Tea Leaves and Diamond Bracelets

Bitter Trusting

Match Nine: Bitter Trusting:

Wang Ja made it back to his room. He managed to make his isolated room his own. When the Baltic states stepped in, they felt like they were stepping into Hong Kong itself. Wang Ja made his room his sanctuary.

He sat down at his laptop and booted it up. Ah, the internet. Without it, people would've gone nuts a long time ago. Many a night Wang Ja found it as his stress ball. He'd look up many things through Google. (Heh, who knew he would have access to Google again. Why couldn't China just lighten up and let them have it?) He had to be careful, though. Ivan would check the internet about 99.8% of the time. Wang Ja managed to work his way around this nagging fact. Incognito was such a gift to the browsers around the world.

That wasn't the only thing he had on his laptop.

Wang Ja opened up his translation program on his desktop. He downloaded from the internet. The butler was careful to do his research beforehand. He read the reviews and the feedback before downloading and installing. Wang Ja set the default of Russian to Chinese. He got started on the first document.

"Come on, you bastard," he said to himself. "What are you hiding in your e-mails?" As Wang Ja waited for the results, a notification popped up on his screen.

"Hm?" he asked. Seventy-eight new messages. Wang Ja shrugged to himself. Why not? Might as well knock as couple of e-mails out while he waits. The butler opened his e-mail and looked through the inbox. Mostly just notices about the various groups he was on. Another e-mail from Yao. Wang Ja rolled his eyes. His brother still tried to kiss up to him, huh? This was all Yao's fault anyway. Oh well, forget about him for now. Spam that tried to pass itself off as normal e-mails.

But then, he stopped on one certain e-mail.

Mi-Soon had sent him something. "Urgent! Please Reply ASAP!" Wang Ja stared at his screen. He like the other siblings hadn't heard from her in years. After the Korean War, they all took Im Yong's side. Mi-Soon cut herself off from everyone else. Why would she be reaching out now?

Against his better judgement, he clicked on the e-mail. He wasn't the only one she sent this too. All of the siblings got this e-mail. Wang Ja's eyes moved down the message.

I have to keep this short because I am not supposed to tell you this. But, I can't keep this a secret anymore. You might call me crazy, I don't care. This has to come out.

The world is ending. There are three forces at play: Tandeki, Vozrozhdeniye, and Mam. Our intelligence is saying that Japan, Russia, and England are in a race to bring the world to an end.

Wang Ja read the last line again and again. Russia wants to end the world? As much he wanted to celebrate about finding this out, something told him not to get his hopes up.

Then another notice popped up on his screen. This time, for a private chat session. Low and behold it was Mi-Soon inviting him to talk. Something told Wang Ja to decline. This was a rabbit hole waiting to happen. What kind of conspiracy theories could she drag him down? It sounded to dangerous. Maybe he should decline.

The Hong Kong man hit accept. A chat window popped up on the screen.

"Hello?" he typed. Wang Ja held his breath as he waited. He had never had to use chat on his laptop while living in Ivan's house. He hadn't even changed the setting after the update yet. Maybe she won't even reply back.

"Hi," Mi-Soon wrote back.

Wang Ja sat up in his chair. "Is this really Mi-Soon?" He waited for the reply.

"Yes," she wrote back. The Hong Kong man stared at the screen. Okay then, she could actually be her.

"Prove it," Wang Ja typed. He sat back and waited. Suddenly, a video feed popped up. A girl in a military uniform sat at a computer. There was she was.