by Paula Stokes
We exit the plane and follow the passengers in front of us through the wide passageways, around several corners, and down two flights of stairs to where a shuttle will take us from the arrivals terminal to the immigration area. Around us, most people are talking or texting on their phones while they wait.
Jesse’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out. “Baz texted me the address.”
I glance at it. It’s in a central part of the city called Itaewon—a neighborhood that caters to military guys and foreign English teachers. We shouldn’t raise any suspicion there. “That will take us about an hour to get to.”
Jesse doesn’t respond. The shuttle is approaching and he’s staring at it. “Whoa,” he says.
The enclosure is full of people standing shoulder to shoulder, packed in tightly.
The glass doors open and the people disembark in a wave of black coats and carry-on luggage. Once everyone has gotten off, Jesse and I step into the shuttle. I find us an area in the back of the car where he can lean against the wall for support. People pile in behind us, and then keep piling.
“The perception of personal space here is different than in the US,” I tell him. “The subway is sometimes like this too.”
Jesse gives me a look as an old lady rolls her suitcase over his feet and then reaches across him to press her palm against the back of the shuttle. “I feel like I’m taking up way too much space.”
I wink at him. “They’re used to Americans taking up lots of space.”
“How are you okay with this?” he asks. A bell rings. A few more people smash into the shuttle before the glass doors close with a hiss. “I thought you hated crowds.”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Maybe it’s because some part of me remembers taking crowded trains as a child. Plus, I have a purpose now. I can’t be afraid of everything anymore.”
Jesse leans down to talk in my ear. “You were never afraid of everything. And you had good reasons for the stuff that scared you.”
The shuttle starts up with a jerk and we head for the next terminal. It feels weird being pressed against Jesse, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it, a little.
He coughs and his face contorts. He struggles in the crowded space to lift his hand to his chest.
“How are you doing?” I ask, leaning back away from him to give him space.
“I’m pretty sore, but not too bad, all things considered.”
“That moment in the penthouse,” I murmur. “I thought I might lose you.”
“I assure you, I’m not that easy to get rid of,” Jesse says lightly. But there’s a seriousness in his hazel eyes that belies his casual tone. Jesse knows he could’ve died for me. He knows he still might.
CHAPTER 16
We hire a car to take us from the airport to Itaewon. Jesse spends the entire ride peering out his side window, his eyes taking in as much as he can in the dark. I scan the scenery on my side, wonder what has changed in the past six years. There seem to be more buildings and less green space, but we’re still a ways outside of the city.
Digital billboards light up both sides of the road, advertising everything from cigarettes to cars. Beautiful models smile down, promising glamour and happiness if you’ll just buy what they’re selling.
“They use pretty girls to advertise everything, huh?”
“Pretty girls sell.” I point out into the night. “You can’t see them, but there are mountains over there, and over there.”
Jesse squints. “All I see are little groups of tall buildings that look like high-rise apartments.”
“That’s how most people live here,” I tell him. “Even the wealthy.”
He turns back to his window. After a few seconds he says, “Aside from the signs and people, it doesn’t look as different as I expected it to look.”
“I remember thinking the same thing about California.”
After about twenty minutes on the highway, our driver exits onto a small, congested road and we quickly end up mired in traffic. He says something about a shortcut and makes a couple of quick turns. We pass a vacant lot, a metallic crane peeping over the top of a fence of boards and orange netting. A giant banner hanging from the gate proclaims this as the latest construction project from UsuCon. In Korea, the biggest corporations, or jaebeols, don’t just specialize in one thing. The same company might make cars and computers and operate hotels and department stores. I didn’t realize how powerful the Usu jaebeol had become throughout the city. Going up against them, even just one segment, even just one man, isn’t going to be easy.
We wind our way through the back streets of Seoul, our driver finding openings just big enough for us to slide through, occasionally coming close enough to a pedestrian to brush up against a purse or puffy winter coat. College kids and young professionals are out in droves. Girls saunter by in tall boots and short dresses. Men in suits drink from green soju bottles. Some of them are already intoxicated to the point of yelling and stumbling.
“Party central,” Jesse says.
“I think the motto here is ‘Work hard, play hard,’” I say.
Eventually, we turn onto the main street of Itaewon and pass a string of fast-food restaurants and bars, some of them with signs welcoming gay and transgender patrons. I’m not sure how socially progressive Seoul has become since I left, but I’m guessing Itaewon is probably a lot more accepting than other parts of the city. When the car finally slows to a stop in front of a tall cement building, Baz is waiting out in front. I almost don’t recognize him. Instead of the dark suit and slicked-back hair I’m used to seeing on him, he’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. I pay the driver, who helps unload our bags from the trunk.
Baz gives Jesse a fist bump and turns to me with a half smile. “Flight okay?”
“Okay?” Jesse says. “They had like sixty different movies to pick from, including every Star Wars. It was awesome.”
I smile. “It was fine.” I glance up at the building. “What is this place?”
“I was going to book us rooms at one of the hotels the military guys usually use for their families, but then I saw a flyer for a flat rental. I figure we might as well have the space since paying for multiple hotel rooms will cost just as much. Plus, this way no one is monitoring our comings and goings.”
“Good point,” I say. The hotels probably all have security cameras. “Speaking of being monitored, you seem to have a fan club.” A few feet away, two Korean girls with dyed hair and heavy makeup are eyeing Baz appraisingly.
He glances over his shoulder and snorts. “No regard for taste, I guess.”
“Have you been able to GPS the tech since you got here?” I ask.
“Sure did. The signal only locates to within a radius of a couple of blocks, but the tech appears to be in Gangnam-gu, and guess what’s right in the middle of that—the international headquarters for UsuMed.”
“Imagine that.”
Baz eyes my suitcase. “We’re on the sixth floor. Stairs?”
“I can try the elevator,” I say slowly.
“Cool,” he says, like it’s no big deal. But we all know that it is. I haven’t taken an elevator in years. Well, except for the day Gideon died, when Sung Jin dragged me into the private penthouse elevator at gunpoint.
I struggle to breathe, my chest suddenly tight as we step inside the building and approach the shining steel doors.
Baz reaches out and presses the up arrow. It lights up red.
Red means stop, a voice whispers.
“You know what? You guys go ahead. I think I’ll scope out the stairs, make sure I’m familiar with the escape routes just in case something happens.”
“I’ll take your bag up,” Baz says.
“I’ll come with you.” Jesse leaves his luggage and starts to follow me.
“What am I? The bellhop?” Baz kicks at Jesse’s suitcase. “Carry your own shit.”
“I thought you said—”
“Her bag, no
t yours.”
“Good to know chivalry isn’t dead,” I say weakly, but mostly I’m just grateful for the reprieve from lugging my suitcase up several flights of stairs. I’m fairly certain that’s not even a possibility for Jesse right now, so I’m not surprised when I head for the stairwell and he doesn’t follow me.
My leg is throbbing a little. I pause halfway up the stairs and pull back the tape on my bandage to make sure I’m not bleeding again. The wound looks a little inflamed, but the scab is holding.
Baz and Jesse are leaning against the hall outside of apartment 608 when I duck out of the stairwell. Baz glances down at his phone like he was timing me. “When did you get so slow?”
“After she got shot,” Jesse says drily.
“Fair point, but try to step it up a little in the next few days. We’re all going to need to be at the top of our game if we’re going to steal back the ViSE tech without ending up in Korean prison.” Baz turns to the apartment door and punches in a six-digit security code. I watch and memorize the string of numbers. He swings the heavy door inward.
The flat is nicer than I imagined based on the outside of the building. It has wooden floors with traditional Korean ondol heating and all new appliances.
I stroll into the living room. “How many bedrooms?”
“Two.” Baz looks back and forth from Jesse to me. “It was the best option I found on short notice. I figured Jesse and I could share one room and you could have the other.”
“Or I could sleep on the sofa,” I say.
The living room is small but furnished with a faux leather sofa, a set of glass tables, and a flat-screen television. I wander through the room, to the big picture window that looks out onto the street. An older woman, her arms laden with packages, totters by. Behind her, a couple of dark-skinned guys with military haircuts are looking down at their phones. I watch all three of them disappear into the nearest entrance to the subway station at the end of the block.
Jesse joins me at the window. “You’re not going to be able to function if you set your alarm to wake up every two hours. Let me or Baz sleep on the sofa. That way if you dissociate and try to leave the apartment, we’ll wake up.”
“I don’t mind sleeping out here,” Baz says. “I’m a light sleeper. I’ll wake up if you try to go anywhere.”
Jesse reaches out and touches a metal ring that’s embedded in the wall next to the window. “What’s this for?”
Baz chuckles. “That’s part of the Korean fire escape.” He looks around and locates a red metal basket in the far corner of the living room. Bending down, he retrieves a neatly coiled rope with a nylon harness attached and a folded piece of paper. “Just slip this around you, clip into the anchor ring, and follow these instructions on how to use the descender.”
“You’re shitting me, right?” Jesse grabs the paper out of Baz’s hands. He scans the tiny print, his jaw tensing up as he reads. “Maximum weight a hundred kilograms? What if you’re bigger than that?”
Baz slaps him lightly on the shoulder. “Then you die.”
“No one is dying,” I say firmly.
“Did I say die?” Baz asks innocently. “I meant diet. Yeah, that’s it.” He turns toward Jesse and claps his hands together. “Splat,” he says under his breath.
“You’re an ass,” Jesse says.
Baz grins. “But I’m an ass who will survive a fire.” He places the rope back into the red basket.
“I’m sure this rope could hold double the weight if it had to, but let’s try not to start any fires, all right?” I turn to Baz. “How do you know about Korean fire escapes? Have you been here before?”
“I used to live here.”
“In Itaewon? When you were in the military?” I ask.
“Actually, after that,” Baz says. “I did some contract work for the government.”
Jesse arches an eyebrow. “Which government?”
Baz grins. “Whichever government was paying the best that week.”
Jesse smirks. Something outside the window catches his eye. “What’s a PC cyber zone?”
“A good thing for us,” Baz says.
“We call them PC bangs. “Bang” means room. It’s like an Internet café,” I explain. “Mostly full of college kids playing RPGs.”
“They’re playing with rocket-propelled grenades?”
I’m fairly certain Jesse is joking, but I’m too tired to pretend to laugh so I explain anyway. “Role-playing games. Like some of the college kids like to do at Escape.”
“Why do they pay for Internet access when everybody has it at home?”
“Camaraderie,” I explain. “They like playing together.”
“Also, some of the games are team oriented and others reward gamers with virtual currency when they log on from a cooperative gaming area,” Baz says. “But we don’t care about any of that. We just want to be able to use the Internet anonymously.”
“You think they’re anonymous?”
“More or less,” Baz says. “They don’t track who sits at which computer or ask for any sort of ID. I mean, they probably have cameras, but they’re not going to be watching every tourist who stumbles in looking for a place to catch up on his e-mail cheaply. And there are certain people it’s safer for me to contact from an outside terminal. I’ll head over there and hit up my contacts in the area and see what I can do about procuring some equipment. You two should come with me.”
“Why?” I ask.
“I don’t know. So you stay out of trouble? You can try to look for information on your brother.”
“You don’t think I tried that?” I ask. “I’ve searched for Jun Song in Los Angeles and in Seoul and in Taebaek, where I was born. There are results everywhere, but no way to know if any of them are actually my brother. Kyung could have lied about me having a brother. Or maybe I have one but his name isn’t Jun, or maybe it is but he has a different last name.”
I’m still standing in front of the window. The dark corners of the nearby buildings cut into the sky. Beyond them, more buildings. Beyond them, still more. People hurry past on the sidewalk—one, two, ten, a thousand. Faceless, nameless shadows.
The absolute hopelessness of ever finding my brother threatens to drown me. How does someone find one boy in a sea of buildings and people, especially a boy who may or may not even exist?
CHAPTER 17
“Do you know your mom’s full name and date of birth?” Baz asks. “Maybe there’s a birth announcement or some sort of medical records.”
I shake my head. “I remember that people called her Hyun, but that might have just been part of her name. And Song was my father’s last name.”
“You don’t know your mother’s surname?”
I turn to face Baz. “I was only two when she gave us up. How much do you remember from that age?”
“Dude,” Jesse interjects. “Winter’s had a hellish couple of days. Maybe go take care of your business and finish the interrogation tomorrow?”
“No. It’s fine,” I say. “I’ll give you all the information I can, if you really think you might be able to find my … family. What do you want to know?” I sink to the sofa, pull my feet up onto the cushions and sit cross-legged. Could I have a brother and a mother? Perhaps even a father somewhere? I’m not sure how I feel about that. I know the boy Kyung hired in Los Angeles could have been lying about everything, but it was easy to believe that both my parents were dead. Comforting, even. If I have a mother and father who are still alive, it would hurt to think about how they didn’t try to find me. I’m not even sure I’d want to meet them anytime soon. They might be ashamed of me, of the fact that I am mentally ill.
Jesse sits next to me. He looks back and forth as Baz and I talk.
“What happened to your dad?” Baz asks.
“I don’t remember him at all. I don’t know his first name. I don’t even know if they were married.”
“Then how do you know Song is his name?”
“Because that’s how it�
��s done here,” I say sharply. But even as I’m insisting I’m right, I know that I could be wrong. My mother could have given Rose and me her name if she really wanted to.
“What was the name of the orphanage you lived at?”
“Singing Crane,” I tell Baz. “In Songpa-gu.” I hadn’t thought to look up the Singing Crane again. I guess it’s possible they might have information on my mother, assuming she actually talked to a representative and signed us into their custody. I never knew for sure if we were documented orphans or if she just left us there knowing that eventually someone would find us.
“That’s not a ton of information to go on, but I’ll see what I can find out.”
I nod. “I appreciate it.”
“However,” Baz says. “Even if we can find your mom or brother, I think it might be best to hold off on contacting them until after we regain control of the ViSE technology.”
“But—”
“Kyung’s people could be watching them. If he sees you make contact, it could put them in danger. Plus, I know you want to trust your family, but it’s always possible UsuMed has some sort of hold over them.”
“You’re saying my own family would betray me.”
“I’m saying I don’t know.” Baz grabs a sweatshirt from the back of the sofa and pulls it over his head.
“Fine,” I say. “But then there’s no reason for me to go to a PC bang with you. Maybe I’ll hop on the subway and go check out the UsuMed building, just get a feel for the layout.”
“I’ll come with you,” Jesse says.
Baz shakes his head. “Before anyone goes to UsuMed, we need to make a plan.”
“Says who?” I narrow my eyes at him.
“Says me.”
“Who put you in charge?”
“I put me in charge.” Baz crosses the living room to the entryway. He starts to slide back into his shoes.
I rise from the sofa to face him. “Well, I didn’t even ask you to come to Seoul, so—”
“Winter.” He holds up a hand. “Do you know why surgeons aren’t supposed to operate on family members?”