Black Orchid | BEOMKAI

Chapter 1

Los Angeles, March 20th, 2020

The sound of wings grew louder, eventually paired with a displeased squawk.

"Toto, for the last time," I said, approaching my caged parrot. "You know I don't like letting you out of your cage. Remember what happened last time?"

Toto squawked again.

"That's right, you flew onto the roof, refused to come down and I had to get the fire brigade out to rescue your feathery ass."

"Beomgyu!" my mother called from downstairs, "don't keep your father waiting!"

With a grimace, I wiggled my finger at Toto through the bars. "I better go," I mumbled. "Dad bought a house somewhere and wants me to see it. I'll be back soon. Behave yourself, okay?"

Grabbing my headphones, I took my time making my descent from my bedroom to the front door downstairs. My mother gave me a sudden hug and I caught the glistening of tears in her eyes. She shoved me through the door to my father's car in waiting.

"I'm sorry, Beomgyu," she muttered, as if guilty. With a confused frown, I turned to see my father sitting tensely in the driver's seat, the passenger door already open for me. I took an uneasy seat beside him, slammed the door and he sped away through the winding hills of Los Angeles to reach the southern highway.

"So where's this house you bought, anyway?" I asked.

"In Julian."

"Julian? Isn't that some shitty graveyard town? And you bought a house there?"

My father was silent. He gave a gentle ease of his foot upon the gas and the engine responded with a low deep purr. Eight hundred units of horsepower under the hood made life so effortless. Though as the glass and steel scenery out the window began to blur, we were speeding in a direction that had me a bit lost.

According to a quick search on my phone: with a population of only around one thousand people and the biggest attraction being a fucking pie shop, there was nothing in Julian except for the old and destitute; houses and people alike.

"You really don't know how to spend your money, Dad. You have enough to buy a castle in Spain and you waste it on a shack in the middle of nowhere?"

No response. He had been oddly quiet with me all week. Especially since the birthday party I threw myself at home that apparently got 'way out of hand.' It's not like I was God knows where with God knows who. And so what if I threw the eighty-inch TV into the pool? Everyone thought it was hilarious. It's not like I couldn't just replace it with a swipe of my card, anyway.

My father tapped the touchscreen display in the middle of the dash. "Play Air Supply."

My eyes ached from how hard I rolled them. A breakup song. Pathetic verses singing 'I know you hurt too,'s and 'what else can we do's.

I'll tell you what else you can do, you old muppet of a musician. Buy yourself something and move the hell on.

"How can you keep listening to this shit, Dad? Can't you put something decent on that's not sung by a retiree?"

He increased the volume.

Dragging my headphones up, I pressed them into my heavily pierced ears and drowned out the garbage with my superior taste in music. An hour later we were pulling up the driveway of some mediocre single-story house. It was white and green but screamed the color 'beige'. My father mouthed the words "come on" to me through the loud music I still had pulsing in my ears. With a hefty sigh, I followed.