Pop Singer: A Dark BWAM / AMBW Romance

by Asia Olanna

  “You’re up,” he whispered, my earlobes taking in his voice, his sound. “And you look much better.”

  “I’m really tired,” I managed to say. “And I’m feeling bad.”

  “Try not to,” he said, “because we’re headed to Busan.”

  I knew some of my geography pretty well. Busan was a city located to the south of Korea, all the way on the peninsular tip. Surrounded by mountains, it was the kind of place you could get lost in—the forests were said to stretch on for miles.

  “How much longer?” I said. “Are you going to bring me home?”

  “I’m going to,” Jong-soo said, although his eyes bespoke of a shiftiness, like there was something he held back from me, a point of contention I could not understand between him and the others. Maybe he wanted to free me but simply couldn’t because of the politics surrounding my capture. I figured that a kidnapping was not an everyday event. “I can’t really imagine keeping you around.”

  “Are you really Jong-soo Jeup? The pop singer?” I forgot if I had asked him this before. “I was supposed to have won a contest. The prize was meeting you. Having my artwork shown at the Higher Museum. But the woman told me it was all a farce. It was fake.”

  “I don’t know of any prizes,” Jong-soo said, sadly. “But I can explain more about who I am. I am indeed the pop singer that you know about.”

  “This is definitely not how I thought about meeting you.”

  “I know, it’s not. I don’t meet most of my fans like this either.”

  It’s strange, but I smiled.

  Just a little bit.

  He had a sense of humor even in the middle of near-death.

  “Then it really was all a set up,” I said. “If you don’t know about any prizes, then I really was tricked. I was brought over to Korea for no reason. My sculptures—they’re all gone.”

  I put my hands up to my face, squeezing my cheeks, trying to make myself cry. But I had no more energy for it.

  I had to admit defeat.

  “I’m sorry that things have gone this way,” Jong-soo said, massaging my forearm, pumping my hand. “It shouldn’t be like this for tourists.”

  “I came all of this way to—dammit.”

  I remained silent for the rest of the trip.

  Talking more would just exhaust me. Even though I had slept for what seemed several hours, I did not want to do anything more.

  We made a pit stop on the side of the road, not wanting to attract attention to ourselves.

  We grabbed a couple of quick dinners at a local mom-and-pop place, although Jong-soo and I remained in the car. Hae-il and Bit-na brought food to us.

  I also remained because I was scared. I didn’t want to go out anywhere or see anyone. The outside had already wrought so much unto me, and even though I had been put into great danger, Jong-soo had saved me, would continue doing so—I felt it in my heart.

  I looked into his deep dark eyes. Dreamy and casual, although different than the album cover, Being a prisoner had changed him, and the lack of slick appearance meant that people probably couldn’t recognize him well.

  “Did you do something wrong?” I asked when Bit-na and Hae-il were gone. “Tell the truth. Are you someone I should be scared of? Are you someone I shouldn’t be hanging around?”

  Jong-soo shook his head. “I haven’t done anything wrong. Nothing that I’ve been ashamed of. Nothing truly bad. Many of the people I’ve known throughout my life haven’t always been the kindest or the best. But I don’t think that makes me bad by association.”

  “A lot of words to say nothing,” I said. “Tell me the truth. Are you?”

  “No,” Jong-soo said, straight to my face. Staring into my eyes, his chiseled jaw like a knife in the night. “No, I’m not. I think of myself as being a good person. Although there are a lot of bad circumstances surrounding me. It would take me the entire year to explain what’s going on in full.”

  “Why don’t you try and start now? Since it’s going to be a long while and everything? I don’t have a phone and a laptop to record you. So you don’t have to be worried about any of that.” I was surprised at myself. Finding the strength in my voice, I sat up, looking at him better and better as the moonlight shone down from above. I wanted to know who this man was: the true Jong-soo Jeup. Not the guy on the glossy album covers. The man who was being chased by gangsters. Who was being helped by Bit-na and Hae-il—two people I did not exactly trust, not fully at least. “Tell me what you can, and I’ll tell you what I can about myself. It’ll be an equal exchange, isn’t that fair?”

  So it appeared to me that my sleeping—my little map—had done more for me than I thought.

  It felt like hours before Hae-il and Bit-na had come back. And in that timeframe, Jong-soo told me what he felt comfortable detailing.

  “I am Jong-soo Jeup,” he said, “the pop singer that you know about. Some of my most famous songs you probably have heard of. Shadows over an empty valley // The wind in my face, the sun in your eyes // Being with you is a challenge // Because of all of your lies… You know that one?”

  I nodded, impressed. It sounded—his voice—just like the CD. Like the MP3 I had purchased.

  “That’s… I’m… You really are him, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” Jong-soo said. “I’m Jong-soo Jeup. And my parents were gangsters. The Double Dragons—this organization of criminals—it’s was theirs but they died and now they’re gone. I assumed control…”

  Of his organization. His life. Suddenly, he was thrust in the middle of a gang fight, a war of sorts. Made into a man because of violence, because of what other people wanted: power and control. Stuff he never minded, didn’t understand. In his youth, he traveled all over Asia, even making it past the border into North Korea before it became crazily totalitarian.

  “They weren’t the way they are today,” Jong-soo said. He wiped his hands against his shirt. They looked sweaty and glimmered in the light, diamonds in the rough. “The North Koreans used to be much more developed. Not so oppressive. They actually had something going on. For a time period, people actually thought about North Korea as a standard. The Soviets had pumped in money, and they were on the up-and-up. And then everything collapsed. Everything came down on them, the Soviets, the North Koreans. And then the totalitarian state began.”

  And once the regime all started up in North Korea, Jong-soo’s life began revving. His parents showed him the ways of gang life. How to coordinate a run. How to coordinate a scandal. When someone was breathing down your neck, what to do.

  Be suspicious, always suspicious about people’s intentions. Never get caught up in messes. Because then you have to clean your hands, and cleaning your hands is difficult when everything you touch turns foul.

  “I’ve never actually done anything on the level of killing a man with my own hands,” Jong-soo said. “Not that I am scared of it, like you’ve seen. I can get with that. But what I mean is, I’ve never dealt with murder. I’ve never killed someone in a premeditated way. I’ve never plotted and schemed. I hate violence. Everything I’ve done has been to make the Double Dragons fold on itself. To end the violence in the street. But that’s kind of difficult, when you’re surrounded by it, and you have to protect yourself. So if you have to protect yourself with violence, and violence begets violence—you know where I’m going with this. The cycle is a positive feedback loop. It never ends. You begin and start again. One day you think that you’ll get out of this life, and then it begins all over.”

  I sat there in silence, listening to his voice.

  I watched for Hae-il and Bit-na.

  Were they going to bring back noodles? Were they in the bathroom peeing? Did Bit-na need a tampon?

  I filled up my head with these kinds of questions if only to make Jong-soo’s seriousness not so grave.

  I wanted to come back to a world where people worried about art and beauty, entertainment and love.

  Not the streets and the hood. I had enough of that while g
rowing up alongside Latasha in college.

  “I’m so sorry,” was all that I could say. What more?

  “The Double Dragons primarily deals with drugs. We used to have some top agents at the border—Eun-jung and Kyung-joon—I don’t know where they are. Or where they’ve gone. If they’re even alive. They’re good people, but they’ve just been caught up in bad circumstances. I want to go find them next. But I have to deal with you first.”

  Guilt washed over me. He had to deal with me next, huh?

  “I didn’t ask for any of this,” I said. “I just want to go home, back to the United States. As soon as possible, that’s what I want to happen.”

  “It’s going to take us some time to get to the shore. And then we have to make sure that we’re all safe. That no one is going to pull a double trick. Who knows? Bit-na or Hae-il might have ulterior motives. We might wake up in heaven one day. And then we still have to charter a boat to Japan. Because that’s the safest place.”

  I tracked all of the details in my head. Going to the shore. To Busan. And then chartering a boat. Why not a plane? He had all of these plots and schemes in his mind, and he said that he was not the type to do so.

  I pulled away from him, although he came closer to me, still rubbing my forearm. I felt ambivalence: on one hand, he saved my life. On the other, he killed a man right before my eyes. Could I trust him? Was this the type of person I wanted in my life?

  Did I even have a choice?

  If I tried running away, would he let me do so? Would that even be in my best interest?

  I no longer had my wallet. And if I asked for a freebie—like money or something— he might get angry. And then what?

  “I trust you,” I said, although the sound coming from my throat sounded hollow, fake. The kind of thing I would say to Latasha if she was annoying me as she had done to me when I first told her about my going to Korea.

  A long time.

  A long ways away.

  “Who else can you trust?” he said, and he was right. There wasn’t anybody else in the area to follow, to seek help from. Regardless about how I felt—Jong-soo Jeup was the most familiar person in my mind.

  “It might be maybe a month or so before you actually get back,” he continued. “Getting you to safety is the most important part. Even in the modern world, that’s going to require a bit of clandestine work. Plus, I’m not sure if Amanda and Adam want you going home so soon. They wouldn’t trust you not to snitch on them. I have to make sure you’ll be okay all the way home.”

  I shifted my body away from him now. He respected me, not at all stroking me anymore. Although I will admit, I wanted him to. I needed the touch, the consistency of someone helping me along physically, not sexually, but emotionally.

  How was I supposed to feel about this all in the end?

  I had no judgments to make. I wished I did, but coming across them would be difficult. Instead, I had to formulate a feeling in my head. I had to let my feelings percolate.

  And that would all take time.

  Panicking would be the least of my concerns. Because panic would show fear, and to fear these people who were helping me—that would do me no good. They might have stifled my concerns, and then become more conservative in dealing with me. Telling me less and less about their plans—which they already did not detail very well.

  Not that I blamed them for doing so. They had to be secretive. And, of course, they had gotten me out. So I could not blame them for being mysterious.

  Who knew? They were operating on a wavelength I was only beginning to become receptive to.

  “Here they come,” Jong-soo said, pointing out the window. Bit-na and Hae-il brought back noodles, some dried-out sushi. Not the highest-class of places, but what could I expect being a practical refugee? In the arms of my captors, I had to go with whatever they could give. Even if that meant the lowest rate, base quality.

  Chewing on my dried-out sushi, I listened in on their conversation. Hardly being able to understand them, I pretended to piece together their exact feelings on the situation. But I didn’t need to do that—the body language told me everything: they were tense, nervous, anxious, unlike before. There was a sense of escape, that they had gotten out of a really bad situation. They looked like prisoners on television, embarrassed, but at the same time proud of what they had accomplished.

  I didn’t know whether or not to be scared of this, their body language.

  Should I have been?

  Would the average person?

  I’m not the average person though, I thought. I’m a girl from Lincoln, Nebraska. I’m a black woman from the United States. So in the context of a Korean society, I’m nothing but extraordinary. I came from what would be perceived as the middle class, but I did have contact with what others might see as “the ghettos.” I was in contact with people who had rougher lives. I knew what went on in the gross sides of town, the places no one wants to go to. So that makes me special somehow, right? I think it does. And maybe I can understand them better, if I empathize with them from my perspective.

  They had killed someone in front of me though. I had never expected that. I had never encountered that in my life, truthfully.

  No one—no one in my life had to go to the length that Jong-soo and Hae-il and Bit-na had for me.

  I trembled as I considered the person they took dead. The entire house of people who collapsed underneath the brick and fire.

  Even though I was not particularly religious, I prayed for them. Feeling for them in the ether of the universe.

  I hoped that wherever their souls went, they could find peace. They could not be completely damned—I knew how difficult life was struggling as a poor person.

  And how so many people fell on hard times. How they—those who felt desperate regardless of their income—had to make difficult decisions for themselves.

  I ate my sushi in silence, as they chattered on and on.

  “Is the meal good?” Jong-soo said, wrinkling his nose. “I know it’s not the best. But I have to say, it’s better than nothing.”

  I still mostly understood only him in our pidgin. But I was already beginning to acclimate to standard Korean, being able to parse out certain words from sentences, the meanings and syntaxes, basic grammar.

  Good.

  Because I would be with them for a much longer time than even Jong-soo anticipated.

  “We still have to drive over to a hotel,” Jong-soo said, as Hae-il pulled back onto the main road. Jong-soo offered his hand to me, and then his shoulder. “You can sleep on me if you want. We’re still a far ways away.”

  I declined him, saying, “I’ve had enough sleep for now. I think I’ll stay up.”

  And stay up I did. I watched as Bit-na relaxed into her seat, not speaking anymore, turning her head to the side. Jong-soo himself closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against the back of Bit-na’s headrest.

  They slept like babies.

  “How are you feeling?” Hae-il said. I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. He adjusted it. I was surprised, because we had not communicated much back at the house. Even though we were trapped together, we stayed silent in our imprisonment. We could’ve tried to use Morse code or come up with our own system—but I was too scared of him, honestly. Looking back, he instilled a certain fear in me.

  “I’m okay,” I said, not wanting to wake up the others. “How are you doing?”

  The fact that I even had words to say…

  I wanted to say nothing. Then again, I had to be strong. We all experienced trauma, and talking about it would probably be the best for all of us.

  “I’m exhausted,” Hae-il said, using the same linguistic construct me and Jong-soo had come up with. “Truly exhausted.”

  We stayed silent, and then he continued, saying, “If we’re all kind of rough around the edges, it’s because we’re all dealing with shit.”

  I nodded, not knowing how to convey my empathy. “I understand,” I said.

  “It’s a
tough deal,” Hae-il said. “This life is. I’m sorry that you got caught up in it.”

  I stared at him in the rearview mirror, catching his gaze, making sure that he saw me smile. “I’m sorry you got caught up in it as well.”

  He smiled back at me, turning for the road. We did not talk anymore.

  What was there left to say?

  I think both of us were just too tired for anything serious. It’s not like I wanted to talk about philosophy in the middle of our harrowing situation.

  Instead, I noticed the darkness of the night, and the stars, so pretty and pointed. A multitude of stars that I would otherwise never see during the daytime in the United States. Unless you want out into the country, you never saw them.