Chapter 6: Don't lie and tell me that we're friends

[On the staircase]

If it's not scary enough dealing with an irate Jacob, Sunny thinks, then dealing with an irate Jacob while climbing a steep rickety staircase in this absolute antique of a house is bound to get your heart pumping. 

"Um, you don't have to chaperone me all the way up...I can probably find everything on my own...it's just an attic, right..."

"You know, hospitality is a two-way street - " Jacob starts, turning around swiftly and - Sunny doesn't need him to continue! Even the slightest stomp on the aged treads and jerk of the handrail sends his entire body bracing against the wall. Below, Soeun presses against his feet, in an amusingly scaled-down caricature of her owner.

"- I don't leave you alone, and you don't try to escape," Jacob finishes, drawing each word out into a silent, sharpened point. 

"Wait, what? I thought I was free to come and go?" Sunny cries, his eyebrows shooting up. 

Jacob crosses his arms and leans against the wall, as if Sunny is telling a mildly amusing joke and he's waiting for the punchline. 

"I mean, no offence - love the house, and you're obviously two rad dudes - but I haven't really had a chance to make up my mind, about the cult thing? Maybe, uh, if you could give me a few days..."

"Well, Jungmo has a way of making everything seem easy and voluntary like that," Jacob sneers. "But I'm sure you can appreciate that after months of research and tracking you down, we are not about to just let you walk out of our sight! That's kind of why we literally dragged you out of school - or did you think we were playing games?

"Even if you had gone down for a nice refreshing walk on the beach," he continues, "Fassy and I would have found you and brought you right back. That's why he sleeps on the roof, like a big ol' searchlight. Same thing if you had tried to pull any 'nautical nonsense'."

Sunny's heart sinks, and he can feel his face burn with embarrassment. 

Of course, Jacob was right...what was he expecting? He can't believe he'd felt so at ease a moment ago, spilling all of his worries to Jungmo, thinking that the gentleman abductor could be reasoned with! But a good cop and a bad cop are both cops at the end of the day - they're in league with each other, and he's nothing but a captive.  

Seeing that his words have finally landed, Jacob steps back. "Think of it as a nice vacation from your regular basic-ass life. Your nice older brothers will take care of everything - walking your dog, cooking your meals, doing your stinking laundry. Hell, the one downstairs might even be willing to hand in your summer homework, if you ask nicely!"

His large briliant eyes glimmer in the refreshed light of the house like two cut gems - hard and cold. "But at the end of the day, Apollo calls the shots. I'm living proof of his powers and I'm just a drop in the sea. Once he's singled you out, there's nowhere in the world that you can go to be rid of him. Nothing, and I mean nothing, escapes from the reach of the light."

As prisons go, it is certainly not as bad as it could be. There is a large armoire full of laundered towels and changes of clothes, and a matching credenza desk at which he could read. The attic has its own ensuite bathroom, although it is only a little thing, a windowless crawlspace hastily plastered and styled as a wetroom. Unlike the singularly brash and charismatic downstairs, this entire room and all of its furnishings have been painted a uniform, featureless cool white, creating a liminal space untethered to time or fashion. It would not win any prizes for warmth, but neither was there anything to disturb his peace.

There is also a trundle bed, seemingly conceived for a fellow and his furry friend to lay side by side as they drift into dreaming. Moreover, it might be in the most idyllic location in the house: east facing and adjoining the dormer, which looks out onto the moon and the star-speckled sea. 

It is almost...lovely. Like a storybook. Sunny marvels at the tastefulness of the simple attic room, at Jungmo's thoughtfulness in arranging this for him (for it surely was Jungmo, and not the hissing goose who just skulked out). But it never leaves his thoughts that there is a cruel utility to this arrangement: it would be impractical for him to escape via the creaking stairs, especially when both Jacob and Jungmo's rooms are en route. 

Not to mention that Jacob is still out there right now. Doing what, exactly? He thinks of the unambiguous threat to steer clear of the door handle, and imagines the metal pulsating with heat energy, ready to scald his fingers at the slightest touch. 

"So I really am a prisoner," he murmurs, so quietly and resignedly that even Soeun pays no heed. The curious Airedale is already sniffing the corners of the room, eagerly building a dapper cobweb moustache. 

[Hindsight is 20/20]

As Sunny lowers himself onto the bed, drained of energy, he once again feels the burning shame of his situation eating at his insides. If he had only had a more skeptical mindset from the very beginning, he could have asked more incisive questions! Things like,

"What does a follower of Apollo even do?"

"What do you expect me to do? I mean, apart from replacing your flashlight apps."

"What do you think I - can - do?"

That's right...maybe he could have even persuaded his captors to let him go, if he just had some basic information about their motives and assumptions! Instead, he allowed Jungmo to steer the entire conversation - had even been taken in by the guy - and failed to gather any details that could actually help him survive! But it is too late to beg for another audience now and frankly, too embarrassing. 

Adding insult to injury, they now know way, way too much about him. Oh, how could he ever expose his own weaknesses like that! Talking about his insecurities, about his family? Nearly allowing himself to say that he wanted...that he wanted what they had...

They probably think he's a needy man-baby without any survival instincts, and they'd be right. 

[A moment's peace]

Clearly, today is just cursed, and sometimes the only way through a bad day is to fast-forward to the next day. So despite his every sense protesting vehemently against it, Sunny resigns himself to sleep.

A quick scrub in the wetroom removes most of the dirt on his neck and underarms, though his arms feel like lead and he falls short of scrubbing his whole body. Soeun, the amazing cobweb magnet, gets a quick rinse too. The towels in armoire are soft - the lovingly used kind - but the designer tee that Jacob supplied him (for this was surely Jacob, and not the saintlike man who cares nothing for material possessions) scratches at the delicate skin of his collarbone, and he curses his nemesis's ability to come up with fresh torments to fill every hour. 

"Literally you could have just left me one of my shirts!" He curses under his breath. "Weirdo!"

Soon it is off to bed, and he draws the sheets around him, feeling the faint chill of the summer night seep in through the drafty windowframe. The round moon - perfectly centred in the frame, as if hung there on a nail - shines wanly. 

He remembers the moment when he first noticed the moon fading - unbelievably, it was just last night, but now feels like an eternity ago. Has it truly and permanently lost its lustre? Or is it just his confused mind playing tricks on him after days of one supernatural encounter after another, so frequent as to be nearly mundane? He is honestly not sure when anything would look normal to him again...

Sensing her friend's confusion, with that keen otherworldly sense that a dog possesses, Soeun perks up from where she lies on the lower frame. She leaps easily onto his bed, walking daintily overtop of the mattress and around the contours of his body, and nuzzles her way to his face. 

Sunny touches her warm body, grateful for her attempt at assuaging him. A warm, steadying presence. There is something sweetly familiar about her slightly porky breath, her eyes adorned with crusts, the huffy breaths that gradually deepen into snores - something that briefly transmutes an unfamiliar and sterile attic into a home. Everything has changed in the last 24 hours, except his little girl.  

Now, in the quiet of the night, his earlier indifference towards her gives way to a more nuanced view of the situation. She might be all right physically, but she's been used by these people too. They've charmed her...and he's let them. But the reality is that they only have each other. 

She remembers that, while he's allowed himself to forget.

Under the light of the pale moon, his fingers find the lingering granules of dirt still lingering in her hair, and flick them away. As if on queue, something seems to scratch at his eyes, and he feels the hot tears coming down. 

"Sorry..." he murmurs. "Sorry your owner's such a loser. That he lost you your home, and thought he could just find another one with a bunch of strangers. It's not that easy, is it, Soeun? You're my only home." 

[The conversation]

Sleep, even with exhaustion and demoralization to coax it along, would not come easily. After lying in the cold bed for an hour or more, watching the diminished orb of the moon intermingle with passing cloud-forms until his eyes are painfully dry, Sunny begins to hear something. Something, low and deep, burbling just underneath the wheezing of Soeun's occluded nasal passages and the gentle thrumming of the ocean wind. 

Two people's voices are wafting up from the staircase and through the cracks of the door, faintly - and faintly recognizable. Crawling to the edge of the bed and taking care not to wake Soeun, he strains to hear them. 

"What's there to question? You saw what he did on the beach. And his hair - "

"I'm not sure."

"He is one of us. What else could it be?"

"I'm not sure," the first voice repeats after a pause, quieter but with identical tone. Jungmo. "Truth be told I'm a bit disconcerted by it. And, by the implications of the power itself."

"The power? What's the big deal? It's harmless by definition!" Jacob. 

"And yet we must interrogate it. Harmless to who..." Jungmo's voice hushes and dims, becomes nearly fuzz. Sunny can vaguely trace the fragments of sentences: "...alone...only a little...suppose...higher, even sublime...real peril...what could we do then?"

There is no denouement, no answer. Soon, Sunny hears the sound of footsteps - Jacob walking away and retreating into his own unseen sanctum on the second floor, probably to cool his head. Leaving only Jungmo - a nearly imperceptible but lingering presence on the stairs. 

Does thinking produce any sound? To Sunny, the hollow vacated by the mysterious conversation is like a dull roar. He adjusts himself on the bed and pulls the covers close again, swaddling himself inside his own body heat before it can dissipate. 

It's strange...

He should be worried. They are his enemies, after all. And what little he could make of the conversation seems portentious. Maybe it could be important for him. But more than that, he finds himself...oddly soothed. 

Hearing them and their hushed voices reminded him of something...ancient and forgotten...some nascent memory deep inside, shadows of a buried childhood. He can feel something welling up inside his chest - a warmth tinged with blue. 

Like Mom and Dad, he thinks, without being able to picture their faces.

He drifts off at this thought, by and by.