Han River—
Everyone went there to die.
Actually it was harder now than it ever used to be, but if you were really determined...
And he was pretty determined.
Might wanna make it quick with all the AI cameras that were in the vicinity. Someone was probably calling it in right now.
Choi Su-bong, aka Thanos, stood on one of many bridges overlooking the Han River and contemplated the dark water below. It wasn't as dark as he would have liked, considering all the light pollution from the surrounding city. But it also wasn't the biggest bridge, or the most well-travelled, either.
He ran polychromic fingertips through violently disarrayed magenta hair and frowned, staring at the play of shapes and shadows below. A car snaked by, slowing, then speeding up again when he gestured with both middle fingers in its direction. He wrapped a hand around the cross necklace, its comfortable weight heavy and warm from lying next to his skin.
He hadn't left a note. Figured what family who still spoke to him, what family was still left, would figure it out soon enough. Sorry, Umma. She was too good to have a son like him. He closed his eyes, seeing the shapes and shadows play out just the same against his lids.
He'd always had good hearing, or maybe he sensed the presence of someone else approaching. Warily, he cracked an eye and angled his body a little, then relaxed upon seeing the slight figure of a child—no, a girl, though enveloped in a puffy jacket like children wore. She hesitated and stopped some distance from the railing. She seemed to be eyeing him, too.
"꺼져," he told her, but it was a dismissal more conversational than rude. The girl flinched, but stood her ground.
"Did you hear me?" He played with the necklace, not trying to sound especially threatening, though his unconventional appearance in and of itself combined with the darkness of the river bridge would probably serve the purpose. Most people couldn't meet his gaze these days.
But she came a little closer to the railing. "I can be here too."
"There's lots of other bridges."
"You could go somewhere else too," she said, lifting her chin in a stubborn way.
"I got here first, chiquita," he mocked.
She hunched her shoulders in the too-big jacket.
They stood in silence for a time. Clouds scudded by overhead, scarcely visible by in luminescence of the quarter moon. The girl drifted closer still. She put her hands on the edge of the railing.
"I'm not gonna stop you, you know," Thanos told her.
"I don't want you to try," she murmured, barely audibly.
He considered her. She was very young. Perhaps even still a teenager. Probably just broke up with her 첫사랑, or maybe couldn't get accepted into the university her parents wanted for her.
Certainly she wasn't almost 1.2 billion won in debt.
He flipped open his necklace and thumbed one of the tablets into his mouth. Realized the girl was watching him, so on impulse he held the necklace in her direction.
She shook her head, diffidently.
"You'll jump off a bridge but you won't take a pill from a stranger?" he gibed.
"I don't want to hurt the baby," she argued softly, and they both stared down at the water, contemplating the absurdity of such a statement. Then it clicked. There's a baby?
Her phone rang out from somewhere in the depths of her jacket, a cheerful melody in ironic contrast to the somber environment.
"Are you going to answer that?"
After a moment she did, not responding when a woman's voice crackled thinly out of it. "Junhee-ya. Where are you?"
When she didn't reply to the person clearly her parent, Thanos stabbed a finger threateningly. You better talk to your mother while she's still around, it meant, no words needed. Junhee gazed back at him, wide-eyed. Fumbled the phone, then stammered, "At...at Miran's house. I'm sleeping here tonight."
The lie was somehow better than not saying anything at all, so he was satisfied, nodding when she ended the call.
A sudden impulse of mild curiosity compelled him then to order—"Take your jacket off—" in the autocratic tone of an older brother.
"It's cold," she argued weakly. It wasn't really that cold. The water would be, but the air was not.
"Take it off I said." He approached, cocking his head. Junhee took an uncertain step backward but there was really no where to go; she was already against the railing.
He patted her shoulder with insouciant grace, buoyed into pleasantness by the effects of the drug entering his blood. "Do it or I'll do it."
After a moment she brought her hand up and uncertainly tugged the zipper down, revealing a sweater-covered round belly that while not yet completely disfiguring was by no means new. He made a face. Baby.
"Who's the daddy?" he said lightly, in English, and whether she did not understand or did not care to reply, she stared unblinking up at him for a time. At last she said evenly, "Some 개새끼."
He made a bomb-exploding whistle sound between his teeth. "But you love him don't you?"
Sometimes the drugs made him sleepy, sometimes they gave him a heaping dose of perception. This was one of the latter times evidently. Junhee's eyes glistened in the moonlight and she looked away.
He scoffed, then. "Are you even out of school?"
Momentary indignation piqued her mouth into a small O.
A car slowed, stopped some distance away. Switched its lights out.
They turned in wary unison to watch as a well-dressed man emerged, spreading smile visible as he approached. "Do you want to play a game?"