Waltz Fatale

 

“So how is the girl from the beach?” Jong Dae laughed at his girlfriend’s nickname for Mi Rae.

He met her at their usual place. It was somewhere in the suburbs of the city and it was labeled as a bad place to lose yourself in. He was an 18 years old boy. He was all grown up, in his point of view.

“Mi Rae. Her name is Mi Rae and she’s fine. Mom loves her” Su Jin was a little jealous on Mi Rae for her accomplishment. Jong Dae’s mother was always so paranoid. Su Jin was surprised when she heard how much she liked a girl who was practically a stranger.

“I heard she got a lot of dating requests from the ahjummas around. She must be really pretty” In that case, it was obvious what Su Jin wanted to hear.

 She wanted to feel special and beautiful and that was exactly what Jong Dae didn’t understand. He nodded, appraising Mi Rae’s beauty right in front of his girlfriend. Being known as an oblivious guy, Su Jin looked past his mistake.

“But she’s not that special” That altered his mistake, partially.

Jong Dae wasn’t ugly at all. He was quite handsome and there were many girls who proclaimed themselves as being worthy of him. He didn’t care about them. He chose a girl who had some background issues. He chose Su Jin and that was enough to forgive his mistakes.

He noticed how silent she got and he pulled her into a one sided hug. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek, sweetly. They were happy with each other. That was the only thought in Su Jin’s mind.

Jong Dae returned home somewhere around late afternoon. He was smiling goofily and even kissed his mother on the forehead. Kim Ahjumma looked behind him but she didn’t see anyone else.

“Jong Dae, where is Mi Rae?” After he met Su Jin, every thought he had about Mi Rae vanished. Suddenly, realization hit him. He forgot about Mi Rae. He grabbed his jacket and walked out of the house.

 

Mi Rae wasn’t sure where she ended up. She walked through some streets and passed some bright colored houses. She found a small coffee shop and took a break from wandering aimlessly. She stayed there for the whole time. She didn’t venture to some bad looking parts of the city and the accent of Busan people was a little hard to understand. She wasn’t lost and she wasn’t helpless. Jong Dae didn’t know that.

The sky was getting darker and darker and Mi Rae figured it wasn’t natural. There were signs of raining. She didn’t have an umbrella and was a little reluctant to leave the coziness of the coffee shop. Begrudgingly, she paid for her chocolate milkshake and left. She wasn’t far from the intersection when it started to rain heavily.

Jong Dae was running around, getting all drenched up. He was slowly going into panic mode. There were many questions ringing through his ears. One of them had a tragic end. He shook his head and ran to search for her in the place he had last seen her. Thankfully, she was there. She was wet from head to toe and there were 50% chances she was crying. It was hard to say if it was the rain or her tears. Anyways, he ran to her and grabbed her arm.

“Are you insane? Do you really want to die of hypothermia?” Up close, he noticed that she was indeed crying. Her eyes were sorrowful and her bottom lip was trembling. He sighed and patted her head. “There, there. I didn’t intend to yell at you. Don’t cry” She hugged him.

She caught him off guard and crossed her arms around his chest. He didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t sobbing or anything else, but it took him by surprise. His hands found themselves on her shoulders, patting them with sympathy.   

 

At home, after two long baths and a good dinner, Mi Rae and Jong Dae went into their room.

“You take the bed tonight. It looks like you need it more than I do. But only tonight” She didn’t even glance at him. She distanced herself from everyone once they arrived home. Her eyes were staring into the distance. They were longing for someone. Jong Dae thought about the breakup she mentioned before. “Do you miss him?” Her response came quickly.

“Yes” She was a girl who built a lot of walls around her heart. She must have gone through some terrible moments if she ended up so messed up. 

“Do you want to, I don’t know, talk about it?” She raised an eyebrow and looked at him.

“You sounded exactly like a girl” He laughed and jumped on the bed. He wasn’t interfering into her personal space but he wasn’t on the other side of the bed either. He was somewhere in the middle. She curled into a ball once again and leaned her chin on her knees.

“Why did you two break up?” His soft voice reached her ears. It was the first time, since he brought her into his house, when he was being nice to her.

“My father is the kind of man who gets overprotective. He loves his family more than anything and he can’t stand it when some outer factor comes in between him and his family”

She wasn’t referring to her and Min Jun. Her father loved his mafia family more than his real family. Siwon became part of both worlds and he had to give up both. Her father wasn’t able to trust him after he found out how much his daughter liked him. She could already picture the whole scene into her mind.

“So your father was the reason why I found you on the beach, crying” She nodded. Her father was one of the factors that pushed her so far. “Why didn’t you fight back? Didn’t he love you?” She sulked.

“It wasn’t that easy. That man was older than me. I wonder sometimes if anything he said was true or he was just making me feel special because he had to” Jong Dae didn’t understand her logic. It was too complicated for him.

“So you didn’t fight for him?” She pouted.

“There was nothing to fight for, in the first place” Jong Dae felt the sudden need to hug her. She looked so small and fragile. She was nothing like the girl who got in front of him. She had a lot of faces, a lot of masks and he didn’t know which one he should believe. Who was she, for real?

 

From that day on, Jong Dae realized how much pressure he was putting on her. She ran away from wherever her house was because she couldn’t find love. Her family was against her relationship with an older man and she gave up on them. It was sad and pitiful. He told Su Jin about Mi Rae but she didn’t have the same reaction as he did.

“Are you sure she was telling you the truth? It sounds like an episode from a drama” She doubted Mi Rae’s explanation. She didn’t even know half of it yet she was already considering everything a charade.

“I do. She didn’t make it up. She was genuinely suffering” Su Jin didn’t like how defendant he became. Everything Mi Rae told him, he believed it all.

Unfortunately, it was still April. They weren’t on a vacation. They had to go to school. Kim Ahjumma tried really hard to enroll Mi Rae into Jong Dae’s high school but the girl had only one answer; no. She wasn’t feeling like creating a life based on lies. She was hiding a lot from Ahjumma and she was already feeling guilty enough. She didn’t want to create new friendships. She was scared that she was going to disappoint everyone.

That wasn’t Jong Dae’s case. He had to go to school every day. He was leaving the house early in the morning and came back somewhere around 8 o’clock. He wasn’t always coming alone, though. Su Jin started to visit her boyfriend a lot more. She wasn’t necessarily scared that she could lose her boyfriend in the favor of a stranger. No, she was curious who that stranger was exactly.

They talked like girls about different subjects. There was nothing weird or suspicious about Mi Rae. Her responses were cold and vague but not enough to raise any suspicions. However, Su Jin noticed there was one subject that always triggered something in Mi Rae’s mind. Her family was a taboo subject in the house. That was why Su Jin pressed on that matter. She didn’t get the responses she was looking for. Mi Rae was smart enough to manipulate Jong Dae into changing the subject. Actually, Mi Rae was very good at manipulating people.

“I think you’re overeating a little” She told Jong Dae about her theories.

Of course, he denied. He became a little puppy in Mi Rae’s vicious hands.

 

It had been more than a month since Mi Rae started to live with the Kim Family and she was growing closer and closer to all of them. Jong Dae’s eyes glinted differently around Mi Rae and Su Jin didn’t like it. It was the er of an emotion she knew very well. He was too attached to Mi Rae. That stranger had to leave and go back to the place she had risen from.      

Her hopes rose when a group of people in suits appeared at the market, asking for a girl who got lost. She walked closer to those men and caught a glance of that missing girl. Her eyes widened, yet she became excited.

“I know where she is” The men in suits gave her their whole attention. “But why are you looking for her?” The men glanced at each other worriedly.

The leader rubbed the back of his head and cracked a smile. It was hardly a smile, actually. Su Jin didn’t know what that was.

“She ran away from home. Her father is a very important business man and he has been looking for her for a little over a month”

They were lying. They didn’t look like business associates. She knew exactly what kind of men wore such suits. They were involved with the darker part of South Korea.

 

She scribbled Jong Dae’s address on a piece of paper and gave it to them. They rushed out of the market and left a happy Su Jin behind.

When Kim Ahjumma opened the door after the bell rung for a few times, she didn’t expect a group of three men, dressed in suits, to barge in.

“We’re looking for-“ The man stopped talking when he met the brown eyes of Mi Rae. She was in the kitchen when the commotion started. She walked out, hoping that it was just some kids or someone unimportant.

No. It was them.

She took a deep breath and walked towards them. She excused herself and the men. They were impolite. She asked for a little personal space and Kim Ahjumma gave it to her. Reluctantly, but she did leave the room.

“Do you have any idea how furious your father was when you disappeared?” They weren’t able to express themselves as they wished. They had to be safe and they had to keep Mi Rae safe. 

“Do I look like I care?” The leader sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“You have to come back” Her eyes narrowed and she took a step back.

“No” Her response was so full of hatred that even the men figured how much she must have hated her father.

“You don’t understand, Mi Rae. You have to come back. We are not asking you, we are advising you” She remained emotionless.

“Your father is dead” That certainly caught her interest. “He had a machine connected to his belt. If something were to happen to him, we would be alerted. He died this morning. We think you and Min Jun are in danger” Hearing her brother’s name alerted her. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.

“Where is Min Jun?” She was slowly getting into panic mode. She could feel her blood boiling and the veins on her neck became visible. She was definitely panicking.

“He’s on a plane to America” Mi Rae’s eyes widened. It was serious. It was happening. Her whole life was suddenly changing; again. “We have to get you out of the country” She took a few steps back and tried to process the information. What was she going to tell Kim Ahjumma or Jong Dae? She couldn’t possibly tell them the truth.

“Where?” The men glanced at each other again.

“Australia. You can’t be in the same place as your brother. You are in great danger, Mi Rae. Your father was on the brick of finishing a contract with Yakuza” She was familiar with that term. But so was Jong Dae who magically appeared in the room.

“Yakuza?” Mi Rae’s head shot towards him and she started to panic even more. “What is going on?”

He inspected the three men and he inspected Mi Rae’s face. She was worried, scared, stressed, angry, all at once. He walked closer to her and touched her arm.

“I have to go” She had no choice. She didn’t want to put that nice family in danger. It was just her father’s fault. “I have to go” She repeated. Jong Dae wasn’t sure what was happening. He figured it was very important if she was so affected.

“What do you mean? Where do you have to go?” She grabbed his hands in hers and forced him to look into her eyes.

“The rumors about Su Jin involving the mafia and drug dealers. She might or might have not been involved. But, Jong Dae, I am” Jong Dae’s eyebrow furrowed. He was confused. Why was she bringing up that subject and why was she incriminating herself? “My father is one of the most influential mafia leaders in South Korea. My mother died two years ago because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have a younger brother. His name is Min Jun. He is 11 years old. He looks so much like my father but he is a softy. Sometimes he is a brat and no one can handle him except me but-“

“Mi Rae!” She was getting into unimportant details.

“Yes. Anyway, the man I fell in love with for the first time in my life was my bodyguard. He was about 20 years older than me. He left me because my father threatened him”

Jong Dae’s eyes widened gradually. She was throwing bad news after bad news at him.

“But that wasn’t why I ran away from home. I had a teacher who got a crush on me. He thought I was an interesting prey and he tried to assault me”

Jong Dae’s eyes narrowed. That was an important detail. If something like that happened to her, she should have told him. He would have understood.

“He was found dead in his apartment two days later. People talk and they spread rumors about me, my family, my relationships, all throughout my high school. They were bad rumors. I watched as my life started to break down, piece by piece. I ran away because I couldn’t face reality anymore. I’m sorry I lied to you and your family. I’m sorry” She gripped his hands tighter. “Now, my father died because of his own hubris. Yakuza killed him. They might be looking after me and my brother. I have to leave this place. I have to leave South Korea”

“You don’t have to leave. We can cover for you” She shook her head.

“No. Su Jin doesn’t like me and I’m pretty sure she told them where I am” She pointed towards the men in suits, who tried to look blank. “She would sell me in a blink of an eye”

“And when will you come back?” She retracted her arms and sighed.

“I don’t know. Maybe in a year, maybe never” Jong Dae grabbed the collar of her shirt and pulled her into his arms. He smelled nice and the hug was more significant then she expected it to be. “Find me”

“What?” She pushed him away softly and tried to encourage him by smiling.

“Find me”

He scowled when she raised her pinky finger. They weren’t kids anymore and that was a serious matter. However, he found himself making a childish pinky promise with a girl he never knew and he might have lost the chance to get to know.

“I promise I will find you”

With that out of the way, Mi Rae walked out of Jong Dae’s life. She closed the door to a life she wanted and craved for.

She left South Korea that night. She left her whole past behind.