WARNING: UNPLEASANT INSINUATIONS

Both women whipped around.  A group of ten men were standing there, evidently having come round from a different corner.  Three were dressed in the uniform of the attendants inside the bowling alley while the others were in dark clothes.  Miran could see tattoos and at least one had a sheathed knife.  She automatically reached for her pistol, only to realise that it was with her jacket back in the bowling alley.  She silently cursed her stupidity.

“Looks like you’re still trying to be everything you can’t,” goaded the foremost of the men.  He was one of the ones wearing the bowling alley uniform.  “Struggling in that world, are you?  Struggling in a world you’re not meant to be part of?  Tryin’ to fake it all dressed up in your jeans and men’s clothes.  Even got yourself a precious friend?”  He spat.

Miran’s hand closed around Hyeri’s wrist.

“We need to run,” she grated out of the corner of , but Hyeri had frozen up.  With alarm, Miran saw that the woman’s eyes were wide with terror and that she had shrunk back against the wall, shaking her head.

“When are you gonna learn?” the man went on, and Miran realised too late that they were now surrounded.  “When are you gonna learn that you’re trash and so are all the women around you?  Come back to a job where you’re actually valued, why don’t you?  At least with a price on your body you know how much you’re worth.”

Hyeri was shaking her head more vigorously.  Miran gave her a worried glance and then the meaning of the man’s words twigged.

Price on your body.

Shocked, Miran scoffed.  “You think that our bodies are worth a price tag?”

The ring leader spat again.  “You should know better than to talk to a man before he says you can speak up.”  He folded his arms, chewing on a piece of gum.  “We saw you – we saw both of you overstepping the line in there.”  A cocky grin spread over his face.  “So whaddaya say, darlin’?  Wanna come back with Hyeri to a job where you get paid what you’re worth?”

Miran snapped.  “You ing b*stard.”

“Y’can earn extra for being feisty,” he added with approval.  “Some people like that.”

What Miran liked more was the sound of her fist crunching his nose.  Hyeri let out a shriek of horror as blood fountained, but Miran was far too angry to care.  Neither she nor anybody she was working with was a object, and it had been such a long time since she had heard such derogatory comments that she was livid, and it showed in the punches she was throwing.

Unfortunately, she was outnumbered ten to one; Hyeri was cowering against the wall, now having slid down it and with her arms raised protectively over her head, and Miran was getting as good as she was giving in terms of blows.  She had the satisfaction of knowing she’d completely floored and potentially knocked out three men twice her size before she was pinned down face first.

“C’mon,” murmured the man who’d known Hyeri.  “Let’s get them out of here before their friends come to find them.”

It might only have been a couple of days training with Kyungsoo, but Miran had learnt enough to squirm out of the position she was trapped in and she was soon on her feet again, crouching like a feral little cat.  Somebody lunged at her and with a quick couple of steps he was cartwheeling over her shoulder to a hard landing on tarmac.  It was now four on one and two men were grabbing hold of Hyeri and hauling her to her feet.

Miran charged the man nearest her, dropping her shoulder and practically ramming him to the ground, but then one of the men with Hyeri pulled her upright and Miran saw metal gleaming at her colleague’s throat.  Hyeri looked like she was going to throw up.

The man Miran had charged got to his feet, wiping blood away from his mouth.  It was the ringleader.

“We can do this the easy way,” he growled, spitting out more blood, “or we can beat you both into submission.”

Miran glared at him.  Were she on her own, she would have attacked again without hesitation, but Hyeri had a knife on her neck and seemed on the brink of passing out with fright.  She was going to have to think carefully about this one.

The man took her silence as surrender.

“Excellent,” he purred, coming in close, but at that moment, the bowling alley door burst open again and a black mop of hair appeared.

“Hey, Hyeri, can you come back and—”

Kyungsoo stopped dead, eyes raking over the scene before him.  Miran noticed that he had her coat slung over his arm, and she dearly hoped that he realised there was a gun strapped to the inside pocket.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded.

The ringleader gave him a toothy grin.  “Can we do anything for you, sir?” he asked, trying to brush over the situation.

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo said bluntly.  “You can get away from my sister and my girlfriend before I ring the police.”

The ringleader’s expression turned nasty.  With a twitch of two of his fingers, his minions were moving to surround Kyungsoo as well as Miran.  Kyungsoo immediately held up his phone and typed in the number of the emergency services.

Somebody made the mistake of lunging at him.  There was a thud and a loud crack and the hapless man was on the floor.  Hyeri let out a whimper as the knife dug into her neck in response.  Kyungsoo’s gaze darted in her direction, but he didn’t take his eyes off the ringleader.

That was when Miran’s arms were seized from behind her and twisted painfully. It was a position that, though painful, she knew how to get out of, but with Hyeri as a hostage, she didn’t think it was the best of ideas.  It was better if Kyungsoo called the shots on this one, any