The Past, Seoul

I found Chan Wook sitting on the patio one night, textbooks scattered around him, his chin about to fall off his hand as he stared at an empty notebook. Grabbing his favorite soda from the fridge, I joined him outside and nudged books aside to carve out a place to sit beside him.

“How’s school going?” I asked as I offered him the drink.

Lifting his head, he looked lost in thought for a moment before his eyes caught on the bottle and went wide with delight, a weary smile warming his features as he reached for it. “Grueling,” he replied after taking his first sip. “I thought studying for the entrance exams was a lot of work, but the pace has been relentless.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re taking classes above your level,” I pointed out.

“I tested into them,” he protested with a wounded look in his eyes.

I sighed. “I know. I know.” Looking down at one of the textbooks, I tried to decipher the code on the page but gave up quickly. “I just hoped that you would be able to enjoy school more. This is your last gasp of freedom before adulthood and a career gobble it up. You should make time to enjoy yourself along the way.”

Chan Wook rolled his eyes and gave my shoulder a playful shove. “Like you have? You skipped it and immediately started working yourself to death.”

“I did,” I agreed, biting back the retort I wanted to say, that I had done it all for him, so that he could have the experience I wouldn’t get. But the choice had been mine alone and I couldn’t put that kind of pressure on him when he’d never asked me to do it.

“Do you have the night off, or are you going to have to head out again?”

Lifting the beer I had grabbed for myself when I got his soda, I shook my head. “I have the evening to myself for once.”

“Yourself?” Chan Wook made a face. “I’m here, too. We should do something fun together!”

“Don’t you need to study?”

Slapping the book in front of him shut, he pronounced, “I’ve studied enough. What do you want to do?”

I had a hard time arguing with that look on his face. I’d always been weak to it, ever since we were simply neighbor kids and he’d asked to borrow a toy. I took another sip of beer. “To be honest, I don’t want to do anything but be lazy tonight. I don’t want to go out and I definitely don’t want to drive anywhere.”

“That still sounds nice,” he said, shifting books out of the way so he could scoot closer to me. “We could watch a movie and eat junk food like we did when we were little.” He leaned into me with a smile even stickier than the humid evening air, and I felt the heat of his arm against my own like a flame against my skin. “Or we could play Go-Stop! I’ve improved my game since the last time we played.”

I thought about how good he’d been before and how I’d had to cheat a little to retain the upper hand. He would win easily against me now, and even if he didn’t manage it on his own I would probably let him win. “Are you sure you want to test me?” I asked, hiding my smile as I took another drink of beer.

“I do,” he said. “I don’t care if I’m winning if I’m playing with you.”

I froze, trying to figure out how to respond to a statement like that. Chan Wook had always been impractically sentimental, so his statement could mean nothing more than brotherly affection, but brothers didn’t act like that, did they? Brothers fought for dominance. They were competitive and willing to use any leverage they had to come out on top.

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I was grateful for the excuse to remain silent.

The text was simple, only three words. Come get me.

Normally I would groan at getting called to work on the first evening I’d had off in weeks, but I never felt as annoyed by the extra work for Yun Seo as I probably should have.

“No.” Chan Wook groaned. “Tell me it isn’t your devil boss.”

“Devil boss?” I arched an eyebrow at him.

“He’s so demanding. He works you like a slave.”

I laughed. “The job isn’t that much work. In fact it’s far easier than most of the jobs I’ve had.” Texting Yun Seo back to ask where he was, I was shocked by the response.

I think someone spiked my drink. Then he sent me the address of a bar in Songpa. Come quickly before someone figures out how far gone I am.

My fingers trembled as I typed out a quick response to let him know I was on my way, my imagination giving me far too many unhelpful images to go with his words for me to process. I imagined him half drunk on a stool, his cheeks flushed pink and his lips bitten red, and I wondered how I was going to get him to the car without causing a scene – or crossing a line Yun Seo had never given me permission to cross. He was my boss, I reminded myself. No matter what state I found him in, I had to keep him at arm’s length. This was the best job I’d ever had and I refused to ruin it over something as stupid as hormones.

“I have to go,” I said, already rising to my feet.

“Tell him you’re busy,” Chan Wook insisted. “That you’ve been drinking and can’t drive.”

“I only had two sips,” I replied, backing my way toward the kitchen so I could show him my can of beer as if he could tell how full it was from the outside.

“Hyung!” Chan Wook said in frustration, grabbing at the can.

I let him take it. “Finish it if you want,” I told him. “You’re far too responsible for your own good.”

“You can’t be serious,” he said with a glance at the can. He was still underage, but only barely. I’d started drinking with older friends by his age, but Chan Wook was responsible in ways I’d never been.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I replied. “I’m giving you permission. Enjoy yourself for once!”

“What’s the point of drinking at home when you’re alone?”

Relieved that he hadn’t reached a point of frustration in his life where that kind of thing was appealing, I waved at him over my shoulder as I slipped on my shoes. “Put it back in the fridge if you don’t want it. I’ll probably need a drink by the time I get home.”

I wasn’t dressed for a party, but I was presentable enough for a bar, even if it was the kind of swanky place Yun Seo would patronize. Rich people liked to dress down at places like that to show off that they could dress however they liked as long as they had money to spend.

I drove past the bar twice before I realized that it was one of those trendy hidden bars and that the entrance looked more like a shrine than a door.

Parking the car and walking my way through the narrow streets to the address, I frowned at the framed artwork in the middle of the alcove that marked the entrance, an illustration depicting young man with a bindle and a dog on a leash looking over his shoulder without realizing he was about to step off a cliff. A title at the bottom of the frame read: The Fool.

I moved closer when I saw a couple push the entire back wall of the alcove inward and walk through it, the bar beyond glimmering with crimson and gold light. I followed them inside and pushed the moveable wall shut behind me, pausing to get my bearings in the strange space. The walls were painted black and the tables were arranged within larger nooks around the room, each containing a similar painting to the one I’d seen on the outside, illustrations rich with symbolism and labeled with cryptic words.

As if he’d seen me enter, Yun Seo sent me another text. I’m at the Hermit table.

I rolled my eyes, thinking that sounded like an appropriate place for him to be and wondering if he’d requested the table specifically. In the year I’d been working for him now, I’d never seen Yun Seo relax with friends. In Ho was the closest thing he had to a friend as far as I could tell, and Yun Seo basically paid the lawyer to hang out with him. What free time he allowed himself, Yun Seo used to cozy up to influential patrons or be seen as someone important by the elite. I didn’t have a lot of friends myself, but I still had connections from my previous jobs and a few buddies from high school that I kept in touch with. I wasn’t sure Yun Seo had anyone.

Other than his sister, I supposed, but I’d never really met her. She’d been standing in the doorway a few times when I arrived at the mansion to pick up Yun Seo, but she’d worn sunglasses and a shapeless, oversized hoodie and leggings like an incognito celebrity. Even though I had heard that she was the brains behind Liminal’s soon to be published app, she worked from home and rarely even stepped outside if the flashes of pale skin revealed by gaps in her clothing could be trusted. From what little I know about the inner workings of the company, Yun Seo’s sister was something of a recluse and left her brother to handle all the social requirements of their work. The rumor was that most of the employees had never even met her before.

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 of the restaurant, glancing into alcoves at the framed art along the way. The imagery and labels 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 drawing 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…

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“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 young, at least a few years younger than me. 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 such 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 reached for a blue drink in a martini glass that practically glowed in the darkness as if it were radioactive and took a thoughtful sip. “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 did 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 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 lacquered 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, to keep tabs on the CEO of a rival company and find out who they met with and how frequently or to follow 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 but also because they meant Yun Seo trusted me enough to give such sensitive tasks to me.

“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 a kindred spirit 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 almost 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 they had enough money for plastic surgery to be an option, but she’d chosen not to pursue it and kept herself hidden away.

I strongly suspected she’d gotten them in the fire. I’d heard about it from In Ho, that the entire estate had burned to the ground and several people had died. 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 himself step out of the crowd and walk up to our table, his expression grim as he focused on his sister. He was dressed more casually than I’d ever seen him in a black button-down shirt and jeans, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his hair falling into his eyes, long enough to shadow his face and soften the harsh angles enough to make him look years younger. 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 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 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 I couldn’t endure the intensity of his gaze 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 with outrage in her eyes. “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 with a challenge in her voice. “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. The more I learned about Yun Seo the more I realized I barely knew him at all.