by Asia Olanna
Waited for a signal, a sign.
And when Bit-na made a fist, as if prepared to fight, I fired.
Shots rang out and burst forth from the bag, striking Oh-seong between the eyes.
He reeled backwards, the room a burst of noise.
Gunshots fired everywhere; Bit-na kicked the bag over; the Yakuza who were rolling us pushing us forward ducked.
We slid underneath Oh-seong’s desk.
I fired once more into his body.
The woman on his desk screamed, ran in her high heels to a man in a suit.
But that man fell immediately, fired at by one of the Yakuza on our side. Unzipping the bag, I got out, surveying the battlefield.
The four Yakuza who we had come with were crouching low against the ground, Bit-na behind a dead body.
It was difficult to tell who was friend and who was foe in the frenzy, but after a couple more shots, our Yakuza cleaned shop.
“Clear,” Bit-na said, standing up. I realized the body she had been crouching behind was Hyun-jun’s, and although her hands were still chained, she dug for the key quickly enough that she was able to free herself.
“Jesus Christ,” Henrietta said. “Oh my God!”
I sat on top of the bag, turning it over, making sure that no one could get a final shot at Henrietta, guarding her with my own flesh, making sure that my body was over the fabric, and after having done a once over of all of the fallen men, I stood up, and unzipped the bag.
“It seems to be safe, but stay down for now,” I said.
I walked over to Bit-na, who was breathing heavily. She said to me, “We did it.”
The other Yakuza men gathered around us, talking rapidly in Japanese. “The Devil is dead,” they said amongst themselves. “He’s all dead. Clean and efficient.”
As the Japanese were.
Clean and efficient.
“Now,” I said, “where are we?”
The Yakuza turned on us, aiming their guns at our heads.
“You’re our ransom,” one of them said. They were all wearing identical suits and ties, had polished nails and skin. But the words were the same between them: we were now their captives.
HENRIETTA
I knew it was too good to be true to trust them.
But whatever, times change, and you have to roll with the punches.
Even if it meant betrayal.
I went through the medicine supplies, trying to find something I could use against the Yakuza.
Holding onto a syringe, I thought I might be able to get their attention.
They were all focused on Bit-na and Jong-soo, seemingly having forgotten about me. I edged out of the bag, crawling out from underneath the table.
Then one of the men turned on me, had his gun pressed up against my forehead—quickly, before I could even see him move.
They were definitely trained in an art I did not know.
It was not sculpting.
I can tell you that right now.
“You’ll make a pretty ransom,” they said. “You’ll make a very fine ransom for the government.”
Bit-na shook her head. “Not if I’m going to have anything to say about it,” she screamed, running forward.
A hail of bullets roared out from everyone’s guns, and I buried myself in the blitz, charging ahead with the syringe at the guy who faced me.
I slapped away his weapon and stabbed his wrist while he glanced at Bit-na for a shot himself.
I pulled him against me, took his weapon, holding it against his forehead like Jong-soo had done before.
Bit-na fell to the ground, two shots in her shoulder so evident and bloodied. I screamed out for her.
I pulled the trigger, firing into the man’s head.
Rushing through me were all sorts of sensations, the least of them being remorse.
These were people who had no shame, killing us, beating us down.
So it was time to show them that we weren’t going to stay around like pigs in a blanket.
I fired again, aimed at the man next to Jong-soo, not missing my shots, taking him down all the same.
I ducked back underneath the desk, going around the sides, watching as Bit-na struggled on the ground.
Then I went to the medicine bag, getting out a couple of emergency packets, antiseptics and gauze.
The other two Yakuza were in Jong-soo’s muscular grip, wrapped underneath his arms, and with one twist of his hips, he knocked them out, tearing at their throats.
There were footsteps coming down the hallway. We had to get out of there fast.
I went over to Bit-na, gauze and antiseptics at hand, rubbing her shoulders tight with them.
“I know where we are,” she mumbled, nearly faint. “I know where we can go,” she said, stronger now. “Go back the way we came, and then around the corner, there is an emergency exit. It’s the way Oh-seong always would leave to go into his cars. It will take us to his private underground garage.”
Jong-soo nodded, looking out into the hallway that we had come from.
He fired a couple more shots, although I did not look.
I didn’t want to see what he was doing.
I didn’t want to see anymore bloodshed or have to face what was going on.
The reality of the situation was beginning to catch up to me.
JONG-SOO
“Move it,” I screamed. There were two guys at the end of the hallway, hidden behind the corner.
When they popped out, I fired before they could.
Then I wrapped myself around a corner bend.
The hallway split into three, led down a flight of stairs.
I followed Bit-na’s advice, going around the corner instead, ignoring the stairs, following down and down until we reached a door.
I pushed it open, Henrietta right behind me.
She was hysterical, heaving with her lungs.
I gripped onto her, guiding her down, Bit-na staggering.
“There’s a garage button,” she said, her bloodied hand touching the wall. “Here, the switch.”
I touched it. The doors opened, five of them, a huge dazzling array of lights overhead displaying all of what Oh-seong kept underground: Maseratis and Lamborghinis.
Expensive cars that I thought only celebrities owned.
This must’ve been his playground.
“The stairs,” Bit-na said, looking like she was about to blackout. We helped her, a long flight down, going into the garage itself.
“Put my hand against one of them,” Bit-na said. We put her bloodied hand on the door of a Maserati, but it did not open up. “Crap,” she said. “He must’ve changed the locks. They used to open up with my DNA signature.”
“We could use his body,” I said. “Stay here.”
I ran back up the stairs, looking at the hallway.
No one there.
A trap?
I was paranoid, tiptoed back into the room.
No one there still.
One good look at Oh-seong’s body told me that he deserved no mercy.
Using the butt end of my Glock 22, I smashed his arm to pulp, ripping off his hands.
Going back out, I noticed five men in suits crouched around the corner. I shot at the first, knocking him down.
Then I ducked back into the room.
Out of ammo.
I reached with my foot to get one of the lying guns on the ground.
Then I went back into the hall, shooting at number two and three.
Slowly, I inched around the corner, back into the fork of the hallways, ran down for the garage, closing the door behind me.
I clambered over the stairs, yelling, “I have it, I have his hands.”
Bit-na sounded out of breath when I got to her. Henrietta had injected her with a shot of morphine.
Kyung-joon definitely had saved her ass.
“Press the hand against the car, hurry,” Bit-na said.
I pressed it, and like clockwork, just as she said, it opened up.<
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“Everyone get in,” I said.
With the garage doors opened, we had our way out. I sat in the driver’s seat, Henrietta with her hands wrapped around Bit-na in the passenger seat.
I revved the engine, hearing gunshots behind us, men shouting loudly.
Alarm bells rang off.
Everyone was figuring out what was going on.
Suddenly, the garage doors were shutting, quickly and fast.
I pulled out of the lot and floored the accelerator, speeding out quickly beyond the gates.
Behind us, the doors shut tightly, the entire complex going on lockdown.
I rolled out of Oh-seong’s driveway, throwing his hands away, watching them dip down in a huge arc of blood—off a mountainside, a hill that overlooked the ocean below.
We passed a sign.
It read: Nichinan.
HENRIETTA
Holding onto Bit-na, I felt incredibly guilty.
Was she going to die because of all of this craziness?
Was I going to make it out alive?
“I’m sorry if I’ve ever been mean to you,” I said to Bit-na, shaking her. Trying to keep her awake. “If I’ve ever said anything wrong to you, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not you who should be apologizing,” Bit-na said. “I’ve always had a very rough side to me. And I’ve never been able to show the nicer sides. It’s always been like that since I was a child. I lived a rough life, but that’s never been an excuse to be mean. Which I have been to you. I guess, what I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry. And you don’t have to be.”
I held Bit-na against my face, rocking her back and forth. She had been through so much. And I will admit: she had been through more than I could ever understand.
From one person to another, she had been through so much more crap.
I did not know where she was coming from or where she might go, but she had to stay alive.
I scrambled around the boot of the Maserati for the syringe of morphine I had injected her with. There was only a little bit left, and I thought it would be best if I gave her pain relief.
Thoughts flooded my mind about her falling sick. She might going to shock, die in my arms.
Oh my God, that couldn’t happen.
“Just stay with me,” I said, “just stay with me here. If you go anywhere, don’t let it be to heaven.”
“I’m with you,” Bit-na said, mumbling. “I’m with you.”
“Did you know that they would betray us?” Jong-soo said, glancing over to us. I glared at him. Now was not the time for us to be going at each other’s throats.
And then another pang of guilt ran through my soul. Suddenly, my hands felt disgusting, holding her against me.
What if she had betrayed us?
Did she know that we were walking into a second lion’s den?
That the Yakuza would come with strings attached?
We would have to settle those details later. Because for now, all we could hope for was help.
“Nichinan is rural,” Bit-na said. “That’s why he always liked this place. We can go to one of the hospitals and pop out ASAP. We don’t have to stay too long. Let’s just get me some help, please?”
Jong-soo nodded, rolling down one of the main highways, pulling into town.
We immediately got Bit-na out of the Maserati—some of the people in the parking lot were looking at us—and we got her a bed, a doctor to check on her.
People were talking all around us, wondering who we were, how we had gotten so roughed up, where we had come from.
We told them little, being that we were unable to communicate with them properly.
And being that the Japanese are always so polite, we were able to get ourselves good, decent treatment.
After a couple of hours, Bit-na was all wrapped up, her wounds sealed.
She would go into major surgery the next day.
Jong-soo and I would stay with her, waiting in the lobby, biting our lips, shaking with anxiety.
What if the Yakuza and Twin Swords found us? They would in only a matter of hours if we stayed too long.
Jong-soo went to the front desk. He asked if he could borrow the phone.
It took a long while for the woman manning the desk to understand, but she got the point when Jong-soo put his hand against his ear and made a telephone with his fingers.
“I’ve got to call in a favor,” Jong-soo told me. “It’s really important.”
JONG-SOO
It was time to call on Kyung-joon.
I had not relied on him except for the tickets, but he had given me his number, and I had memorized it for this very specific reason.
For him to get us out of trouble, and away from all of the drama, we would have to leave Asia, go as far away as possible.
“Can you just get us the things we need?” I said.
“I don’t know… I thought I told you I could only help you so much…”
“And now is how you can help me!”
I tried my hardest not to scream in the middle of the lobby.
People were still looking at me, even though I was using a whisper. Everything about this affair was strange: random people walking in, bloodied, a Maserati.
“Okay,” Kyung-joon said. “This is the last favor I can do for you. After this, no more.”
“I get it,” I said.
I waited for the tickets to be booked for us.
Then Kyung-joon wired me money, so that I had money to print out our tickets, some fake passports in high quality.
I called Kyung-joon back up later, after I had done everything.
“This is really going to save our asses,” I said, nodding to no one in particular. Self-satisfied, hopeful. “I’m glad you pulled through.”
“Just don’t get into trouble in America,” Kyung-joon said. “And good luck, you’ll need it over there.”
HENRIETTA
By the time Jong-soo had gotten our tickets, Bit-na was already undergoing surgery.
By the time he had finished printing them out, and confirming everything with Kyung-joon, she was already done.
They had removed the pair of bullets out from her shoulders, and now she was resting in the ICU.
They wanted her to wait a full week. Maybe even two or a month.
But we knew we had no time for that.
We had to get out of the country immediately, away from all of this nonsense.
Japan, Korea.
It was time to go home.
I was already sitting in the Maserati, anxiously waiting. This would be my resting place for a while, a place where I put my arm up, my feet up, and turned on the air conditioning. Pretending that nothing was going on.
“Where are we going to land?” I said, looking at Jong-soo’s tickets. He had chartered us to go to…
California!
“How are we going to get home from there?” I said.
“Home?” Jong-soo said, smirking, trying to find the funny in our situation, I guess. “There’s no home for me but Korea. I’m going to your home, not mine.”
I forgot.
He had never been to America before and neither had Bit-na. So they would be traveling with me, and I would be showing them the land instead.
It scared me, because I didn’t know what else lay ahead of us.
But I had to try and make the best of what was going on. If I paralyzed myself with too much analysis, then we would never be able to go where we needed to go. And we had places to head to, many sights to see.
“At night,” Jong-soo said, we have to move. “Okay?”
God.
If only I could shake my head and say no. And just teleport back home.
“I’ve got you,” I said, leaning into Jong-soo’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”