>_____<;;

Victoria’s torso lurched forward into the steering wheel upon the impact from abruptly stepping on the brakes as she pulled over to the side. She huffed a loud sigh and gripped the wheel with all the strength she could summon into her hands. She was pissed off and angry.

No, no one had killed her mom. She killed herself because she hated life so much. And that was that.

“You’re only pissed off because you found out you were a mistake she didn’t want! And when the police listed her death as suicide, you and grandma turned your back on her, but now the cops are pursuing Ma Ho Jun’s death, which is exactly the same as mom’s, and you can bring yourself to participate in an investigation that could be linked to mom’s death? I think there’s something wrong with that picture. Don’t you think it’s strange that they never looked into mom’s death, but they’re looking into Ma Ho Jun’s?”

Her high pitch screamed echoed and deafened her ears even when she tugged at her scalp and curled her loose hair into a scrunched up mess. Anger was boiling in her; she was just so angry…and utterly disappointed. Whether she was more pissed off with the fact that Chorong had a point or that she refused to believe she still loved her mom confused her.

She sat in her car for hours and when the sky darkened a little she turned the engine back on and drove off.

At 20 years old just before she officially moved out from her home, she’d been angry enough to drive up to the crest hill where her mother’s body had been discovered by a biker. It was a tall hill near the private camping grounds and from there one could see the full view of Seoul. The lights of homes and businesses could be seen in millions at once. And the cars that moved around the city were like beautiful dragonflies wandering a lost town.

A hiking hill had been created by pathways created by someone who seemed to have nothing better to do between the winding woods. Her mother had been found at the top; dead and soulless.

Parking her car at the bottom she saw the yellow tape the police had used to keep the public away from the crest hill, but obviously someone had cut through leaving the tape strewn across the ground in a disorderly fashion. Or perhaps the cops had just been too lazy to pick up after themselves.

Victoria picked her way through the woods, her feet carefully moving underneath her. She could see a dim glow of the blue green sky the dying sun created as it fell through the gaps of the trees. From afar the buildings sparkled out of the corner of her eyes, but it wasn’t the view she’d come for. She was going to take another look at the area where her mother had been found, where Ma Ho Jun had been discovered.

Birds and crickets chirped and Victoria felt paranoia slowly seep through her. She foolishly wondered if there was something else there with her. Shaking her head she shoved the thought away and continued to the top.

>_____<;;

“I’m worried,” Chorong paced throughout the house biting her thumbnail with her arm crossed over her tummy underneath her elbow. “Victoria should be back by now.”

“Sometimes we need to blow off our own steam,” Namjoo muttered from where she was sitting on the stairs.

Chorong sighed and walked into the living room. Pulling aside the curtain she glanced out into the empty street.

“She’s not answering her phone,” Chorong muttered.

“Who do you think could have done it?” Namjoo asked thinking as hard as she could.

Chorong started back out of the living room and resumed her position earlier.

“I don’t think mom had any enemies,” Namjoo seemed to talk to herself. “They would have been dumb enough to hate her.”

Chorong glanced at her with a sigh. She was frustrated. Namjoo and Victoria were so alike in the ways they didn’t want to admit. Both would run off after an argument to blow off their so-called steam as Namjoo put it. If they were so similar, Chorong couldn’t understand why they didn’t get along.

“You said that guy died in the same place mom was found?” Namjoo asked with her eyes following Chorong’s movements. “Lets go check that place out.”

“What?” Chorong’s arms dropped to her sides. “Are you crazy?!”

“I’ve never been there, to this hill,” Namjoo said, “I want to go see the place.”

“Why would you want to go there?” Chorong followed Namjoo to the door flustered by the idea. “Are you crazy? This time of night? It’s dark outside! Who knows what hooligans are out there?”

“I got fire power, don’t I?” Namjoo played her hands around in the air.

“That’s not enough of an assurance,” Chorong quickly walked to the front door to stop her. “Namjoo, don’t go. There’s nothing good about that place anyway.”

Namjoo’s stare softened with a slight air of seriousness, “Chorong, I want to see where mom died.”

Their eyes locked onto each other’s and Chorong thought about all the things about mom they’d kept from her. It’d only be fair to Namjoo if she didn’t hold her back. Besides, Namjoo was capable of taking care of herself as well as knowing what was right and wrong.

“Alright, fine,” Chorong gave in, “but we come back home as soon as we get up there.”

“Fine with me,” Namjoo smiled.

Her sisters were crazy. Chorong wondered why she’d been born as the middle to deal with them both.

>_____<;;

Victoria pushed some low branches out of the way as the path became steeper. Up ahead she could see the edge of the hill and the flat land just before it. Pressing her lips together she quietly gulped and continued on. Her heart started pulsating faster the more she neared the flat ground.

When she stepped into the clearing she paused for a long time hesitating about whether to go any further or not. Victoria’s eyelids fluttered quickly before placing her feet forward as if cautious that the ground could break any moment. This was where the path disappeared into the green grass. Up ahead she could see a muddled black area on the ground where she assumed Ma Ho Jun had been lying.

She had been so concentrated on staring at the muddled area she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her until a stick broke. Spinning around she hastily browsed her eyes into the dark trees and toward the path where two figures were approaching.

“Who are you!?” Victoria shouted loudly before her heart rate dropped when she saw that it was only her sisters. “What the hell are you doing here!?”

“Back at you,” Chorong looked angry, but relieved that she was safe.

On the other hand, Victoria caught sight of Namjoo curiously poking around. Victoria turned when she began to walk toward the muddled area just ahead.

“Where are you going? Stop,” Victoria demanded.

Namjoo paused and looked at her, “Walking around on public ground. You can’t be having a problem with that after keeping the cause of mom’s death away from me for 14 years.”     

Stupefied, Victoria turned around to Chorong.

“She’s 22, what can you keep from her,” Chorong shrugged.

Frustrated, Victoria heaved a long sigh before ordering, “You two, go back home.”

“Why?” Chorong crossed her arms. “Why should we go when you’re still here? Oh yea, what are you doing here in the first place?”

Victoria chewed on her bottom lip and was just about ready to argue back, but stopped when she thought she heard clipping noises. She turned her head before shifting around to look here and there.

“What, what?” Chorong dropped her arms to her side.

“You hear that?” Victoria questioned.

“Hear what?” Chorong wondered.

It sounded as if scissors were in motion. There were sharp noises like something was being cut. Victoria concentrated on listening for the origin of the noise, but it was too quiet a sound for her to figure out. Then all of sudden Namjoo let out a loud shriek and Victoria turned in time to see her dropping back onto the ground when something grew from the muddled black area she’d seen earlier. Her lips fell apart and Namjoo turned over to crawl toward her and Chorong as the thing grew into a man carrying a scythe.

“Whoa…” Chorong cried as she quickly stepped over.

She bent forward to help pull Namjoo up to her feet before the three of them crowded together.

“Who…what are you?” Victoria called out.

“Ah…” the man stretched his arms focused on cracking his neck.

His dark hair was gelled up, but his face was an ugly pale white of someone who was seriously ill and in need of medical attention. His costume wasn’t anything she recognized from anywhere. He was wearing a heavily layered shirt that had random cuts here and there as if he’d gone through the gates of hell to get there. Underneath the moonlight she could make out the gray trousers underneath his long shirt. The tall scythe in his hand looked sharply deadly.

“I have visitors,” he croaked.

Victoria stepped back protectively against her sisters. “What do you want?”

“Oh I don’t know,” he picked up a rock and tossed it in his hand. “A head or two?”

Victoria felt a frown grow on her face and she eyed the scythe. “Did you…kill with that?”

“This?” he held out his unbelievably long scythe and they watched it shine underneath the moonlight. It looked like it had just been freshly sharpened.

Victoria could feel shivers climbing over her whole body at the thought of it touching her skin.

“Mom…” Chorong whispered.

“Mom?” the man repeated tauntingly and glanced at his scythe before eyeing them one by one. He drew his long scythe back before suddenly throwing it out toward Namjoo. “You look the most like her!”

“Leave her alone!” Victoria raised her voice threateningly.

“Ah,” then he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. She watched him walk around under the moon creepily before turning back to look at them. He clasped his hands together before looking at the three of them and whispered, “I didn’t kill her.”

Then he vanished as soon as someone started shouting behind them, “Who’s there!?”

The three whipped around alarmed to see a flashlight hovering over their faces.

A few minutes later they were sitting inside a police station in front of an officer’s desk currently being interrogated for tarnishing a scene under investigation.

“I told you, the yellow tape was already ripped when I got there,” Victoria grumbled, burning her eyes into the officer’s thin eyes she had a hard time seeing.

Chorong and Namjoo quietly sat on either side of her. Phone calls buzzed in the background, there was endless chatter echoing off the poor sound proof walls, and Victoria felt like her nerves were going to blow up if she heard one more pen scribbling against a piece of paper on a wooden desktop.

“Then who did it?”

“I told you I don’t know!” Victoria grounded her voice irritated. “I don’t think I am psychic enough to know that, officer.”

The officer slightly glared at her before he looked up and waved his arm as if relieved. Victoria burned her eyes on him and hoped that the tires of his damn car would pop before he got home.

“Changmin, over here!”

Victoria could hear loud footsteps nearing them as a door closed shut down the far hallway.

“These girls were up at that crest hill, but none of them claim to have ripped apart the yellow tape,” the officer explained, “they wouldn’t give an explanation about what they were doing up there either.”

“I got it, you can leave now.”

Victoria narrowed her eyes and wished the worst for the officer as he got up to walk away with his beer belly sticking out from his loose shirt. She thought she could feel the room shake as he went by. When she raised her eyes back to the man who’d taken over in place of the officer she recognized the crime investigator who’d stopped by earlier in the day.

“Looks like we meet again,” he said amused before eyeing Chorong and Namjoo. “Your sisters?”

“Yes,” Victoria mumbled.

“Alright, so,” Changmin slightly lifted up a piece of paper and read off their names before stating their offense, “trespassing on investigation grounds and ripping apart yellow tape.” He put the paper down and leaned forward to catch a better glimpse of their faces, “So what were you doing up there? I can’t help you unless you give me an explanation.”

They quietly stared back at him. After a minute or two of their staring battle Changmin leaned back into his seat.

“I guess we can do this the whole night then.”

“We didn’t vandalize the yellow tape,” Victoria stated, “and I can’t tell you who did that either. We’ve all got busy lives to get on with, so can we leave already?”

“Alright then, so you didn’t do it,” they watched him cross off the offense before he looked up at them then leaned back into his seat again. “So what were you doing up at the crest hill? Catching a night view of the city?”

“Sarcasm, great,” Chorong whispered from the side. “What if we just say we were fighting off some dark warlord?”

“Nice one,” Namjoo mumbled. “And tell him we can create fire, lighting, and move things.”

Victoria gritted her teeth and said, “We didn’t know the crest hill was still under investigation. I assumed it was already done and over with when I saw that the yellow tape was torn up.”

“So I’ll ask again,” Changmin said, “what were you doing up there?”

He was annoying. Why should she have to talk to him about her personal life? Wasn’t that a breach of the law for the cops or FBI or CIA or whatever to be poking into someone else’s affairs for their own gain when doing their job?

“Look here, we didn’t do anything,” Victoria slightly leaned forward, “we didn’t vandalize anything, or touch the area where Ma Ho Jun was found, so what if we were taking a walk or was enjoying the night view of the city. I don’t think that breaks the law when the crest hill belongs to the public.”

Changmin raised an eyebrow before scribbling down, “Second offense, causing disorder in public.”

Victoria snorted, “Excuse me!?”

He glanced at her. “My explanation?”

When Victoria heard another pen scribbling on bare desktop she felt her veins pop. One of the drawers in the police station popped open loudly scaring everyone in the room. Everything went quiet a minute before life resumed again.

“You’re rude,” Victoria shot her words out, “my sisters and I should not have to be treated disrespectfully by you or that damn officer who forced us here! I’ve had it! I can’t even grieve properly or live normally without finding out my mom was murdered and that my life has been flipped over in one damn night! I am out of here!”

Another drawer shot open when Victoria stood up and stomped out of the police department with Chorong and Namjoo hot on her tail.

“Wow!” Namjoo exclaimed from behind as they walked down the steps.

“I would have done the same thing,” Chorong muttered. “That was getting pathetic.”

Victoria led them to the street where they hailed a taxi.

“I’ve always wondered how it was to ride in a police car,” Chorong said when they squeezed into the back of the cab, “it wasn’t that cool.”

Victoria snorted before giving the driver their address.

“You’re not going back to fetch the cars?” Chorong wondered.

“I’m too pissed off and lazy, I’ll do it before I head off to school tomorrow,” Victoria muttered.

“But hey,” Chorong nudged her, “you believe mom was killed?”

They quieted.

“He said it, didn’t he?” Victoria asked staring out into the street. “That he didn’t kill her.” Then she turned to glance at her sisters. “That only means someone else did the deed.” 

***I think watching too much Charmed & writing 3 Ways has made me too sarcastic these days. I had the most amount of it in me today lolol