Beneath the Surface // Moonsun

Chapter 21

Yongsun POV

I don't know how I'm supposed to feel after forfeiting my life for a gang of drug dealers. It feels both surreal and crushingly insignificant. The silence at the dinner table only reaffirmed that thought. They probably laughed when I left.

Wheein seemed to take it seriously though, even when her eyebrows knitted in confusion at my proposition. Maybe it is a suicide mission. The Force has infinitely more safeguards, precautions, and officers that will back you up. Wheein gave me the metaphor that I will be a hook on a line that's being plunged into a fishing hole deep inside the Arctic ice. If I get in too deep, they won't be able to pull me out again; if somehow my line (of communication) is cut, same fate.

The likelihood of Adrian Jiang even taking me deeper into the organization is slim, it's dire that I blackmail him with information from Michael King — enough to scare him, not too much that he thinks it's safer to kill me. If he decides to try to kill me, Wheein stressed, make sure that I pull the trigger first. The thought of killing someone else with hardly twenty-four hours between the last time makes me feel sick. I wonder if I'll attempt to defend myself if the time does come.

I sit on the edge of the lighthouse's cliff, or maybe the cliff that allows the lighthouse to reside there, and pick at the clumps of brittle brown-yellow grass. Now that I'm not training, the cold settles beside my bones with all the familiarity of a kitten curling into its owner's lap.

Maybe I decided to do all this because I like to marinate in my own self-pity and inverse the world so that it's an incomprehensible enemy focused on me that I can't possibly fight. All the terrible things that happen gravitate to me of their own divine will and I can blame the fact that I alone have fucked my life up on a faceless entity to my own contentment.

I feel the wetness on my cheeks, but I let it slide down into the corners of mouth until I can taste the salt and pretend that it's only water from the sea. It's pathetic.

"Choi Yongsun," a familiar drawling voice comes from somewhere behind me, "second generation Korean-American still maintaining her roots through an authentic Korean first name, but has disappointed her parents — rest their souls — by getting into the business of...?"

So Byulyi's come out of her way to torture me with Twenty Questions? Fine. I could use the distraction. I wipe the moisture off of my face, but don't turn to look at her. "Molly, ecstasy, and cocaine."

"Party drugs for party-girl!" She sounds exaggerated like she's doing a dramatic reading of a 'say-no-to-drugs' commercial script. "But why, oh why, would this low-time dealer want to jump up into the big leagues with Lin's Clan?"

"I saw an opening and took it. Michael King was sloppy and cocky, I can do better."

"How did you know about King?"

"How couldn't I?" I take up the air of a young woman that's too in over her head to realize it. "He flaunted his position to whoever he sold to. If not me, someone else would've got to him."

Byulyi sits down beside me, close but not too close, in the damp dirt. She tucks her chin between her knees and doesn't offer up any other questions. She smells slightly of sweat, coconut, and salt. I can't manage to dredge up the anger I felt for her earlier. It all seems so petty right now.

"I'm sorry that I've been an ass to you." She says quietly, eyes trained towards the water. "If you can believe it, I haven't always been this way."

"I'd hardly think anyone could be born quite like you." I mutter back bitterly. It's a little late for pity apologies.

"I didn't come out here to make you forgive me; I'm just extending an apology."