief.
"Have they tried to fix it ever since?" Woon asked with a genuine curiosity, while helping him up the steps, followed by his men whose two-piece suits, impeccably waxed Richelieu's and guns were contrasting a little with the rest of the place.
"You bet," Dong Soo cursed , trying not to lean too much on his companion so as not to crush him. "They don't even come anymore. Or, if they come, they just write a note, and then they leave and have a barbecue right across the street."
"They're still open?" Woon couldn't help but marvel.
"They would be even if there was a nuclear war. But the old lady no longer cooks, it's her son now. He has taken over the business. It's not as good," he observed.
They reached the second-floor landing and pushed the door separating the corridor from the stairway. There, five apartment doors faced each other, and preserved from the eyes and ears of the world the lives of the residents, their voices, habits and vices. The apartment door was the middle door, a little to the left of the stairs.
Stopping in front of it, Woon asked the awkward question.
"Do you have the key?"
Dong Soo had it. He had it in the small inside pocket of his bag, with which he always came to work, and with which he always left the NIS. The bag was a somewhat impulsive purchase he made the year of the Hong Dae Ju coup, and which he has strangely not regretted since.
It was a very practical, aesthetically pleasing bag, in which he always put his keys, wallet, a small water bottle, a change of clothes when he was working at night, hand cream, his mp3 player and two phones, the official one, and the one for his hacking activities. His cell phones.
(shit)
And his keys.
And this wonderful, unrivalled bag had been left in the NIS parking lot when the henchmen of the vice minister of Defense had come to greet him. Dong Soo wasn't sure that it hadn't been picked up by them, but given Hong Dae Ju's interest in him and his certainty that Dong Soo was the amateur painter who liked explosives, there was a good chance that his men had brought it back to him.
"No," he replied to Woon. "They were in my bag, and my bag either stayed in the parking lot when Hong Dae Ju's guys came to pick me up, or at the Yanoi Tower, and if it's the second option, let me tell you I'm completely screwed."
Woon made a face.
"It wasn't already the case?"
"Oh, you know, the details," Dong Soo signaled to him with a lazy hand gesture.
"Alright then. But the door ? How do we open it?"
"Do you have any master key on you? Or one of your guys?"
Then began a great scene of intense and shared prevarication, a convivial moment of brainstorming whose outcome was so laughable that it probably could have been an American sitcom, with laughter stimulated in the background and close-ups of the actors, frozen in zany poses, grinning at the camera.
Woon, sticking his head back, asked his men if any of them had a master key. A concert of "no, boss" was heard in the hallway, and it went without saying that everyone looked very embarrassed. The master key set was at Heuksa Chorong ("what, really ?" Dong Soo was outraged, and Woon elbowed him). Jang Tae San suggested to break down the door, and was told that he was just going to manage to rouse the neighbors, and therefore the idea was outlawed.
They considered making a picklock, or finding something in the hallway or the surrounding area that could be used as a hook. Woon let go of Dong Soo for a moment to talk more easily with his lieutenants and soldiers, and Dong Soo chose precisely that moment to lean on the apartment door, pressing the handle in the process.
He then felt that he was going backwards, almost fell down, and was only saved by quick and senseless contortions that revived the pain in his ribs, and the door opened without any difficulty, unlocked, on the inside of the apartment and the vestibule.
All conversations stopped, everyone looked at him, including Woon, whose beautiful face looked like Doomsday. Dong Soo, abashed, smiled at them as an apology.
"Didn't you lock the door?" Woon said the same way an angry Queen of England could have said it, pointing at the door with a majestic index finger.
"No, my love."
"Did you forget again?"
"You know me so well, my love."
It was a reflex : whenever Woon got angry, Dong Soo had a slight tendency to accentuate his use of pet names, in a (vain) attempt to appease his fury. It never worked, but he couldn't help himself.
"For the millionth time, you could get robbed, you know that?"
"Yes, my love."
Woon raised his eyes to the sky, as he knew how to do it so well, in that somewhat aristocratic and stilted way, which always seemed to meant something like "but frankly, Elizabeth, do I look like I want to wear Chanel for the ball tonight ? ".
He said nothing else, however, and returned to Dong Soo, sliding his arm around his waist again to support him until they entered the apartment. Woon's subordinates obediently followed their lead, and soon there were no less than ten of them in the apartment, initially provided for only two.
The interior had changed a lot since they had moved in together. Before, the wallpaper was normal, well stuck to the wall, the floor was clean and regularly swept, there was furnitures. The apartment was designed as follows : the front door opened onto the vestibule, in reality a sort of corridor that led to a dead end, but whose right side had the front door of the first bedroom, which had been Woon's.
Then, in barely four steps, you reached the living room, with a pretty sliding glass window that opened onto a small balcony, on which they used to smok from time to time, and which they had sometimes used to pass things on to each other without having to come back to the apartment. The living room was divided between the sofa-television part, and the kitchen-dining room part.
The first one had been, at the time of their cohabitation, furnished with a beautiful and very soft sofa that they had both chosen, of a very nice dark blue one, with a long-pile carpet that Dong Soo had loved to feel under the soles of his bare feet, and a coffee table where they had installed the television, then surrounded by small shelves full of books and more outlandish objects, such as Dong Soo's collectible figurines or Woon's classic and more elegant statuettes, often looking like animals.
Opposite, there was the kitchen, composed of exactly three worktops, one of which also housed the sink and another one the microwave (when they had been able to get one), three high cupboards, the stove, and the refrigerator at the end of the line, as well as a round table surrounded by four chairs on which they took their meals. The hallway of the vestibule then continued to the door of the second bedroom, just opposite, and on the left was the bathroom door, while on the right was the toilet door.
Before, the apartment was comfortable, warm, and full of life and light. Now it was empty, the wallpaper was peeling off the walls, the floor was dusty, and the furniture was all gone. Dong Soo had refused (couldn't) to stay there after Woon's departure, but hadn't informed Sa-Mo about his move, because he knew that the latter would put other tenants in the apartment if he were to heard Dong Soo had left it, and he found out he couldn't stand such an idea.
The apartment was his and Woon's. In his mind, the fact had been imprinted forever, and he had made it empty at first, because the sight of the furniture brought tears to his eyes, before keeping it that way for years, visiting it sporadically like a grave, sometimes getting caught up in the memories attached to it and the pain, until the coup of 2009, Woon's suicide attempt, and their final reconciliation.
x
Sa-Mo had imposed on them the presence and company of the other when he had brought Woon back during the summer of 1997. At first, they didn't get along, or rather they distrusted each other. In any case, Dong Soo was suspicious. All his other interactions with kids his own age had so far been negative, and he had feared this so-called new "friend", expecting him to make fun of his splints, to call him a can. But Woon had never said anything.
He didn't seem to care at all, and had looked at him without malice, but rather with the somewhat innocent curiosity of a tourist who discovers a foreign species. Very quickly, he had demonstrated remarkable fighting skills in martial arts, dancing more than fighting, with a deadly grace, an absolute mastery, and Dong Soo had been able only to admire, prisoner of his iron skeleton, and to envy.
Some time earlier, however, he had proved that he could do without this heavy physical burden, and that his body had surpassed the deformities of his birth, by saving Jin-Ju, Jin-Gi's daughter, who was passing through town at the time and had come to meet Sa-Mo, accompanied by her twelve-year-old daughter, to present him with valuable objects that he had thought could "interest him".
Jin-Ju had been the first not to laugh at his appearance, and had actively sought out his friendship, showing patience and kindness as he was sending her away, convinced that she wasn't sincere. She fought like a boy and knocked them all down, swore like a trooper, and had offered him help more than once during the outdoor activities they did with the other kids in the neighbourhood.
One of them, a complete moron, had once thought clever to light a firecracker in an old, totally uninhabited hanok where they sometimes came to play. As a result, five minutes later, the house was burning and Jin-Ju, who had fallen asleep there without paying attention, had woken up surrounded by flames. Strangely enough, it was him they had come looking for, panicked, to tell him that the girl was inside. He had prevented a beam from falling on her by holding it with his arm. The event had finally earned him the respect of his peers, and the removal, albeit temporary, of his restraints.
Woon was the son of one of Sa-Mo's childhood friends, but also of Dong Soo's father. His uncle, while going to visit the first one, had come across an empty apartment, and a bloodstain on the floor. Woon was also sitting there in one corner, and a fragment of cloth with the mark of Heuksa Chorong in the other. The organization was already known as a mafia face for repeatedly opposing the NIS, but no one knew anything about its connection to the Sky Corporation.
Sa-Mo, no doubt because he had felt as responsible as he did with Dong Soo, had taken Woon with him, and filled out the forms to place him in his custody. He had never been as close to Woon as he had been to Dong Soo, but Dong Soo had seen him truly sorry for his betrayal, and had heard him ask Jang-mi if it wasn't his fault for not being able to see, to better accompany the child, and guess what was in his head and heart.
Dong Soo didn't blame him : he had asked himself the same questions repeatedly in the months after the death of the president's son and Woon's departure.
In the beginning, Dong Soo had confronted Woon constantly, had been obsessed with the idea of bending him to his domination, proving that he was the pack leader, the Alpha wolf, and all that crap. All his thoughts had literally focused on him. Woon had never yielded, but had always looked at him with eyes so little unfriendly, with so little malevolence despite his provocations, that Dong Soo had conceived even more irritation from it, convinced that he was finding him secretly ridiculous, that he was deep down making fun of his stupidity and incompetence, and that he was seeing himself as the only real dominant one in their relationship.
It was during one of his failed attempts to subject him to his will that Dong Soo had first met Yoo Jin-Seon. He was hanging with his foot on a trap that he had prepared the day before to snare Woon, when the girl had passed by. He remembered finding her as pretty as a picture, and horribly cold, which, upon reflection, was also the feeling that Woon had inspired him several times.
When he had come home, Woon had said to him that he was "really something". Dong Soo had been showing off, trying to make him believe that he'd gotten himself out of it. Jin-Ju, sticking her head through the half-open appartment door, had fizzled out all his plan, revealing that she had been the one who had saved him.
It was Woon who had proposed to make peace and become friends. Dong Soo had wanted to play hard to get, but the next night, he had lent him one of his favorite comic book without protesting, and everything had been settled from that moment on. They slept in the same room, sharing Dong Soo's bed, since there was only one bed, and after their agreement, Dong Soo had started to wrap himself around Woon almost every night, without even meaning to. Woon had never said anything.
He slept like a corpse with his hands clasped over his belly. Once or twice, Dong Soo had found him turned on his side, very close to him, his head almost resting on his shoulder. He would have liked Woon to be more sociable, less withdrawn. He had tried to integrate him into the gang of friends he had made after Jin-Ju's rescue, and in the end would have preferred his company a hundred times over all the other boys, although he appreciated them.
Woon's refusals to go with them had always hurt him more than all the mockery he had been subjected to during his childhood. Even Jin-Ju had not been able to dampen his cranky mood after Woon had told him that he preferred to stay home.
He had met the president's son, Jangheon, during one of his escapades with Jin-Ju and the gang that surrounded him at the time. His car had almost ran over the girl, and Dong Soo had stormed out, demanded an apology, and ran after the car in a narrow alley. Jangheon, out of consideration for his perseverance, had asked one of his man to give him ten thousand won, with which he had bought candy for the whole troupe. He had been acclaimed as a hero.
It was also shortly after this collision that he helped the president's son escape from the clutches of Heuksa Chorong without even knowing it, after having chased the thief of Yoo Ji-Seon's pearl purse, whom he had met by chance in a shopping street, and arrested him with Woon. Meanwhile, Jin-Ju, before leaving with her father, had proposed to him. He had been so taken aback that his only answer had been "I'm certainly not going to marry a stubborn girl like you," which had done little to make him seem like a brilliant person in society. He had been sad to see her go, though.
They had been sent together to the specialized boarding school located about twenty kilometers away from the town of Gwangju, south of Seoul, a few days after Dong Soo had helped the president's son, an action for which he had moreover cruelly lacked recognition, an injustice he still deplored today. Sa-Mo had enrolled them both. Another friend of his, Jang Dae-Po, also of the NIS, who happened to be Jang-Mi's brother, ran the facility.
The program was general, but had a strong military aspect, and was justified by the fact that the institute had been specifically commissioned by the president's son to train his future bodyguards and special agents from an early age, ensuring that they were fully dedicated to his cause. The students had been recruited in the greatest secrecy, and the institute, isolated in the South Korean countryside, was known only to its founders and Jangheon's relatives.
Dae-Po's daughter, Min-So, was one of them : she was one of those children who were said to have the temper of their parents, and in her case, more precisely, she possessed the nature of her father, a bit mocking, strict, and particularly determined. Woon and Dong Soo had also met Yang Cho-Rip there. During the two months they had spent in the boarding school, following theoretical and practical courses, learning history and then hand-to-hand combat training, Woon and Dong Soo hadn't let go of each other.
The other boys were then more competitors than comrades, and the welcoming committee had been relatively inhospitable, as they had woken up Woon during the first night to force him to fight, and reawaken the old tensions of the beginning between him and Dong Soo. Woon was always the first up, and he always left the dormitory, always looking at Dong Soo, almost forcing him to hurry, but also waiting for him for the exercises. Although Dong Soo had provoked him first, Woon had taken over once at the boarding school.
They had been subjected to particularly demanding, often unfair physical tests. During one of them, the crossing of an entire stretch of the Han River, during which Cho-Rip, who was a poor swimmer, had almost drowned, Dong Soo had wanted to give up and return to Sa-Mo. It was Woon who had held him back, throwing a stone at him and mocking his departure.
I didn't want you to leave, he had told him years later, in a shyer, more vulnerable voice, I didn't know how to tell you. The ploy had worked. And then, in a way, Dong Soo had understood perfectly well from the look Woon had given him at that time. The rest didn't matter. They had started to fight each other at night, while Cho-Rip was keeping a careful eye on the scores.
Some time after an unofficial visit by the president's son, and during an evening he had spent talking with the director of the establishment and his advisers, Heuksa Chorong had attacked with Chun at his head. He had killed Dae-Po, and wounded Dong Soo, who had stood in his way to protect the former when he had simply come to find Woon, who hadn't followed them on their escape. He remembered very clearly that Woon had wanted to protect him, standing in front of him to prevent Chun from touching him.
The latter had pushed him aside dryly, and then plunged the blade of his knife into Dong Soo's side. The scar was still there, and had grown with the rest of his body. Sa-Mo and Jang-Mi had then taken them, shocked, dazed, further south, to the small village in Goesan district, where they had founded the orphanage and educated the children between the mountains.
x
They settled down in the dilapidated apartment, empty if it weren't for a mattress that Dong Soo had placed in the living room, where the old sofa had been, a television connected to a multi-socket outlet that also powered the microwave, the only survivor of the purge perpetrated by Dong Soo after the death of the president's son, a depressive-looking kitchen counter, and the bathroom medicine cabinet.
Water and electricity were still available, as Dong Soo continued to pay the bills to maintain the illusion of his own occupation of the apartment, but the ceiling light in the living room and more generally all the lamps in the house had disappeared, now reduced to a moving light bulb hanging from a wire in the middle of the main room. Woon, discovering the interior of the apartment, its inner emptiness and the erasing of all traces of his presence, remained somewhat suspended, and he left to have a look at all the rooms after having helped Dong Soo to sit on the mattress which was used as a bunk, when he sometimes came to spend the night there.
The rest of his men were visibly disappointed : they had probably expected a better, more furnished hideout, but Dong Soo preferred its clandestinity, and the little risk the authorities had of finding them there. He had changed his official address in the NIS forms, and erased all traces of the apartment's mention in the computer files.
(Unless they ask Sa-Mo)
It was a possibility that he couldn't overlook and for which he could almost have blamed himself for having told his uncle that he was still living in the apartment, but which he diminished the aspect of danger by convincing himself that Sa-Mo's loyalty and paternal affection would push him to try to preserve Dong Soo, and if not, to seek explanations from him personally before denouncing him to the police.
The same hypothesis applied to Jang-mi. As for the rest of his comrades, he hadn't seen enough of them in the last few years to have confided in them anything about it, except maybe Jin-Ju, who was the only one he still met regularly.
While his subordinates were finding corners to stand around waiting for news of the Sky Corporation Tower invasion, and Jang Tae San was trying, at the request of his boss, to contact Baek Myun for more information, Woon came back into the living room, and expressed his opinion about the state of the apartment in a way that was characteristic of him, and brought a smile to Dong Soo's face.
"Is it me or did you change the wallpaper?" He observed in a neutral tone, looking around him and pulling with his fingertips on a piece of the said wallpaper, which was torn off in a languid crumpling.
"Do you like it ? It's feng-shui," Dong Soo taught him. "What did you find?"
Woon had in his hands a flat object that he soon recognized as a magazine. He raised his arm, and presented the cover to Dong Soo, which was that of an old dated issue of GUNS magazine, purchased years before when they were still in training at the Korea National Police University.
After Woon's departure, Dong Soo had been trained for three years by agent Kim Gwang Taek, who had returned from a long expatriation to China, and who, upon his return, had been confused to find the baby he had deposited in an alley twenty years earlier, simply to protect him, and whom he had never found afterwards, plunging into a state of profund distress and guilt.
He had shown interest in Woon as well, but Woon had always been aloof with him, almost hostile. I thought he had killed my father," Woon had explained to him, Chun hadn't told me anything, and I wanted revenge.
"Oh, great," Dong Soo remarked, in the living room of their old apartment. "Reading."
The leader of Heuksa Chorong, for having nothing better to do, came and let himself fell down beside him on the mattress, bringing his skinny legs against his chest, and opening randomly a page of the magazin.
"Here, what do you think of this one?" he asked, pointing to a Sauer.
Dong Soo gauged the gun over Woon's shoulder, as he had done when he was younger, to read excerpts from books or comics that Woon submitted to him.
"Yeah, not bad," he concluded. "But the grip is a bit slutty-like, darling. I mean, it shines a lot."
"It's called varnish, Dong Soo-yah."
"It's a matter of opinion," he defended himself, bringing a smile to Woon's lips.
There were cameras in Woon's penthouse, and he had access to them through his phone. He had watched in the car as Hong Dae Ju's henchmen were searching his home, knocking over his furniture, ripping off fabrics, defacing the walls. Dong Soo had asked him if he was worried about his cat, Jun. Woon, not very comfortable with his fellow humans, was however passionately fond of animals, and felines had his preference in everything.
She's at the vet's, he had told him, she has an eye infection. In those, black, opaque, of Woon, Dong Soo had seen the threats, the promises of abuse and payment by blood if ever one of Hong Dae Ju's henchmen dared to attack his cat (the storm clouds). It would soon be midnight. The night was pierced by the illuminations of the city.
"Did you eat or you didn't have time?" Dong Soo asked as Woon was closing the magazine elegantly and lethargically, as if reading it had considerable bored him.
"Second option," Woon replied. "I would kill for instant noodles. And a nap."
"You want to order a bulgogi downstairs ? Same as before ? You send your guys to get it, and we'll all have dinner here together. It'll pass the time. And if you want to sleep, I can lend you my shoulder."
Woon breathed a sigh of relief, then looked at him through his eyelashes.
"I love it when you talk dirty to me," he said.
"Anything for you, man. And wait," Dong Soo resumed in an optimistic tone. "If you want, I think there's a bottle of nail polish left in the bathroom."
"What, you brought a girl here?"
"No," he protested, shrugging his shoulders. "One evening, I was really bored, and I felt like trying."
"What color?"
"Barbie pink, I think."
"Perfect," Woon decreed. "It'll fit the mood."
« One thousand miles an hour, how does it feel?
A million horse power, no steering wheel
Running off the shoulder, asleep on the stage
Exposing cold steel, fire, beauty and rage»
( The Midnight, « Night Skies » )
At the orphanage in the village between the mountains, he and Woon had grown up as harmoniously as it was possible for two kids like them to grow up. They went to school in the nearest big city, taking the bus every day, Dong Soo chatting non-stop with Cho-Rip, while Woon, calmer, often still half asleep despite his early awakenings, slumbered with his head resting against the window the whole way. Dong Soo always left it to him. Sometimes, he lend him his shoulder.
They had never flirted, or at least not in the naughty sense of the word, firstly because Woon and the word didn't fit well in the same sentence, and secondly because neither of them had enough subtlety to really know how to do it. On the other hand, they had sniped at each other, joked, complimented each other, stopped fighting and tried a much more verbal and peaceful approach.
The other kids in the school or orphanage had insulted them more than once, calling them fags, mimicking the sound of kisses when they walked by, and some had ended up with bloody noses, either from Dong Soo's or Woon's hand. Looking back, Dong Soo knew that he should have reacted differently, let them talk, not give a damn and move on. It's because they insulted Woon, he had later realized, by wanting to explain his attitude with another argument than youth and stupidity, it's because they insulted him, and they were telling the truth, and we weren't ready.
They had argued and made up countless times, or at least enough for Dong Soo to lose count. They never stayed angry at each other for very long. But when they did, the whole orphanage and the whole school knew about it. They would even come and ask questions about the why and how, and Cho-Rip would try to reconcile them at all costs, saying that he could not bear to take sides.
The irony was striking, when years later, he would described Woon as a "degenerate criminal" after surviving an attack by Heuksa Chorong, not ordered by Woon, but which his closest lieutenants, including Go Hyang, had implemented in order to protect him from the threat that the presidential authority still posed to him. Not only had it failed, since Cho-Rip was still alive, and the maneuver had contributed to making Woon even more dangerous in the eyes of Lee San and his grandfather, but it had also resulted in Woon's suicide attempt.
Dong Soo had guessed the trap by discussing with agent Seol who, after having trained them a few months in the mountains, and whose lessons had concluded with the successful test of sending the encrypted message from the radio station, during which both Dong Soo and Woon had thought they were playing for the future of their careers.
It was Dong Soo who had started to send the message, but it was Woon who had finished it, because the hands of the first one were shaking too much under the pressure, and that he had estimated to be too unstable to carry out the mission they had entrusted to them. When he had invited Woon to take his place, the latter had raised towards him a nebulous, strange look in which Dong Soo remembered having read of gratitude and surprise, a little like during their night after the (rave party).
He had rushed to the meeting place indicated by Cho-Rip, and found him, bleeding, and Woon right next to him, his gun in hand.
"Did you do this?" Dong Soo had panicked, coming close to Cho-Rip and dialing the number of an ambulance on his phone.
The question had been the same as during Woon's betrayal, when Dong Soo had seen him kneeling in front of the body of the president's son, with tears in his eyes. Woon had said nothing then, and Dong Soo had been too angry, too overcome with incomprehension and pain to fully reflect on the situation and analyze it in retrospect. They had fought that day, for real, like never before.
Woon hadn't even grazed him with a bullet, but he had disarmed him, and Dong Soo had used his knife, foolishly thinking that his sight would make Woon confess everything, but Woon had remained a wall, as usual, and it had been finally Yoo Ji-Seon, who had emerged from Jangheon's car to stand as a shield in front of Woon, while Dong Soo, having retrieved his gun, had raised his arm and fired almost randomly, twice.
He had pierced both of them, marking them with his fury, and was still blaming himself today, when he thought of the scar on Woon's flank, or the one on Ji-Seon's thigh. He didn't remember her face, but instead had a vivid memory of the tears that had come up in Woon's eyes, and the vulnerability that had been written on his features, which he had ignored in anger.
He had wanted to take her to the hospital, but she had refused, saying she wished to die near the president's son. Chun had arrived afterwards, taking them both away, and Dong Soo had immersed himself in hatred, resentment and grief. He hadn't seen them again until months later, both thin, pale, tired, just as Heuksa Chorong had tried to smuggle Ji-Seon and the indestructible tattoo on her back to China. The idea for the acid had come to him just before he had locked himself in regret, and he had taken some with him, in a pocket of his coat, when he had learned that Heuksa Chorong had booked a flight for Beijin.
Ji-Seon had told him that she wasn't angry with him, that she owed him, and he believed her, essentially because Woon had said the same thing to him during his convalescence after the rooftops of Seoul. She and Woon were the same in a way, of the same material, shaped in almost the same mold, and there was fire in the beautiful dark eyes of Ji-Seon, raised to be a respectable, educated, and composed young woman, as in Woon's eyes.
Despite Dong Soo's jealousy, as he had been a little in love with her when he had first saw her again at the age of twenty, during a special mission that had required all NIS forces, including future available agents, and consisted of the surveillance of an exceptional convoy, of which Ji-Seon was a part, they still had a much sharper and deeper connection than she had had with him.
They had spent more time together in a common situation, when she had been abducted by Heuksa Chorong, and he suddenly had been forced to take on the role he had been assigned upon joining the organization. In addition, he had come to her aid more than once, for example when Hong Dae Ju had her arrested during the ginseng case. She had stayed with him in his penthouse for a few days until things had calmed down and the real perpetrators had been brought to justice. Woon had also prevented the henchmen of the vice minister of Defense from attacking her when Dong Soo, for lack of means and especially information, hadn't been able to. They had never really argued about her, nor questioned their friendship on her behalf.
She had represented an anchor point at a delicate, post-rave party moment, on which they had thrown themselves, each in their own way, with the energy of despair, tragically erasing her in her whole person to remplace her with something else (Woon and the pole dance bar Woon and his arms around his neck Woon and his waist and his hair and his eyes and his black crown). Now that she was rid of the tattoo and, perhaps, of the son of the president, who had spotted her almost solely for that reason, she was free to exist for herself, and she now ruled her own empire, like Woon, with Jin-Ju standing by her throne, one hand on her graceful shoulder.
Cho-Rip's aggression had been the overstep, the line crossed, the ban not respected, which had seen them oppose each other for the second time, truly, on the rooftops of buildings in Seoul. They each had their guns, but none of them had dared to fire. Dong Soo was shuddering with horror at the simple idea of piercing Woon's body again with a bullet, and the latter had never done anything against Dong Soo under any circumstances.
From punch to parry, they had disarmed each other and pulled out their respective knives, but Woon had only been able to make light cuts, without any gravity, while Dong Soo, terrified by the turn of events, hadn't even dared to approach him. When other NIS agents had disembarked, surrounding Cho-Rip, waiting for the ambulance that Dong Soo had called, Woon had looked like a doe pointed at by a hunter, appallingly condemned and aware of his fate.
He had gone to speak to the president's grandson the day before, and had promised him, in exchange for his freedom, to dismantle Heuksa Chorong, but the maneuvering of his lieutenants and his right-hand woman had thwarted all his plans. And Cho-Rip had said things to him before sinking into unconsciousness, mean things that people could say when they were angry, but which he had seemed to think sincerely, and which had been planting their claws in Woon's darkest beliefs about himself.
Taking advantage of a moment of inattention from Dong Soo (you've always been my safe place), he had jumped up, and played on Dong Soo's reflex to lift the blade of his knife as they had collided. It had plunged a little above his heart, and should have killed him instantly.
Dong Soo still sometimes had the impression of the weight of his body between his arms, the smell of his blood, the taste of his own tears and his supplications, his mind turning completely upside down (Woon-ah my love my king my religion I beg you I'm sorry I didn't want to don't die don't leave me I can't without you it makes no sense without you).
He had been taken away from him and brought to the hospital with Cho-Rip, one alive, the other presumed dead, or dying, until a stretcher-bearer had exclaimed that his heart was still beating. He had been treated for a trial, no more. One evening, after drugging the guards outside his door, who wouldn't let him in for (justified) fear that he might try to take him away from their surveillance, he had ripped out his infusions, lifted him up in his arms (he weighed nothing my god he weighs nothing) and had taken him far away, in a kind of parody of a morbid wedding, at a clandestine surgeon whom he knew by his activities of hacker and at whom Woon could recover without the threat of the authorities above his head.
The heart of the problem, in truth, hadn't been Woon's physical health, which was robust and had allowed him to come out of his unconsciousness relatively quickly, but rather his nervous state when he had woken up.
On the slightly dusty bed on which the surgeon had told Dong Soo to install him, and in which Woon had been lying for several weeks, he had oscillated between tears and aggressiveness. You should have let me die, you idiot, he had yowled, and Dong Soo had started to cry too, angry at Woon for saying such things, angry at himself for not being able to react in time, then out of sorrow and fear.
But you didn't want to die, he had articulated, your heart was still beating when the ambulance arrived. The surgeon had never heard of Heuksa Chorong, didn't know Woon's face, and had obediently continued the care already provided by the hospital doctors as long as Dong Soo paid him his money. Dong Soo came every day, anxiety twisting his good sense, to check if Woon was awake or not. When he had finally arrived after his shift and had found Woon sitting on the bed with his eyes open, he had cried with relief, had rushed to his bedside, hugged him. But Woon had looked at him and just told him that he should have let him die.
The first month had been chaotic. Woon had refused to treat himself and to take the treatment imposed by the surgeon. He didn't want to eat or even talk. He cried. Another fear had started to twist Dong Soo's stomach whenever he left the basement where the man had set up his clinic : that Woon would suddenly slice his wrist or threw himself from the nearest roof.
One evening, they had argued so angrily and Woon had looked so distressed that he almost had tied him to the bed and removed all potentially dangerous objects from the room. They finally had ended up in each other's arms, asking each other for forgiveness for the first time in four years, and had spent the night in the same bed. Everything had been okay from that moment on.
They had taken the time to talk to each other, to look for real solutions together, to be with each other again. They had laid the groundwork for their understanding, rekindled their friendship, and considered ways to make it work despite their respective statuses. Woon had returned to Heuksa Chorong at the end of the third month. Dong Soo, for his part, had begun to cover all the country's surfaces with his face.
x
They made the order by phone, using the menu card Dong Soo had kept, and asked for an entire buffet. Two of Woon's men went down to get the order about twenty minutes later, during which he and Dong had been busy painting their fingernails (they had proposed to Woon's two lieutenants and soldiers to do the same with them, but they had then looked at them like they were two heretics, or as if they had spoken to them in a completely foreign language, and they had withdrawn wisely in their little bubble, reaching out their fingers for the other to be able to apply the candy pink), and came back with their arms full of warm plastic bags which immediately spread an appetizing aroma throughout the apartment.
During the interval between the order and the delivery, Woon had also taken the opportunity to clean the wounds on Dong Soo's chest, with the help of the small first-aid kit he had sent one of his men retrieve from the inside of the Genesis. He had made him lift up his shirt and had cleaned everything with application, wiping off the dried blood, barely pressing against the bluish and yellowed stains so as not to hurt him.
He had asked him how his rib was doing. Dong Soo had answered evasively. It was throbbing in regular pulses, but he didn't want to go to the hospital, and knew that Woon would drag him there by force if he confessed anything to him.
They distributed among them the plastic boxes that contained the food, and began to eat in silence. Baek Myun had finally responded to Jang Tae San's requests, and declared that the tower was literally under siege by the NIS, who opposed Hong Dae Ju's men without knowing who they belonged to. Shots were being fired from all sides, and Gangnam had been cordoned off by the police.
All those attached to Heuksa Chorong had retreated to hiding places in the city, while the employees of the Sky Corporation in the strict sense of the word had remained there, protected by the police and their ignorance. There was already talk in the media of a general collapse of the organization. Woon, when he heard the confirmation from his lieutenant, focused all his attention on his beef and said nothing.
Dong Soo could see the cogs inside his head, rolling against each other, producing ideas, strategies, options for reclaiming his territory. He himself was trying to envision some of them, to help him. He had had some feedback from the Nephelae, and the compromising files on the Hong Dae Ju case were piling up, which was probably the only good news of the evening.
After finishing his portion, Woon pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his coat pocket.
"I thought you'd quit," Dong Soo signaled to him, his mouth full of beef.
"I had," Woon said, imperturbable. "But now, considering that my company and my cover are about to be blown, I'm getting back to it, if you don't mind too much."
He and Woon had smoked together. Their consumption, which had begun during high school, wasn't excessive, and was generally more occasional than regular. Dong Soo had tried to quit after Woon's betrayal, and his efforts had resulted in the destruction of three packs in three days, a dismal failure.
As for Woon, even though Dong Soo had no longer be able to follow his path with tobacco after his return to Heuksa Chorong, he had considerably reduced his consumption during their collocation, and was in the process of quitting completely a few weeks before the Yungneung mission.
"You don't mind?" he asked him, his cigarette clenched between his lips.
"You know very well I don't."
"The smoke detector..."
"Dead."
"Okay. Do you have a lighter on you?"
"No. But I think I have a kitchen blowtorch."
Woon raised an eloquent eyebrow.
"Don't ask me," Dong Soo protested. "Do you want it or not?"
He wanted it. Dong Soo then pointed the kitchen counter to Joo Bong, Woon's second lieutenant, and the latter retrieved the blowtorch and threw it at him with a languid arm movement. He held the flame lit for Woon, watching him bend over, protected his cigarette with his hand, and then released a puff of thick smoke into the apartment.
"If anyone else wants to smoke, go ahead, I'm used to it," he said.
It was a great success. Nearly half of Woon's subordinates also reached into a jacket or trouser pocket to retrieve a packet of cigarettes, and two of them, probably more consistent smokers than their colleagues, found a lighter they had taken without even thinking about it. They passed it on.
Jang Tae San preferred the blowtorch ("more intense," he observed with a sly smile, which made him a little more sympathetic to Dong Soo). Joo Bong, who didn't smoke, opened the window to let the air circulate, while the others, out of respect and politeness, retired to the rooms to smoke, opening the windows. The air outside was icy. Dong Soo saw Woon tighten the sections of his coat around him, and instinctively, he moved closer, to let him enjoy his warmth and block the cold.
The smell of tobacco was soon everywhere, sticking to the walls, the floor, the fabrics of the clothes and their hair. Dong Soo accepted Woon's cigarette, which Woon held out to him because he had seen him squint at it several times, and putting his lips where Woon's had been, inspired a bitter, greasy puff, which he gently released. Woon looked gloomy, and a little sad.
When they had first met again after his betrayal, when Heuksa Chorong had found Chun's trail and moved in herds, under the command of Dae-Un and a new chief from China, who had died just a few weeks later at the hand of his predecessor, to trap him, Dong Soo had seen the same expression in him, and thought that he was thin, pale, and sinister.
They hadn't even had time to talk about what had happened, and had become mired over the weeks in misunderstandings that were resolved only after Woon had recovered from his suicide attempt. I wish you would have told me earlier, Dong Soo had confessed one night in bed, while they were lying together, I'm sorry I didn't give you the impression that you could tell me such things.
Woon had stood up on one elbow, leaning against his chest. Dong Soo remembered the immensity of his eyes, how midnight dark they were, how sorry and pained they looked, how they had absolute power over him.
"I meant what I said to you on the roof," he had said in a hoarse voice. "You've always been my safe place."
Then he had added, after a pause, in a painful tone.
"And I'm sorry you're sorry. I'm sorry I gave you the impression that I didn't trust you enough to talk to you about this."
I would burn the world for you, Dong Soo had sworn as he had contemplated him above him, his emaciated face surrounded by his black hair, I would burn the world if you ask me, you only have to say a word, I would do it, I swear. The bed in the basement was tiny, ridiculously too narrow for two, and there was always a suffocating smell of chemicals.
He remembered Woon's leg resting on his, Woon's hands slipped under his shirt, pressed against his heart. He thought about it as he was watching him smoke in the living room of their old apartment, while Heuksa Chorong was falling apart and his own career at NIS was coming to an abrupt end. Woon had always been everything, even before the rave party, even before the night they had shared in his room.
x
To say that the rave party had started it all would have been a lie, but it had set things free, it had set a process in motion, it had set new things in motion. If the relationship between him and Woon had been a room, the rave party would have been one of those interior designers who had proposed a different arrangement of furniture, a new layout, more adapted to the variations in representations and perceptions that had marked their adolescence.
They had followed the others, including Min-So, Jang Dae-Po's daughter and Jang-Mi's niece, who had grown up to be even more reckless than her late father, and Cho-Rip, whose passage to maturity had seemed to have stirred the desire for integration and celebration. They had taken the bus, greeting almost with one voice the driver, who knew them well. They had reached the old nightclub at twenty-one o'clock and had stayed there for almost three and a half hours.
Cars had piled up in the old parking lot, the doors had been open almost all night, and the arrivals had followed one after the other, seeming never to stop. The club, illuminated with blue and yellow neon lights, had filled up so quickly that even the event organizers had been a little overwhelmed, and at the bar, the orders had multiplied.
Dong Soo had been drinking moderately, not to the point of being completely drunk, but the next day in the corridors of the orphanage he had come across many hungover faces, including that of Cho-Rip. They had talked low all morning, and Sa-Mo and Jang-Mi had made a general distribution of aspirin.
The main attraction had been one of the local DJs, who regularly animated the rave parties and always brought a huge mixing table, standing in front of it with very big headphones whose ends were wrapped in a glittering surface with purple and copper reflections, and that Dong Soo had always admired. That evening, he had been unanimously acclaimed, regardless of his musical choices, and as always, Dong Soo had come to join him at the end of the first hour, leaving the group of kids from the orphanage who were dancing all together and jumping to the rhythm of the songs, holding each other by the shoulders, some of them already completely overcome by alcohol.
Woon had joined them, but he was much calmer, and if he had let the arms of the others surround him, he wasn't screaming or singing like them, and Dong Soo was afraid that he was getting bored, or having a bad time. He knew that Woon came more to please him than out of genuine interest. So he had made a suggestion to the DJ, who had left him in charge of the mixing, while he was standing by to observe the manipulations and add more if needed. A popular song of the time, which Woon had told him he liked, had invaded the room and caused a great stir among the guests.
It was a song with lyrics that were a little sad, with a heavy and catchy bass, a little captivating. Dong Soo had made some adjustments to the speed, and slowed it down just enough to make the atmosphere more lascivious, more sophisticated, more like a real strip club than a nightclub. He had been warmly applauded, and the movements of the guests on the dance floor had become more muffled, graceful, languorous, to match the new rhythm that Dong Soo was proposing to them.
At that time, there were already people on the pole-dance bars. They were always employed at the slightest party, and there were mostly girls who circled around them like panthers, looking at their audience with fiery, conquering glances, while they were moving without hurrying, the bar in their hands. Dong Soo, knowing this, hadn't paid attention at first, and was focusing on the music and the delicate adaptations he wanted to bring to it.
Then he had heard a clamor, very localized roars of joy, the voices being those of his classmates at the orphanage, and looking up, he had seen, and oh, since that day, since that night, he had never forgotten, never, because Woon had climbed onto the pole dance platform, in his black t-shirt, jeans and boots, surprising everyone, and had grabbed the bar between his long fingers, and he was now moving in cadence, his hips undulating very gently, like a (wave), like the downy fabric of a (cloud). Around him, the others had gathered, and they were screaming, laughing, in hysterical euphoria, chanting the name of Woon, encouraging him.
Some had begun to throw bills at him. When he had met Dong Soo's gaze, the latter literally staring at him, he had smiled, a gigantic, happy, demented, confident smile (look at me). His eyes were shining wildly under the neon light, his skin had taken on bluish, golden hues, like those of a girdle of Venus in the abyss of the oceans, the muscles of his arms were rolling with each of his movements.
Dong Soo had responded with another smile just as huge, moved, amazed, and had accelerated the rhythm of the song, his eyes plunging at regular intervals in the direction of Woon. Never then had he seemed so beautiful, so powerful, so unforgettable. From the top of his platform, he had controlled absolutely everything, and his sensuality had been supreme.
Dong Soo remembered not being able to stop himself from running towards him at the end of the song, to retrieve him as he was letting go of the bar, visibly ecstatic, to wrap his slender waist with his arms and to spin him around while laughing with happiness, unable to believe what he had seen, Woon, who was so reserved, so severe, and who had been so voluptuous nevertheless at the pole-dance bar.
"Woon-ah, you were wonderful!" he had shouted after putting him down, delirious with glare. "You were sensational, I can't believe it, it was crazy!"
Woon had shaken his head, laughed in his arms, seemed surprised by his own boldness. Dong Soo had kissed him, because he had been unable not to do so, because there had been nothing else to do, because a kiss had seemed the only way to express his admiration and how much he loved him.
And when his lips had pressed against Woon's, he had felt him at first tensed like the string of a harp, and he would probably have retreated immediately if he hadn't heard his moan, muffled but real, an unexpected moan of pleasure and probably also of amazement. Woon's arms, which had remained around his neck when Dong Soo had lifted him up, had tightened around him, almost convulsively. No one had paid any attention to them, no one had come to disturb them.
They were in the midst of strangers who were dancing, having fun, not caring about other people's problems, and rightly so. Dong Soo had then stood up, smiling, and had seen from Woon's expression, completely lost, confused, from his silence, that he had perhaps made a mistake, and presumed his rights. His joy had fallen back suddenly.
"Sorry," he had said, appallingly ashamed and unhappy, terrified by the idea that he had ruined eight years of friendship within the space of a few seconds. "I'm so sorry, I won't do it again, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."
But Woon had casted him another look in response to his regrets, which had been full of urgency and uncertainty, and Dong Soo had seen it as a possibility that until then had remained unsettled, unformulated, kept secret by restraint and hesitation.
They had come home and, in his room, Woon had opened up to him, let him touch him, caress him, roam his legs with his hands and kiss him, and even then Dong Soo had never dared, without knowing what exactly. He had almost no memory of his body's reactions. He had been too absorbed in bringing pleasure to Woon, in pleasing him, giving him absolutely something with all the gentleness and respect that Dong Soo felt he deserved.
He remembered with painful perfection the cold of Woon's thighs around his head, his taste, the brittle skin and bones of his hips against the palms of his hands and how they had rippled between them, how Woon had arched for him, moved for him, squeezed his hands in despair, had yielded with a majestic and feverish supremacy, he remembered the slightest moan that Woon had let go, even if they had been weak, even if they had been tinged with indescribable suffering, and his own pleasure, so finely, so intimately linked to Woon's. Feeling him close to orgasm, listening to his body and its slightest tremors, Dong Soo had looked up.
Then he had been caught, seized, devoured, by the vision offered by Woon lying on the bed, eyes closed, cheeks rosy, lips parted in a sigh of pleasure, his black hair in a crown around his face.
He had smiled at him, and Dong Soo had been stabbed by piety, by veneration, had let it rush into him without putting up the slightest resistance, because it was impossible to resist it, burning his entrails, twisting his nerves, becoming ingrained in his bones, tilting his reason and drowning his heart, because Woon was beautiful, more beautiful than any statue of Michelangelo, more beautiful than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so beautiful he could make an non-believer believe, more powerful than any god, he was power, sensuality, and consecration, he was God to Dong Soo, and nothing else made sense except him.
Dong Soo had wanted to revere him, to wash his feet, to pray him, to worship him, to paint frescos for him, and to put his face on every wall, on every surface in the world, and he had repeated in his head "no one else matters, the world doesn't matter, you are the only thing that matters, the only important thing, let me build temples for you, let me burn the world for you, let me serve you, let me deify you, make me your slave, I don't care if I loose myself, it doesn't matter, I don't care, I love you, there's only you".
After his orgasm, Woon had looked totally disoriented, terrorized, and his eyes had filled with tears when Dong Soo had joined him, had gone up to him, had allowed himself to lie down on him, leaving the moist heat of the cocoon of his legs to enable him to be with himself completely, but coming close to him nevertheless.
He had been worried, as Woon had seemed about to have a panic attack, and was breathing in fits and starts, his irregular breath interspersed with abominably silent sobs. Dong Soo had wrapped his cheek with one hand, and Woon had grabbed it like a drowning man grabbing a rope after it had been thrown to him over the rail.
"Sorry," Woon had articulated with difficulty, his voice chopped up, squeezing his hand.
"Woon-ah, it's all right," Dong Soo had whispered, not knowing what to say, and not wanting to cause him any pain or harm. "My love, it's all right."
He had done his best not to touch him too much with the rest of his body, had just wrapped his hands around his face, stroked his cheeks with his thumbs, and had stayed above him, shaking his head to let him know that it was okay, that everything was fine, that he was safe.
Woon, finally, had closed his eyes, lips parted, had thrown his head back against his pillow to breathe better, and Dong Soo had pressed his nose against his jaw, wanting nothing more than to provide him with relief, to offer him comfort as much as possible.
Woon had wrapped his arms around his neck, and they had stood up on the bed, dragged by Dong Soo, hugging each other like two young children, Dong Soo's arms around Woon's waist. Gone was the sensuality, gone was the languor and desire. Woon had buried his face in his shoulder and there was nothing left but their friendship and love, and their mutual tenderness, and the fear too, of what they had just done, of its enormity, of its implications, far too immense for them, and which they feared they would have to face someday.
They had stayed like that for a long time, rocking in each other's arms, vainly trying to calm their anxieties, without saying anything but very sweet, intimate words, words of love, full of promises that were a little hollow and a little silly, and Dong Soo had pronounced them one after the other with devotion, in Woon's elegant neck, listening to the beating of his heart and feeling the curly and black locks of his hair against his cheeks.
x
They finished the cigarette, watching the filter burn out between puffs. Woon wanted to know how Ji Seon was doing, and Jin-Ju (they're doing great, Dong Soo said, Jin-Ju broke up with her painter boyfriend and they moved in together, and I'm pretty sure it's a different kind of collocation than ours). He also briefly inquired about Cho-Rip, who now belonged to the President's Cabinet, and Sa-Mo and Jang-Mi (You know they call each other mommy and daddy now ? Dong Soo told him).
Several of Woon's men had sat, like them, with their backs against the wall, and were spoking in low voices, waiting, prey to a cautiously contained impatience and growing anxiety. They hadn't heard from Baek Myun, but Go Hyang had called at one point, both for directions from Woon, but also to give him a more direct assessment of the situation.
She had reported that no floor of the tower had been spared by their encounter with Hong Dae Ju's men, and that she had finally retreated as soon as she heard that the NIS was going to come, fleeing with the rest of the lieutenants and a small group of soldiers. They had taken refuge in one of the secondary, and admirably classified, addresses of Heuksa Chorong on the outskirts of the capital.
"She wanted to join us, or for us to join them," Woon signaled after hanging up.
"And?" Dong Soo encouraged him.
Go Hyang had played a key role in Woon's lieutenants' attack on Cho-Rip and their struggle on the rooftops, which had ended with his suicide attempt. Several times since then, Dong Soo had been staring at his computer screen thinking about her.
Woon had assured him that he had cleared things up with both her and his men, and that her role was too important (and his knowledge of the organization too precise) to safely dislodge her, but Dong Soo continued to daydream some nights about programs, codes, and all the destruction and violence he could have unleashed against her.
"I said no, Woon replied. "It's too dangerous, not until things have calmed down a bit."
Woon was also monitoring developments through media reports. According to these reports, the Sky Corporation tower, abandoned by its employees and consequently by Heuksa Chorong's mafia, had become the site of a private confrontation between the NIS and Hong Dae Ju's henchmen, who were trapped in the building by the rush of law enforcement and therefore forced to defend themselves.
The Nephelae were patiently digging up old files, and several of them had already gone to the TV stations, radio stations, national newspapers and finally the government.
"The police was also dispatched by the president to the Yanoi Tower," a KBS 2TV presenter was announcing, as images of the skyscraper surrounded by government cars appeared in the background. "For the time being, the vice minister of Defense remains nowhere to be found, and the police suspect that he left in a hurry to the nearest airport. A search is also reportedly underway at his Seoul home."
"If that's the case, he has a chance to escape them," Woon observed gloomily, holding the screen of his phone vertically in front of him and Dong Soo.
"Not sure. He can also hide in a bunker under the tower, or at home, in some kind of secret basement."
"You watch too many shows, Dong Soo-yah."
"What, you don't have a secret basement?"
"No," Woon asserted. "I have safes, it's more convenient."
"With top secret files?" Dong Soo insisted.
Woon turned his head towards him, buried his eyes into his own.
"And your drawings," he admitted, a little shyly.
Dong Soo extended his hand, stroked the hollows between Woon's fingers, inserted his own between those of Heuksa Chorong's chief and felt him respond to his pressure. His hands were cold. Woon's hands were always cold, because he was cold all the time.
"Woon-ah, sweetheart, don't you think we should talk?" he said, after more than a decade of hesitation. "Now that we have time."
The pet names thing had started after the rave party. In any case, Dong Soo remembered using them abundantly after their night together, and a bit like a reflex.
"Talk about what?" Woon gently asked him, contemplating their linked hands, touching Dong Soo's little finger with his thumb.
"Of this. Of us. We've never discussed it. I mean, if you want."
"Is it absolutely necessary ?" Woon objected. "Do we have to?"
Dong Soo shrugged his shoulders. The pain in his ribs had diminished since they were in the apartment, and he was beginning to seriously hope that he hadn't really broken any of them.
"Maybe," he replied. "I don't know. Maybe it would be good for us, just to lay some groundwork, to check some things out. I mean, look at us. We're going to be thirty-five, and even with the rave party, even with everything that's happened since we were eighteen, we're reduced to holding hands in the ruins of our old apartment while your Mafia organization is collapsing and I probably have a broken rib. Did you ever wonder where it was leading us?"
"Does it absolutely have to lead us somewhere?" Woon opposed him, not without a certain truth (no matter the others and the world). "Except to the hospital for your rib, maybe."
"Very nice," Dong Soo complimented him. "But more seriously. What do you think about it ? Have you ever wondered about it?"
"Yes," he told him. "But not in detail. I mean, it's always been more or less obvious to me. It hasn't, for you?"
"I don't know. Have you met anyone since the last time?"
Woon bumped his head against the wall, closed his eyes, and let out a weary sigh. Dong Soo felt his heart cowering in his chest, under the weight of the apprehension and the abominable anguish caused by the idea of Woon with someone other than himself, but also the bitter and implacable realization that Woon wasn't his, wasn't anyone's, and therefore had only himself to answer to on this point.
"Why do you always ask this question?"
"I don't know," Dong Soo confessed , avoiding looking at him, focusing his attention on a lint of dust stuck to his coat. "Maybe because I'm a masochist. Or because I'm scared, and I think that if I rip the bandage off faster, it won't hurt so much. Bullshits like that."
"What about your hackers ? Didn't they watch me?" Woon teased him, with a smirk on his face.
"No," Dong Soo protested, a little offended. "I know I have issues, but not that much, thank you."
"And you don't trust me?"
(I'll give you the world on a silver platter)
"I do, he said with sincerity, because it was true. "But trust has nothing to do with it."
Woon's eyes were filled with a dense, misty haze, as deep as the abyss of the earth.
"Dong Soo-yah, there's no one else," he whispered then, vulnerable, almighty, and no doubt aware that he was capable of annihilating Dong Soo with a single word. "There will never be anyone else, okay ? You know that, though."
"I know," Dong Soo confirmed, trying to contain the huge and painful thing that was going down his throat. "But sometimes I just need you to say it to me one more time."
Woon looked at him for a moment, with great sadness, then he slipped his free hand into Dong Soo's hair, pushing a lock that had fell on his forehead, gently drawing him to him, and kissed him on the lips, firmly, briefly, very slowly.
Eyes closed, Dong Soo ignored Woon's subordinates, convincing himself that they weren't paying attention to them (which was a frank illusion given the size of the apartment and the line of four mafia guys, including two lieutenants, that was right in front of them, less than ten steps away), and gave him back his kiss, their first in seventeen years. They had never dared to do anything after the rave party.
Everything had crystallized between them, in emptiness and silence, shyness and fear, and then fossilized permanently after Woon's betrayal, until Hong Dae Ju, without even realizing it, had finally gave them an opportunity to dust off and melt the ice.
"Do you think we should change our Facebook status or something?" Dong Soo submitted to him when Woon backed down. "Apparently, that's something educated people do."
"Sure," the latter replied in a slightly hoarse voice. "My enemies are going to love learning that I'm in a "complicated relationship" with the guy who's been getting in their way for the last ten years."
"Ah, in my defense, I'm not alone."
His remark brought a smile on Woon's, and Woon then said, cutting the thread of Dong Soo's reflections, and echoing them in a totally unpredictable and a little creepy way :
"Do you want to get married in Las Vegas?"
His tone was much too nonchalant not to disturb Dong Soo, who stared at him as if Woon had told him that he was joigning a circus.
"Woah, dude. Smooth. Great transition," he managed to answer with logical words. "I'm so turned on right now. Maybe warn a guy next time?"
Woon didn't even blink.
"Seriously," he said, and then he presentend an irrefutable argument. "It's not like it would change a lot of things between us. It's just a piece of paper to sign, we'll be done quickly, it'll go fast."
"Why, you're pregnant or something ? Because if you are, I'm going to have to ask you some questions for science. And I'd like you to think about calling him "Dong Soo Junior"."
"Dong Soo-yah..."
"But like, today, right now?"
"No, not necessarily," Woon reassured him with a slight shrug of the shoulders. "It can wait until tomorrow."
Dong Soo then accepted, under the weight of his dark, insistent, beautiful eyes, to consider the idea much more carefully than through the transitory impulses he had experienced throughout the years he had spent with Woon.
"I don't know," he heard himself say. "I mean, we've never really...well, we're not even a couple, if that means anything."
Woon didn't get flustered.
"Do you want us to be a couple?"
Dong Soo then thought that they were going back to the starting point, and that by beating around the bush so much, one of them would probably end up sick.
"No," he admitted. "That's what I told you, I don't know. I think...I think I'm okay with things the way they are, honestly. When I really think about it, I realize I don't want to change them."
"Neither do I."
"And honestly, I wouldn't know how to do it," he later admitted.
Woon observed the kitchen wall in front of them, or rather the wall behind his men.
"Neither do I," he decreed. "Just the thought of having to buy you chocolates for the Valentine's Day cliche makes me want to kill myself, and I really don't need another reason to want something like that."
"You smooth talker," Dong Soo mocked him. "Don't forget the flowers, I'm a sensitive guy."
"Maybe I could always give you a marijuana bag for our anniversary. With a pearl necklace."
"Cool. And I could paint you as the Mona Lisa, and then hack a bank to pay us a gourmet restaurant."
"Who's the smooth talker now?"
They smiled at each other, hand in hand, sharing common memories, improvised karaoke in Dong Soo's old car, awkward dances in their living room, when the radio was playing a catchy song, dinners at restaurants, trips to museums and movies, the popcorn between them almost like an intruder as they took turns dipping their hands in it, common jokes, games, all those things that made them, above all, childhood friends, the confidant of the other, a part of themselves that had swollen over the years, taking up more and more space in their hearts and minds.
Woon was the first thing Dong Soo thought of in the morning, and often the last thing he thought of before going to sleep. He imagined him with him all the time, every time he moved, thinking about what Woon might say, how he might react to this or that thing. Woon was a natural extension of his thinking, an automatic deviation, which he didn't even pay attention to any more each time he followed it.
He always had him with him, all the time, to some extent, and realized, as Woon was smilin at him, that the other way round was also true, and that he was as permanent in Woon's ideas as the latter was in his. He remembered what he had read in an article one day about these parasitic worms that lived in the gills of fish, and which, after meeting each other while still in the larval stage, attached themselves to each other and grew up like that, all their lives, without ever separating.
My half worm, Dong Soo thought to himself with tenderness, my darling parasite.
"But aren't we supposed to be together to get married, though?" he went on, tearing himself away from his metaphysical contemplations, which brought absolutely nothing to the matter, since they had been there from day one.
"No idea," Woon admitted. "I just want to. I trust you. I know you. We've lived together before and it was going well. You make me laugh. And I love you enough to hold your hand, and to do other stuff, too. Does it have to be something else?"
(let me build you temples)
"You're setting a poser, love," Dong Soo conceded him, while pressing his hand in his. "Do you really think it could last?"
"What, if we got married?"
"Yes."
Woon's eyes were drawn to the bay window, to the illuminated buildings of Seoul and its frenetic nightlife, that of a large international metropolis. It was snowing now. Snowflakes, as light and floating as pieces of clouds, were falling gracefully on the capital's floor and rooftops.
"No idea," he said. "I'd like to. Do you think that's enough to make a marriage work?"
"You're giving me a philosophy exam or you're just really happy to see me?"
"You want to check in my pocket to find out?"
"Sorry," Dong Soo replied. "My hands are full."
And he lifted up the one who was holding Woon's hand, brought it to his lips, and laid a reverential kiss on his skin.
Woon cuddled up a little more against the apartment wall, put his head on Dong Soo's shoulder, and closed his eyes with a sigh.
"You're the best friend I have in the world," he whispered. "At the same time, I don't know if I would have the strength to risk that."
Dong Soo pressed his cheek against the top of his head, felt the soft touch of his hair.
"Do you love me?" he asked softly, tenderly, with his heart beating very fast.
"Yes, you know that," Woon replied in the same tone of voice, looking up at him. "And you, do you love me?"
"Yes."
"No offense, but I don't see how that's supposed to help."
Dong Soo, with his fingertips, replaced a lock of curly hair back behind Woon's ear.
"Easy, sweetheart," he told him. "You love me. I love you. And the rest...well, it doesn't matter. Like a wise man said before me, I'm chill if you're chill."
Woon raised his chin, pressed his lips against Dong Soo's for the second time of the evening. His eyes were wet when he moved back.
"Woon-ah, are you crying?" Dong Soo worried.
"No," he replied, sniffing pitifully, while a diamond-sized tear was running down his cheek.
"Yes, right, I'm sorry. I mean : did you by any chance peel some onions, my love?"
Woon laughed, threw his head back, elbowed him in the ribs. He had the most beautiful eyes in the world when he was crying, and it was a terrible thing to say, as Dong Soo was obsessed with the idea of seeing him as radiant as he had been during the rave party. But maybe that's not possible, a part of him whispered, maybe we can't make people really happy, maybe deep down we can just be there with them when they're sad, and hold their hands, and comfort them the best we can.
The idea haunted him, depressed him too. At times, he would be tempted to buy one of those melancholic old mansions in the English countryside, or elsewhere, something prettier and more liveable than the ruins of their apartment, to start gardening, to do some DIY, to furnish everything with soft sofas and Chinese porcelain, and then to give it to Woon and admire the expression of happiness and satisfaction that would appear on his face.
Everything for you, Dong Soo thought, every day, everything for you, the world for you. It wasn't healthy, it wasn't reasonable, it wasn't more logical than it was modest, and he didn't give a damn.
"Okay, then," he said, because he didn't know how to express the strength of his love for Woon, the crazy things he was able to do for him. "We're getting married."
Woon turned to him with a dreadful, imploring look. Dong Soo was now convinced that the others were following their conversation attentively, and were close to banging their heads against the walls because of it.
"But I want a diamond," he added, to relax the atmosphere.
"Ah. I was thinking sapphires," Woon observed critically. "Blue suits your complexion better. I don't have anything on me at the moment, but in the car, if you want, I think we have a pair of earrings."
"Well, why not ? I'd like to have some very long, cocaine-set ones."
"Oh no, not in sapphires," Woon corrected him. "We put it with the jade, it's more patriotic."
"Yes, you're right, it makes more sense," Dong Soo concluded eloquently, before continuing. "And then what?"
"What, what?"
"We get married in Las Vegas. Let's say we manage to leave the country, we don't get caught by the international authorities, nobody recognizes us in the United States. Let's say we manage to get your duchess of a cat back, since it seems impossible that we leave without her. What will we do then ? Do we go on honeymoon?"
"I talked about marriage, not about running away," Woon replied wittily. "And Jun isn't a duchess, she's an empress."
"That depends. For your cat too. We could become tourists after all. Go to England. See the Death Valley. Make a road trip. Go visit the North Pole, I don't know."
Woon raised a royal and interrogating eyebrow.
"We never talked about the North Pole," he observed after a hesitation.
"No, but you know, lately I've been feeling a lot of empathy for penguins."
Woon shook his head, looking truly sorry.
"I can't leave like this," he said. "I'm a mafia boss. It didn't work ten years ago, it won't work today. You were right. I'd be chased everywhere."
"We'll change our names," Dong Soo replied tit for tat. "And for your own survival, I hope it will work today. If not, I can predict you're going to face a whole lot of problems. Ten years ago, Heuksa Chorong wasn't in the same situation as it is now. Things are changing, sweetheart. In light of the latest events, you'll probably have to hide for quite a while."
"With you?"
"Look at that," he noted with exaggerated tenderness. "My future husband and his tact. You could at least try to look more enthusiastic."
Woon's face darkened nevertheless. They then remained silent for a while, still holding hands.
None of Woon's men had announced that they had received news from Heuksa Chorong or the tower, but messages from the Nephelea were still pouring out on Woon's phone, and when they had checked the various national media, they had found that the authorities still hadn't gotten hold of Hong Dae Ju. The hypothesis that he had managed to get on a plane and escape from the police was becoming more and more likely.
"Sometimes," Woon said suddenly. "Sometimes I don't feel anything at all. Really, Dong Soo-yah. Sometimes I kill and I know I kill and it's my fault, and it doesn't matter at all. Sometimes I get up and I don't feel anything, I feel empty. Sometimes I don't feel anything all day. And I try, I swear I do, but the more time goes by, the more I think I have nothing left inside. There are moments when I think about going on the roof and jumping, and I don't care. You must be the only thing I still can feel something for. You, and Jun. Do you think it's normal ? Do you think there's something wrong with me?"
His eyes were full of tears and anxiety when he laid them on Dong Soo, looking for answers, for comfort, like that night after the rave party, on his bed.
Dong Soo realized with horror that he didn't know what to say to reassure him, and understood at the same time that no good answer could be decently given to such questions, simply because they didn't need to be resolved, but just buried under something nice, loving, kind.
"I don't know if what I'm going to tell you will help you," he articulated carefully, with a thoughtful slowness. "But sometimes I just feel like dropping one or two pieces of information randomly, and then watching the world collapse and burn. I never thought there was something wrong with you, Woon-ah. I think there's something wrong with all of us. But I know that the only thing that stops me from sending this information is the idea that it would be a bad move, just because you're in the world, because you're part of the world."
"Do you love me?" Woon asked him, begged him.
"Yes. You're the only thing that matters to me. I promise. For as long as I can, for as long as you want me. I'll do my best."
"You'll marry me?"
"Oh, for sapphires, yes, definitely."
Woon burst out laughing, and it was a trembling laughter, which collapsed on itself like the heart of a star, but Dong Soo preferred to concentrate on the good things, and pressed his forehead against Woon's.
"We're going to get married in Las Vegas," he said, as a prayer, as a verbal ritual that would have helped to calm all their fears and suffering. "It will last an hour and your lieutenants will be our witnesses, and then we'll go to a restaurant to celebrate. I'll take you on a Route 66 road trip. And to England. We'll buy a pied-à-terre for Jun, with a nice garden. You'll sit on the queen's throne, and if you want, I'll give you her crown. You'll control Heuksa Chorong from everywhere in the world, or you will do something else, whatever you want, and I will always have the Nephelea. I'll take your name, if it pleases you. I'll draw you on the walls of Buckingam Palace. We'll find Hong Dae Ju, and I'll watch you skin him alive."
Woon's smile widened wonderfully at this enumeration, as he wrapped Dong Soo's face with his cold hands and held him against him, pressed himself against him.
They probably wouldn't do half of the crazy things he had suggested, maybe the marriage would never ever happen, because it was the craziness thing between all of them, and the stupidest, but it was the intention that mattered, or rather their common, shared desire, this sudden clarification that had never been able to take place before.
"And I'll be your king?" he murmured, his eyes half closed, his voice vibrant, victorious, languorous.
Dong Soo thought of his hips, his skin in the blue neon light, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the clouds, the first time he had seen Woon at the age of twelve.
"Sure. And I'll be your queen."
Woon's laughter resounded furiously in the living room. They were the same power, the same entity, the same storm, Woon with Heuksa Chorong, in the sky, the clouds, Dong Soo with the hackers, on the ground, the sea, both in the shadow, then in the light. They were one catastrophe, one absolute, the fire in the sky, the anarchy, the disorder of love, the destruction and all the frenetic beauty of eternal and selfish devotion.
And nothing else mattered.
« I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That's all. The rest is confetti. »
(The Haunting of Hill House)
Indications :
- I have to thank a thousand time the last video of a french youtuber called DirtyBiology, titled "You don't know what the living world is like (but no one does, actually)" (in french : "Vous ne savez pas à quoi ressemble le monde vivant (mais personne en fait)"), for giving me the idea of the Girdle of Venus and romantic worms (also called paradiplozoon hemiculteri - you're welcome, it was a pleasure) metaphor.
Thank you ever so much for reading this story !
