CHAPTER NINETEEN: Ramen fort

Taeyeon followed Jessica around the clinic for the next few days. It was boring she wouldn't have voluntarily participated in if it didn't feel purifying or whatever. About twelve hours a day, she helped wash clothes, change bandage dressings, and moved things. Jessica made decisions, gave medicine, and administered injections. Sunmi was right about me being just a hard labor sort of person, Taeyeon thought. It wasn't like she actually wanted to be intelligent or some like that. She had some smarts on the field and that was mattered. 

She was capable enough to sniff out a spy, infiltrate home base and beat down a bunch of s. She hadn't been capable of doing it discreetly. Her heart hadn't wanted to do it. Left a bunch of DNA, fingerprints and witnesses at the confinement building. The MPs would link it to Kang Hodong's strangled, cold body. Trespassing, battery and murder charges, for sure, on top of the desertion. 

Everything had gone so wrong so fast, but her hands were steady. The only times they shook were after adrenaline rushes and stupid pills. 

She looked down at the man lying down on the mattress. He had a tremendous gash opening his left calf. A good chunk was torn off by a bullet. He was a gangster, and had probably committed some crimes. Maybe atrocious ones like hers. He was and sweating in his sleep. She was changing out his stinky bandages, and said, "I guess you and I are not so different. Neither of us give a flying about right and wrong."

"What are you mumbling to yourself about?"

Taeyeon looked up and shrugged at Jessica. "Just... how we're all the same."

"You studied philosophy in college, or what?"

"Nah."

"Good. I'd have to reassess my impression of you if you did."

Taeyeon straightened up and followed Jessica. "And what's that?"

Jessica paused and blatantly looked her up and down. "That you're a short dwarf, which is really bad because a dwarf is already-"

Jessica cracked up at Taeyeon's expression. She tried keeping her face grim, but Jessica's high pitched giggling made her guffaw. She laughed hard, as hard as she could.

Then, Jessica yawned widely, twice in a row. "I fell asleep standing just now."

Taeyeon frowned. "The past few days have been quiet. Can't you go home earlier tonight?"

"Maybe, we'll see."

In the afternoon, Taeyeon skipped out of the clinic and out of Hongdae. After a couple of hours, she came across a tremendous score. It was a five-storey apartment building. In one of the homes, she was hit with the faint but unmistakeable stench of rotting flesh. 

The windows were all smashed, and the wall of the living room facing the street had a hole blown in it. The smell was tolerable because of the ventilation. There were dark, skinny corpses swarming with thousands of white little maggots, squirming in wriggling bunches. She swatted flies out of the way as she made her way quickly to the kitchen. Checked the cabinets and the fridge. 

Everything in the fridge was mouldy, and the stink was the worst. The cabinets had stacks of canned salmon, sardines and tuna. There were five packets of ramen. Taeyeon crammed everything into the plastic bags she had stuffed in her pockets before jumping out of the hole in the wall to the road below. She headed back to Hongdae.

She did not go back to Yuri's apartment. She did not return to the clinic. She went to the rooftop of one of the abandoned buildings in Hongdae. Then she found some curtains, dining tables, and a child's table and stools in the floors below. She carried them as she found them, up to the rooftop. She propped the dining tables against each other like the frame of a tent, then draped the curtains over them to make an open-faced fort. She put the plastic table and stools under it, and placed the food on the table.

She assessed the setup, and nodded. Taeyeon went to Yuri's apartment to get a pot, chopsticks, a large bottle of water, and matches. She foraged through the neighborhood for dried leaves and twigs, filling two plastic bags. She found four bricks, and took them along. They would make a good pot stand for the fire.

When the sun dipped under the horizon, and the last sliver of pink sky darkened to blue, Taeyeon returned to the clinic. YG had no emergencies today, which was a real relief, because the food would then have to wait for tomorrow. The night after, and after that, and so on. But it looked like tonight was the night.

She went to Yuri. "Hey, Yuri, could I borrow Jessica for the rest of the night? She could use a break."

"Sure." Yuri called out to Jessica, who hurried to them.

"What's the problem."

"The problem is you're working too hard," Yuri said, even though she had been working just as hard, for even longer, than Jessica. Medical people were so nice. If Taeyeon liked Jessica more than she liked herself, she would have encouraged them to be together. That is, if Yuri was gay. Taeyeon couldn't tell. Her gaydar wasn't the sort of machinery that upgraded itself over time. "So move along now. If you come back later, I'll make sure you don't come in for the rest of the week."

Jessica sighed at Yuri and rolled her eyes at Taeyeon. Taeyeon grinned widely, grabbed her hand, and dragged her off to the abandoned building with the fort on its rooftop.

The elevators in the abandoned building, of course, was out of power. Taeyeon hadn't realized that she'd been climbing ten levels all day until Jessica's eyes bugged out. "What the hell am I climbing ten storeys for?"

"Um. I could carry you?"

"Don't be a chauvanist pig," Jessica said. "Do I really have to go up?"

"Probably, yes."

"Ugh." Jessica started trudging up the stairs.

Taeyeon felt kind of bad about this, because Jessica was supposed to be on a break. "Um. You take your time, okay? I'll go upstairs first to get stuff ready, so that when you reach the top, we can just chill."

"You're such a pig!"

She knew Jessica didn't mean it, so she just laughed as she ran up ahead. Taeyeon scurried about, arranging the bricks in a square grid, propping twigs together, stuffing leaves into the twig teepee. She struck a match and lit a fire. She put the pot on, dumped half the bottle of water into it, and set the lid. The water would take time to boil.

She hurried to the stairwell, where Jessica was huffing up the last flight. She bounced on the balls of her feet while waiting. She escorted Jessica to the exit to the roof. "Jja-jjan!"

Jessica took in the curtain fort, the crackling fire, and the food on the table. "Whoa."

"Come and sit." She showed Jessica to the pink stool, because she wanted the yellow one. She ripped open the five bags of ramen and dumped them into the pot. She emptied all five packets of ramen seasoning as well. She stirred the food with a pair of chopsticks. She handed Jessica the water bottle. "Have a drink."

"You found food."

"A feast, like I promised. There's a ton of fish, too." She picked up a can of salmon and stuck the lid with a chopstick. She peeled off the lid and opened a can of sardines in the same way. "Let's keep some of the fish, but all the ramen had to go. The insane hunger, you know."

"Yes, yes. You're like a bear."

"Am I just animals to you? Dwarves and bears?"

Jessica gestured randomly. "Thanks for doing all of this."

"Yeah. Thought that the food should have a proper place to be eaten."

Jessica added more twigs to the fire and stuck her palms near the base of the pot. "The view up here is nice. It's surprisingly quiet, too."

"Yep. Can hardly hear the rat-tat-tat of guns from here."

Jessica took the other pair of chopsticks and stirred the noodles. "When are you going with Yuri's brother and his gang?"

Daesung told her yesterday that they would leave in five more days. North Korean soldiers had delayed preparations. "Next week. Jiyong's holding the briefing tomorrow."

"Okay. Be careful," Jessica said. "They're nice, and they saved us, but we don't know them well yet, and they're going to be looking out for each other before they do for you. It's just going to be natural for them. It's not going to be like the army."

"I'll keep that in mind, don't worry," Taeyeon said. "Heh. Gonna miss me?"

"Yes, I'm going to miss not having the sofa bed to myself."

"Aww shucks, I know you're missing me already."

The ramen noodles were cooked, so Taeyeon lifted the pot off and put it on the low table. They sat close to the fire, and shared the cans of fish. They ate in silence, relishing the hot, springy noodles. It was the first time they tasted anything different from kimchi fried rice and kimbap for more than three weeks now. Jessica finished  about one packet of ramen, while Taeyeon downed the rest. Both of them were thoroughly sated at the end of it.

They pulled their stools so that they were sitting around the fire again. They added twigs and leaves to keep it going strong.

"I never really cared for ramen before, but this was heavenly."

"What... Ramen is the ," Taeyeon said. She patted her warm, full stomach. "What kind of food do you like, then?"

"Custom-built burgers for American, seafood makguksu for Korean."

"American. Korean. Such a foreigner. But I approve of makguksu."

"And you're such a country bumpkin for liking only Korean food," Jessica said. "But, this was great. I wish we could do this more often."

"Then we'll do it again, sometime."

They sat in comfortable silence. The battle in the distant neighborhood was intensifying. They could hear the faint rumble of bombs going off. Taeyeon wished she could erase the warzone backdrop. She wondered what Sooyoung and Yoona were doing now. She couldn't imagine what being in the North for so long was like.

"Are you sure you don't want to go back to America?"

"Well... yes. No, I mean." 

Taeyeon looked up.

"I've been thinking about it, after we talked. I should go back. I have family matters I need to deal with."

Taeyeon looked at Jessica for a long moment. "Okay. Let's go. I'll do the smuggling job, then let's leave. We'll take a boat to Japan. China would be nearer, but they're not our ally, so it'll be more dangerous. From there, we'll get you to an American embassy."

"Are you sure? It's dangerous. I could get my friends-"

"The MPs will be looking hard at my known associates and their known associates. Much, much harder than they have been, because I stirred the pot. We shouldn't implicate them."

"What happened? Was it that night?"

Taeyeon broke eye contact. "Yes. I killed and hurt some soldiers during the mission. Probably nobody but Sooyoung, and maybe Yoona, know that the man I killed was a spy."

"What the hell? Why didn't they get someone else to do it then?"

"They couldn't trust anyone else for sure, and we were on a deadline."

"Right. So, anyway, don't worry about it. I promise, I'll do everything I can to get you back quickly and safely."

"Okay. Thanks."

They lapsed back into silence. Taeyeon folded her arms. In her peripheral vision, she saw Jessica do the same. She stared into the distance. The sound of artillery had faded in the background. The natural night silence was relaxing. Hongdae was cramped and industrial. Jeonju was sparse and rural. Seongnam was orderly and driven. She wondered what the labels were for Japan.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Jessica's head dip forward. She took the opportunity to gaze openly as Jessica slept in her seat. She had wanted tonight's conversation to go differently, but Jessica wanting to leave Korea was a good thing.

A/N: What's up! Thanks for the subs/upvotes/comments last chapter:) What was good/bad about this one?