[CONTENTID1]hesitation[/CONTENTID1]

[CONTENTID2]Chapter Thirty Eight[/CONTENTID2]

[CONTENTID3]

“You mean to tell me this isn’t the first time a frozen head has shown up via delivery man?”

“Well, it’s the first time we’ve received one,” Suho sighed. He rubbed a tired hand over his face as the group peered into the cooler.

Jakyung’s screams had brought the remaining eleven men stampeding down to the kitchen where a chorus of curses and gagging noises quickly followed. After quickly filling them in on what happened, Jakyung allowed Chen to hug her close. She was supposed that the pills she had hastily gulped down this morning were responsible for her reaction; the last time she had been presented with the severed body parts or a person, she had not only screamed, but she had vomited and fainted. She was glad that a scream was the only thing she managed, and if she as being totally honest with herself, she was more disgusted than she was frightened.

Yang Hyunsuk was the man who poisoned her, kidnapped her, and left her to be tortured and permanently injured by Mark Tuan. Yang Hyunsuk was the man who had arranged for her father’s assassination. Yang Hyunsuk was the man responsible for the almost-death of the man who had his arms wrapped firmly around her middle and his chin resting on her shoulder.

Good riddance.

“So you’re saying that other frozen heads have been delivered to people recently?” Jakyung asked, shuddering. Again, she wasn’t so much afraid as she was disgusted at the meticulousness of the gruesome act. “How many deliveries have been made so far?”

“Four. All to people who work for or are associated with OEX,” Kyungsoo explained tiredly. “One was a child.” At that, Jakyung did want to puke. Who would do such a thing to a child? At first she thought the still missing Mark Tuan was behind it, but it didn’t fit his usual profile. He was obsessed with her, that she was certain of, so this couldn’t have been him. Besides, why would he have killed Yang Hyunsuk, his ally?

The thirteen people crowded in the kitchen stared at the now closed cooler.

“Well, what do we do now?” Sehun asked quietly. Luhan laced a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“We get to figuring out who this serial guillotine artist is,” Luhan said. “At least this time, I don’t feel bad. Yang Hyunsuk was a crazy bastard who deserved what came to him.”

“That may be, but I hope the next time one of our enemies gets knocked off, his head doesn’t show up instead of breakfast,” Kris grumbled. As if that was the cue, the doorbell rang for the second time this morning. They all shuffled into the living room, anticipating the outcome as Suho answered the door. A collective sigh filled the air as this time, it was the expected four coolers worth of freshly cooked breakfast foods for the hungry group.

Breakfast was eaten in a somber atmosphere. The head was unceremoniously disposed of by a man in black who came to the house mere minutes after a call placed by Kris. Jakyung had seen this kind of man at the mansion on occasion, but she didn’t question it and she wasn’t about to start now. Whatever the man did with the head, as long as it was out of her immediate area, she was fine.

It was the middle of the week, and as many of the men had their own things to attend to, Jakyung was left, once again, with only Xiumin as company. While it was true she didn’t favor being alone, her feelings surrounding him were in such a state of turmoil that this time she wasn’t going to attempt to speak to him. Inevitably, it would end in disaster.

Yet, Xiumin seemed to have other ideas as he swept into Baekhyun’s room, where she had been reading over some documents Kyungmi had sent her.

“We’re going out,” He said with finality. Jakyung resisted the urge to look up from her thick packet of papers. 

“Oh? Well have fun with whomever you’re going with,” she murmured, rereading the line she’d been stuck on.

“No. We – as in you and me – are going out,” Xiumin said, and she could hear his footsteps grow closer. This time she did look up from her papers and fixed him with as blank a look as she could muster.

“And what makes you think that I want to go anywhere with you?”

It was not lost on him that she was echoing his words from before.

“You don’t really have a choice, that’s why.”

Before she knew what was happening, he whisked the papers out of her hands and had her hoisted over his shoulder. The whole set of actions winded her, and it took a moment for her to react.

“Kick and scream all you want. We’re the only two left here and I’ll be damned If I’m going to sit here bored and have you angry at me.”

Jakyung did just that; kicking and screaming all the way down to his car where he placed her in the passenger’s seat and buckled her in without her escaping.

“This is kidnapping,” Jakyung told him grumpily. They had already pulled away from the garage and were making their way to the edge of the property. “I don’t even have shoes.” Xiumin pointed to the back seat, where a jacket and a pair of sneakers lay neatly.

“We’re going to go drink,” Xiumin told her after a moment. Jakyung raised an eyebrow; she hadn’t pegged him for a day drinker. “Don’t give me that look. I just saw a frozen, severed head, and the image is haunting me. I want to drown my sorrows, and I’m sure you do, too.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong.

Jakyung decided to stay quiet and watched the scenery pass by as they drove to whichever bar Xiumin decided on. He was right, the image of the head had been dancing around in her mind in the hours since breakfast and if he was offering to pay, then she wasn’t going to argue too much. What bugged her was that he seemed to have forgotten how much of an he had been to her. She hadn’t forgotten how poorly he’d handled their last two encounters, and while she wasn’t the type to hold grudges, she didn’t want to waste her time on someone who would just throw it back in her face.

She reached into the back seat and pulled on the sneakers Xiumin had grabbed for her. The middle of the city at this time of year was still colder than she liked, but the only pair of boots she had were the thigh high ones she wore for parties, and it would severely clash with the ripped jeans and flannel look she was sporting. Like her apartment, Jakyung had sold many of her belongings (clothes and shoes included) prior to leaving for New York. Kai had saved some of it for her, which is why she had anything to wear in the first place, but her wardrobe was lacking compared to what it was before.

“We’re here,” Xiumin announced unnecessarily as he pulled into the small lot of a dusty looking bar.

“This place looks like it’s going to cave in on itself,” she muttered, following him inside. The bar was deceptively bigger on the inside than the outside showed, but it was still a rather intimate setting. Jakyung couldn’t tell if the place was just old or if the theme was rustic and aged, but either way she decided to stay away from the rusted over décor hanging from the walls. She was not surprised that every single person in the place was male, save for herself, as she was sure any typical, sensible Korean woman would steer clear of the suspicious looking venue. Yet, it seemed to match her mood, as she felt just as fragile as the tables looked, and she thought that a strong gust of wind would blow down the delicate wall she’d built against her emotions.

“What can I get the little lady this fine afternoon?” The bartender asked as Jakyung took a seat at the small bar. She fixed him with the most innocent look she could muster.

“A Raging Bull Hunter please,” she said politely. Xiumin held back a laugh at the confused look on the man’s face. “Everclear, Redbull, Jaeger. Layered. Highball glass. Jaeger first because I hate the taste of licorice.”

“So you want to wash it down with Everclear? You’re crazier than I thought,” Xiumin told her. She just gave him a glance from the side and watched carefully as the surprised bartender assembled her drink. “I know I said you probably want to erase this morning from your mind, but at this rate you’ll erase the past year, too.”

“That’s the plan, Baozi face,” she said. As soon as the bartender had wiped the last drip of jaeger from the rim of the glass, she grinned at both men and downed it with one go. Her face scrunched up only a little as she tasted the Jaegermeister, but had settled to impassivity as the last of the liquid went down . “Huh. Much less bitter than I remembered.” The bartender looked from Jakyung to Xiumin and back again.

“I’ll have one more of those, please,” Jakyung said again politely. “He’s paying.”

After a moment of brief silence, Xiumin slid his credit card over to the man. “I’ll just have a whiskey straight. Open up a tab; we’re going to be here for a while.”

And a while it was.

Xiumin watched as Jakyung put away drink of after drink, each with a more bizarre list of ingredients than the last. She didn’t seem to be outwardly getting more drunk, but she became more and more talkative as the day wore on.

“You know, I really regret not killing Mark Tuan when I had the chance,” Jakyung said suddenly. She had been talking about New York and her time in Anyang as a child up until this point, so the abrupt topic change surprised Xiumin.

“I slashed his face. I don’t know why I did that,” Jakyung mused, sipping on the glass of gin she was nursing. “I could have plunged the knife right into his heart, but instead I slashed his face. Right across his eye, straight across to his left cheek. I wonder how beautiful he thinks I am now. He never did like it when I fought back.”

Xiumin didn’t know what to say. For the most part, Jakyung hadn’t talked with anyone about went on in that room. The only thing he and the others had to go off of was her injured hand and the memories of her echoing screams as she was tortured.

“Years suffering at his hands and all I managed to do was give him a scar.” She emptied the contents of her glass and turned to face him fully, swaying slightly in her seat. “I thought I would die in that room, you know. I thought the last thing I would see before I die was his face. I tried to think of you; tried to conjure up something other than that twisted sneer and those cold, dead eyes, but I couldn’t.”

By now, several of the other bar patrons had paused their conversations to listen to Jakyung speak. Some seemed unsure of this strange drunk woman rambling about death and regrets, but others listened to their story as if it were their own. Xiumin couldn’t decide if he should stop her or urge her to spill everything in an act of therapeutic catharsis. He watched as she slowly peeled the glove from her left hand and traced the jagged lines with the fingers of her right.

“Funny how there are some scars that we can see and some we can’t.” Xiumin was hypnotized by the contrast of her delicate fingers over puckered flesh. “My hand will never work properly. I can’t stretch my fingers. I can’t write my name legibly. I can barely hold a glass without it slipping and shattering. That’s just from the scars you can see. But what about the ones you can’t? Will I ever be able to walk through the woods alone again? Will I ever be able to close my eyes without fear of seeing his hellish grin? Can I ever love someone and accept their love, knowing that the love he gave me left me scarred both inside and out?”

A heavy silence fell over the bar as she stopped speaking. She hadn’t noticed when everyone tuned into her speech, and she didn’t care. There was too much alcohol in her system to care much about anything for more than a minute, but the alcohol could push back the vivid images of mangled bodies and frozen heads and the taunting, terrifying face of Mark Tuan.

“A water please,” she said as she turned to the bartender. “Lots