Chapter 10: Found you

‘Ohana’ means ‘family’; and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”

Disney: Lilo & Stitch

Ji Yong had never been the talkative type of a person so it was always hard to say what he was thinking. It was easier to understand him when we were kids because back then he used to laugh and joke around. He was more innocent and pure. Later, when he grew older there was an instance when he particularly stopped laughing. All the kindness in him faded, replaced by irony and sarcasm. Maybe it was the puberty that changed him, maybe it was something else.

There was a day when I got angry at him for something I don’t remember anymore but probably it was something pretty insignificant. I kicked him out from our room and went to sulk in the bed under the covers. Somehow I fell asleep, wishing he’d disappear from my life forever so I could be the only child again, and after waking up I got the shock of my life when I couldn’t find him anywhere. I was sure he had disappeared forever and would never come back. Just the thought of it was enough to make me hysterical.

My father who had been working in the garden found me crying in the living room. I cried so hard my voice grew hoarse and I started hiccupping. At first, he thought I had hurt myself but when I told him the reason behind my tears he insisted that Ji Yong hadn’t disappeared but that he had just gone grocery shopping with his mother. This only convinced me that he had disappeared together with his mother. I was sure they wouldn’t ever come back and I was so sad I couldn’t stop crying, no matter what.

You can imagine how relieved I was when Ji Yong and his mother actually came back and they had even bought my favorite choco pies. Though, that was the first time in my life I didn’t care about food because when I saw Ji Yong I ran to him and hugged him tightly. The choco pie he was holding to give me fell on the floor completely forgotten. The power of the kiss, it was real to me then.

The rest of the day went by quietly. I followed Ji Yong around, watching him from the distance, probably giving him the creeps. And I asked him million times if he was going to disappear one day but he always said he wouldn’t. That night I fell asleep holding his hand to make sure he wouldn’t leave without me noticing. I remember he smiled at me sweetly and promised that he would always be there. Liar.

“If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart, I'll always be with you.”

A.A Milne: Winnie the Pooh

Lately, I had been thinking about Ji Yong a lot more than usual. All kind of nostalgic memories flooded my mind and I found myself daydreaming. What would have happened if I had made different decisions back in the past, the right ones? But then again, what are the right decisions? You tell me. Sigh.

Most importantly, the more I thought about Ji Yong the more similarities I found between him and Seung-Hyun. There were many differences too, for example, Ji Yong had never been much of a ladies’ man and he never flirted with anyone. Heck, he never even dated a girl back then and I even suspected he was gay.  And the two looked completely different, there was nothing same in their appearances. The conclusion was that either my memory was betraying me or perhaps Seung-Hyun was just similar to Ji Yong or maybe he tried to be like Ji Yong. For what reasons? Who knows, it’s probably something weird.

About million questions flooded my mind, making it impossible for me to concentrate on anything at all and that’s when I reached my limits. Four days had passed since Seung-Hyun had left my apartment and the more time passed the more my curiosity grew. I had to meet him and find out what was going on. So, I closed the bookstore early and gathered my courage. It was time to find Paradise Kiss and see what it was all about.

After the kidnapping, I felt cautious while moving outside even though nothing bad had happened since. That’s why I wore caps and hooded shirts, the first days I even wore a mask so I could hide my face. Even though still worried about my safety, I also knew that the whole deal with Tango was probably over because I had seen the news about the whole place burning down and the owner getting arrested for several crimes. It felt surreal that I had been involved in something like that yet somehow I got the feeling that this was only the beginning and even crazier things would happen from now on.

With mixed emotions, I made my way to the gates of hell. Seoul Station was busy and lively as always, but the area behind it was eerily quiet. The narrow alleys and old houses looked all the same and once again I got helplessly lost while wandering around. Even though I had my new smartphone with an updated map application, the area wasn’t mapped well enough and not all streets had been drawn on the map as if the world had forgotten about the whole place. Hesitance and uncertainty in me grew with each passing minute and the more I walked the less I wanted to find Paradise Kiss. Was it a bad idea, after all, to come here?

A sigh of relief escaped my lips when I heard voices in the distance and when I turned a corner I saw two men sitting on an old bench chatting. Their clothes were worn out and dirty, I could tell with just one look that they were homeless but it didn’t matter. I just needed some directions and they probably knew the whole area like their own pockets.

“Excuse me.”

“Oh! You look familiar!” The man with thick beard exclaimed, pointing his finger at me. 

“I-I do?” After staring at him for a moment, I realized that it was the same man I had bumped into the last time.

“Someone you know?” The other man with balding head asked, leaning closer to his friend. His eyes ran up and down my body but instead of suggestive, like I would have expected, the look in his eyes was rather cautious.

“You are looking for Paradise Kiss, aren’t you?” The one with beard flashed a friendly smile.

I nodded hesitantly, pulling my cap lower.

“The last time you ran away.”

“She is looking for Haechi?”

“I think so.”

“Haechi…” I muttered under my breath. Could it be Seung-Hyun?

“It doesn’t seem like she knows him, though…”

As I stared at the men and they stared at me, I got this brilliant idea. If they knew the place well, at least, they knew Paradise Kiss and this Haechi person, so maybe they also knew what was going on around there.

“Could you tell me more about Haechi?” I cleared my throat.

“You are not a reporter are you?” The one with balding head narrowed his eyes at me.

“No, I’m not.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Eh?” Why are these homeless men so suspicious?

“Wait, JiSub, she has the pink business card. I saw it the last time”, the man with beard exclaimed, receiving a suspicious look from his friend.

“Could it be you saw wrong?”

“I swear I saw it.”

“It’s true, I have it!”

The both men le