This the second half of a double update. Read chapter 4 first!!

Jiyong

Arriving at Seungri’s, the large sign out the front proclaiming the place as ‘Big Bang’, I parked my bike next to several over-souped Harley’s.

“Amateurs.” When will they ever understand that you don’t have to make your bike look like a traveling circus to look like a bad ?

“What did you mean by ‘do the opposite’?” Dara pulled the helmet off her head and flicked back her long hair. Placing the helmet back down she waited for me to turn off the bike and remove mine. I did so, shaking my head around to get my fringe out of my eyes and the blood back in my ears.

“I meant act like, um, Minzy.” I silently pray that Minzy won’t ever hear that comment. I mean, the girl is hilarious and interesting and smoking hot but she’d beat my if I ever called her something she would consider ‘ty’. She’s not really, but she dresses like it sometimes and her attitude could blow most men out of the water.

“So basically flirt with anything with legs, wear a dress that actually should be considered a shirt and lie all over you all night?” Dara shuts her eyes for a few seconds to put on a persona I think will be one of my favourites. “What are you looking at? You can’t even touch this! Girl I’ll scratch your eyes out if you look at him again.”

“Nicely done. You’ll get by perfectly, Seungri’s not gonna know what hit him.” We walk through the double doors of the bar to see some guy get thrown across the bar, smashing glasses and sliding over the taps to hitting the wall and slide to the ground.

“And don’t you ever come near my girl again!” A deep voice resounds through the bar, revealing it’s self to be a tall but well built male in his twenties. It’s one of Seungri’s regulars or his ‘bodyguards’ for the girls he normally has in his bar. They make sure no-one gets doped or beat up or ‘damaged’ like his sister was. For this privilege they get free drinks and entry to ‘Big Bang’.

‘Onew, you’re going to have to pay for that you know.” The lazy voice of Seungri comes from upstairs. His shock of dark black hair appears over the edge of the railing and is followed by tan skin, a silver stud earring and broad shoulders covered with a black t-shirt. “Ahh, Jiyong, my man. Come up here and bring the pretty filly on your arm.” He motions to the thickset man who is covering the stairway and the man moves over to allow Dara and myself up the glass and wood staircase, which twists around the centre pylon of the club.

“Seungri.” I greet him with a handshake and ‘man hug’. He looks over and his eyes ask who she is. “Park Sandara, TOP’s sister so watch your mouth and your hands.”

Dara offers her hand for a handshake and Seungri takes it and kisses it. “Miss Park.”

She coughs ‘off limits’, motion her head towards me and Seungri raises an eyebrow.

“Wow, baiting the dragon there aren’t we Ji.” Seungri nods at the several girls who are lounging on the couch in very little clothing and they move off, some downstairs to join the party and some to rooms that offshoot from what I consider the ‘front lounge room’. “Go have some fun, girls. I’ll see you later.”

We follow him through a door to his house, situated above the club and noise proofed. He shuts the door behind us, blocking off the noise of the club and motions to the couch while heading towards the kitchen.

“Anyone want a drink of some kind? I have beer, water, tea, coffee, basically anything.” Dara notices the sip-pah cup on the counter and looks at me strangely. I just smile, silently counting in my head and wait for the surprise that not many people know about.

“Daddddeeeee!” The shriek of Seungri’s daughter Emily, as she blasts down the hallway shocks Dara into silence. “I made a tower of blocks and knocked them down and built a princess tower for Princess Mika.” Emily barrels into Seungri’s legs just as he shuts the fridge. She is dressed in a pink shirt with a crown on the front that says ‘Daddy’s princess’ and is wearing a nappy. She has the dark brown eyes of Seungri missed with her mother’s blonde hair. It’s an adorable combo, hair tied up in messy pigtails and a heart birthmark on her left arm, just below the elbow.

Noticing Dara and I, she hides behind Seungri’s legs for a few seconds, until she recognizes me. “Uncle Yongi!” She bolts over and slams into my legs, knocking me onto the couch. She’s really quite strong for a two year old. Crawling up into my lap she sits on my chest and starts to play with my hair.

“Hello Emmy. How are you? I heard you built a very good tower.” I slide back into a seated position, Emily sliding down my front till she sits on my lap. Seungri grabs her sippy cup and brings it over, along with several cans, two of Coca-Cola and one of lemon, lime and bitters for me. He knows how much I hate coke and so always has a couple of cans of bitters in his fridge for me. I often crash here when I just can’t be bothered to go home.

“Dara, this is Emily, my daughter. She is two and looks remarkably like her mother.” Seungri manages to say all this without flinching. Emily’s mother was killed only a few weeks after Emily was born. She was American and Seungri had no idea she was pregnant till he got a call at four in the morning asking if he was the father of Emily Rosemont. He’s taken on fatherhood rather well, still managing his club and keeping it hidden from his numerous enemies in the dark side of club business.

“Hello Emily, I’m Dara.” Dara waves a hand at Emily, who with all her father’s skill has discovered my phone and pulled it out of my pocket without me noticing.

“Hello. Are you one of Yongi’s friends?” Emily is busy playing with Jackie the talking koala but still asks the question with big brown eyes, Seungri’s eyes, looking up from beneath thick lashes and a blonde fringe.

“Ahh, maybe.” Dara is unsure of the meaning of ‘friends’ in this case, assuming that my ‘friends’ are the girls I bring home.

“Yes, Dara is one of my friends and she is Seung’s little sister. Do you remember Seunghyun?” I pulled my phone from Emily’s little hands and hand her over to Dara so I can pick up my drink. Dara’s eyes widen as I place Emily in her lap, and she fumbles for a minute then awkwardly places her hands next to her.

Seungri laughs, a genuine, friendly sound.

“You hold her like this,” He gestures to Dara and as she sits there, still bewildered, he takes pity on her and leans over to manipulate her arms so Emily doesn’t look like she is sitting on a plastic doll. “Have you never held a baby before?”

After Emily protests about how she isn’t a baby, she is ‘twoo’. Dara shakes her head. “Never. I’m the youngest and none of my friends are married or have kids.”

“You wouldn’t be the first one.” Seungri’s face crinkles up in a smile that not many people see. “You should have seen Jiyong here, when Em was only a few months old. It was like watching someone hold a china plate, like he was afraid he’d drop her and she’d shatter. Seunghyun was better, since he had you to watch I guess.” Seungri gently grabs a now rather sleepy Emily from Dara’s lap and walks towards a door with ‘Emily’s Room’ written on it in both English and Korean characters. Emily sleepily waves at both of us from over Seungri’s shoulder and then settles back down.

“Really? You’d never held a baby before?” I turn to Dara, still sipping on my drink. “I thought it was some big girl thing to babysit and stuff. Didn’t you all plan your perfect weddings, obviously with me, and how many kids you’d have and all that?”

Dara blushes red and sips her drink to try and avoid answering. “I wasn’t that sort of girl Ji, I thought you might have noticed when I never had any friends over or Seunghyun never said anything about me dating. I didn’t really have any girl friends; I was more into cars and planes and spent more time with you and Seung than I did with anyone else. I didn’t really get into any of that till grade twelve and uni. But apparently you’d never held a baby either? Did you really think she’d fracture like a china plate?”

“I may have. I never really noticed that you were like that, I just assumed that you had girl friends but you didn’t want them near your brother or, “ gesturing to myself. “all this, which none of your friends could obviously handle.”

She laughs without humour. “Chaerin was my friend, and so are Bom and Minzy. And we see where that got them.” Now we are back to the heart of the matter, and exactly why we came to Seungri’s in the first place. Chaerin’s dead because of my job and Bom so nearly was, Minzy is one of my ‘girls and I know she’s gotten into plenty of trouble for me. It seems I’m the one everyone gets hurt around. I voice this last thought to Dara and she looks at me with sadness in her eyes and sympathy in her smile. We both know it’s true but nobody wants to voice the fear we all have, the fear that we might all go down one day because of me and some stupid mistake.

“Now that Emily’s down we can get onto business. I heard about Taeyang, Ji.” Seungri walks out of Emily’s room and shuts the door softly behind him. “Let’s head into my office so we can talk.” He opens yet another door, further along the hallway and we step into his cream and black office. It has several deceptively comfortable chairs and a large table used for rare meetings. Seungri pulls his office chair round from behind his desk and puts his feet on the coffee table in the middle of the ‘chair circle’. “What do you want to know? Ahh, Forgotten Promises that’s right.” Reaching behind him Seungri grabs a remote and clicks a button. A screen slides up from a decorated wooden side bookcase; on it flicks pictures of Emily in several different places. He pushes a second button and the screen switches over to a slide show of gang members and assorted bites of information. “This,” Seungri circled a man in red. “Is their leader Jang Soo Hyuk. He’s smart, street tough and known for slipping through police nets. Imports arms through several ports, namely Busan and Incheon. This,” another figure was circled. “Is his son, Jang Junghyun. Junghyun was responsible for Chaerin’s death. Sorry to bring up bad memories Ji but this was recent info that you needed to know.” The instant he said Chaerin’s name I knew who it was, the face, the posture on the screen and the smirk.

“Dead man walking.” It’s not my voice that answers Seungri’s unspoken question; it’s Dara’s. The look on her face says that if he was standing right in front of us, he’d be on the floor and Dara would be choking the life out of him. Neither of us would stop her either.

“Ok. Now some of his ‘minions’ were responsible for Taeyang. They were protecting the house, which Junghyun was in. Apparently there was some underage es in there and Junghyun doesn’t like to be bailed out by his dad more than once a month. Sounds a bit like you, Jiyong.” Seungri now has a folder from the safe hidden behind a picture of a farmhouse. I’m not quite sure why he has a picture of a farmhouse on his wall but Seungri’s kinda quirky like that.

The rip finally kicks in, “My father said if he had to bail me out one more time I was gonna get my car privileges revoked. So I stopped. They never charged me for anything and even if they did, which they didn’t, I was a minor so my records are sealed.”

“Your father bailed you out of jail, more than once?” Dara shoots me a look and I realize I’ve revealed a bit too much about my life before she knew me too well. “That does explain why mother banned Seunghyun from seeing you.”

“Yeah, I had a rough childhood.” That doesn’t cover the half of it. It was either steal the car or I’ll lock you in the cellar again and make sure you don’t get caught because then you won’t get fed either. My father was trying to lead me into his life, a life where he is a master thief and basically major hard . I saw people come out of his office with bruises and broken bones. One guy tried to rat out on the group and I cleaned blood off the floors for several hours. The stain never went away and it was a lesson in never, ever, no matter how broken you are or how much they threaten you, give information. Never.

“So here is what you came for.” Seungri hands me the folder. I open it and it is full of details regarding arms shipments, gang members and safe houses. “My door is always open Jiyong and I’ll keep your room made up.”

“Oh, so this is where you stay when you don’t come home. We always got really worried, like you’d been knifed on the streets or something. But you always turned up the next morning so we figured you stayed with Minzy or one of the others.” Dara says it in a joking voice but you can see she was worried when I didn’t come home.

“No, he has a bedroom made up here so if he’s too lazy to make it home he can crash here. If you like I can do up the other office and adjoining bedroom for you, Dara. It’s always useful when you’re on stakeout or you need a meeting place.” Seungri walked further up the hallway, feet slapping on the wooden floorboards. He opened one door to reveal my bedroom, a dark grey affair with a queen bed and muted furniture. We walked through the double doors in there to a small office/ conference room then through another set of doors to a white and green room, more suited to females. It also had a queen bed; covered in a silk, flower patterned quilt with enough pillows to stock a small country.

“How big is your house?” Dara looked around the room, amazed. It had been done out completely, right down to the shampoo and conditioner in the bathroom, both fruity concoctions in the idea that a young women would be living here. “Seriously, how many rooms does this place have?”

“Six bedrooms, three bathrooms, three ensuite’, two living rooms plus the ‘front’ one, two offices and one conference room. Oh, and Emily’s playroom then there’s kitchens and stuff too. So nineteen plus in total. It covers the entirety of above the club, and a small third story with a pool, spa and open air dining room.” Seungri blushed, Dara’s face was shocked, mouth wide open and eyes blinking rapidly. “I like big spaces, so I have friends or colleagues stay over to help fill up the space. I built this place from the ground up and it’s designed by me, for me. It’s paid for it’s self, with the club and all and I’m only twenty-one.”

“Wow. Thankyou, Seungri. I’d love to stay here sometime, it looks marvellous.” Dara returned to the living room behind me.

“Yeah, bring whatever you want too. Clothes and stuff wise. One rule though,” Seungri turned, facing Dara with a hard look on his face. “Never bring people here without my explicit permission. There are many people who would like to find some way to hurt me and Emily is the perfect way.

“Understood. I might stay tonight actually, Bom and Seung are having a home date and I’d rather avoid that. It’s awkward watching your brother and close friend eat each others faces on the couch. Is that ok?” Dara crushed her empty drink can and hunted around for a bin. I indicated that it was in a bottom corner and was thanked with a grin.

“I might do the same, regarding Bom and TOP.  Dinner on me tonight.” It was getting late and I am essentially a lazy person. Half my stuff is here at Seungri’s anyway and there is a great takeout dinner place next door.

“All good on my front. Dara can borrow some clothes from one of the girls here if she wants. Mu shu pork for me and fried rice with prawns for Emily.” Seungri grabbed a remote from the table and the television lowered from the ceiling.

“FOOTBALL NIGHT!” Dara’s face lit up and she dropped down on the couch next to Seungri. Shockingly enough, she loves football. Seoul United is her team and she holds bragging rights for them beating Busan football club last week. Busan is my team and they got their asses kicked 27-nil last Friday. “Ginger chicken and friend rice, no prawns.”

She didn’t need to say anything; I know her order off by heart. 

So yeah, hope you liked it. There will probably be another chapter after this weekend cause I'm at my grandparents and I have nothing better to do.

:)