7 – IV: Protector
-Soul-
They won't say dying.
They say malignant. Advanced.
Do you have any family? You're alone? What a shame. They say it slow, quiet, as if I can't understand that I've a year left, at most. I'm mute, not stupid.
While the boy is gone doing the secret things he does I've been going to the hospital during breaks from needle and thread, for the secret bleeding in my belly. If it wasn't for the pain I should be done with the hanbok by now.
It shouldn't be like this. Then again, when is anything as you think it should be?
The boy disappears every day, outside where he once fought and laughed and led other boys to their doom. He runs, roams, and returns smelling like night. And then he'll rise, a deadly sun, and leave again. I wonder how different it would be if I could speak, if I could say his name or explain my heart. But then he would not have sought me out and I would not know any reason to love. To live.
I can imagine what my voice would sound like. Sweet, a tender violin imploring his growling guitar, a dark instrument as hungry as the boy who wields it. He tells me he misses music, but he doesn't dare seek it. He believes he destroys all that he touches, all whom he knows. And now this sudden growth, this blood in my uterus, flowing from wounds that seem to transpire from air.
He doesn't even know my name.
The door creaks open. It's past 3 a.m. He knows not that I am awake, upright at my sewing table like usual, the knots in my belly making me sweat. After four months of going to doctors telling me the same old things I have decided to refuse treatment. If I am to die, I am to die. No one but I need know this.
"You're awake," he says.
I smile, tired, and beckon for him to sit beside me.
"I'm sorry for being late, I just—I just got to walking, and…"
He smells like soju and seawater. He takes the seat and sets his head down onto the table.
"I'm sorry," he says again. "I'm so, so sorry."
The apologies are not for me alone. The boy suddenly begins to cry, the quick, heaving sobs racking his body as he covers his face with his hands. It is the first and last time I will see him weep. I set down the silks and hold him, but he is difficult to embrace. His broad shoulders, still muscled from his fighting years, are like boulders against the wind; his heart betrays him. It yields.
I hold him, imagining I am his mother, and I tell him in my mind how everything will be all right, even as we watch our worlds crumble from the anguish. In my arms he melts, and I rock him back and forth, back and forth, like the ocean miles away crashing on the rocks, as salty as the tears staining my shirt.
I'm nearly finished with your hanbok.
He looks up as if I had spoken, then gazes at the silks. He reaches for the pile of fabric. He's mentioned red several times, but white fares better with that shocking hair. White and small flashes of gold, green, and black. White suits him so well.
"You're almost done," he murmurs, pulling himself away from me.
Yes. Almost done, in more ways than this.
I gesture for him to try it on. He drapes the silk over his body, the strong, sinewy arms disappearing beneath jeogori sleeves as white as snow, his red bangs falling over his eyes so I can no longer read his face. I help him finish dressing, adjusting where needed, smoothing a wrinkle, straightening a stray edge, tucking back loose threads. He's too self-conscious around me to try on the baji, but the jeogori is enough. I already know he will wear it beautifully.
"This is amazing," he whispers, fingering the cloth between two fingers. "You're gifted."
I reach for his hair, sweeping it up into sangtu, the traditional topknot, and he sighs, the skin of his forehead growing taut.
Wings indeed, dear child. Your mother was right.
-Seoul-
The third time he saw her she was in an alley behind the restaurant where she worked, the boy cowering behind her legs. Two men advanced towards them, one of them brandishing a switchblade, demanding money and other obscene requests Hwoarang didn't bother to comprehend. All he knew was that he was attacking them without a thought, coming down on the man with the knife with a spine-shattering axe kick. When he turned the girl had already defeated the other man. Her fists and shirt were speckled with blood.
It was too classic, this scene. Too familiar. And yet Hwoarang found himself breathless.
She gathered Huan into her arms and asked the boy if he was all right. He was too big to be held in such a manner, but she pressed him to her chest anyway, smoothing back his hair as he trembled in her embrace.
"Komap sumnida," she breathed, her gaze meeting Hwoarang's. "They just came so fast. I could have fought them both, but Huan was here and I—"
"It's okay," he said. "It's over."
"There's been so much crime in the last couple years. I'm thinking I should just take Huan with me and move back to Tianjin."
"Oh, and China's any better? I hear all sorts of stories from your beloved mother country."
He'd always be a loyalist, even if Seoul was the reason for the arrows in his chest.
Ignoring him, she set the boy down and brushed the dirt from his shorts. She was so tender Hwoarang looked away, feigning intrigue with the gravel under his shoes.
"My aunt has food at home. Are you hungry?" she asked.
He felt like a fool when he couldn't answer right away. Besides the absurdity of such a question, he was still trying to understand how she was here, and why, like during every crucial moment in his life, it had occurred in the midst of violence.
"She won't be there when we arrive. Her shift at the office starts about now."
Hwoarang barely listened as he finally noticed the boy's scraped knees and hands, the dried crusts of blood, the bruise beginning to form on the soft cheekbone. He remembered Chung Hee, as young as Huan. As violent as Hwoarang. They should be around ten or eleven-years-old now.
Muddled in these thoughts, he managed a nod, and then followed the woman and the boy out of the alley. It was so crowded, but he knew he could die on this sidewalk, right now, and no one would look his way. They would take cares to step over his cadaver, though, making sure their clothes didn't touch him.
The apartment was one of the newer ones, a housing project that opened up three or four years ago to accommodate Seoul's exponential population growth. A lone ceramic pot of white lilies sat in the shaded entrance. A stray tomcat licked his paws in the bushes, content after a long hunt for the unwary chickadees nesting in the nearby trees; there were many strays nowadays, feline and otherwise. Hwoarang stood there, his chin held high, even as his heart beat too fast and sweat trickled between his shoulder blades. Yes, this was happening: he'd agreed to lunch with strangers wearing blood-spotted clothes, one a thief and the other an aggressive enigma so unlike the swollen sweetness in her mouth. It shouldn't have felt strange, yet he found his fingers fidgeting with the lint in his pockets.
The woman fumbled for her keys. She was still shielding the child with her body, her muscular legs positioned purposefully behind him even though the danger had subsided. Huan darted into the apartment when she opened the door.
"Come in," she said, her hair still mussed from the fight. "Excuse the mess."
"Do you always invite strangers into your home?"
"You saved our lives. This is the least I can do. Besides, Huan still has to make up for robbing you. He's been getting into a lot of trouble lately, and I won't have him think his actions don't have consequences."
So she remembered him then, even though the stolen suitcase episode happened almost two years ago. Huan blushed in his chair as he slapped band-aids onto his knees.
"Who are you, his mother?" the redhead smirked.
"I might as well be. His is always working."
"And yours?"
"Dead."
How disappointing they shared this loss in common. But he would not make it a conversation starter. Instead, Hwoarang felt the familiar anger rising in his chest, and allowed it to choke back the sympathy, to wall up memories better dead.
"It was a long time ago," she said, trying to ease the silence. "She was the typical American: unworldly, thinking she was entitled to everything. She got involved with bad business and, well, they made sure she never revealed company secrets."
Her voice trailed off, tightened, cleared. There. There was the pain disguised in anger and vague explanation. Hwoarang relaxed.
"I thought you were Chinese," he said, deftly changing the topic.
"I am. But Mom was American. Here you go."
She set in front of him a bowl of fresh dukbokki, kimchi, rice and pork spare ribs. Apparently her aunt was a fantastic cook.
"I'm Xifeng."
He bowed his head in acknowledgement, told her his name, and wolfed down the food. She offered him more, and he was hungrier now, but perhaps it was the ice in her eyes, that slight glint of terror that made him shake his head.
"Is everything all right now?"
"What do you mean?"
"Is Huan forgiven? You won't hurt him?"
And he realized she already knew. You fool. He was gripping his chopsticks too tightly. He knew the look of rage that must now hold his face, thick and stubborn as cement. But Xifeng kept her gaze steady. He could tell she'd been in many fights; how else could she remain so calm in front of an enemy? Because that's what he was at this moment, her enemy, sitting in her kitchen, having fallen into her hospitality trap.
He remembered Kwan Youngeun, how he'd reminded her of his power, in a single movement, with a single warning. But now, with this woman and her knowing eyes, he couldn't move.
"They call you the Blood Talon. Right?"
Her fists were clenched, but she restrained them at her sides. Go on. Hit me. He wanted her to, so he could see what she was made of. So he could taste her truth. Essence was revealed best in blood.
And what did that make him?
"So you have me," he replied, emotionless. "Why don't you call the cops?"
"Because, if one of your people finds out it was me, then Huan isn't safe," she replied, her voice quaking. "Then I'll be as dead as his aunt—as my mother."
"Look, that wasn't my gang doing all those things. I don't do that anymore."
Anymore…
"Why should I believe that when your picture is all over the news? When your own guardian sold you out when the police questioned him?"
"What would you know about Baek Doo San?"
The question came out as a snarl, and Xifeng took a step back.
"I'm surprised he hasn't already hunted me down and turned me in himself. The man's a fucking bloodhound," Hwoarang snapped, poking at the remaining rice grains sticking to his bowl. "I don't deserve anything from him but punishment."
Where once he beat the boy, or hid the motorcycle keys, or changed the locks on all the doors, now Baek had simply given up. He was tired of chasing thunder. Let the law have him, let his fate be decided by men who didn't care.
"What do you want from me?" he asked.
"I could ask you to stop all this violence, but then again—"
"I didn't do those things!"
He'd risen from his chair, shoved it so hard against the wall it left a dent. A glimmer of fear flickered across Xifeng's face—right before she punched him in the jaw. Hwoarang reeled backwards, unprepared with a defense for the second time in his life. Blood began to pool in his mouth.
"So she does fight. Where'd you learn that, huh? Some Communist handbook?" he spat.
"From my mother," she replied, her fists raised.
He felt the old adrenaline returning, the fury, the hatred he always felt during a street fight. During a war that was supposed to be a game. He was about to say something vile, something that might hurt her more than a kick to that pretty face, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Huan at the foot of the stairs, watching them. In his hands was an acoustic guitar, the wood as dark as blood.
"Just stay the fuck out of my way," Hwoarang seethed, before stalking out the door.
Walking home, he cursed himself for even challenging her, smaller and weaker, unthreatening. He put an ice pack on his jaw, hated how much it hurt. He shouldn't have overreacted, shouldn't have allowed her to see the redness beyond the dye in his hair.
Because he was responsible for all of it. He despised her for instinctively knowing this. He despised her for being lovely. But most of all, he hated her for that look in her eyes when Huan became involved.
She had someone to protect. She had someone to fight for.
-Soul-
Near midnight Happiness knocks on the door with a guitar case strapped to his back.
"You're a rock star," he squeaks, shrinking beneath my glare. "That's why I stole your suitcase."
"You followed me." The kid was a natural criminal.
"Sorry about Feng. She's actually really nice."
"What are you doing here."
"To play guitar."
"Why the hell would you want to do that? It's fucking late."
"You swear a lot."
"Oh and you're so innocent, aren't ya, stealing people's things."
So I'm arguing with an eleven-year-old. Even if I've forgiven him for the incident I know guilt may be the only thing that gets him off the porch and out of my business.
"Yeah, sorry about that…"
"So scram! Go home."
Don't be like me. Go home to your mother. Good God, why are you here right now!
"Please, mister? Mom gave me this, but it's kinda big. I'd like to learn."
Learn? Why would anyone want to learn anything from me?
Sighing, I usher him inside. I can't hate him anymore, even if he has a dragon of a cousin. I remind myself that this is a child now, not Chung Hee, whose something else altogether. The seamstress frowns at me, grins at Huan, and disappears into the kitchen to fix him a snack.
"Okay, Kid. Show me something."
He plucks some mellow mainstream John Mayer chord. I stop him before he destroys my eardrums.
"I meant real music."
"Can you play?"
"Not anymore." That word.
"Come on, I know you can," he urges, pushing the guitar into my hands. "I've heard you before, so don't lie."
"Like hell you've heard me play."
"That wasn't you all those times at night?"
Well, fuck.
The guitar is as red as cherries, as blood. Pluck it from the tree and taste its sweetness. Plunge into it a blade and I know it would bleed. I can smell the wood, like an ocean wind, like victory after hours of sweat. Like a brief daydream under sakura trees.
Cradling the instrument against me, my fingers curl upon the strings, the steel cold and taut—and I play. I play and I make something beautiful. It's a Nirvana song, a nirvana song, for the first time after almost two years.
Feelin' uninspired,
Think I'll start a fire…
I must have forgotten the kid was there, because I close my eyes, like I used to, and let the guitar guide the music into me, through me, out, in, bursting and pulsing in waves behind the darkness in my sight, beneath the dark edges of soul, if there is even a thing as that. If there is then only this music can find it.
Think you're kinda neat,
Then she tells me I'm a creep…
I remember Ummah and her stories, Baek and his hard love. I remember Sung and his idiot laugh, the gang and their bloody loyalty. I remember Xifeng and that look in her eyes, Huan and his mischievous innocence. I even remember my father. The music possesses me, seizes me, ties me in knots, releases me again.
Friends don't mean a thing.
Guess I'll leave it up to me…
When I finish, Huan is all dimples and white teeth. "I knew you could play," he beams.
Behind him, the seamstress too is smiling, soft and sad and happy at the same time. I feel myself smiling back and instantly regret it. I hand back to Huan the guitar.
"Okay. It's late," I say, my fingers still itching for the instrument. "Don't want old Xifeng to get on your case, now do you?"
"Can you teach me? Please?"
I'm about to say no again until I see the look on his face. I used to look at Baek that way, before I shifted loyalties and shamed him for good. Music could be the one thing that saves the kid from making my mistakes.
I know I can't protect the child. That's one thing I understand that Xifeng will not. But I can give him options, something I thought I never had.
"First, you'll learn how to control it," I begin, shushing him when he tries to interrupt. "Notes, chords, basic songs. You'll need some sheet music. Once you've mastered that…then you can let it speak."
"Guitars can talk?"
"Yes. And if you're really good to them, they can sing, too."
Glossary
jeogori - hanbok upper garment worn by both men and women
baji - traditional hanbok pants
komap sumnida - thank you