The Girl Between

It was late evening. Heesung sat quietly at her desk, trying to complete her homework. She could hear her brother, Jimin, down the hall in his bedroom playing some video game with the rest of the Bangtan Boys. Their whoops and hollers at gunning down the simulated enemies echoed throughout their empty apartment.

Unable to concentrate on her work, she closed her textbooks and sat down on her bed, thinking about her boyfriend, Woohyun. Reaching over to her nightstand, she grabbed her phone and scrolled through the songs saved on there until she found the one that Woohyun had written and recorded for her.

Heesung hadn’t even known that Woohyun was a singer capable of producing such sweet vocals, not until he created that song to win back her heart after she had broken up with him last month. She hadn’t really wanted their relationship to end. She had just been worried about her brother finding out about it. If Jimin ever learned that she was dating Woohyun, who attended their rival school, Woollim High, Jimin would surely seek Woohyun out to fight him. She was sure of that.

Both she and Woohyun had been heartbroken after the breakup. She fell behind in her studies during this time, too overcome by her sadness. Woohyun, meanwhile, had spent those lonely days putting all of his time and effort into his song for her. The song, “Close Your Eyes,” brought them together again, and they vowed after that to never again let anything come between them, no matter what.

She listened to the song through her earbuds, hearing the synth-like sounds of the keyboard begin its melody and then Woohyun’s voice, like an angelic echo, as he sang his words to her… You said we’d meet again someday, as you held my hand and whispered…

Heesung closed her eyes and reclined back against the pillows as she continued to listen. Where are you and what are you doing? You haven’t forgotten me, have you?

Each time she listened to this song, it brought tears to her eyes, reminding her that she had almost let her true love go. She breathed in deeply, trying not to listen to the words so that she wouldn’t be sad, but to instead listen only to his voice, which always made her happy; however, just as the song was reaching the chorus, the music suddenly cut out and a notification beeped, signifying that she had received a text message. It was from Woohyun. He wrote: Go to yr window.

Heesung stared at the message with wide eyes. Had he come here? To the apartment she shared with her brother? She quickly pulled her earbuds out and sat still in bed, trying to hear if her brother was still busy in his room with his friends. A second of quiet passed, but then she heard her brother and the other Bangtan Boys erupt with cheers over the video game.

Realizing that she was dressed only in a thin pink nightgown, she grabbed her robe from its hook on the back of her bedroom door and quickly tied it tight around her petite frame as she walked toward her window. She quietly opened it, the brisk winter air rushing in, and peered through the screen to the ground below, where she saw Woohyun standing there in the snow.

When Woohyun saw her, that perfect diamond-shaped face and those big, big eyes of hers, his mouth fell open, the sight of her taking his breath away.

“What are you doing here?” Heesung whispered, pushing back her long brown hair. “If my brother sees, he’ll–”

“I couldn’t wait until Friday,” Woohyun whispered back.

On Friday, Heesung would be leaving for a weekend trip to Busan to participate in a dance competition with her school troupe. It would be her first weekend away from home, away from her brother. She and Woohyun made secret plans to use that time away to be together. He was going to take the train down to Busan and meet her there.   

“Are you still going to go this weekend?” she asked.

“Of course,” Woohyun said, smiling. “It’s just that Friday seems so far away.” He zippered up his coat, shivering a bit out there in the cold. “I keep dreaming about it. Just me and you out there gazing over the winter sea…”

Heesung thought she heard something – what sounded like a door opening down the hall. She turned to listen and then quickly glanced down at Woohyun again. “You need to go,” she said, trying to keep her voice as low as possible. “Please, I’ll try to call you later after he goes to sleep.”

“Promise? My beautiful Juliet?”

“I promise,” she whispered, smiling. When they had gotten back together after the breakup, he had begun occasionally referring to her as his Juliet, believing that their love was as star-crossed as that fated Shakespearean pair, with just as many outside forces trying to separate them. She recited the line now that she knew he loved to hear. “The more love I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite,” she said. But she turned then when she heard footsteps in the hall. Frantic now at the window, she begged Woohyun to go. “Please, hurry,” she said.

Woohyun smiled. “Until Friday,” he dreamily said, his imagination wild with thoughts of her as he turned to leave.

The door to Heesung’s bedroom slammed open. Jimin stood in the doorway.

Heesung stood frozen by the open window.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I felt hot,” she weakly said. She looked down as she spoke, as it was difficult to outright lie to her brother.

“It’s freezing outside,” he said.

“That’s why I opened the window,” she said, still looking down. “I felt hot.”

Jimin pulled his cap up on his head a bit so that it sat high atop his hair and then studied his sister’s face. He knew that she was lying. He walked toward her now and gently pushed her aside as he peered out the window, searching the wintry darkness. He didn’t see anything, not at first, not until he caught sight of someone walking through the snow-covered trees away from their apartment building. He leaned forward, squinting his eyes to peer just as the boy emerged out of the trees and onto the street beyond. There, under the light of the streetlamps, Jimin saw the boy’s coat with the infinity logo that was stamped across the back.

Stunned that she had been talking to a member of the Infinite gang, Jimin stood up from the window and stared at her. “Tell me who that was,” he said. “Right now.”

“Oppa, it’s nothing… just a friend from school.”

“He doesn’t go to our school,” Jimin said. “I saw his coat. Infinite members go to Woollim High, not ours, and you know that.” He wanted to grab her, to shake her and yell at her and frighten her, but he didn’t. His anger was out of love for her, not hate. She was his little sister, his only family. It was his duty to protect her. He didn’t want her dating at all. He couldn’t protect her if she followed her heart away from his guidance. Maybe, he thought, just maybe he could be open to the possibility of her dating someone he knew, someone he had some authority over, like Jungkook, the youngest member of the Bangtan Boys gang. But to date an Infinite member? His gang’s most hated rival? He couldn’t understand what she was thinking. “Are you trying to rebel against me?” he asked.

“What? Oppa, no…”

“That’s it, isn’t it? You’re mad at me because I act like your father.” The tension in his voice broke out as he began to yell. “Well, I don’t really have a choice, do I? I wish I could just be your brother, be your friend. But our parents are dead, Heesung-ah! I just… I can’t understand you! I’m trying my hardest here, but you go behind my back and… and what? Start dating a damn Infinite member?”

At that moment, Jimin’s gang appeared in the doorway, having heard him yelling.

Rap Monster, the leader of the gang, pushed his way through the boys and glanced between Jimin and Heesung. “Which Infinite member?” he asked.

Jimin shook his head. “She’s not going to tell me,” he said. He could tell just by the look on his sister’s face that her heart was already full of love for the boy. “She thinks she’s in love,” he said.

Heesung looked up at her brother, wondering how he could infer so much.

Rap Monster clenched his fists. “Those Infinite boys are going to get it,” he said, slamming the knuckles of his right hand into the palm of his left. “This has been a long time coming,” he said.

Jimin breathed in deeply and stared at his gang. He didn’t want to fight Infinite. He wasn’t really a violent person. Being in a gang, to him, was more about loyalty and knowing that these boys had his back, just as he had theirs. But violence seemed unavoidable. It seemed… expected. He looked back down at his sister now. “If you tell me who it is, we won’t fight them,” he said.

“What?” Rap Monster glanced behind him at the other members of the gang with a look of disbelief and then turned back to Jimin, stepping forward now into the bedroom. “You’re joking, right?”

Jimin looked over at him. “Hyung, I can handle this. I’ll go talk to whoever it is alone. We don’t need to turn this into a… a gang war.”

V now stepped forward, as did J-Hope.

“This is already a war,” V said.

“That’s your sister,” J-Hope said. “She’s only fifteen!”

“He’s probably just using her to get to us!” V said.

Heesung had been quiet this whole time, but now that she sensed things were escalating, she swallowed hard and tried to intervene. “He’s not using me,” she said, being sure to stare directly into her brother’s eyes. But she lost her nerve then and her voice cracked. “We’re in love,” she quietly said.

“Tell me who it is,” Jimin said.

Heesung’s tears streaked down her face. She shook her head, the tears scattering about her. “Oppa, no…”

Jimin looked at his boys, seeing their anxious expressions. They were waiting for him to make a move. They were waiting for him to do something, to take this to the next level. Not wanting to look weak, he said, “Fine. Then we’ll go after all of them.”

“Oppa, no!” Heesung stood there for a moment, searching her brother’s eyes, and then told him what he wanted to hear. “Woohyun,” she muttered. “It’s Woohyun oppa. I love him and he loves me. If you just got to know him, you’d–” But she was interrupted then by the boys in the doorway, who had all begun excitedly talking about how they would take down Woohyun and the rest of Infinite. She looked over at them, realizing that she had just confessed for nothing, and then turned back to look at her brother, hoping that he could stop what was happening. But Jimin offered her no solace. He just stared quietly at her and then left the room with his boys, joining them in their plotting against Infinite.

She could hear their voices resounding down the hall from inside Jimin’s room. They were talking about ambushing Infinite at the skate park near Woollim High where they knew Infinite would be. Heesung didn’t want to defy her brother, but she knew that what he was about to do was wrong and that someone was going to get hurt. And so she gently closed her bedroom door and grabbed her phone to call Woohyun, hoping to warn him of the impending attack, but Woohyun didn’t answer. She realized then that he was probably still walking home. He always kept his phone on vibrate and could never feel it go off in his pocket while he was walking.

She had never snuck out of the apartment before, but she knew she had to now. She threw on some clothes and a pair of boots and returned to the window, briefly thinking about climbing out but dismissing that idea when she saw no way to get down other than jumping. Their apartment was on the third floor; she couldn’t imagine jumping from that high up without injury. Biting her lip now, she crept quietly to her bedroom door, opened it slowly, and then tiptoed down the hallway past Jimin’s room. His door was closed. Inside, they were all still yelling excitedly over each other, as if trying to rev themselves up for the fight. She made it to the front door at the end of the hall, grabbed her winter coat from the closet, and then hurried out the door as quietly as she could.

As she walked down the three flights of stairs to the building entrance, she tried calling Woohyun again, but still there was no answer.

Just as she was standing in the lobby of the building, about to push open the front door, she heard the Bangtan Boys three flights up, just leaving the apartment. Realizing that there was no time to waste, she hurried out into the night, running as fast as she could through the deep snow to catch up with Woohyun before the Bangtan Boys did.

She had never been out on these streets this late at night. She and Jimin lived in what was considered the poor part of Seoul. It wasn’t exactly a safe neighborhood, but it was the only place they could afford to live, and the only place where landlords didn’t question the ages of their tenants.

Things had been hard after their parents died. They were almost separated after that, each to be placed in a different foster home, but Jimin had managed to convince the authorities that he and Heesung would be able to stay with J-Hope’s family. When the authorities called J-Hope’s home to confirm this, J-Hope answered the phone and pretended to be his father. It was a brief conversation and seemed to be all the evidence the authorities needed to let Jimin and Heesung go.

They were homeless at that point. They couldn’t stay with J-Hope’s family because his parents were abusive alcoholics. J-Hope, in fact, only stayed there when he absolutely had to. And so Jimin and Heesung drifted for a while, just staying wherever they could, usually bouncing from one Bangtan Boys’ home to another until Jimin had saved enough money from his part-time job to afford a place of their own. He had worked so hard to take care of Heesung, to make sure that she was enrolled in school and that she was safe.

As Heesung ran through the cold, empty streets now, she cried thinking about this. She felt like she was betraying her brother. But if she didn’t run to warn Woohyun, then she would be betraying her boyfriend. She felt caught in the middle, lost.

She had run so far and so fast that she could barely catch her breath when she saw Woohyun ahead on the street, lazily walking through the snow. “Oppa!” she yelled.

Woohyun turned around, his face lighting up when he saw her. “Jagiya, what are you doing here? Did you sneak out?” He saw that her cheeks were flushed pink from the cold.

Heesung caught up to him and fell into his arms. “I’m so sorry, oppa. I’m so sorry, but my brother knows about us.” Her words poured out of her quickly and shakily, her heart still beating heavy in her chest from her run. “All of them, they’re coming right now to fight you. To the skate park. Right now.” Her breaths were short and fast.

Woohyun stared at her, trying to absorb everything she was saying. He shook his head. “I don’t want to fight your brother. To me, he is my brother-in-law.”

“I don’t want you to fight him either!” Heesung said, crying now.

Woohyun held her close, his fingers running through her hair as she rested her head on his chest. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll… I’ll call Infinite and tell them to leave the park. And then I’ll go there alone to talk with your brother.”

“No, oppa, he’s not alone. He’s coming with all of them… J-Hope, Suga, Jin…”

Woohyun shook his head. “They won’t fight me, not if I’m alone. It wouldn’t be a fair fight.”

Heesung looked up at him, her eyes just as pleading as they had been when she had faced her brother earlier. “Don’t go,” she said. “Just call Infinite and tell them to leave the park. If my brother and his friends show up there and no one’s there, they’ll just go home. Maybe they’ll forget about this. I don’t know. Just, just don’t go.”

Woohyun nodded. “If that is what my Juliet wants, then okay,” he said. He looked at her now, her worried face breaking his heart. He leaned down to softly kiss her, their cold lips warming against each other’s. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

Woohyun pulled out his phone, seeing then that he had missed her calls. He quickly swiped through the screens and found the number for Sunggyu, Infinite’s leader. When Sunggyu answered, Woohyun told him everything – that he had been dating Jimin’s sister, that Jimin had just found out, and that the Bangtan Boys were on their way to the park now to fight them. He told Sunggyu to get Infinite out of there, but Sunggyu said no.

“This is our chance,” Sunggyu said. “We’ve been waiting all this time for an excuse to fight them. I don’t care what reason is behind it. I just want to kick their .”

Woohyun didn’t usually see eye-to-eye with Sunggyu, and now was no different. “Hyung, just leave,” he said. “Let me take care of this alone. It’s my problem.”

But Sunggyu again said no.

Woohyun ended the call and stared at Heesung. “I’m going to go and try to stop this,” he said.

“If you’re going to go, then I want to come, too,” she said.

They cut through the trees alongside the road, hoping to reach the park before the Bangtan Boys did to try one last time to convince Infinite to leave, but they emerged from those trees just in time to see the two gangs slowly approaching each other from opposite ends of that concrete skate park. Some were holding baseball bats, others were holding knives.

Heesung covered when she saw that her brother was holding a gun. She knew that he owned one. He had bought it as protection when they were alone on the streets, but he had always said that he would only use it in defense, only if their lives were being threatened.

When both gangs saw Woohyun crossing the park toward them, with Heesung behind him holding his hand, they all focused their attention on the couple. Rap Monster screamed out to Jimin, telling him to shoot Woohyun right there.

“End this now!” Rap Monster yelled.

Woohyun let go of Heesung and held up his hands, staring only at Jimin as he slowly stepped between the gangs. “This is between us,” he said. “Let’s just talk about this.”

J-Hope grabbed Heesung, pulling her into the safety of the Bangtan Boys.

Jimin didn’t answer Woohyun’s appeal. He wanted to do what Woohyun was suggesting. He wanted to just talk. That was what he had originally wanted to do from the start. But that opportunity was gone. It was too late. If he backed down now, he would lose all credit with his gang. He and his sister would be on their own.

“Please, oppa, put the gun down,” Heesung said.

Jimin didn’t look over at her. He tried to block her voice from his head as he kept the gun aimed on Woohyun. He was doing this for her.

“Now!” Rap Monster called out.

In that moment, as Jimin’s hand shook, the gun jittery and his trigger finger slowly pressing down, Heesung ripped herself from J-Hope’s grip and flung herself in front of Woohyun, the bullet passing right through her neck before she collapsed onto the ground, her blood staining the snow-covered concrete of the park, her face slowly growing pale as she lay there, staring up at the wintry sky, seeing then the two boys – her brother and her boyfriend – fall to their knees beside her, their faces both torn apart with despair.

“No, no, no,” Woohyun cried, trying to cover Heesung’s neck with his hands to stop the bleeding.

Jimin, in shock and unable to think outside of his own blame, held his sister’s small hand, crying loudly. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…”

Both Infinite and the Bangtan Boys gathered around, mixing together without a thought as to their rivalry.

“Someone call an ambulance!” Woohyun screamed, his hands covered in Heesung’s blood.

Heesung, the blood gurgling in , tried to speak but couldn’t. She wanted to tell Woohyun and Jimin that she had known that this would happen, that it was no one’s fault, that this story has been written before and that it was her destiny. She wanted to tell them that, without her standing between them, they will unite, they will learn from this, they will become better people – sadder perhaps, but wiser.

But she couldn’t say any of this. She was distracted by the black starless sky. She imagined that this must be what the winter sea off Busan looked like at night – dark, vast, and absolutely breathtaking.