She watches it all burn down to the ground. The people around her look at her with pity, and tap on her shoulder whispering, “poor girl” but she knows that they're not really sad for her. Maybe they are a little, but they’re really just glad it wasn’t them. She’s not mad at them though. She can’t summon up the energy to get mad, or even be sad at the fact that everything she owns is gone. It was more fascinating to her how the ash from her only home is light enough to float in the wind. 

She was always like this. Different. Unable to feel the right emotion that was socially acceptable. When she should be sad or disgusted, she was disinterested or too interested for the wrong reasons. Like when a bully beats up a kid to take his lunch money, instead of being upset that no one is doing anything, she wonders what the bully will spend the money on and walk aways. She didn’t shed a tear at her parents' funeral and only felt a little sad. And she’s never felt what love was towards another person. She wasn’t even sure if she liked men or women or if she was aual. It just never happened or seemed important enough to care about.

The firefighters run back and forth from the firetruck to the building, desperately trying to put out the fire, and she squats down and looks up at the sky to watch the gray snow-like ash float down around her.  

“Miss?”

A man comes into view above her from behind and smiles down at her. She remains squatting and looking back at him with her head tilted. “You’re handsome,” she says.

He smiles at her, black hair curled around his forehead. She doesn’t smile back. She wasn’t hitting on him, she just stated facts. 

“Your house is on fire,” he says. He’s tall, even from this angle she can tell he’s taller than most. His skin was a nice tan color, and his smile wide. 

“You noticed?”

She didn’t know a smile could get brighter and wider, but his did. “Johnny,” he says.

“Shin Min Gi,” she replies.

He leans down until the faces are just a foot apart. “Everything you own is up in flames.”

“I figured.”

“But you don’t look sad about it.”

She straightens her neck and looks at her old home. Everything was ablaze except her motorcycle she parked across the street when she first pulled up to her house. Her bike was okay, so she was okay.

She leans back so she can look at him, who is still leaned over close to her.

“Not really.”

“I like that,” he smiles. 

Shin Min Gi straightens up, ignoring him, and looks to her house that’s slowly falling in on itself. She didn’t know why he was talking to her, but she couldn’t care either way. 

Another man walks up to her and squats down beside her. He was handsome too, but differently. They both looked like Princes’ from movies to her. He had bright brown hair. She notices the snake tattoo on his neck and long-nosed goblin tattoo on his hand. She looks back at the other guy and takes in the knife tattoo on his eyebrow and the large tattoo covering his neck. They were not just normal concerned citizens.

“I don’t need a loan or anything. I’ll be fine,” she says. They looked like loan sharks who preyed on the needy and came back with bats to collect. Even though they were kind of young for that line of work.

The one squatting down next to her laughs, and she gets drawn into his deep dimples. “We’re not that kind of people,” he says.

She just nods and looks back towards her house. 

“Are you going to ask what kind of people we are?” Johnny asks her.

She shakes her head no and continues looking at the beautiful flame that was dying down. 

“That’s no fun,” Johnny pouts.

“I’m Jaehyun.”

“Shin Min Gi,” she repeats.

The fire goes out, and the firefighters turn off the water and pack up. Her house looks like a soggy cardboard house soaking up all the water and getting ready to deflate. Guess she needed to figure out what she was going to do next.

“This was our fault,” Jaehyun says, looking at her. She looks at him, and his brown eyes sparkle. She continues to stare at him, waiting for him to finish, not minding if that’s the end of his sentence. “We accidentally shot towards your house, and we must have hit something.”

“Shot? With guns?” Shin Min Gi asks. Guns were illegal in South Korea. Only the police should have them, and they didn’t look like police. 

“So to make up for it, you can come stay with us,” Johnny smiles, coming to squat on the other side of her. 

Nothing inside of her screamed ‘DONT GO WITH THE HANDSOME SCARY MEN!’. She didn’t feel fear. Her brain wasn’t sending any warning signs, and so she didn’t have that little ball of worry in her chest. She knew better, though. “No thanks,” she says.

“We’re not giving you a choice,” Jaehyun smiles. 

She didn’t know why he smiled, or even why she smiled back. This was one of those moments where the emotions she was having didn’t match the emotions she was supposed to have. She wasn’t scared to go with them, and she wasn’t mad that they made her house explode. She was excited. Not because they were two handsome people coming to her aid, but because the adrenaline going through her, meant it was fight-or-flight time. And it made her excited. 

“I don’t have a choice?” Min Gi asks, “Are you kidnapping me?”

“If you don’t come willingly.” She looks at Johnny, who isn’t smiling anymore. His face is dark and serious. “Come with us, while we’re asking nicely.”

“This is nice?” She smiles.

was going to get her in trouble, but she liked it. 

Johnny’s hand whipped out, closing around and squeezing. Not enough to cut off her air, but enough to let her know that he could. Something deep in her belly sparked. It wasn’t fear, but something else. Something so new that she was no longer excited but curious and confused. 

He dragged her to her feet, ignoring the people around them staring and whispering but doing nothing to help her. He walks, leaving her stumbling to keep up. Jaehyun walks behind her. 

“Ya,” she says, “get my bike.”

“Your bike?” Jaehyun asks. They all stop in their tracks. “Really?”

Ming Gi just stares at him until he turns around to look. He walks towards her bike but then grabs a puny little hand bike that was parked beside it. 

“You have got to be kidding me!” She shouts. “The bike! The motorcycle! Here.” She reaches in her pocket and tosses the keys towards Jaehyun. Johnny still has his hand around , but he’s finally smiling at her.

That was her one prized possession, bought when she was desperate to feel something. It was the first thing that made her excited. That made emotion spark inside her chest when she weaved recklessly in and out of traffic. It was her first high, and losing that would make her mad, and mad was the last thing she needed to be. She couldn’t control herself when she was mad.

“I’ll take the bike,” Jaehyun fumes, “you take the smart mouth.”

“Where are we going?” She asks, stumbling behind Johnny who still hasn’t let her go.

“Home.”