The Past, Seoul

The bar was crowded with young, hip people – not the sort of crowd I would have expected Yun Seo to favor, but perhaps he’d been looking to finally cut loose. Maybe he’d even been hoping to find someone to hook up with. The thought made me uncomfortable although that kind of behavior would actually explain a lot about how Yun Seo managed to keep himself so completely under control the rest of the time. No one could keep themselves wound as tight as he did without eventually exploding, so it made sense that he had to have methods for letting off steam. Going to a club and finding casual partners was not the way I would have expected him to relieve the pressure, but Yun Seo was still a mystery to me in many ways.

Skirting the crowd, I followed a path around the perimeter, glancing into alcoves at the framed art along the way. The imagery and labels of the art were all vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t really sure why. I thought they might be some kind of occult thing from the West, but I didn’t care enough to give it more thought than that. Eventually I came to the ninth table around the room and noticed a man in a hooded cloak in the painting above the table. The wizened figure held a lantern aloft but the light barely illuminated the darkness around him. After verifying that the painting was labeled as the Hermit, I shifted my attention to the booth and was startled to find a young woman seated there instead of Yun Seo. She gazed at me with big dark eyes and a slow, satisfied smile as if she’d been waiting for me, but that couldn’t be right. Unless… 

“Sorry,” I said as I backed away from the table with my hands outstretched. “I’m looking for someone else.”

She held up a phone, tapping the surface to light up a text string that looked identical to the one I’d been exchanging with Yun Seo. “I know,” she said loftily. “Have a seat.”

Studying her more closely, I realized that she bore more than a passing resemblance to Yun Seo between her angular features and penetrating stare. She was pretty, but a few years younger than me at least. Her hair was long and straight as an arrow, falling over her shoulders and obscuring half of her face in the dim light.

“Oh, sit down,” she said with a familiar sort of impatience that made me think of Yun Seo once again. “I’m not going to bite.”

I released the breath I was holding and slid onto the bench across from her, holding myself braced for a quick exit even though I could tell just by looking at her that she wouldn’t be much of a physical threat. “Jang Na Rae?” I asked softly, making an educated guess.

She nodded. “Smart enough to figure out that much, at least.”

“Did you steal your brother’s phone?”

Laughing suddenly, she ruined her enigmatic air with a snort. “Of course not.”

“Then how did you text me from his number?”

Folding her hands on top of the table, she leaned forward, and as her hair swayed away from her face I saw the burn scars on her left cheek, red welts that traced an ugly line from her forehead to her collarbone and disfigured her left ear. “I’m a genius with computers,” she said succinctly. 

For some reason I felt like being stubborn, so embarrassed by being tricked that I resorted to defensiveness. “That doesn’t answer my question.” 

“Phones are basically computers that fit into your pocket,” she continued in a tone that reminded me once again of her brother at his most arrogant. “All I had to do was load a little code onto your phone to hijack his communications with you.”

“You hacked my phone?” I asked, furious now.

She shook her head with a scoff. “That’s an exaggeration. It took all of five seconds while you were waiting around in the driveway doing nothing. In fact, you clicked the link to download the malicious code yourself.”

I blinked at her in confusion.

“I hid it in a pop up on that lewd website you were browsing while you waited for Yun Seo.” She lifted her martini glass to me in salute before taking a drink of the radioactive blue liquid glowing within. “You really should be more careful. Hackers are everywhere.”

I was suddenly grateful for the darkness of the bar because I felt flushed, half from embarrassment and half from anger. I remembered that day. One of my friends had sent me a link as a joke that took me to a porn site for a fetish that normally would have done absolutely nothing for me. I had foolishly clicked on it and gotten an eyeful of photos that lingered with me uneasily the rest of the day. What was worse was that the video at the top of the page had been a pair of men in a workplace setting with the employee satisfying his boss after hours. The executive in the video’s thumbnail looked nothing like Yun Seo physically, but the heat in his eyes as he stared down at his employee was exactly the same.

“Why am I here?” I asked, my teeth grinding against each other.

“I wanted to meet you.”

Before I could react, a waiter paused next to their table and delivered a drink. It looked less like the fanciful cocktail Na Rae was drinking and more like the kind of drink I generally preferred, something golden on the rocks garnished with a slice of orange. Smoke filled the glass, rising slowly as the waiter removed a wooden lid and backed away.

“You ordered for me?” I asked

“Old fashioned,” she said with a shrug. “I found it on your credit card receipts from when you went out with friends.”

“That’s an invasion of privacy!”

“Oh just give it a try,” she replied with a sweet smile. “They infuse it with hickory smoke here. You should take a drink before it settles.”

As irritated as I was, I had to admit I was also intrigued. The smoke changed the flavor of the drink, making it richer and bringing out flavors in the whiskey I had never noticed before. 

“So,” she said, tapping a black painted fingernail against the matching black lacquer of the table. “Let’s get started, shall we? How did you meet my brother?”

I stared at her for a moment while I savored my drink, trying to find my balance again. “Don’t you know already?” I asked, keeping my tone light. “Haven’t you hacked a CCTV camera or something to figure it out? Or, you know, actually asked your brother?”

She laughed, and there was something bright and joyful about the sound that surprised me. From the brief glimpses I’d had of her, I’d expected her to be moody and morose. “That would be a complete waste of time,” she said. “Yun Seo never tells me anything.”

“Why not?”

Eyes narrowing, she took another sip of her drink before returning it delicately to the table. “He says it’s for my own protection, but I know it’s because he prefers to be in control. I let him think he is. Most of the time.” Folding her hands on top of the table, she leaned forward again. “So, how did you meet?”

“Through a friend.”

“A friend?” She chuckled and covered her mouth with a hand. “Yun Seo doesn’t have friends.”

“A colleague, then.”

“You’re being awfully cagey for someone who has nothing to hide.”

“I don’t have anything to hide,” I said firmly, “And I’m being careful because I’m dealing with a criminal who hacks people’s phones and accounts.”

She sighed with a little pout. “Fair enough, but we’re never going to get anywhere this way.”

“I agree.” Taking another swallow of smoke and bittersweet burn, I waited, letting the liquid roll around in my mouth a bit before swallowing. “Why do you want to know anything about me at all?” I asked finally. “I’m no one. I just drive him around.”

“You do more than that. He sends you on errands and asks you to keep an eye on people.”

I focused on her again with a frown, wondering how she knew anything about the little off-the-books tasks Yun Seo had started giving me lately, keeping tabs on the CEO of a rival company to find out who they met with and how frequently and following a socialite who had been demanding more and more of Yun Seo’s time to see if she was working with anyone else. I didn’t mind the covert assignments. In fact, I found them thrilling, not only because they seemed like the sort of work a spy would be assigned to do – a childhood fantasy job fulfilled – but also because they meant Yun Seo trusted me enough to give me such sensitive tasks. 

Na Rae’s tone was matter of fact as she said, “He’s using you.”

I wasn’t sure I could argue that point. Of course Yun Seo was using me. In Ho had said the same thing to me when he found out that Yun Seo was paying me on the side instead of making me an employee of his company. Furious that Yun Seo would do such a thing, In Ho tried to explain to me that he must be keeping me off the books for a reason. It would be easier to fire me that way and he could cheat me out of benefits and appropriate compensation, but I didn’t feel cheated. Yun Seo paid me generously, more than enough to cover any other expenses I had and to pay down my family’s debt significantly. Besides, I liked the idea of belonging to Yun Seo alone, even if it was obvious to me how problematic that was.

“You don’t care if you’re being used, do you?” she asked, seeing right through me. She rolled her eyes. “You’ve fallen under his spell, just like everyone else.”

I realized that she was disappointed, as if she’d expected to find an ally in me, someone who would align with her in her frustration with Yun Seo. I’d heard only bits and pieces about Na Rae from her brother, but it had been clear to me that he admired her and wanted to protect her, doing what he could to accommodate her eccentricities while giving her the opportunity to pursue her dreams. She was about a decade younger than Yun Seo, so their sibling dynamic had likely been a bit askew from the start, but now I wondered if more was going on than Yun Seo had ever shared. Na Rae’s scars were obviously something she was self-conscious about since she covered them with her hair and intentionally kept her head tilted so that they would always be hidden by shadow. Did she avoid going out in public because of them? Surely the Jangs had enough money for plastic surgery to be an option, but she’d chosen not to pursue it and kept herself hidden away instead.

I strongly suspected she’d gotten the burns in the fire. I’d heard about it from In Ho, that the entire estate had burned to the ground, killing several people and gravely injuring others. By some miracle, Yun Seo and his sister had survived, but their father had been confined to a wheelchair because of his injuries and suffered a stroke shortly afterward. After that, Yun Seo built a new, modern mansion on the property and began his pursuit of greatness by founding Liminal. 

“What exactly are you trying to do here, Na Rae?”

I straightened at the sound of the voice, turning to see Yun Seo step out of the crowd and walk up to our table, his expression grim as his gaze focused entirely on his sister. He was dressed more casually than I’d ever seen him in a black button-down shirt and jeans, his unstyled hair falling into his eyes, long enough to shadow his eyes and soften the harsh angles of his face, shaving years off his appearance. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of him, my gaze catching at the triangle of pale skin revealed by the open button at the top of his shirt, but I tore my gaze away before my body could get any inconvenient ideas. I’d assumed that Yun Seo was the type who had learned how to look his best while dressed up, but to my dismay, he looked even better dressed down. I could only count my blessings that I wouldn’t have many opportunities to see him this way.

“I’m on a date,” Na Rae said with a smirk, crossing her legs casually as she turned to face him. “Has it been so long that you don’t know what one looks like?” She reached across the table to grab my hand where it was resting beside my drink, digging black-painted fingernails into my skin in a silent plea for my cooperation.

Yun Seo glanced at our hands on the table and then up at my face, and his gaze was so intense that I couldn’t endure it for long before I had to look away. He was angry – angrier than I’d ever seen him. “Did you trick him into meeting you here?” Yun Seo asked as he returned his attention to Na Rae, and I was relieved that he trusted me so much that he questioned her rather than doubting my loyalty.

“Our eyes met one day across the driveway and we just knew that it was meant to be. Isn’t that right, oppa?”

I winced and pulled my hand out of her grip.

“Na Rae,” Yun Seo said through a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes, “we’ve talked about this. I know you get bored in the house. If you want to go out, I can arrange it for you, but you can’t just trick people into meeting with you.”

Sliding out of the booth and standing up, she stepped in front of Yun Seo, her face painted with outrage. “You can’t tell me what to do,” she said, sounding like a petulant child as she propped her hands on her hips and glared up at him from her lesser height. She was wearing a black shift dress with long sleeves, but I could see more scar tissue peeking out from beneath her left sleeve. 

“You’re right,” Yun Seo replied steadily, “I can’t. I’m only asking that you find your own companions rather than try to steal mine.”

She glanced at me briefly. “Companions?” she asked, her voice laced with challenge. “Is that what you call them? How much extra do you pay them for that service?”

“Na Rae!”

I decided that I wanted nothing more to do with this, feeling embarrassed all over again that I had fallen into Na Rae’s trap and irritated that they were both acting like I wasn’t there. “I’m leaving,” I said, wondering if they would even notice my absence.

Yun Seo caught me by the arm before I could escape, his grip firm and unforgiving. “Are you okay?”

The question caught me off guard. “I’m fine,” I replied uncertainly, surprised by the seemingly authentic concern in his eyes.

“I’ll call you later, love,” Na Rae told me with exaggerated cheer. “This time from my own number.”

Yun Seo ignored her. “I’ll pay you extra for your trouble,” he murmured to me.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said, but he gripped my arm harder, his fingers so tight against my skin that I suspected they would leave marks behind.

“Yes, I do,” he said before releasing me and turning back to face his sister. 

Backing away slowly, I watched them until the crowd obscured their argument from view and then turned my back on the entire affair. I still didn’t know what Na Rae had hoped to get out of me or how Yun Seo had figured out where she was, but he hadn’t seemed particularly surprised to see me. I wondered if he had a tracker on his car. That would make sense. And maybe he had one on Na Rae as well. He was paranoid enough to have done far worse.

The more I learned about Yun Seo the more I realized I barely knew him at all.