Present Day, London

I walked for a while with no particular destination in mind, eventually finding the river and walking alongside it while the cold soaked through my sweater and into my skin. Eventually I found a bar that opened early and went inside, dragging my suitcase with me. Drinking had become a problem when I worked for Yun Seo, the alcohol serving as a way to ignore the gnawing emptiness inside of me. I’d told myself I would never drink like that again or use it as a way to escape my feelings, but I decided that I would break that promise just for one day.

The bar was dark and lit with swirls of neon light that cast a chill glow over all of the reflective surfaces, making the darkness feel like a fragmented dream. I found a seat in the corner and ordered whiskey, not the expensive stuff that Yun Seo had always preferred, but something cheap that I could drink for hours without making too much of a dent in my savings. I still didn’t know where I would spend the night, but I wasn’t worried. I could find a place to crash for one night, even if it was with a stranger.

I drank slowly and tried not to think as the bar slowly filled, watching the smiling, inebriated people without really seeing them and trying to remember the last time I’d felt that happy. Wallowing in emotions I didn’t want to feel, I didn’t notice the man who sat down at my table until he spoke.

“You look like you’ve been at it for a while, mate,” he observed in a posh accent.

Looking up, I squinted at him in surprise, my foggy senses seeing what they wanted to see for a moment and sending a shock of want down my spine, the resemblance so uncanny that I thought at first that he’d walked straight out of my memory. His hair was dark, his eyes even darker and he smirked as if he could read my thoughts well enough to find them amusing.

“Shall I order you another?” he asked, relaxing back in his chair and I could tell from the way his tailored suit shifted over his body that his compact frame was all muscle. “Maybe something a little nicer this time?” Calling over the nearest waiter with a gesture that was practiced and easy, he put in an order.

Of course he drank the same brand as Yun Seo.

“Something funny?”

I shook my head. “You have good taste.”

The man leaned his elbows on the table and gave me a piercing look, sculpted cheekbones catching in a flare of neon light from the dance floor. “How can you know that when you haven’t even tasted me yet?”

Laughing in relief to find something about him that was different from Yun Seo, I said, “Not much for subtlety, are you?”

“I wasn’t sure subtlety would work on someone as half-cut as you appear to be.”

“I have a high tolerance.”

“Maybe I should have ordered a double.”

“Are you trying to get me drunk?”

He shrugged a little and slouched in his chair again. “I’m trying to cheer you up is all. That sad face you’re pulling is really bringing me down.”

“Maybe I’m just a sad drunk,” I replied, relieved when the waiter returned with our drinks.

“I think you’re a lonely drunk,” the man countered, lifting his glass to tap it against mine. “And I aim to change that.”

Studying him as I tasted the familiar flavor on my tongue, I tried to decide if he was real or a shapeshifter of some sort who took the form of whatever a person most desired. But I couldn’t think of any creatures that matched that description, and he wasn’t exactly like Yun Seo. He was a little older, perhaps, a little taller, and clearly of English descent.

“New to town?” he asked, eyeing my suitcase.

I nodded. “Looking for a place to stay, in fact,” I said, deciding to give into the temptation to lose myself in the familiarity. “Just for a night.”

The man chuckled, and the arrogance of the sound was eerily familiar. “Now who is being less than subtle?”

“I’m not in the mood for subtlety.” I replied, taking another sip and rolling it around on my tongue before swallowing.

“My name’s Ian.”

“I don’t care.”

Laughing again, Ian reached out to trace a finger over my jaw. “What should I call you, then?”

“Jon.” I’d used the pseudonym occasionally in the less than legal things I’d done for Yun Seo. A western name made it easier to hide my identity when I was doing work that crossed borders.

Nodding as if he knew I was lying about my name, Ian leaned closer until our lips brushed together as he spoke. “Nice to meet you, Jon.” Then he kissed me.

It was nothing special. Ian was a little too careful for my liking, his hand almost limp against my jaw and his lips nibbling at mine so playfully that I bit a little at his in reaction. He made a sound I thought was dismay but must have been interest instead, because soon his hand was gripping me harder and the kiss became sloppy and demanding, hot and wet and enough to keep me distracted for a while.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

After we finished our drinks, Ian invited me back to his place and we fucked until I felt sore and hollow, wrung out by the intensity of my longing and just drunk enough to pretend he was what I wanted, but he wasn’t quite as strong as Yun Seo nor as cruel. He was overly gentle when I wanted him to be rough and he was kind when I wanted him to be cold. Even his arrogance was similar but not quite right, all posturing with no intelligence to back it up.

He went out on the balcony to smoke when it was over, and that was jarring enough to shake me out of my fantasy. Looking at him standing out in the cold night air, his profile too hawkish and a little too round to be quite right, the differences seemed all too obvious. Yun Seo had always been just shy of pretty, his masculinity undercut by a boyish quality that came out when he was flustered or feeling vulnerable, but there was nothing of a boy left in this man. He was all grown up and boring, accepting his life as it was rather than treating it like a game that could be either won or lost. He lacked Yun Seo’s passion, his refusal to settle for less than what he thought he deserved.

I was thrown off enough that I considered leaving right then, but I didn’t want to check into a hotel and spend the rest of the night alone, so I pretended to be asleep when he returned and tried to ignore the tender way he touched me before falling asleep at my back, his soft snores soon filling the room. Staring into the darkness, I waited for sleep that wouldn’t come, my mind so exhausted by spirals of useless thought that it refused to settle. When sleep finally found me, it was almost dawn.

I should have known I would dream of Yun Seo after fucking his English doppelgänger.

“We’re close now,” dream Yun Seo said, standing next to the window of his bedroom and looking out at a night sky that was alive with flashes of lightning against roiling clouds. “Soon we’ll have everything we need to take Ye Kwang down.”

His shoulders were wrapped in a silk robe that hid his scars. Not that they would have been visible in the darkness anyway, but it was strange that he was wearing so little when he’d always kept himself as hidden as possible. I could only catch the faintest glimpse of his features in the glass when the lightning briefly turned night into day, but his lips were curved with a hint of triumph, his eyes intense beneath the shadow of hair that hung loose over his face.

“And then what?” I asked, shivering in spite of the warm duvet wrapped around my legs. I was propped up on my arms in the midst of tangled sheets that resembled the storm outside more than a bed.

“Then?” He shrugged a shoulder and took a sip of whiskey. “Then I take back what’s mine. Everything they took from me and my family.”

I didn’t say anything, but I couldn’t help but wonder about everyone else, all the others who had been wronged as well. Yun Seo didn’t seem to be concerned about them getting the justice they deserved even though he’d used that incentive to get them to expose their own secrets and put their lives on the line in pursuit of revenge. I looked down at my toes where they were peeking out from beneath the sheet and wondered how much longer I could keep playing this game when I had nothing to gain and everything to lose.

“You’ve been wronged as well,” Yun Seo insisted as if reading my mind. “Your father would still be alive if it hadn’t been for them.”

I nodded absently, but didn’t reply. I wasn’t sure that was true. If they hadn’t given him purpose, I’m not sure my father would have outlived my mother very long anyway.

“Sang Kyu.”

Sighing, I tried to untangle myself from the covers. It was time to go. I never stayed the night, rarely had the luxury of using Yun Seo’s plush mattress for anything other than sex.

“You shouldn’t drive home in this storm.”

I looked up to see that he’d turned toward me, his profile silhouetted against a burst of lightning. He watched me as if waiting to see how I would react. It felt like a test and I hesitated while thunder rumbled softly in the distance.

Sliding off the mattress, I winced at the cold floor against my bare feet. “I’ll be fine.” I bent down to find my jeans in the pile of discarded clothing and was startled to feel his hand against my back. It was warm, feverishly hot, and even that much contact was enough to make me want more, as if my dream self knew that it had been months since my real body had been this close to him even though in the dream I’d obviously had enough to be willing to leave. The dissonance between the dream and reality left me feeling dizzy.

“Go back to bed,” Yun Seo murmured and I found myself wanting to say yes even though I knew better than to accept such generosity. His gifts always came with a price.

When I turned to look at him, his expression was cool and distant as always. His reasons for asking me to stay were obviously practical rather than because of any kind of attachment. Strangely, that made me feel better, to know he was behaving exactly as I expected.

“I’m leaving,” I said, turning away from him and the comfort I longed for but knew I wouldn’t find at his side.

I woke up with a stranger pressed against my back and wanted to crawl out of my own skin to escape the clammy touch of the arm around my waist and the hot breath against the nape of my neck. Luckily, Ian was a heavy sleeper and didn’t stir as I slipped out of his grasp. I dressed quickly and slipped out the door on silent feet, eager for a shower but not willing to stay long enough to risk another encounter with Ian.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the elevator doors and frowned at the dark mark on my neck. Ian might not be Yun Seo, but he’d left me with bruises just the same.

When I left the rundown apartment building, I realized that I was somewhere in East London. Shoreditch, according to the map on my phone. I suspected that this was the kind of place the customs officer had been expecting me to go, the streets decorated with art and lined with trendy bars that had menus like museum placards. I had been to enough cities now to recognize the pattern, how a neighborhood started out as the kind of place only immigrants would be willing to live in until the artists in search of cheap housing started taking over, making it popular until eventually gentrification pushed both groups out. Shoreditch seemed to be in the late stages of its transformation and I suspected that in spite of the artsy people still wandering the streets and the murals covering most of the walls, the bleeding edge artists had already moved on to the next place to be.

It suited my purposes well enough for the moment. This was a place where I could blend in without even trying. I wasn’t an artist, but I had spent a lot of time pretending to be a part of one crowd or another back in Seoul, and this was one I fit into better than most. I was a little too old to pass for just-out-of-college, but I still looked young enough to pass for post-grad even though I was tipping my way toward the middle of my thirties.

I wandered around looking for places with signs in the window advertising places to rent, but I didn’t have much luck. Realizing that I wasn’t going to make a great impression smelling like alcohol and looking like the death the banshee claimed I had hanging over me all the time, I decided to find a spot to pass the time until I could shake off my jet lag and clear my head. I booked a room in a ridiculously overpriced hotel not far from Ian’s building and ignored the cost. I didn’t pay much attention to the hotel’s decor either in spite of the designer’s obvious intent to make a statement with loud wallpaper and bright colors, simply dropping my backpack on the bed and sleepwalking my way through a shower, grateful for the decent water pressure and the scalding heat.

Collapsing on the bed afterward, I felt sleep swallow me whole the moment my head hit the pillow.