Even the streets of Bangkok, once her only refuge, had closed to her. In her panic, she had taken a wrong turning, and now the walls on either side of ever alley seemed to be falling in on her. So close, and the air so hot, so humid, and her pursuers closing in so quickly -

Taerim's foot caught on the edge of an industrial dustbin and she fell flat on her face. She jumped to her feet immediately and rushed on, limping. Perhaps she had broken toes, but it couldn't slow her down. She turned a corner and collided with a street food vendor, an old man who cursed at her as she ran away, already hearing the shouts of the police behind her.

She'd already left the red light district and was hurtling towards parts of Bangkok that she didn't know at all. For a fleeting moment she regretted leaving the district, where she could have laid low in any number of hiding places that she knew well. But she knew that wasn't a solution. Hiding was what she had made her career for the last two years, and it wasn't going to work any more. Ever since the first time she'd gotten busted and gone to jail, she'd sworn that she'd get out of the business before it stole the rest of her life. The heroin and methamphetamine pills she was carrying alone would get her a death penalty. Even if she died of old age before they carried out her sentence, that still meant a lifetime in prison. And here, prison was much, much worse than death.

It had been over a year since she'd sworn that she could never deal drugs again. It hadn't worked out exactly how she'd planned. Even though she'd never been stupid enough to use, she still couldn't tear herself away from an industry that had it's foundation in greed and manipulation. Swearing to herself wasn't enough. Taerim was starting to wonder if there was any way to escape the problems she'd created for herself beyond dying in obscurity in a filthy ditch in some god-forsaken alleyway.

For a little while, she'd thrived selling drugs to clueless, thrill-seeking tourists because she appeared like an innocent Asian schoolchild and English was her first language, but eventually she'd gotten to a place where a way with words wasn't enough to get her out of trouble.

Trouble like this. Taerim's pulse hammered in her ears as she burst out onto a main street and dodged around cars that were trapped bumper to bumper in a traffic jam. A policeman shouted behind her, much too close. It had just rained, and as she clambered over the hood of a furiously honking car, she slipped on the slick surface and fell to the pavement, hitting her shoulder so hard that she saw stars. As she jumped to her feet and rushed past an endless parade of idling cars, a hand grabbed at her jacket and dragged her sideways. Blindly, Taerim kicked viciously at the faceless, groping policeman once, twice, three times, and he grunted and let go. She stumbled on.

She ran until she was sure that one more step would kill her, then hid in a filthy gutter for two hours as every sound, every shout of a street vendor, every honk of a horn seemed like the sound of the police finding her, dragging her away to a place where she would never be heard from again. When she finally reached Piranut's haunt, sure that the police weren't on her tail any more, she had to wait another hour before he arrived. While she waited, she used her knife to saw off about ten inches of her hair. Anything to be less recognizable. There was no trashcan in the filthy lavatory, so she simply dropped handfuls of her own hair into the sink, glanced over her work in the cloudy mirror, and walked back into the badly-lit strip club to wait for Piranut to arrive, folding her lanky body into a far booth to stay unnoticed.

Taerim was exhausted. She did the unthinkable and dozed off. Her head lowered slowly, slowly as she was pulled into sleep, and only when it hit the table did she jerk awake, horrified. When she looked up, Piranut was standing over her, looking her over with a critical eye.

“You look terrible,” was all he said. He knew why she was here. “How much have you got on you?”

She pulled the bag halfway out of the lining of her jacket and showed it to him carefully, so no one else could see in the dim, clamorous room. Piranut whistled. “How much are you offering?”

“All of it.”

His eyes widened. “Hold on -”

“I'm not asking much.”

Piranut his thick lips, staring at her jacket where the incriminating bag was concealed. He was tempted. Not even that would normally be enough, but he owed her bigtime. “What's the catch?”

“Get me out of the country.”

Piranut laughed. To his credit, he thought she was joking. But the smile slowly disappeared from his face when he realized that she wasn't laughing too. “...out of Thailand, you mean?”

“I don't care where I go. I just have to go.”

His face was serious again. “It's that bad?”

“I can't go back to jail. I'll die there.”

He understood that, at least. “It's not going to work.”

“Why not?”

“It's just not. I can't get you out. Your passport's fried, if it shows up in an airport you're dead meat. And that's just the beginning.”

“That's why I'm asking for your help.”

He looked doubtful. “You need it fast, though.”

Taerim spread her arms. “I have to get out of here. Fast as possible.”

Piranut scratched his chin. A few flakes of something floated to the floor. “It won't be ideal.”

“I don't care.”

“There's a freighter going out tonight. I know a guy.”

Relief flooded through Taerim like a river. “Get me on it. Good God, Piranut, get me on that freighter right now.”

In hindsight, she should have asked where the freighter was going before accepting Piranut's offer. It was beautiful in a way, really – Taerim wondered later whether some kind of dry-humored divine power had willed it. Piranut had really gone the extra mile this time. Maybe he was just glad to be seeing the back of Taerim for what he knew was the last time.

In the end, it was Piranut's zeal for a job well done that three weeks later and fifteen pounds lighter thanks to stowing away on a trans-Asian freighter found Taerim in a freshly pressed uniform, standing at the entrance of a Korean all-boy's boarding school just in time for the academic year to begin. It didn't matter that her parents were Korean or that she had a Korean name. Taerim didn't belong here. But “here” wasn't prison, and it was Piranut's last favor to her. There was nowhere else to go.

Boys rushed past her into the gates, pushing and calling to each other playfully, feeling their last moments of real freedom before the schoolyear started in earnest. No one had eyes for Taerim, the newcomer. She shrugged her backpack to a more secure position on her shoulders and sighed. "Damn you, Piranut," she murmured to herself in Thai. "If I die here it's all your ing fault."

"Whose fault?" An amused voice said, very close by.

Taerim looked around. One boy had stopped in the babbling rush of schoolboys and was standing just behind her, with messy hair and an amiable smirk.

"You speak Thai?" was all she could think to say.

The boy shrugged like it was nothing. "Family gift," he said. "My dad does business in Thailand, so I lived there for about six years. You?"

She hadn't even walked into the school and the subject was already coming up. But she'd worked out the lie a long time ago. "My mom is Thai," she said easily. "And my dad's Korean-American. I'm new here."

The boy nodded. "How's your Korean?"

"Um... shopping? Proverbs? Swearwords? Uh... a few song lyrics..."

He whistled sympathetically. "Good thing you have me, then."

Taerim narrowed her eyes. "I have... you?"

The boy reached out and patted her shoulder like they were already friends. Were they? "Tell me your first class," he said. "I'll take you there. By the way..." He smiled, so bright and close and full of straight white teeth that Taerim had to blink, "My name's Jongin. You?"

She'd practiced saying her new name so it wouldn't seem so unfamiliar to . "Me? I'm Lee Taemin."