who was choi siwon?
bound. gagged. chained,
"What would you do, per chance one day you woke up without the comforts of your own home--say, your alarm clock--"
"I don't have one."
"Then your pillow."
"I hate pillows."
"You would be completely comfortable?"
"Are you ing with me?"
"I don't have one."
"Then your pillow."
"I hate pillows."
"You would be completely comfortable?"
"Are you ing with me?"
Thinking back, Heechul had never really been much of a flight conversationalist. Sitting in an airplane always put him in a bad mood, and he would shoot himself in the foot if the day a smile and a frown finds room for co-existence on his face ever comes.
He disliked the feeling of entrapment. There was something fuzzy and disgusting about the idea of sitting stone-still in the great expanse of one cubic meter and having to cringe over the minutest activity--such as scratching his foot. Given, Heechul hated scratching his feet, too, but there was still something fuzzy and disgusting about the matter. Anyone who thought otherwise was a blood-mongering idiot probably into some conspiracy plot with all the s out there who called themselves aerospace engineers. And he made that thought known, even if it could only be expanded upon in god-awful flight conversations.
"No, I'm not ing with you."
"My is sore. Who the designed this thing?"
"Really, I'd very much like to know."
"What are you, a kindergartner? I don't care, alright? The day's not going to happen, as far as I'm concerned, because I don't even have a damned home, you blood-mongering idiot."
"Why would I--"
Heechul had then shoved a knee into the tray table and tried to sleep with his knees propped up on the chair before him and his head on his knees, but that proved to be an awful position as he soon awoke with a minor bruise on his knees and a simply divine migraine. He moaned and tried jerking himself around to face the guy with the weird eyebrows again.
"I'll tell you what I'll do if I ever woke up kidnapped."
"I didn't really say kidnapped--"
"I'll split the bastard's head open and eat his brains."
"That'll probably put you in the psych ward."
"Do you know what company I work for? I work for mothering Choi Dai corps. God knows why I wasn't put in the psych ward the day I took up the offer."
"Come on, it can't be so bad. Can it?"
"Don't get me started."
Heechul had said that not because he had a lot to say, but because he had nothing to start on. Precisely nothing. He had worked as a secretary for Choi Dai for four years, since the day he drank his way out of grad school in Korean Lit and was promised a future endeavor in homelessness by his thesis supervisor, and in all of these four years he wasn't even told who he was secretarying around for. Eventually, he picked up the bits and pieces: Choi Siwon, probably in his late fifties, probably short, probably a smidgen pudgy. Initially he thought that his boss must have been one hideous-looking bastard with a some sort of face complex who couldn't show himself before Heechul's own breathing artistry. But not even a bipolar, histrionic schizophrenic with borderline personality disorder could hold that idea for four years. He thought that his boss might have been dead a long time ago, killed by some sort of conspiracy plot, and he was only there as a pawn. That idea proved to be a popular one. At least amongst his readers.
Heechul was a writer outside of his secretarial job. He wrote a little bit of everything, from romance to horror to tragicomedies of the first Greek class, each time under a different pen-name, because that way he couldn't become famous, but could drive his agent absolutely bonkers--and there was simply nothing more pleasing than slowly driving Hankyung bonkers. Heechul loved Hankyung, and he really had no better idea of showering the younger man with his adoration outside of driving him bonkers and molding his Chinese name into a Korean one. Hankyung, however, thought otherwise and frequently sought mental support groups for his client. Heechul bragged about how insane Hankyung was about him, how dreadfully head over hells, how oh-so-kiss-, to his other writer friends by the number of psychiatric business cards he'd collected from the Chinese.
Hankyung was awesome and Chinese and knew his way in the kitchen. Heechul really enjoyed working with him and ing with him. It was probably because Heechul enjoyed working and ing with him that he wrote as often as he did, and as awfully as he did. He loved watching Hankyung run around between publishing houses, promising that next time Heechul would stick with a single penname and next time he would use spell-check and next time he wouldn't write an entire foreword for the sole purpose of dissing and cussing out his lovely editors.
Hankyung was always intrigued by what Heechul wrote about his boss. He'd tried to devise many explanations for exactly why the man had taken such ridiculous, meticulous care of hiding himself from Heechul, but the best one involved penguins and fried rice and even Heechul knew better than that. For one, he knew that his boss hated fried rice. Every time he snuck in an order of fried rice in his Chinese take-out, the paper container would be found, untouched plus a good wad of spittle, in the next morning's trash. He also knew that his boss was more fond of the muppets than penguins, and that he kept sending him weird memos about muppets and had twice asked Heechul to book tickets to live showings of the muppet theatre and other muppet-related affairs. Infernal affairs. Fried rice and muppets alone was a bizarre coupling, but the two in combination with a flimsy relationship with an existence named God made Heechul think that his boss was a bit... out there.
"Get started, we've still got two hours left."
"Who do you think you are? Ordering me around like--"
For the first time in his life, Heechul allowed himself to be cut off in the middle of a sentence. For good reason. The man with the weird eyebrows presented a fairly ordinary-looking business card from his pocket. Choi Siwon. Heechul glanced at it a few times, even taking the time to study the corners. There was no doubt that it belonged to his boss. Heechul guffawed.
"Business card thief."
"No."
"Stalker extraordinaire."
"No."
"Stalker extraordinaire."
Heechul kind of wished that the guy was a stalker. He had quite a bit of semblance to a stalker that he had back in high school and, to be honest, bullying that kid made up the best chunks of his adolescence and he wouldn't mind repeating them.
"Very flattering."
"Who are you?"
"Says right here: Choi Siwon."
"Liar."
"Back to my original question: would you really eat--your kidnapper's--brains? The police might misinterpret. You know. Think of you as the assailant or something. Discuss."
"I refuse."
Heechul remained quiet and stared because he had nothing to discuss. The guy who claimed to share his boss's name and company grew tired of waiting, eventually, and slumped over and fell asleep. Heechul snorted. There was no way his (probably) elderly, fat, midget of a boss would fall asleep without a dozen pillows. His boss had a weird thing about sleeping with pillows and he knew because he had been frequently called up at four in the morning by the head secretary--some named Sungmin--to find and dry-clean some pillows and bring them to the office. Heechul tried once to attempt the excuse that no dry cleaner's was open at four in the morning and that he didn't own many pillows. The next morning his room was stuffed with dry cleaning supplies and duff pillows, on the lovely Choi Siwon's tab. From then on every time his boss pulled an all-nighter, Heechul would be stuck at home dry-cleaning pillows. Once Heechul considered steaming them with piss, but that plan aborted because Sungmin was the one who used the pillow and Heechul barely walked out of Sungmin's office with a mean glob of bubble gum up his rear.
"Wake up."
"What?"
"You're a liar. I hope you know that."
The man had lifted an eyebrow and tossed back into sleep. Heechul grew bored and spent the rest of the monotonous, claustrophobia-inducing ride going through one romantic comedy after another and hitting on the occasional airline stewardess. They didn't receive well to his claims of being a famous writer. They didn't even want his autograph on their flat asses, but that was alright, because the only Heechul had any plans of writing over was Hankyung's. Still, he didn't blame them because he wasn't ever and had no plans of becoming famous. Or a writer. Plus, they had their eyes peeled on his sleeping companion, the lying stalker extraordinaire with a probable business card thief streak, because apparently the modern eye for beauty had carved itself out from the world and decided to shoot for the hot, fiery, pits of Hell. The thought made Heechul angry. He marched himself straight out of the airplane as soon as it stopped--earning a smattering of verbal abuse from cruel officers and pilots and stewards--grabbed his luggage, headed straight for home, and locked himself in with all of his dozen pillows and pounds of cleaning detergent.
He chewed on a pound of gross beef jerky, frothing wrath at the lips and eyes, as he dialled Hankyung's number over and over again. At first he said he wanted to talk. The answering machine didn't take well to that. Then he claimed he had a new idea for a book. Ignored. Then he claimed he was finally ready to answer to psychiatric evaluation. Then he fell to the ultimate low and threatened to nullify their contract. No answer. Heechul called one last time, just to check his versatility in English and Korean profanities, and left a modestly acrid and fast-paced soliloquy on the answering machine. He even reminded Hankyung that a defibrillator might be needed in advance before proceeding into the message and waited a good thirty seconds for Hankyung to find said defibrillator. Hankyung did not call back after that. Heechul worried for a heart attack on Hankyung's end, decided that it was ridiculous, and reached the sullen conclusion that Hankyung had cheated on him with some other ty writer, probably a man-eater like Sungmin, and was drowning in an elastic web of bubble gum. At least, so he hoped.
He called Sungmin to make sure. A woman picked up, her voice over-used and husky and breathless and hinging on ic, and Heechul knew at once that at least Hankyung was not sleeping with Sungmin. Or if he were, at least Sungmin was taking revenge in place of Heechul by cheating on Hankyung. The thought was still not comforting enough. The man he adored was sleeping with another man who was sleeping with a woman. That would mean that Heechul would have to live down the thought that his best friend had indirectly slept with a woman and was a shame to all not-really-gay men on the planet, such as himself.
Heechul fell into an uneasy sleep in a pile of half-gnawed beef-jerky sticks and a whole load of piss-scented pillows. Thoughts of the stranger from the flight snuck in between better thoughts of a thousand ways to decapitate Hankyung's avoidant, cheating, phone-no-picking-upping--
"Good morning."
Heechul opened his eyes. Something hurt. No, a lot of things hurt. There was something heavy on his ankles, neck, and wrists. His lips felt dry. He wondered if his eyes were sewn shut or if he was blind or if the room really was as pitch black as it seemed. He caught a tiny ray of light scampering somewhere in the distance and realized that he wasn't blind and his eyes weren't sewn shut at all. He was much more ed than that. He was kidnapped. And his kidnapper--
"Here's a spoon. How would you like to eat my brains out?"
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