Chapter 3

Jiyong hasn't handled a gun in a long time, but it's just like riding a bike.

Chaerin comes back to her modest, neat apartment and frays the edges of her make-believe life.

She does the quiet things first, taking the clothes out from the dresser and throwing them haphazardly. Her clothes land softly around the room, like snowfall, and she takes a moment to appreciate how the lining on the skirt catches the setting sun just right. She leaves the drawers open, one half-yanked off its rails. She moves on, goes the closet, where she easily balances on her toes to reach the top shelf, and retrieves the exit necessities. She pulls out a switchblade and moves to the front door, stabs it into the wall and slashes. The paint flakes land on her bare feet, settle between her toes as she finishes jaggedly writing the word, made uglier in the half-light.

Her computer collides satisfyingly against the sharp corner of the kitchen counter, and it's only twice more before there's plastic scattered across the linoleum.

The bathroom holds a line-up of unused products, and she carries all of them to her dresser in her small hands before replacing them neatly upright. She then sweeps her arm in one angry, urgent motion. They go flying, some landing on the floor, and one perfume bottle shatters against the wall in a particularly cinematic explosion.

There's a tentative knock at the door, and Chaerin closes her eyes, presses her index fingers at the corners, and rubs steadily as the knocks trail down, until the last one is hardly audible.

When she opens the door, it's only enough for her neighbor, already half-turned to leave, to see the width of her face and the puffiness of her eyes. She closes it immediately as their face breaks into a portrait of unease and anxiety.

Hours later, she dresses herself in an over-large sweatshirt and walks towards the building exit. There's a thump against the last door in the hallway as she passes, the weight of her neighbor pressed against it. She turns her head away and pulls the hood tight, hiding her face from the narrow, distorted view of the peephole.

It's a beautiful night, clear and crisp, and she walks to the drug store across the street, her footsteps weighted down. The security guard looks twice when she enters.

She buys a sewing needle, thread, a small brown bottle of antibiotic, and doesn't look at the cashier, a woman of 40 whose hand shakes when she scans the bottle. Chaerin asks for cigarettes in a small, timid voice, and stutters her thanks when their fingers brush against each other. When she goes outside, she pulls out an empty lighter and slides her thumb against it.

"Here, let me help," her hero offers, his tan fingers holding out a light.

"Thanks," she mumbles, leaning in. His eyes take in her disheveled hair, the smears of black, dark as an oil slick, at the corners of her eyes.

They smoke in silence, and she counts beats as they watch the cars pass by.

"You remember me?" she asks.

The security guard ducks his head, kicks his foot against the blacktop, and nods, ashamed.

"I thought...you didn't call them," she says, shy, and her reliance on him is stronger than any magnet at pulling him in.

He shuffles and Chaerin turns her cheek, lets the artificial light from the store catch the redness of her eyes. He flushes and swears, "I will, okay? I will, but you have to tell them everything."

She nods, solemn and earnest, "I will," and reaches out to wrap her hand in his. He stills, sudden, squeezing softly so as not to break her.

When the police knock on her door the next morning, she stands aside, docile, as they take photos and murmur amongst themselves. She asks about how safe she'll be tonight, and they recommend staying with friends.

She's new in town, Chaerin explains, and doesn't know anyone well enough. They can only see themselves as inadequate when she says she'll find a hotel for now.

Her drugstore cowboy offers her a ride to the hotel, and any other help. She accepts and slides into his secondhand car, fiddles with the seatbelt until he reaches over and pushes it in for her. He flicks through the radio and glances at her with every station, gauging and solicitous and kind. When they arrive at the hotel, he hops out and opens the door for her.

His fingers fiddle against each other, nerves and worry, as she presses the button for the elevator.

"Thanks," she says, quickly, and stands on her toes to kiss his cheek.

He nods at her, the color high in his face, as the elevator doors close.

When they open, Jiyong is waiting for her.

"Are you done yet?" His words miss the target as she turns with an eyeroll, and instead settle for snapping at her heels as she heads down the hallway. The gun is an unfamiliar, rash weight at his side that unsettles his stride as he follows her down an aisle of dusty light fixtures and half-off artwork.

"Aren't you?" she snarls.

He snorts as she viciously stabs the key in the lock, her hair peeking out from behind a faded hoodie that smells like cigarettes and cologne. It would be the easiest thing to end it now - end this, whatever it was - now. There's a fire exit 10 feet away, and the hotel never bothered to replace the security cameras. He has a hundred names just as fake, just as effective, as the one he uses now, and they can make up any story they want for this one because it won't matter. He'll be someone else tomorrow, someone to whom the name Lee Chaerin means nothing. He wishes, vaguely, that he could have been that person 10 months ago.

She shoves the door open with her shoulder and his hand flutters away from the pocket and lands on the doorframe, still marginally warm from her body.

He teeters on the threshold and simply watches her as she peeks out the window briefly before pulling the curtains closed. The action throws swirls of dust into the air, and she waves a dismissive hand as she sits down on the bed and eyes him.

"Come in already," she says.

She asks because she wants to. Jiyong is the first person in months to look at her and know exactly how dangerous she is. His apprehension and wariness is a comfort; the way his body shies from crossing the invisible line is a flattering caution.

Chaerin is tired from this new game; for as much as she won it, it has just as much exhausted her. She has wanted for months, waited for months, openly and honestly, and then buried all of herself into a beautiful and fragile shell. All-encompassing is her discomfort and hatred of pretending to be someone she never has been and has never wanted to be. She could run into waiting, expectant arms in an instant and destroy Jiyong from this ivory tower.

- but all she wants is to be Chaerin again, and Chaerin is not something to be rescued. She is something to be rescued from.

Jiyong resists the urge to squirm, because Chaerin looks at him and flays apart the lies he wears like a second skin with every blink, and the way he doesn't do anything to stop it - has never really stopped anything she does - makes him wonder if he's always been such a masochist or a fool. It's impossible for him to say what she wants that she doesn't already have, either of her own work or by robbing him. He's at his wits' end, taunted and bruised and humiliated, while she is clean of all fault to everyone's eyes but his.

"Did you enjoy it?" he asks, because it's a simple question, and he thinks he already knows the answer.

"Which part?"

He scowls.

At that, she smiles and that's the answer he thought he would get - but then her smile slips off her face, and he can hear the buzz of the hallway lights behind him.

"Hardly worth it," she says, finally, and she eyes him with distaste.

"If it's not worth it, then stop," Jiyong bristles, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. "What are you getting out of it besides that?"

"The pleasure of your company," she drawls and pushes a dark strand of hair out of her eyes. "You don't believe me?"

"Should I ever?" he says, and even then he realizes that true is all she's ever been to him (Lee Chaerin, an easy introduction that he took for untested cockiness, who dresses for herself and no one else), up until this month. He wonders at the change, at what brought it on, and then he catches sight of himself in the mirror, at the practiced tilt of his head, and the crooked slide of a smirk that he took from someone else's mouth.

Ah, he realizes.

"Yes," she says, firmly.

He flinches as she pushes herself off the bed; his hand goes up to his pocket, as she stops in front of him. Her eyes flicker down to where his fingers are grazing against the grip, and she laughs, bright and loud and unrestrained. She puts her hand over his and tugs it out until the gun is pointed into the narrow space between them, trained on the ceiling. She leans forward, up, and pushes her lips against his.

He almost doesn't hear the gun being cocked over the roaring in his ears and when he does, he pulls back, but she follows him and pushes her body against his until they hit the wall. Her hold on his hand and the gun is brutally strong, and when she kisses him again, he knows any bullet shot would skid up the line of her neck, punch through her chin, and burrow into his head.

The difference between falling in love and going to prison, his thoughts wildly conclude as the barrel quavers between them, is that you can escape from prison.

"Jiyong," she says into his mouth, the first person to call him that in years. He wonders if it's the last thing he's ever going to hear, before she continues. "Come downstairs with me."

"To the police," he accuses, chasing her lips and letting the barrel slide against his shirt and rest against his ribs. He can feel her smile against his jaw.

"Eventually," she affirms and releases her hand, slides them both up his chest until they come to rest on either side of his neck. His frustration is a whetstone she wants to sharpen their future against. She runs her hand up through his hair, and his breath catches when her finger brushes against the scar there. There's new tension in the room, for her to find this, his body strung out like a cord waiting to snap as he traces the full length of it beneath the pad of her thumb.

"They all think you're obsessed with me," she says when she reaches the end of the line and stills. Jiyong breathes again. The smile falls off her face, replaced by something offended. "They think I'm in danger."

He has to bark out a laugh at that, and she traces fingernails around the shell of his ears, having to smile again at someone understanding the absurdity.

"Not the police - not yet," she says, "There's someone else first. Okay?"

Chaerin comes out of the elevator, and spies her drugstore cowboy, his head just poking out above the back of the chair. His fingers are drumming against the arm, and she would bet everything she had that he's debating whether or not to come knocking on her door and offer a bit of comfort. An acrid taste of loathing fills as she slides back into the ill-fitting costume of distress and unease that made her so appealing.

"Hey," she says, softly, coming around as he jerks up in his chair and stands up. She sits down across from him, leans across and takes his hands in his as the pity in his eyes grows larger, louder, more suffocating.

It abruptly disappears as Jiyong shoots him in the back of the head, the blood splattering onto him and Chaerin in equal measure. She stands up and yanks him across the back of the chair into a kiss.

"Okay," he says as they come apart.

"Okay," she says back and they walk out to the car together, hands clasped, as sirens begin to wail.