The Reaper

Chapter 5: Night of Seoul

Korean word pronunciations and meanings: Dae-Un (Deh-Oon), Jae-Un (Jeh-Oon), Eonni (Ohn-ni) = Big Sister, Eemmo (Eh-moh) = Aunt

So far, people have left us alone for a good number of minutes, and Jun-Seok hasn't introduced us to another member of his family. He looks too busy catching up on things with them over by the kitchen – which is across from our left-hand side of the living room. But I'll bet in a few minutes, or so, at least one of them will come up to us. When that happens, stay on guard.

"You are...Daryl and Lauren?"

Okay, that was definitely less than a few minutes. So who's this old woman anyway? Jeez, her smile looks so creepy, especially with all that sogginess and wrinkles on her face. She's even missing a tooth.

"Hahaha," she chuckles and speaks softly, "do you know who I am? I'm your grandmother."

That's good to know, and we don't care. Just go away.

"Can you come up here? I want to hug you two."

No.

"Hahaha," she chuckles again, knowing that we're refusing to hug her, "you two are so beautiful, huh?"

Oh, just shut up and leave us alone – "HEY!" Old hag trying to touch Lauren's foot! "DON'T YOU FUCKING TOUCH HER!"

Dad charges at me furiously grabs my shirt tightly, and then quickly and aggressively pulls me out of the apartment! I punch his arm and his hip, scratching his extremely clenched grip, trying to break free!

"Ogh!" He shoved me against the wall, pushing his hand against my chest to keep me firmly against it.

He widely looks straight into my eyes, sharply pointing his index finger at me, saying in a tense voice, "You stupid idiot child! Raising your voice like that at me and to your own grandmother?! Huh?!"

"Jun-Seok!" his mom shows up, standing at the door and sharply looking at Jun-Seok.

Jun-Seok looks at her, knowing what she's thinking. He then looks back at me, still infuriated, and is now dragging me back to the apartment!

Why?! You want your fucking family to do the beating for you?! Well, that's fine by me because I would love to beat every one of these abusers to death! Starting with your hag of a mother who started all of this –! Wait, where are we going?! Jun-Seok just made us all pass everyone, taking me to one of the two doors facing one another! He opens the right one and throws me in this room!

"Lauren!" Dad shouts out to Lauren. She comes in looking downward all timid-like. She walks past me as I look solely to Jun-Seok. "You don't ever come out of this room," he says intensely, "you don't ever come out until I tell you to!"

He closes the door on us. Now we're all alone, in complete isolation in this big empty room with just two desks on opposite sides of the room (one has an oval-shaped mirror), that same slide door window, and two large slide closet doors and a door leading to the bathroom next to it. It's needless to say, it's better off this way. Even though I would love to hurt them, but we got a whole month for that. In the meantime, Lauren is sitting at the corner, hugging her legs in, facing out the slide door windows.

"Lauren," I call to her but doesn't respond.

I walk down to her, crouching down in front of her and see what's up.

"Lauren, what's wrong?" she's still not responding. Did these people do something to her while I was outside? Is that why she's all tensed up? "Lauren, did these people hurt you?" Still no response. "Lauren –" whoa! Why did she jump after putting my hand on her? Is she –? "Lauren, hey. Hey, are you scared? Lauren? Come on, talk to me."