No Rest for the Wicked

Chapter 6

"Yes, Dad, I'm eating enough," Luna replied exhaustedly into the phone.

"Ay, mi Normita," her father sighed on the other end. "If I didn't worry about you, I wouldn't be a father," he added.

"Dad, please, don't call me that," Luna requested for the hundredth time.

"Listen, your mom and I named you Norma after your great-grandmother. Don't be so quick to throw the name out," Julio admonished his daughter.

"Dad, you know why I don't use that name, and you shouldn't either," Luna warned him. "What good is changing my name and moving away from L.A. if you insist on continuing to call me Norma?" she asked in exasperation.

"Ay, Normita, te preocupas mucho," he gently scolded her for her outsized worry over a situation that was long over as far as he was concerned. "I'm pretty sure they gave up a long time ago," he assured her.

"That night is never over for me," Luna replied quietly. "I relive it almost every night," she admitted.

"It breaks my heart to hear that," Julio whispered. "You should have just let things play out. You didn't have to get involved," he added.

"Play out?!" Luna practically screamed into the phone. "If I had let things 'play out' as you suggest, you'd be dead right now," she said as tears streamed down her tan cheeks.

"We don't know that," Julio replied in a calming voice, hoping to de-escalate the situation.

"We DO know that," Luna argued. "I remember all too well how close I came to losing you," she cried.

"Tranquila, bolilla," Julio teased, poking fun at his daughter's half-white heritage by calling her "white bread".

"Dad, you're always so out-of-pocket," she scolded her father with a chuckle that erupted despite her tears.

"I just enjoy getting a rise out of you," Julio admitted. "You're cute when you're angry," he teased.

But despite his jovial tone, Luna felt unnerved. "I don't like being angry. You know that," she said solemnly.

"Oy, oy, oy," Julio said, which was his typical phrase to try to diffuse tensions.

"Dad, I gotta go," Luna said as she checked the time on her giant wall clock.

"Ándale," he said. "I love you, Bunny," he said in English, referencing his nickname for her.

"Love you too, Dad," she said before hanging up.

She rushed about the apartment, gathering her things. Woojin had asked her to go on a date with him. Despite the tension of their last conversation, he had reached out and Luna had replied because, the truth was, she was actually very happy to have her Woojin-ah back in her life. She had learned to add the affectionate "ah" to his name from listening to his mother when she would call him. Even as a child, Luna had been good with languages. She would hear all those little particles that were tacked onto words. If she didn't know what they meant, she would investigate until she found out.

That memory of how much she loved languages as a kid made her stomach flip with anxiety as she realized that the three hours she was about to give Woojin could have been used in her Mixtec transcriptions. Luna sighed heavily. It seemed as if any time she wanted to let loose and have some fun, responsibility would come flooding back, bringing its nagging guilt with it.

When she arrived at Woojin's apartment, she found him dressed all in black and wearing a black beanie. She looked down at her bright yellow blouse and jeans and wondered if she had not "gotten the memo" so to speak about the dress-code for the day's activities.

"What are we doing today, anyway?" she asked a positively giddy Woojin.

"You're gonna love it," he assured her. "It's going to be like old times. You'll see!" he added as he put his arm around her and guided her to his car which was parked in the apartment building's private parking garage.

They drove out of Seoul city limits and entered a more rural setting. Woojin pulled off the road at a non-descript building with no signage.

"What is this place?" Luna asked. "This is an odd venue for a date," she added with a laugh.

"Patience, patience," Woojin replied.

They walked through the doors of the building and stopped at the office, which was only accessible to the public through a window, attended by a young man with a military buzzcut. Luna surmised that he had recently returned from his mandatory military service. It was clear that Woojin and this young man knew each other.

"Hey, hyung," the man greeted Woojin. "Is this her?" he asked, using his eyebrows to gesture toward Luna.

"Yeah, man, this is my childhood sweetheart," he said, causing Luna to blush.

"I don't know if I would characterize it like that," Luna said bashfully.

"You kissed me. That made us sweethearts. Don't muddy up the semantics," he replied with a hearty laugh.

"Anyway, dude, hook us up with our gear," Woojin said to his young friend who began passing items to him through the sliding window. Luna watched with interest as he took helmets and what looked like police body armor from the man behind the desk. And then, in a horrifying culmination, the man passed Woojin two rifles.

Luna soundlessly dropped to the floor and sat with her knees against her chest. She was not crying, but her wide green eyes registered shock and fear. Woojin dropped to his knees as well, still clutching the rifles. Luna pushed him away. Her breathing was erratic and inefficient as he noticed her lips were getting a blue tinge to them. Suddenly, it occurred to him that the rifles were the source of her distress. He tossed them aside and sat back down on the floor.

"Baby, they aren't real," he repeated several times, but finally stopped when he realized that his words were not having any effect on her condition. Her fear was coming from a very visceral place that was untouched by reason and facts.

"Breathe," he tried again, this time getting Luna to turn her eyes toward him. He wrapped her in his arms and lifted her up, carrying her out of the building and to the car where he placed her gently on the passenger seat. The familiar smell of the car was helpful for Luna as she attempted to bring herself back to homeostasis.

"It was paintball, wasn't it?" she asked when she had finally gotten control of her breathing.

"Yeah," Woojin replied. "I didn't realize that you would have this reaction," he said, penitently.

"Yeah, I know," Luna acknowledged.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he encouraged.

"No, no, not now," Luna replied. In her current state of upset, she knew she wasn't in a position to be able to explain what her life had been like after her unexpected exodus from the lives of Woojin and his family, a family she had almost taken on as her own. From all she had seen so far, it seemed that he was unaware of why she had left L.A. all those years ago. His mother knew. Of that, she was sure, but perhaps she had found a way to shield Woojin from the media circus that had swirled around little Norma Pérez. But now, she feared that he would discover the truth and have a change of heart about his current infatuation with her. After all, something like this coming to light about his girlfriend would be devastating to his career.