〔 chapter three
MISTER HOW HIGH
〔 CHAPTER THREE — MISTER HOW HIGH
the first thing that happened as the trio transitioned from north chungcheong to gyeonggi was lightning striking right besides their car. the strike was so loud that it startled yoongi awake, if only for a moment, before he dozed back off to sleep. eventually, seoyul found herself dozing off too, her head resting atop yoongi’s as she sprawled out in the confined back seats. the mood in the car was cozy, something that reflected the mood the rain set. jintae wished he could fall asleep too but he didn’t want to kill seoyul just days after her grandpa died.
after more and more driving, jintae finally reached their house. he pulled into their garage, digging seoyul’s bags out of the trunk and lugging them into the house. as soon as he entered the house, six boys popped from behind various pieces of furniture. the sound of poppers filled the air, poppers and those honking blowy things.
“congratulations on the restaurant!”
“we’re sorry for your loss!”
“welcome to your new home!”
all these messages were shouted at jintae at once and the lights went on all at once, blinding jintae and causing him to drop some of seoyul’s luggage. “what the hell?”
“hey, you’re not a girl!” one of them complained, all the joy dissipating quickly.
“you scared the out of me!”
one with full lips and a stylish hairdo sighed and clapped his hands together, “false alarm guys. jungkook, hit the lights. namjoon, get more poppers. everyone else, hide.” the guys scrambled back to their places after turning off the lights. jintae moved her bags into her room before heading back out to gather the younguns. he soothed seoyul awake with a hand on her shoulder, quiet and confident. as soon as she opened her eyes, his hand reached over and smacked yoongi’s head.
before the sloth could protest, jintae rushed them out of the car. he told seoyul where her room was, that she’d have eight roommates, himself included, and that they’d check out the restaurant tomorrow after she was settled in. as soon as he opened the door again, time seemed to repeat itself. the guys popped out of nowhere once again shouting good tidings and condolences, causing seoyul to jump out of her skin. her arm shot out in front of yoongi and stopped him in his tracks as she leaned away from the commotion.
“congratulations on the restaurant!”
“sorry for your loss!”
“welcome to your new home!”
namjoon heard the shouting and rushed back into the living room, moving like a scuttling crab. he lept over the small coffee table in the living room only to bang his foot on the edge and fall face first, spilling all the poppers and causing them to go off all out once.
“yoongi!” she exclaimed as the fallen man almost collided with her leg. she shielded him with her body and lifted her leg up, foot at a point to avoid the man beneath her. yoongi only blinked as she gripped onto his shirt for dear life.
“namjoon are you okay?” the handsome young man asked, “you spilled water on the floor, clean it up.”
“can’t i ever get a break?” mister tall and handsome simply stepped over namjoon and tried to wrap an arm around seoyul’s shoulders, only to have her lean back.
“is this all for me?” she asked as she uncoiled into a normal position, looking around at the streamers and banner and guys in the background.
jintae nodded, “seokjin planned all of this, i guess.” he motioned to the male drama lead in front of her.
“i figured you could use some cheering up. your grandpa died, you moved away from your hometown, have to live with a bunch of strangers. i thought this would be a nice welcome.” seokjin gave her a warm smile, thick lips curling upwards and radiating the same kind of warmth she felt when she ate ramyeon on a chilly day.
her rosy cheeks flushed an even brighter shade of red as a wide smile spread across her face, revealing her rabbit-like front teeth. “that’s…” her voice began to waver uncontrollably and her lips quivered, the smile falling fast and replaced by tears. “that’s so nice! it’s so nice! thank you!” she began bowing to everyone in the room, her hands reaching up and wiping at her wet eyes, mascara smearing on the back of her hands.
all the men just stared at the crying girl who constantly kept trying to smile so no one would worry only to be overwhelmed by tears. jintae had disappeared into the kitchen at the first sign of anything even remotely emotional. one of the guys stepped up, one with a light brown bowl cut and tried to grab seoyul’s hands. she moved them away from him and he placed his hand on her shoulder instead.
“it’s alright, it’s alright.” he cooed, patting her shoulder with each syllable. “you’re pretty when you cry but even prettier when you smile!”
“but i’m doing both!” she hiccuped as more tears streamed down her face.
“oh. then, you’re extra pretty right now.”
“thank you!”
“you’re welcome!”
seokjin pulled him away, “really not helping taehyung.”
“ah, my bad.”
jintae walked back into the living room, eager to break free from all these tears. “seoyul! why don’t you take a bath. or shower. or whatever girls do, it’ll make you feel better.” seoyul nodded and sputtered out an ‘i feel great’ before heading to her room to fetch some clothes and shampoo and conditioner. with a mountain in her hands, she closed the door to the bathroom and everyone let out a collective sigh of relief.
“girls are weird.” said jeon jungkook, who had remained silent and hiding behind jimin during the entire confrontation. everyone agreed. jintae paused until he heard the shower head start spitting water before he spoke about what was on his and yoongi’s mind.
“jin, any updates on park inchul?” seokjin shook his head as he sat down on the stylish and modern couch. everyone followed his lead, all taking seats of their own. namjoon sat beside him, arm resting on the back of the couch and legs spread wide. jimin and taehyung sat on the floor, embracing each other. jungkook sat on the arm of the couch, jintae in his special chair while hoseok and yoongi sat in an adjacent chair.
“park inchul is inslanderable.” he said. “i checked. no family, no job, no girlfriend, no community of people who he’d be worried about finding out his darkest secrets. we could threaten to expose him all we want and he would be completely unconcerned.” jintae sighed deeply, air rushing out of his mouth.
yoongi leaned against hoseok, eyes narrowing a bit as he frowned. “we have to get our money somehow. a loss of three hundred thousand won is too much for us to afford.” this didn’t feel right to jintae. something about the fact that park inchul was a literal nobody made his stomach sink.
“should we send thing one and thing two?” namjoon asked. taehyung and jimin took one look at each other before doing a down-low high-five.
“seems dangerous.” jungkook spoke up, “if he has no connections, we don’t know who we’re dealing with. maybe he covers his tracks well.” jintae nodded, pleased with the caution his newest recruit was taking. “papa tuan and wild & y have been causing a lot of trouble on our turfs lately.”
“even if they offer lower prices, they still don’t have august d. we aren’t gonna lose customers.” losing customers meant losing money. losing money meant less august d. and less august d lead to even less money which meant yoongi would have to drop out of college and live out the rest of his life as a street bum.
jungkook looked his seniors directly in their eyes as he spoke, “this isn’t just about the money or the customers. they mess with our peddlers and footmen. they intercepted jin’s black market prada dress ring. they do cool backflips and are probably stronger than all of us.”
going off jungkook’s train of thought, namjoon spoke up. “it’s possible that they’re using him as a decoy to lure us out. or it’s possible that he’s connected to them in some way and we’d be in big trouble if we roughed him up.”
“if things get really bad, we could always call masta wu.” hoseok’s suggestion was met with fourteen eyes locking onto him as if he had started speaking in tongues.
“i don’t wanna call masta wu unless there are no other options.” jintae rubbed his temples at the very thought of all the ways masta wu could make him regret being born. “we don’t know how close he is with underwater squad.” he rubbed the facial hair on his beard, soft from all the conditioner he put in it and all the time he invested into manscaping it. “we won’t send out thing one and thing two. we won’t seek him out, we have to let him go. if you see him on the streets do not engage. got it? anything else?”
taehyung raised his hand, leaning back into jimin’s warm body. “i like her, she’s pretty. what’s her name again?”
“seoyul.” everyone else said.
“i can’t believe she’s old sage’s granddaughter.” jungkook stretched out his still growing limbs.
yoongi chuckled, “she threatened to fight a flock of seagulls. but jintae has something important about her to share with us, right? something you couldn’t tell us before we left?”
“you’re all gonna work at the ramyeon shop.” everyone let out gasps of protest. they were criminal geniuses! not busboys and hosts. they should be out there beating punks like park inchul, not showing people to their table. “another thing about her. you’ll keep her alive. do whatever you can to keep her safe, even if it means trading your own life. she wants you to work? you work. she wants to paint your nails and put bows in your hair? you let her. if she says jump, you ask how high. you are mister how high, got it?”
“why do we have to babysit someone like her? she’s older than me, and she’s gonna be living out her life as a ramyeon shop owner. her safety shouldn’t be a big deal.” jungkook said.
“kang seoyul has had a sad life. a life sadder than any of you could imagine—”
“doesn’t look very sad to me. she's like my age and she owns an entire restaurant chain.”
the look on jintae’s face warned jungkook not to say anything more. “she has no family left and old sage asked me to take care of her. but because of the very fact that she’s with us is a liability in and of itself. she got mixed up in gang stuff once before and i’d rather die than let it happen again.” his eyes scanned the face of everyone in the room. “if that isn’t enough to motivate you, then do it because she would do the same for you. you see how she protected you from namjoon yoongi? that girl is kind enough, brave enough, and stupid enough to protect even a stranger. when she was seven years old she stood in front of a knife for me. seven. years. old.”
“are you guys talking about me?” the high voice that didn’t match anyone in the room caused everyone to jump out of their skin, hoseok quite literally screaming and falling out of his seat. “what did i do when i was seven?”
jintae place a hand over his pounding heart, hoping it would be still. “jesus yul. nothing. you didn’t do anything when you were seven.”
she frowned slightly, steepling her fingers together as she propped herself up with the back of the couch. “uncle jintae! you know i don’t remember any of like ages one through seven.” he dismissed her complaint with the wave of a hand. “fine. will you comb my hair uncle jintae?”
taehyung’s hand shot up faster than jintae could even answer, “i’ll do it!”
“uncle jintae.”
“let taehyung do it, he’s gentle enough.” with a cheer emanating from the back of his throat, taehyung rapidly pat the floor in front of him. seoyul slowly approached him, sitting criss cross applesauce. taehyung’s boxy smile spread from ear to ear as he held the comb with one hand and raked through her thick hair with the other, fingers immediately getting stuck on a nasty snarl.
everyone else simply looked on in silence. their eyes darted from one another, to taehyung and seoyul, and then to jintae. the only noise that filled the room was the sound of the floor heater doing it’s job, small winces from seoyul, and soft apologies from taehyung. she looked up at all of them and saw grim silence written across their foreheads.
“why isn’t anyone talking?”
jintae rolled his shoulders back, “it’s not really something we want you to know about.”
“hmm.” the empty muttering soon rolled into a sharp wine and taehyung issued another apology to her.
seokjin spoke up, “so… seoyul, are you in college?”
she shook her head, “i wanted to go but i decided to work at the restaurant.”
“do you still want to go?”
“i can’t.” they all looked in her direction, expecting her to carry on with that train of thought, only to shrug it off when she didn’t. there was more silence and more hair combing. yoongi was the first to fall out, heading back to his room in order to be with his mistress, sleep. then seokjin and namjoon began cleaning up the party remnants. taehyung, jimin, and jungkook went to their rooms after taehyung had finished combing seoyul’s hair.
jintae took a glance at her as she sat on the wooden floor. she pumped some hair product into her hands, rubbing them together and warming the substance before running her fingers through her hair.
she had an uncanny resemblance to her mother, he thought. same rabbit-like smile, same chubby cheeks, same mane of hair. “you really look like her.” he breathed, words mostly to himself.
she whipped her head up at him, throwing her hair over her shoulder. “who do i look like?”
“your mother.”
“really?”
“it’s the teeth.”
her toothy grin hid behind one of her hands. “will you tell me about her?”
“old sage never told you anything?” she shook her head. “i guess i can.” before he could start, she ran into her room and snatched the blanket from her bed, returning nicely bundled up and following jintae into the kitchen. they both sat down on some chairs and seoyul rested her blanketed elbows on the smooth wooden surface of the table, looking at jintae like a child looking forward to a bedtime story.
word count : 2486
after more and more driving, jintae finally reached their house. he pulled into their garage, digging seoyul’s bags out of the trunk and lugging them into the house. as soon as he entered the house, six boys popped from behind various pieces of furniture. the sound of poppers filled the air, poppers and those honking blowy things.
“congratulations on the restaurant!”
“we’re sorry for your loss!”
“welcome to your new home!”
all these messages were shouted at jintae at once and the lights went on all at once, blinding jintae and causing him to drop some of seoyul’s luggage. “what the hell?”
“hey, you’re not a girl!” one of them complained, all the joy dissipating quickly.
“you scared the out of me!”
one with full lips and a stylish hairdo sighed and clapped his hands together, “false alarm guys. jungkook, hit the lights. namjoon, get more poppers. everyone else, hide.” the guys scrambled back to their places after turning off the lights. jintae moved her bags into her room before heading back out to gather the younguns. he soothed seoyul awake with a hand on her shoulder, quiet and confident. as soon as she opened her eyes, his hand reached over and smacked yoongi’s head.
before the sloth could protest, jintae rushed them out of the car. he told seoyul where her room was, that she’d have eight roommates, himself included, and that they’d check out the restaurant tomorrow after she was settled in. as soon as he opened the door again, time seemed to repeat itself. the guys popped out of nowhere once again shouting good tidings and condolences, causing seoyul to jump out of her skin. her arm shot out in front of yoongi and stopped him in his tracks as she leaned away from the commotion.
“congratulations on the restaurant!”
“sorry for your loss!”
“welcome to your new home!”
namjoon heard the shouting and rushed back into the living room, moving like a scuttling crab. he lept over the small coffee table in the living room only to bang his foot on the edge and fall face first, spilling all the poppers and causing them to go off all out once.
“yoongi!” she exclaimed as the fallen man almost collided with her leg. she shielded him with her body and lifted her leg up, foot at a point to avoid the man beneath her. yoongi only blinked as she gripped onto his shirt for dear life.
“namjoon are you okay?” the handsome young man asked, “you spilled water on the floor, clean it up.”
“can’t i ever get a break?” mister tall and handsome simply stepped over namjoon and tried to wrap an arm around seoyul’s shoulders, only to have her lean back.
“is this all for me?” she asked as she uncoiled into a normal position, looking around at the streamers and banner and guys in the background.
jintae nodded, “seokjin planned all of this, i guess.” he motioned to the male drama lead in front of her.
“i figured you could use some cheering up. your grandpa died, you moved away from your hometown, have to live with a bunch of strangers. i thought this would be a nice welcome.” seokjin gave her a warm smile, thick lips curling upwards and radiating the same kind of warmth she felt when she ate ramyeon on a chilly day.
her rosy cheeks flushed an even brighter shade of red as a wide smile spread across her face, revealing her rabbit-like front teeth. “that’s…” her voice began to waver uncontrollably and her lips quivered, the smile falling fast and replaced by tears. “that’s so nice! it’s so nice! thank you!” she began bowing to everyone in the room, her hands reaching up and wiping at her wet eyes, mascara smearing on the back of her hands.
all the men just stared at the crying girl who constantly kept trying to smile so no one would worry only to be overwhelmed by tears. jintae had disappeared into the kitchen at the first sign of anything even remotely emotional. one of the guys stepped up, one with a light brown bowl cut and tried to grab seoyul’s hands. she moved them away from him and he placed his hand on her shoulder instead.
“it’s alright, it’s alright.” he cooed, patting her shoulder with each syllable. “you’re pretty when you cry but even prettier when you smile!”
“but i’m doing both!” she hiccuped as more tears streamed down her face.
“oh. then, you’re extra pretty right now.”
“thank you!”
“you’re welcome!”
seokjin pulled him away, “really not helping taehyung.”
“ah, my bad.”
jintae walked back into the living room, eager to break free from all these tears. “seoyul! why don’t you take a bath. or shower. or whatever girls do, it’ll make you feel better.” seoyul nodded and sputtered out an ‘i feel great’ before heading to her room to fetch some clothes and shampoo and conditioner. with a mountain in her hands, she closed the door to the bathroom and everyone let out a collective sigh of relief.
“girls are weird.” said jeon jungkook, who had remained silent and hiding behind jimin during the entire confrontation. everyone agreed. jintae paused until he heard the shower head start spitting water before he spoke about what was on his and yoongi’s mind.
“jin, any updates on park inchul?” seokjin shook his head as he sat down on the stylish and modern couch. everyone followed his lead, all taking seats of their own. namjoon sat beside him, arm resting on the back of the couch and legs spread wide. jimin and taehyung sat on the floor, embracing each other. jungkook sat on the arm of the couch, jintae in his special chair while hoseok and yoongi sat in an adjacent chair.
“park inchul is inslanderable.” he said. “i checked. no family, no job, no girlfriend, no community of people who he’d be worried about finding out his darkest secrets. we could threaten to expose him all we want and he would be completely unconcerned.” jintae sighed deeply, air rushing out of his mouth.
yoongi leaned against hoseok, eyes narrowing a bit as he frowned. “we have to get our money somehow. a loss of three hundred thousand won is too much for us to afford.” this didn’t feel right to jintae. something about the fact that park inchul was a literal nobody made his stomach sink.
“should we send thing one and thing two?” namjoon asked. taehyung and jimin took one look at each other before doing a down-low high-five.
“seems dangerous.” jungkook spoke up, “if he has no connections, we don’t know who we’re dealing with. maybe he covers his tracks well.” jintae nodded, pleased with the caution his newest recruit was taking. “papa tuan and wild & y have been causing a lot of trouble on our turfs lately.”
“even if they offer lower prices, they still don’t have august d. we aren’t gonna lose customers.” losing customers meant losing money. losing money meant less august d. and less august d lead to even less money which meant yoongi would have to drop out of college and live out the rest of his life as a street bum.
jungkook looked his seniors directly in their eyes as he spoke, “this isn’t just about the money or the customers. they mess with our peddlers and footmen. they intercepted jin’s black market prada dress ring. they do cool backflips and are probably stronger than all of us.”
going off jungkook’s train of thought, namjoon spoke up. “it’s possible that they’re using him as a decoy to lure us out. or it’s possible that he’s connected to them in some way and we’d be in big trouble if we roughed him up.”
“if things get really bad, we could always call masta wu.” hoseok’s suggestion was met with fourteen eyes locking onto him as if he had started speaking in tongues.
“i don’t wanna call masta wu unless there are no other options.” jintae rubbed his temples at the very thought of all the ways masta wu could make him regret being born. “we don’t know how close he is with underwater squad.” he rubbed the facial hair on his beard, soft from all the conditioner he put in it and all the time he invested into manscaping it. “we won’t send out thing one and thing two. we won’t seek him out, we have to let him go. if you see him on the streets do not engage. got it? anything else?”
taehyung raised his hand, leaning back into jimin’s warm body. “i like her, she’s pretty. what’s her name again?”
“seoyul.” everyone else said.
“i can’t believe she’s old sage’s granddaughter.” jungkook stretched out his still growing limbs.
yoongi chuckled, “she threatened to fight a flock of seagulls. but jintae has something important about her to share with us, right? something you couldn’t tell us before we left?”
“you’re all gonna work at the ramyeon shop.” everyone let out gasps of protest. they were criminal geniuses! not busboys and hosts. they should be out there beating punks like park inchul, not showing people to their table. “another thing about her. you’ll keep her alive. do whatever you can to keep her safe, even if it means trading your own life. she wants you to work? you work. she wants to paint your nails and put bows in your hair? you let her. if she says jump, you ask how high. you are mister how high, got it?”
“why do we have to babysit someone like her? she’s older than me, and she’s gonna be living out her life as a ramyeon shop owner. her safety shouldn’t be a big deal.” jungkook said.
“kang seoyul has had a sad life. a life sadder than any of you could imagine—”
“doesn’t look very sad to me. she's like my age and she owns an entire restaurant chain.”
the look on jintae’s face warned jungkook not to say anything more. “she has no family left and old sage asked me to take care of her. but because of the very fact that she’s with us is a liability in and of itself. she got mixed up in gang stuff once before and i’d rather die than let it happen again.” his eyes scanned the face of everyone in the room. “if that isn’t enough to motivate you, then do it because she would do the same for you. you see how she protected you from namjoon yoongi? that girl is kind enough, brave enough, and stupid enough to protect even a stranger. when she was seven years old she stood in front of a knife for me. seven. years. old.”
“are you guys talking about me?” the high voice that didn’t match anyone in the room caused everyone to jump out of their skin, hoseok quite literally screaming and falling out of his seat. “what did i do when i was seven?”
jintae place a hand over his pounding heart, hoping it would be still. “jesus yul. nothing. you didn’t do anything when you were seven.”
she frowned slightly, steepling her fingers together as she propped herself up with the back of the couch. “uncle jintae! you know i don’t remember any of like ages one through seven.” he dismissed her complaint with the wave of a hand. “fine. will you comb my hair uncle jintae?”
taehyung’s hand shot up faster than jintae could even answer, “i’ll do it!”
“uncle jintae.”
“let taehyung do it, he’s gentle enough.” with a cheer emanating from the back of his throat, taehyung rapidly pat the floor in front of him. seoyul slowly approached him, sitting criss cross applesauce. taehyung’s boxy smile spread from ear to ear as he held the comb with one hand and raked through her thick hair with the other, fingers immediately getting stuck on a nasty snarl.
everyone else simply looked on in silence. their eyes darted from one another, to taehyung and seoyul, and then to jintae. the only noise that filled the room was the sound of the floor heater doing it’s job, small winces from seoyul, and soft apologies from taehyung. she looked up at all of them and saw grim silence written across their foreheads.
“why isn’t anyone talking?”
jintae rolled his shoulders back, “it’s not really something we want you to know about.”
“hmm.” the empty muttering soon rolled into a sharp wine and taehyung issued another apology to her.
seokjin spoke up, “so… seoyul, are you in college?”
she shook her head, “i wanted to go but i decided to work at the restaurant.”
“do you still want to go?”
“i can’t.” they all looked in her direction, expecting her to carry on with that train of thought, only to shrug it off when she didn’t. there was more silence and more hair combing. yoongi was the first to fall out, heading back to his room in order to be with his mistress, sleep. then seokjin and namjoon began cleaning up the party remnants. taehyung, jimin, and jungkook went to their rooms after taehyung had finished combing seoyul’s hair.
jintae took a glance at her as she sat on the wooden floor. she pumped some hair product into her hands, rubbing them together and warming the substance before running her fingers through her hair.
she had an uncanny resemblance to her mother, he thought. same rabbit-like smile, same chubby cheeks, same mane of hair. “you really look like her.” he breathed, words mostly to himself.
she whipped her head up at him, throwing her hair over her shoulder. “who do i look like?”
“your mother.”
“really?”
“it’s the teeth.”
her toothy grin hid behind one of her hands. “will you tell me about her?”
“old sage never told you anything?” she shook her head. “i guess i can.” before he could start, she ran into her room and snatched the blanket from her bed, returning nicely bundled up and following jintae into the kitchen. they both sat down on some chairs and seoyul rested her blanketed elbows on the smooth wooden surface of the table, looking at jintae like a child looking forward to a bedtime story.
word count : 2486
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