Over and Out

Chapter Sixteen

"Well ouch. That's gotta hurt." Lisa registered the voice, somewhere near her, but couldn't bring herself to care. God knows how long it had been since she had been sat there, cold and numb on the balcony. Once the cars had pulled off, and driven into the night, Mr J had let go of her, and she had crumpled quietly to the floor, into the position she was currently in. She wasn't really sure what was going on; there were still quiet strains of music floating up that suggested that the party had carried on, unaware of the dead man who had been in it just a while ago. Her body didn't feel like hers, and a white haze had settled over her mind – the combination of both rendered her useless in any type of fight, but she was past the point of caring.

"Well, are you gonna sit there the whole night?" She blinked slowly, focusing in on the person talking to her—she vaguely placed him as Jimin, the guy whose name she learned earlier. He walked over, nudging her knee with his toe. "Um. You're still alive, right?" Unable to do anything else, she blinked slowly at him. "Yeah okay, well, here." He reached over, hoisting her to her feet. She swayed slightly, letting her weight fall on the cold stone railing behind her.

"Uh. Thanks." She mumbled, nodding his way. He shrugged, also leaning on the balcony, a little distance away. Lighting a cigarette, he tilted his head up, blowing curls of smoke up around him. out of the corner of her eye, Lisa noticed him stretching his hand out, in offering. Unthinking, she reached for the cigarette, taking a deep drag. They stood in silence a while, passing it between them, until the end started to burn their fingers. Taking a last puff, she tossed it onto the floor, using the tip of her pointy heeled shoe to snuff it out.

"So?" He spoke up again, raising an eyebrow. She mimicked the gesture back. "So what are you gonna do now?"

"What can I do?" she threw the question out, to herself more than anyone, as her brain finally started functioning again. Closing her eyes, she ran through all of the logical steps she could take next- she still remembered the way out of the mansion, still knew the route through the woods around it to the train station. No doubt she would be able to get back, but for the first time ever she stopped to consider what she would find if she did, if she even really wanted to go back at all. Clearly something bigger was happening than she had realised; she still had no idea why Loren had been killed, not when his protection was hammered into all of them as the main priority of the night, although...

Although no-one else had seemed particularly surprised by his death. Thinking back to what she had seen, she couldn't recall any shock, any curiosity towards it. There was no indication that it had been a spur of the moment decision- in all the years she had known Jiyong, it had always been cold calculation and meticulous planning that has underpinned their way of working. And if Loren was dead, surely he was never destined to walk out of the party alive, not under Jiyong's orders or presence. A dull throbbing started up in her temple as the thoughts ran through her head—just how much of this plan had been hidden from her, and what version of it was told to everyone else? Had she been so pre-occupied with her own problems that she had missed these details, or had they been omitted for her from the very beginning? The only way to find out was to go back and demand answers, but what guarantee did she have that her fate would be any different to Loren's if she did that? The throbbing grew stronger, matching the pulsing of the music from the ground below her, and suddenly there was only one thing she could think of doing. Determined, she pushed herself off the railing, making her way through the now-empty room that she had been stuck in—unsurprisingly there were no guards in sight, and the door opened easily into the wide hallway. Scrambling footsteps behind her told her that her companion had started to catch up, confirmed by his called-out question.

"What are you doing?"

She glanced back, a slow smile inching up her face as all thoughts of self-control, composure and logical thinking escaped her head. "It would be such a shame to miss the party." Revelling in the mental whiplash she had obviously given him, she reached up to muss up her hair, flattened slightly by the wig, as she followed the twisting hallways down, making her way to the main floor.