A more sensitive side to our favorite redhead, because it only becomes harsher later on. Enjoy. ~ Sage

2 – Heart Shaped Box

-Soul-

I tried to smile for her, gripping her frail, skeletal hand as gently as I could.

"Don't worry, Sun Jung. I will look after him. You know I love him as if he were my son."

"I know, Master Doo San."

"Baek, please."

"Baek. I do not doubt he will be safe with you. You've been more of a father to him than the one who left us two years ago."

I visited her almost every day since she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer, sometimes with a bouquet of mugunghwa, her favorite, or a book I knew she'd wanted to read. Since her diagnosis, I'd looked after her son, sheltering him under my roof when his own home became too foreign and cold without the presence of his mother.

Maybe I didn't have to take in the boy; a distant aunt or uncle would have sufficed. But most of them lived all the way in Pusan, some even in Japan, and how could Hwoarang visit his mother then? Sun Jung could have hired a nanny. But they're not always trustworthy. I heard they steal things or abuse the children they're supposed to look after. And so, without question, I took Hwoarang in. No reason was good enough for me to give him up, unless it was his mother's recovery.

Such a good man, Mr. Doo San is, taking care of other people's children like that.

Ne, ne, my daughter is a student in his dojang. Admires him so much!

I liked to think that pure, unbiased compassion and selflessness were the reasons why I took in the boy. It couldn't be because I loved his mother. She was still mourning her husband's abandonment after all. Wounds were too fresh. She had a son to focus on. Being a working, single mother had taken its toll, so I later allowed Hwoarang to learn Tae Kwon Do for free. I never could have told her about how I felt.

Koreans were supposed to be good at keeping a straight face anyway. I should know better.

His mother, once vibrant and beautiful, laid like a cadaver on the hospital bed; her formerly raven locks—the envy of every woman she knew—was replaced with a glossy baldness, blue veins slithering like rivers and vines beneath translucent skin. For a year she fought the cancer, smiling every day even as the chemotherapy destroyed her strength and devoured her flesh and hair. But today she was different. Today I knew she'd allowed the cancer to eat up her mind and soul as well as her body.

"Maybe I should have named him Hyun Su—long life."

"What do you mean?"

The boy was only nine. How could she think about such things in this situation?

"I know my son," she murmured, face crumpling as her bottom lip quivered from imminent tears. "Something that beautiful is not meant for a long life."

"Look, I'll call the nurse. I think you need rest."

"But just look at him, Baek. I have no hope left, and I had no time to give him any. He's still so young."

"Hwoarang is a strong boy, and you will watch him live to be a hundred," I said, hoping to cheer her.

"I was never strong, was I? I gave him this bad, bad life, without a father, and soon without a mother—"

"Sun, you shouldn't be talking like this. This isn't your fault. You must be strong for Hwoarang, now more than ever. The boy needs you," I pleaded.

I need you…

"We either go out burning bright, beautiful and lustrous—or we whither and wilt like me, waiting for shadows to pluck us from our dreams," she continued with bitter melancholia.

"Sun, please."

But I knew I'd already lost.

The tears spilled from her tired eyes now, deepening the shadows of her cheekbones, like a trail of footprints in the snow. I could already smell death in the room. She had but to succumb to its pull, crooning and beckoning with its seductive siren's song.

"Everything is his," she sighed. "And he is my everything."

"Sun. Sun? Oh Sun…"

-Seoul-

He patted his jeans pocket, unable to suppress a victorious smirk as he signaled his friends with a nod of his head. They were ditching homeroom again, instead choosing to huddle behind the school's graffiti-riddled brick walls—courtesy of Hwoarang and his posse—as rainclouds thickened in the sky, growling like an empty stomach. Monsoon season would soon tear the sky open and unleash gloriously cold rain for months on end, perfect weather for wreaking mayhem.

"What did you do to your hair, man?"

"Oh hell no, he actually went through with it!"

"Shut the fuck up, all of you. That's not why we're here," the sixteen-year-old snapped, running long fingers through his freshly dyed, fiery hair.

It had been a dare at first, but Hwoarang discovered that he liked the new 'do, an affinity that would soon border along obsessive as he struggled to maintain its vibrancy with cheap boxes of dye or long waits at the salon—without his friends' awareness, of course.

Like his mother's swarthy mane, Hwoarang's hair would become an object of envy.

"Hurry up they'll be looking for us soon," Byung interjected, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet.

From his pockets Hwoarang pulled two bags of marijuana and tiny rolls of white paper. Thrusting his hand into the bag, he pulled out his share and began to roll the joint, fingers working deftly as his comrades snatched at their portions. Sung passed around a lighter, allowing the redhead the first flame.

Ten minutes later, Hwoarang and his three companions were sitting in limp nirvana around one another, heads bowed and muscles lax as they retold stories that never happened and laughed at the dark skies above them. They were already young, stupid and fearless, but the weed always added an extra kick.

"This junk issssss potent," Sung sighed over and over, his tongue stumbling over the words. "Potent stuff right here. Damn potent."

Hwoarang chuckled, rolling another joint before falling victim to a heap of coughing.

"I figured you were the one responsible for these shenanigans, Doo San."

Mr. Kim, one of the school's many hall monitors—or "dickless jackasses who needed to boss kids around to feel powerful," as Hwoarang viewed them—stood with a clipboard in his hand, peering down at the top of the boy's hair with piggish eyes.

Three of the teens leaped to their feet as if they'd been set on fire, but a bit unsteadily at that. Only Hwoarang continued to sit quietly against the brick wall, taking long, slow drags from that little white cocoon, as if drawing life from it, the stinky sweet aroma wafting up into his face and hair like a toxic halo. He could feel the thunder as if it were his heartbeat; lazy raindrops cast wet freckles onto his hands and face.

"Let's just say that suspension is me being generous," Mr. Kim announced later, once he'd managed to force the foursome into his office. "If it weren't for my admiration for Mr. Baek Doo San, your sorry asses would be expelled."

"Are you finished?" Hwoarang asked with his arms crossed over his chest. The effects of the weed hadn't yet dissipated, but it wasn't the drug that was talking. Hwoarang truly didn't give a shit.

"As long as you're here, Hwoarang, we'll never be finished. I better not see you for three days."

Hwoarang was good at a lot of things.

Respecting authority wasn't one of them. Expressing emotions wasn't one of them. School definitely wasn't one of them.

But unleash him into the fighting ring with only his legs and his wits to keep him breathing and he became a different creature within seconds. The ones who would take him as a thickheaded brute were stunned as he molted his loudmouthed street persona for that of a calculating, merciless fighter. Fierce and feral, yet able to maintain a breathtaking grace and fluidity, Hwoarang, at the unripe age of sixteen, came—and conquered. Tournament judges and rival gangs alike were unable to look away as they admired from the sidelines, often awed into silence by the beautiful violence before them. No longer was the naïve fifteen-year-old thug leader; the rabid wolf had become a skilled hunter, weaving in and out with a flick of his feet or sudden shift in stance, calm yet ablaze like the red burning in his hair, delivering lightning quick blows to foes too dumbfounded to react. One moment silent, the next filled with screaming kihap, a deafening war cry to any opponent foolish enough to believe he could defeat this tsunami of talented rage.

And then there was the guitar.

Give him a guitar and Hwoarang created other worlds.

His first six-string had been a gift from Baek for his fourteenth birthday. His mentor figured the boy loved rock music so much that he might as well give him the real thing. All kids wanted to be rock stars anyway, right? It could be fun for him.

What Baek didn't realize was that rock music, metal, alternative, punk, black, grunge or otherwise, pulled at something deep in Hwoarang. The guitar provided an outlet that neither gang nor Tae Kwon Do lesson could offer, subduing foul tempers and disquieted soul alike. It was the one thing that understood him completely and without judgment, an instrument formed of his blood and sweat that sang back to him the songs of his soul. That guitar, that heavy black and red apparatus that tugged at heartstrings and soul strings as easily as Hwoarang plucked its steel strings, humbled the teenager; he would not let it become his arrogance. Whenever he played it a stillness shrouded him, weaving a silken serenity about him in a way he hadn't felt since the death of his mother. The world slowed and sped at the same time. The lights and sounds of Seoul dimmed to soft gray or blinded a hibiscus scarlet, diminished to whispering tranquillo or crescendoed to anguished appassionato. Whichever his mood dictated. Whichever his heart revealed.

So when he became too good, when local music stations offered him little jobs, when hot shot record companies offered him auditions and contracts, Hwoarang became angry. He hid that guitar for weeks, afraid that others would only want to exploit him because of it. Here was this magic at his fingertips, this world of pure, raw emotion, this other place that he could escape to when life deafened him with brutal reality—and people wanted to steal it from him?

He eventually compromised with himself by playing outside at night. Baek's apartment was on the highest floor, Twenty-two, so he never had to exhaust himself carrying guitar and amplifier up multiple flights of stairs. Not that he would have minded.

So there he would be, up on the rooftop with only the stars and the darkness as audience, his guitar wailing anthems long into the night, as if to summon some lost innocence floating in that infinite blackness. Searching, searching for something. He recalled memories in his music, lost moments in time that could only be fully expressed through the soft, ferocious manipulation of five fingers on six strings.

Naturally, nearby neighbors in his part of Seoul wouldn't be able to sleep. Sometimes it was due to the violence in his song, to the magnificently vengeful guitar riffs amplified to shatter eardrums, murdering any hopes of slumber while guaranteeing a moody morning and kitchens permeating with the smell of brewing coffee.

But sometimes it was because of the gentle, soothing lullabies he wove, smoothing like a mother's caress over a child's brow after a nightmare, comforting like a favorite blanket or pleasant dream. Sometimes the neighbors simply didn't want to stop listening.

When the gang wanted him late these times of nights, Hwoarang would sneak out of the apartment and join them in the gloomy roads below, scouring the streets for trouble and adventure along bruised sidewalks and beneath street lamp sentinels.

But when he played that guitar the gang knew not to bother him.

That's how Hwoarang was. Merciless in combat, volatile in speech; but it was only with the guitar that he could be both fierce and gentle, when he let the hurt arise and allowed himself to remember why he was the way he was.

These were the only times when he was utterly content with being alone.

"Heard you last night, Hwoa. Where'd you learn that from?"

"Jeez, Kurt Cobain, that was some depressing shit."

"Haunting, dude."

"I don't know what you guys are talking about."

The gang learned to keep their mouths shut.

As much as their leader talked and bragged, he never said anything of substance about himself.

If they wanted to know him, they had but to listen carefully at night for that guitar, playing itself to sleep.

But the gang, afflicted with loyalty and respect for their leader, listened with deaf ears.

-Soul-

When you died, Baek told me you said I could have everything in the house.

You know what I took? I took that picture of you and I at that frozen yogurt place when I was six, when I tasted mochi for the first time. We looked really happy in that picture, even though my father's the one behind the camera.

I also found a monstrous pile of silks you've been collecting over the years. Why didn't you ever tell me about those? Were they for me? For hanbok?

I could have sold those silks, but I kept them for some reason. I should have just thrown them away like everything else, or sold them to some old seamstress to make for somebody else's son.

But I could tell these silks were the best of the best. I knew you'd picked them out yourself.

Otherwise, Baek and I sold everything else, including the house. I hope you don't mind.

As for school…well, I have an A in music class. You don't have to worry about the others.

You know Mom, one of these days I've gotta stop talking to you like this. The gang might think I'm insane if they find out I'm talking to a dead person. I mean, fuck, I'm supposed to be all grown up and independent, right? All healed up. Sorry, I know you hate swearing.

It's already been seven years. But the problem is that you were good to me, Mom, and now you'll always be with me. Why is it like that?

You can't even hear me can you.

Well, I hope you can somehow, 'cause I've got a new song I want to play for you tonight. Don't worry it's a nice quiet one. Good for the soul.

-Seoul-

"Hwoarang. Hwoarang, wake up."

Baek shook the teenager with a gentle hand on his shoulder, the sunlight illuminating his hair into a ball of fire. He wasn't at all surprised to find the boy here, but admitted that he'd been seized with minor panic when he discovered an empty bed and a missing guitar. Hwoarang had pulled disappearing acts like this before. This time, however, Baek hadn't been able to track him down at his usual haunts: the arcade; the black market; the polluted dam where he and his friends smoked pot—yes, Baek knew, and he figured he should get on with that lecture; and the Jae Bum strip mall, where all the "hotter girls" liked to shop.

Baek shook him again. The boy protested, hugging his guitar closer to his chest, but his mentor was persistent. Finally, he stirred, rising reluctantly onto an elbow with a sheepish yawn.

He'd been found out.

He'd fallen asleep at his mother's grave, drifted off into slumber somewhere between a song and the first golden rays of dawn. Hwoarang saved the best serenades for his mother, and he always played them softly, gently for her ears, because she'd liked it that way once upon a time, and because he didn't want any other ghost or living neighbor to hear this personal music.

Well, now he knew to be more careful about his nightly escapades. He'd hold off on the songwriting for a while, lest he be tempted to share them with his mother. Since someone knew about this secret, there was no use in trying to sneak out anymore. Though Hwoarang knew that Baek wouldn't say anything of the matter, he felt as if his mentor's knowledge—his intrusion—had destroyed the privacy.

The teenager found that he'd become more and more defensive as he aged, perhaps because he understood the world a bit better, understood what it meant to have no one but yourself to trust. Baek was good and kind, but the boy still felt he should keep some things to himself. Hwoarang was filled with secrets, some that even that guitar could not draw out.

The good thing about Baek Doo San was that he never made it awkward. He understood his protégé—but, even more so, he knew a broken heart when he saw one.

Clearing his throat, he offered a hand, which Hwoarang took without shame, dusting dirt off his face and pants in the process.

"Come. Your breakfast is already cold."

Glossary

mugunghwa - rose of Sharon, South Korea's national flower; symbolizes immortality

ne - yes

kihap - the yelling sound made in Tae Kwon Do when sparring or striking