Onyx: Forever

by J. S. Lee

  I looked to JongB. “We went to the pool the other morning. There were rabbits under the trees as we walked there.” I pointed out in the general direction of the trees. “She asked me to go see the rabbits this morning and I told her she needed to wait until after breakfast and then ask one of her brothers.”

  “Guests, this is an island. A child can’t get off it without being noticed. If we all stay calm, we can find her.”

  “She is four!” Joomi snapped. “She’s small enough to fall into the water and she can’t swim.”

  I felt nauseous. I hadn’t even thought about that.

  “She’s not in the chalet, Eomma!” Robin called, out of breath as he ran over to join us.

  Sungmin held his hands up. “We can all split up and look for her. What the resort manager said is true; she will be on the island somewhere.” He stepped in front of Joomi. “She will probably be playing, oblivious to the worry she is causing. You stay here with JongB. Tom and Robin can go back to the chalet, just in case she’s wandered back that way; she’s an intelligent four-year-old. The rest of us will split up and search the island.”

  “I’ll go-” I started.

  “You will go back to your chalet,” Sungmin cut me off. “The last thing we need is you running around the island getting hurt.”

  I folded my arms and shot Sungmin a dark look. “I’m pregnant, not drunk. I can walk around an island resort and look for a child.”

  Sungmin returned the glare, but I refused to back down. I was not going to hide in a chalet. The fact that they seemed to think pregnancy was some form of high-risk disease which left me incapable of doing anything short of breathing without a chaperone was driving me insane.

  Sungmin’s jaw tensed, and then he turned around. “Xiao!”

  The Chinese man jogged over. “Yes?”

  “Stay with Kate. The two of you can check the chalets in case Mina is playing hide and seek.”

  “Thank you,” I muttered, reminding myself that a missing child was more important than my irritation of my pregnancy.

  Xiao and I hurried off, heading to the chalet furthest away; Jiwon’s. “You need to calm down, tián xīn,” he told me. “Stress and worry is bad for the baby.”

  “I’m dating you guys. It’s constant stress and worry. I watch the news and lose faith in humanity; it’s constant stress and worry.” I stopped and looked at Xiao. “I know you mean well, but life has stress and worries, and women have been having babies for centuries. This I can cope with. I have something to do and I can focus that into something.”

  Xiao studied me, and then he nodded. “OK,” he conceded.

  We carried on into the chalet. The door was unlocked. Sungmin had messaged us with the chalet door codes, but for the most part, people had been leaving them unlocked. It was just us and there seemed to be more trust here.

  I pushed open the door to Jiwon’s chalet and stepped in. There were still signs that people had been living here for a few days as the cleaning staff had yet to clear up after everyone. I hadn’t realized the sofa changed into a bed – it was still in the bed mode, sheets discarded on top of it. Jiwon had probably been sharing it with his sister.

  “Do you think he’s coming back?” I asked Xiao, staring at a pillow, imagining Jiwon’s head on it.

  “Do you really think he won’t?” he asked me.

  Considering it was always him giving me a hard time when I’d tried to do what I thought was the right thing and walk away, no. Jiwon was coming back. But at what cost?

  Was it me being selfish? Did I need to find out the baby’s father so that Jiwon could walk away, guilt free, if needed.

  No, that wasn't the answer either. Jiwon would stay.

  I had no right to make the call on what was right or wrong for him.

  I just really didn’t want him to hurt, and where we were now, there wasn’t really another options.

  “If Jiwon doesn’t come back to the island today, he’s going to be waiting for us in Seoul,” Xiao promised me. “You know this.”

  I did. And I had more pressing things to focus on. I hurried up the stairs, calling Mina’s name as I went. Both rooms were empty. So was the bathroom. I joined Xiao downstairs and then we left, locking the chalet behind us.

  The pair of us worked our way through the various chalets as our group chat flared into life of everyone checking in regularly. Everyone but Jiwon. There wasn’t a single message from him, and there weren’t any read notifications on the private ones I had sent.

  It was only when we were in Xiao’s chalet, checking the bedroom, that I saw the painting. It was an oil painting of a country house, probably somewhere in Europe from the style of it. But in front of it, there was a beautiful lily pond.

  “What are you looking at?” Xiao asked, joining me. He frowned at the painting. “This?”

  Slowly, I turned to him. “What if she was saying ribbit?”

  Xiao blinked several times. “Ribbit?”

  “She said rabbit, in English, not tokki,” I said, slowly. “I didn’t realize. I’m still alternating between the two languages,” I muttered, lost in my own thoughts as I pulled my phone out and repeated the question to the group.

  MinMin: I don’t get it.

  Youngbin: Does it matter if she’s saying either? She’s a kid. She could have been talking nonsense like kids do.

  JongB: Makes more sense than rabbits. She’s obsessed with frogs and lizards. Weird kid.

  “What’s a ribbit?” Xiao asked.

  “It’s a sound frogs make,” I explained after checking the translation. “What if she was looking for frogs?”

  “Then they would still be needing to look on the island. They’re more likely to find frogs inland, away from saltwater. We’ve heard them on an evening coming from the forest, not the beach.” He frowned. “Frogs aren’t usually out at this time of day. She’s likely to have gone wandering in that forest.” Xiao added to the conversation. If she’s gone frog hunting, we need to search the forest more. And watch out for snakes.

  “Snakes?” I read aloud before looking at Xiao. “Are you kidding me?”

  Xiao shook his head. “They eat frogs.”

  There was something else that was bothering me, and it wasn’t about snakes. I closed my eyes, trying to recall the image of Mina tugging at my jeans. She’d been hopping – frog hops and rabbit hops looked the same to me.

  I walked out of the chalet, Xiao behind me, and glanced back at the communal area in the center of the chalets. I could hear more than I could see.

  And then I heard the horn from the boat which had taken us from the resort on the main island to this one. Frogs. It had been covered in frogs.

  “Oh fuck,” I muttered, sprinting to the dock. What if it was the boat she wanted to see? What if she had gone and fallen in the water?

  “Kate?” Xiao called after me.

  I ignored him, running past my chalet and up to where the boat was being tied to a post. On the boat, with Mina in his hands, was Jiwon.

  I had been so worried about her going in the sea and drowning that I hadn’t even considered her being on the boat.

  “We had a stowaway,” Jiwon said, dryly.

  “Why the hell didn’t you call one of us?” I demanded, impatiently waiting for the two to get off the boat.

  “My grandfather threw the phone in the sea on the way over to the resort.”

  “MINA!”

  I turned, finding Joomi racing along the walkway with JongB, Sungmin, and the resort manager. Joomi swooped Mina up in her arms.

  “Thank you,” I told Xiao.

  “For what?”

  “For letting the others know,” I said. I’d been so relieved to see both of them, the basic idea of letting them know Mina was safe had escaped my brain.

  “It wasn’t me.”

  I looked to Jiwon with a frown. He’d already said his phone was at the bottom of the ocean. “It was probably the captain,” he shrugged.

  “OK, how about we all
call off the search parties and let Mina go back to her chalet with her family,” Sungmin suggested.

  “Do we need to get the doctor over?” the manager asked.

  Jiwon shook his head. “She’s been telling me all about frogs for the last half hour. She’s fine.”

  While Joomi and Mina disappeared with JongB and the resort manager, Sungmin turned to the rest of us, his gaze drifting to Jiwon. “Let’s all go back to our chalet.”

  We entered the small building and I sank onto the couch feeling exhausted. I’d never had breakfast in the end, and I had been running on adrenaline. Breakfast felt so long ago. I reached for Jiwon, pulling him down beside me. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you apologizing?” he asked. He looked as tired as I felt.

  “Your grandfather overheard my conversation this morning. That’s what set this all off.”

  Jiwon barked out a dry laugh. “I debuted with an idol group. That’s what set this all off.”

  “What happened?” Sungmin asked, holding a bottle of Gatorade in front of my face.

  I took it from him, wondering if this was really something that he considered acceptable to be drinking when pregnant given the luminescent color, and then decided I didn’t care. I drank it greedily, waiting for Jiwon to continue.

  “We got back to the resort. Halabeonim had the car loaded up and told me I was going back with him. He’d get someone to get my things from the dorm.” Jiwon snorted. “He can try. There’s nothing there.”

  “Will he really?” I asked, surprised.

  Jiwon slowly shook his head, glancing out of the window. “There’s no point in collecting the possessions of someone who isn’t in your family.”

  “What?”

  Jiwon shrugged. “He made a comment about how all you were going to do was get pregnant and ruin us all. I got on the boat and he told me that if I didn’t get off there, I was no longer part of the Yoon family. He has been threatening me with that for years, but I think he’s finally serious.”

  “You shouldn’t be here!” I exclaimed. Almost instantly, Xiao was standing behind me, his hands on my shoulders as though he expected me to go running off somewhere. Which was admittedly tempting. “Your sister!”

  Jiwon finally looked at me. “I’m an adult. I’m not reliant on my family and I haven’t been for years. My sister will be fine. She told me as soon as she finishes middle school, she’s going to audition to be an idol too.”

  I wasn’t sure that was going to help either of them, but I had no real argument to put forward. Instead, I slumped back into the seat, tears in my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  God, I wanted off this island now.

  제17 장

  Don’t Know

  Going home seemed to be the sentiment of most people. We all checked out before the weekend, Sungmin and Onyx returning to our house in Seoul with me, while the other family members returned home.

  The mood around the house was low and no one really seemed to be able to shake it. Sungmin was hiding away in what I was calling his bedroom. Whenever he was asked about it, he had comeback related work to do, but that work only seemed necessary when I was in the living room with them.

  In fact, the only time he really spoke to me was on the day before I had an appointment with an obstetrician at a private hospital. There had been a flurry of everyone saying they were going to come with me before Sungmin shot them all down.

  “What do you think the press and your fans are going to say when you get caught walking in and out of a maternity ward?” he snapped at them, irritably. “I will go. You six need to be at Atlantis. Byeon Taeyoon will pick you up at 8 am. And you’d all best come up with some rotation because as of tomorrow, you can’t all be staying here.”

  That night, all seven of us – Jiwon included – had slept in the same bed.

  With six other people in my bed, all getting up at the same time, naturally, I had too. I’d eaten breakfast with the group, and for the first time, the mood seemed to be lifting. There was excitement in the air.

  It wasn’t infectious. I was happy for them, but I was also sad. I had a vague idea of how busy they were going to be for the next five or six weeks and I wasn’t going to see them.

  I kept the smile plastered on my face until they had all climbed into the minibus. As soon as I’d closed the front door on them, I allowed my real feelings to surface. Uncertainty.

  Not over my future with Onyx, but my actual future. I was a photographer. I still had student loans that I had to pay – they were like sasaengs and never seemed to disappear. It had been less than ten minutes and I was already bored. There was no way I could be a housewife – it just wasn’t me.

  And maybe that would change when I had the baby, but aside from bigger boobs, I didn’t have a bump showing. I needed to do something. But I had a plan.

  First, however, I was going to the hospital for my first checkup. Assuming Sungmin ever appeared. I sat, waiting impatiently, drumming my fingers on the top of my thighs.

  I stood back up and walked to his bedroom. I could hear music playing; Nickelback of all things. I swear this man surprised me more than anyone. I knocked on the door, but got no response.

  “Maybe if you turned Rockstar down,” I muttered under my breath as I pushed the door open. “Sungmin?” I called before poking my head in. His room was empty.

  That made no sense.

  I stepped in and looked around, just as the door to his bathroom opened. Sungmin walked out wearing only a towel, which he wore over his head as he towel-dried his hair.

  I stared.

  I probably shouldn’t have done, but the internal voice of mine was probably staring too, because she was silent. She probably had her mouth hanging open in an ‘o’ too.

  And then Sungmin pulled the towel off his head.

  Our eyes met.

  Which was impressive, because his cock was pretty distracting.

  For three whole seconds, we stared at each other, and then Sungmin did the strangest thing. He raised the towel to cover himself. Not his groin, but the scar on his face. Without a word, he bolted into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him.

  I backed out of the room feeling like my heart was being squeezed, fighting the instinct to barrel my way into his bathroom and pull the towel from his face.

  Most other people in that position would have covered their private areas – not their face. Was he really that ashamed of it still? With me? I’d seen it before. It was actually healing nicely. But it had never, ever bothered me. Did he really think it would?

  I stood there, staring dumbly at the closed door. I also needed to work out how to explain this one to the guys because that was a dick move.

  Dick move.

  I sniggered to myself.

  That wasn’t even remotely funny.

  I’d been around JongB too long.

  The door opened and Sungmin appeared. His scar was now barely visible under the makeup. He had makeup skills that put mine to shame. He was also dressed in a smart pants and short-sleeved shirt. “We should go,” he said, not looking at me as he moved past me.

  I rubbed at my forehead with the ball of my hand. How the fuck was I going to clear this one up. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it.

  I followed him outside, finding him waiting at his car, holding the back seat open. He had a non-descript sedan. It wasn’t like it was a limo or a minibus. And yet he wanted me to sit in the back.

  Yeah, I’d fucked up.

  I slid in, turning to apologize, only for him to shut the door.

  The drive to the hospital was spent in an awkward silence. In the end, I just stared out of the window. June in Seoul was busy, and it was filling up with tourists and couples. The hospital was an enormous building in Gangnam with underground parking.

  Sungmin went upstairs with me to the waiting room. It was plush. It was the kind of place which screamed money. I turned to Sungmin after we had sat down in the waiting room. “I don’t think I can afford
this place.”

  Sungmin gently shook his head. “It has been taken care of.”

  I don’t know why it left me feeling uncomfortable, but it did. Eventually, a nurse came out and called me into her room. This time, Sungmin stayed in the waiting room.

  I settled back onto the bed. Both the nurse and the doctor looked like they could have been models or actors, and when they spoke to me, it was in English.

  I walked out feeling overwhelmed, with a handful of leaflets in English, a prescription for folic acid supplements, vitamins, some other form of herbal something or other, a promise that the tests they had run would have results back in the next few days, and a due date. They’d also asked if I wanted to eventually know the sex of the baby, but I had declined, asking that they keep that a surprise.

  They’d also given me a questionnaire to take home about the medical history of the father. That was going to be fun pillow talk.

  Although Sungmin had waited for me, looking very uncomfortable, when we got to the elevator for the parking lot, I didn’t press the button. “I’m going for a walk,” I told him. “I need some air.”

  “Did they give you bad news?” he asked, and for a moment, there was a glimmer of the Sungmin I remembered.

  “No,” I assured him. “I just need some air. I’ve been cooped up in the house and with everyone busy, it would be good to go for a walk.”

  “I can come with you-”

  “Bras, Sungmin. My boobs have grown, and I need new bras.” I folded my arms. “Now, I know you all seem to think that a pregnant woman can’t go anywhere without someone to watch over her, but newsflash, this one can. Unless of course you want to spend the next few hours watching me try on underwear?”

  Sungmin stared at me and then hammered at the call button on the elevator. “Do you have money?” he asked, not looking at me.

  “Yes.” I did have money, but I would have told him yes even if I didn’t. “I will see you back at the house, later.”