Chapter Text
You’re nineteen when you meet him.
He bursts through the pawn shop front door almost faster than the artificial bell can ring, wearing—and you always remembered this very clearly—an oversized Harley Davidson t-shirt, sagging black jeans and beat up Converse All-stars. You remember remembering so clearly because you were too distracted puzzling out why his shirt said Harley Davidson of Honolulu to see his tattoos. New York is about as far from Honolulu as two cities in the same country can get from each other, farther, it seems, than the north and south poles; far enough that Hawaii exists to you only in post cards and technicolor daytime television.
Maybe he’s been to Honolulu and bought the shirt himself, maybe he’s from there—your mother’s sister always says there are a lot of Asians in Hawaii, more Asians than natives, soon the place will be overrun, although there were more Filipinos than Chinese or Koreans. Harley Davidson of Honolulu, the simple black-gray shirt is the most interesting thing that has walked into your shop since Lim Forester swaggered in gap toothed and jovial to sell the golden molars he’d had punched out of his head to pay off his gambling debts.
Back when they used real gold, Lim Forester said with an air of pride upon presenting the false teeth. Wearing gloves was not standard procedure for evaluating goods but from the other side of the counter you saw small flecks of red—blood—and pink—gums.
They still use real gold, you’d replied, although most people preferred white, because glimmering golden teeth made people wonder if you were a pimp, or a failed rapper. After that, you undervalued Lim Forester by two-hundred dollars because that’s what your dad tells you to do (if they negotiate, then offer a better price); after all, the teeth were only ten karat, contained a significant amount of palladium, and near hollow besides.
You plan to ask the young man who burst into your shop about his shirt while appraising whatever he wants to sell you, and are caught off guard when he takes a running leap over the counter, yanks you down by your shirt and crouches down like someone trying not to be found. Your heart becomes a trapped wild animal held back by the cage of your chest, and nonsensically, or maybe perfectly sensibly, you blame your father, who, when he started this venture almost fifteen years ago under the alcohol-induced notion that it would lift your entire family out of poverty and struggle, was too cheap to have bullet resistant glass panels installed. We’re not a bank, your father said, disparaging, no need.
Your assailant’s knuckles knock agitatedly against the bare skin of your hip, exposed by the stretch of your shirt caught in his clenched fist. His hands are shaking. His breath is damp against your neck and heavy with the familiar pungency of tobacco. Like he’d been running , you plan to tell the police, after you’ll have called them, after this whole nightmarish encounter has run its course. You’ll say, it was obvious from the beginning that he was a good for nothing criminal, a gangbanger, more and more boys his age are falling into that lifestyle.
And even though it will be a lie (you were too focused on the Harley Davidson t-shirt to see the tattoos), you will channel your mother to say it with conviction, tutting and fretting over the latest crime reports in front of the television while sipping her misu, an indulgence of unoccupied time that she allowed herself only once a week, for exactly one hour on Sunday evenings. MSNBC is her slow-drip poison of choice. Knife-violence in Manhattan at an all time high; ten research-proven methods to protect yourself from becoming the victim of sexual assault; Surgeon General worries about growing crack epidemic; mayor promises to crack down on gang activity, more news at ten …
You prepare yourself to yell for help, hoping that Mrs. Chow next door is wearing her hearing aids today, at the same time looking conspicuously for a weapon to defend yourself with, at the same time wondering if the sound will startle the young man enough that he will let you go and you can reach the land line, until a hand smothers your breath in the sour desperate cradle of your mouth.
“Shh.” The gentleness of his grip reinforces his words. They mean to silence, not suffocate, despite the heart splattering fear induced by their foreignness. “Just stay quiet for a still, hm? I ain’t gonna hurt ya, just need somewhere to lay low. Once I shake ‘em, I’m gone.”
His voice is high, pitchy, like a vinyl record that needs buffing and polish. You face forward and can only see him out of the corner of your vision yet begin to suspect that he is not a young man, rather, he is a boy no older than you, if you have to guess.
On the cedar brown laminated countertop the quiz for your spring semester freshman seminar on Geology of the Americas sits poised on an old Acer laptop, open like the gaping mouth of a helpless baby bird awaiting its feed. With online schooling, everything relies on timers that trickle down to zero, on pop-up windows that you can only open and close one, on honor , the assumption that the disappointment of their professors (and being written up for academic misconduct) are sufficient deterrents to keep students from cheating.
You have two minutes left to list all of the differences between the four types of sedimentary rock and all you can think about is the smell stuffed into your nostrils, the smell of this stranger whose touch begins to feel less like a gun and more like a caress because god you’re lonely. You don’t know the last time anyone has touched you with intent. The fact that you don’t yet know what shape this teenager's intent will take (he could be lying about not hurting you, just like you will lie to the police later on) sharpens the fear into a nascent thrill. You will smell tiger balm and cheap rolling tobacco long after he has left.
Park’s Pawn Shop is known amongst the neighborhood of Whitestone, Queens for two things. The first is for being the third best pawn shop in Seoul, and it says as much in neat, blocky hangul beneath the larger English. Specifically, your father advertises Park’s Pawn Shop as the first American branch of a wildly successful Korean chain, of which he was entrusted with the sole ownership and managerial responsibilities. When you were little, you believed this to be true, not because you thought your parents incapable of lying like most children your age, who trusted wholeheartedly in every piece of gospel that fell from their parents’ mouths, but because you thought your father smarter than the type of person to tell a lie that was so blatantly false and easily verifiably.
Any Lim Forester or Mrs. Chow could access the internet via their bulky desktop computer and type in something like ‘best pawn shops in Seoul’ or ‘where to sell jewelry, Seoul’ and discover your father’s enterprise nowhere amongst the hundreds of results, even the sponsored ones. Suspicions confirmed (because it would not do to call Kim Ilbok, your father, a liar without hard evidence) you ask him about it one day. Indirectly, of course, deferentially, circling the heart of your question like a penny circling its final destination at the bottom of the donation conical in the cavernous lobby of the Liberty Science Center, endlessly. You do not say ‘father, are we liars?’ but ‘why is part of our store sign in Korean even though we live in America? And furthermore, why does it say best in Seoul and not best in New York?’
Your father sucks down the rest of his soju without sparing a glance your way. You remain seated cross-legged on the rug in front of the television, and play listlessly with the cherry red fire truck gifted to you by your mother’s sister (meant for ages five to seven although you are eleven and three-quarters), knowing that the likelihood of your father answering decreases with every perceived interference into what he calls ‘me time.’
“I printed that sign in hangul because my people are my target clientele base. Koreans. We are Korean, Seokjin-ah, you can’t forget that okay? You’re not American, you’re Korean.” Your birth certificate, which you had to procure in order to enroll in middle school to prove that you weren’t ‘one of those illegals,’says otherwise.
“Every pizza shop from here to Brighton Beach claims to be the original.” Your father stretches his voice on the word original, flattening his i’s to sound almost native, but also like he is mocking the English too. “Original Ray’s, Original Joe’s, Original Luigi’s, established before the birth of Christ, you think they aren’t all lying? Why can’t I?
“Seokjin-ah, to get ahead as a businessman it’s not enough to grab every advantage handed to you, you know that? If that was enough everyone would be Bill Gates. Am I Bill Gates? Is your eomma Oprah Winfery? Listen, listen to me, are you listening? You have to create opportunities even when they don’t exist, or you’ll never get anywhere. Your eomma and I did the hard part, you know that right? We packed up our whole life, left our families, work these long days, all to give you more opportunities. There was nothing left for us in Seoul. We did the hard part, so all you have to do is study in school and get good grades, right?”
You nod, because when your father asks you a question that isn’t really a question the correct answer is always yes (unless it’s no), but you are acutely dissatisfied with this answer and find it strange to refer back to a city in which, according to your father, there was nothing left for us; if there is nothing left, why have this reminder of a life that your father so clearly resented splattered across the front of his new beginning for all of Whitestone to see at all?
So that is the first thing Park’s Pawn Shop is known for. The second is its location. Park’s Pawn Shop shares a length of pock-marked sidewalk with a laundromat, a Papaya King hot dog stand, a one room law office that offers notary services as well as immigration assistance, an auto repair garage, and a diner. A few blocks south is the only grocery store within walking distance, a C-town, and beyond that, the unspoken boundary between Whitestone and Flushing. Were a resident of Whitestone to walk to the next nearest pawn shop, they’d pass the laundromat and the Papaya King, perhaps waver, tempted by the smell of potatoes being deep fried in peanut oil, then continue on their way, precious goods clutched in hand.
They’d pass a public school and a Shell self-service gas station, a florist run by Catholic Puerto Ricans, a Vietnamese bakery, then finally, upon crossing the unofficial barrier of 25th street, would be in Flushing. Bai Hu territory. Bai Hus have red, blue and black ink for stripes, prowling the street corners with gleaming gold fangs framed in their snarls. Each foray through the jungles of Bai Hu territory demands a toll: maybe just your winning lottery ticket or the petty change in your wallet. If they like the way your sister’s breasts look in her tank top then perhaps her, or if you’re very unlucky, the toll is your life. The point is on your way to the second nearest pawn shop, you’re just as likely to lose the thing you were trying to sell, and even more besides. So, while Park’s Pawn Shop offers prices just under fair, their equipment hasn’t been updated since you were born, and it is run by a nineteen year old (that’s you), as Whitestone’s only option, it has become prime real estate.
You don’t expect to see him again. The whole affair takes less than a minute from the moment he ran in to the moment his lanky frame disappeared again through the front door. He leaves without taking so much as ten breaths of air, which is the reason you tell yourself why your fingers stalled over the rotary dial, on the second ‘one’ in nine-one-one. There was no damage done, no harm to you or the wares you store in the back. And besides, it’s never good to involve the cops. They aren’t your friends, your father always preaches, they’ll deport you even though you were born here. And it’s not because your family is doing anything illegal, pigs are just always bad news. It was the type of one off event that will fade from memory in ten or so years, triggered occasionally by a particular smell or sound or word that will bring it all back in crystal clarity.
At least it would have been had the boy not swaggered into your shop three days later.
Ever since that day, you look up from your homework quicker, the bright clink of the doorbell has become a source of anxiety that triggers a damp sweat up and down the back of your neck. The minute—no, the second you see him you lunge for the phone, as well as the aluminum baseball bat you’ve started keeping under the counter.
“Leave, or I’ll call the cops for real this time.” You mean to show him you mean business.
His eyebrows jerk upwards, a condescending smile twists his lips. “You even know what to do with that thing?”
“Oh I don’t know, do I know how to use a phone that everyone on planet earth has? What’s the number again? That’s right, nine-one-fucking-one.”
To him, this is an open invitation to—of all things—flirt. “Cute, but what I meant was that bat you’re hangin’ onto like you’re Wade Boggs aboutta slam one into left field.”
“Don’t come any closer.” You try to maintain your grip on the bat, but it has no rubber taping at the base and your palms are damp. It slips and you fumble it like an idiot, as if to prove that no you really don’t know what you’re doing. A bat is a straight-forward weapon, like a cast iron skillet or a hammer, blunt, and doesn’t require much finesse to menace someone with. The weight alone should be deterrent enough, but he stares you down like you’re a toddler wielding a sippy cup, with amusement and curiosity. A sudden, intrusive impulse streaks through you, an urge towards violence as for one second you contemplate proving him wrong and shattering his knee-caps with your bat. You dislike violence, but hate condescension even more. You get enough patronizing words and looks from the adults in your life, you don’t have to take shit from this little asshole.
Lost in your fantasizing, you are less aware of your surroundings and hadn’t noticed him sidle up to the counter until he plants his elbows and crossed forearms inches from the paperwork you’d been doing before he came in.
“S’that how daddy taught you to speak to payin’ customers?”
You snort. “Who said anything about my dad? This place is mine.” Kim Ilbok would smack you silly if he heard you talking about his shop with such flippant ownership; his successful business, his hard work, the best business ventures run themselves Seokjin-ah, which is why you’re here and he’s at home becoming one with their ugly blue gingham couch. Because unpaid labor is essentially equivalent to ‘running itself’ as far as he's concerned.
Jungkook jerks his chin at the documents you’re in the midst of translating from English to Korean in order to renew the shop’s precious metal dealer’s license before it expires next month. Your mother used to do this, but after picking up extra shifts at the hospital (cleaning up vomit and watery shit, not as a nurse or doctor) she vacillates between one of only two states of being: too busy and too tired.
“ ‘Ilbok’ ain’t exactly a name from this decade. Or the last two, matter of fact.”
This causes you to glance down at your documents, because you are almost certain that you haven’t written your father’s name anywhere in English. “You read hangul?”
“S’the only thing my momma ever taught me, back when she was sober enough to give a shit.” Half his mouth lifts like he’s telling a joke that you’re supposed to find funny. “I’m Jungkook, by the way.”
You feign disinterest and are careful to keep your hand-writing precise. “Didn’t ask.”
“No need to be such a bitch.”
Your hand tightens around your pen. “Excuse me?”
“I mean, here I am polite as fuck just trying to make conversation and you’re treating me like week-old gum under your Converse. Didn’t insult ya momma and forget about it, did I?”
“Maybe I’m not interested in playing nice with the punkass kid who assaulted me the last time he was here all so he could dodge the cops. Or maybe—”
“—Yo wait a fuckin’ minute, assault? I barely touched your ass, matter of fact I’d say I was sweeter than apple pie—”
“Or maybe,” you press on, “I don’t see the point in entertaining the juvenile pigtailing pulling of a little gang banger in training who couldn’t even spell misogyny if I underlined it in a dictionary for him.”
The smirk on Jungkook’s pimply face is infuriating. “I only came by to say sorry for scarin’ ya, but now I’m wonderin’ if I should say ‘fuck you’ instead.”
“Fuck you,” you snap.
“Nah, fuck you.”
“Fuck. You.”
Jungkook leans closer. “Yeah all right, no need to beg. My place or yours?”
And really, you walked right into that one. It’s exactly the type of immature bullshit guys at your high school used to say, luring girls into veiled innuendo that lingered in the ambiguous space between a joke and sexual harassment. You want to tell Jungkook that if he has nothing to pawn and has said his piece to get the fuck out, because you don’t owe him anything, not thanks, not acceptance of his terrible apology, not even a laugh. But you don’t say any of those things.
“I wasn’t scared.” Your ears burn, and you hope the shaggy cut of your hair hides the incriminating blotchiness.
“S’that so? Guess you and I remember things different.” Jungkook is enjoying your discomfort, you can tell.
There’s always a lull in foot traffic in the afternoons. Customers try to come before work, or after, and Park’s Pawn Shop sees most of its business on the weekends, so on a Thursday at 2:17, no one drops by to interrupt the conversation you’ve found yourself unwittingly and unwilling participant to. A part of you is still toying with the idea of calling the cops but the handset remains besides the rotary in limbo, neither dialing nor on the cradle, waiting.
“Shouldn’t you be in school? Or at least behind it, ripping off high schoolers for an eighth?” You forgo the licensing forms in favor of your homework in a vain attempt to focus on something other than Jungkook’s face that is too close to yours. You want to be able to stop staring, but can’t.
He whistles. “Look at Missy here, knows herself a little street slang. Hey you got a fancy dictionary for that back there too, or just speaking from personal experience?” Why won’t he leave? What does he want from you?
“As if. Drugs are for sad fucking losers who can’t handle real life.” Your local high school had a graduation rate of just twenty-five percent, and was an institution riddled with teen pregnancies, overdoses and dropouts turned army recruits. You see what that type of life does to a perfectly good, perfectly hopeful teen and refuse to fall into the same tired stereotypes. You’re going to leave this shitty neighborhood one day; you’re going to get your master’s degree in economics, network your way into a steady city government job with a high five figure salary and a pension, and leave Whitestone in your rear view mirror. You can’t do that high, or in rehab, or fiending for your next fix, so you stay as far away from that stuff as possible.
“Ouch, that’s a helluva lot of judgment from someone on this side of the tracks. If people wanna get high to feel something, that’s their prerogative, shit out here is hard enough as is.”
You roll your eyes. “Please, there are no sides, or tracks. You and I and Sadie Freeman—” a girl in your grade who overdosed in the fifth floor bathroom just days before graduation your junior year of high school, “—were born into the exact same world, with the exact same bullshit, and the exact same tools to fix that bullshit. Using drugs to cope is the easy way out.”
You feel like Jungkook is looking down on you when he ignores your declaration in favor of returning to the asinine topic of school, like he considers your sentiments just noise and that he knows better because he likes to play street rat or whatever the fuck. You're still not clear on the details and are dying to know yet don’t want to encourage him by expressing interest in his personal life. Clearly he’s in a gang but does he sell like you implied? Has he ever committed a crime? Been arrested? Gone to jail? Why do you want to know? Why do you even care? Somehow, you’ve gone from praying for someone to walk in and force your attention elsewhere to plotting how to get Jungkook to look at you again with those playful eyes, the ones that appeared when he disparaged your bat and called you Miss.
He asks if you’re still in high school, to which you reply that you graduated, part of the twenty-five percent, and attend college via online classes. Community college, but it still counts. When you confronted your parents with the supposed good news your father was initially more skeptical than anything. Community college? Isn’t that for retards who could only manage their GED? A degree achieved on a computer? Were you sure you weren’t being scammed? What about Columbia? Harvard? Even if you applied and beat out the tens of thousands of students, including thousands of legacies, for a coveted spot at an Ivy League university, the simple fact was that your family did not have Columbia money. Finally, Ilbok declared that you could do what you wanted as long as you didn’t expect him to pay for it, and you had to bite the inside of your cheek to refrain from pointing out that you’d long since stopped expecting things of your father.
Jungkook asks about your homework, then asks you what you’re doing after work. You understand that he’s trying to ask you out on whatever juvenile idea of a date he has in mind but you play dumb. After work you plan to walk home because the weather is finally growing warmer. You will cook dinner for your parents in anticipation of your mom’s return, finish your homework, and go over the licensing forms with your father if, by the time you’re finished, he’s still sober enough to be coherent.
“Think you could make space somewhere in your busy schedule for me?”
“To do what?” It's as if the ghost of someone else takes over your body, controlling your lips to make you say things that you know you shouldn’t, but want to anyway. Something about the boy making eyes at you from across the counter makes you act in inadvisable ways.
“Dunno, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Why don’t you say yes, then we just go where the night takes us?”
You hum, pretending to consider it. “My mom might have objections. She says I should stay away from boys like you.”
He appears pleased at this designation, at being the type of person people need to be warned away from. “That so? And what am I?”
You glance down at his tattoos, then back up at his face. Bad fucking news is what Jungkook is. A taste, a morsel of a life you’ll never have yet ache to let melt on your tongue. Jungkook is,“—too young. Technically I’m an adult and I have no doubt you’re underage.”
Jungkook snorts. “Yeah, ‘cause three years is a mountain of difference. I’d bet you my momma’s earrings that I’m more mature than any of the guys you’ll meet at that fancy school of yours.” He tilts his pimply chin to the side, letting the light catch the crucifix-shaped earrings stamped with raindrop sized diamonds hanging from his young, tight earlobes. And they’re real, too, not cubic zirconia, small but well cut, as bright and clear as the sky on a cloudless day. He doesn’t care that they’re feminine, that they adorn him with an innocent beauty incongruent to the toughness he tries to project with the rest of his body. Jungkook must love his mother.
With your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth, you don’t correct him again about your school, that your classmates are little more than digital numbers, lonely toiling souls that only exist in front of their own computers, and that the idea of a college romance like the ones in movies is, for you, a fanciful pipe dream. In the face of your extended silence, Jungkook finally seems to capitulate, shoulders slumping ever so slightly.
“Man, whatever.” He turns to leave.
“Jungkook,” you say, allowing the ghost to possess you once more, to give you what you won’t give yourself. “Don’t come by here again unless you have something to sell.”
“Yeah I get it, I get it, I’m gone.”
“No, you don’t—I said, don’t come back, unless you have something to sell.”
The blankness on his face melts away into a smile, the boyish curl of his lips unveiling a set of pearly white teeth, his front two much more prominent than the rest.
“You got it, boss.”
Over the course of late March bleeding into April Jungkook pawns two 10 karat gold tennis bracelets, a low end Movado watch, an eye-searingly red cordless Milwaukee drill accompanied by five separate attachments, an acoustic guitar that, according to him, has recently been restrung; on the 21st of March he brings you a GameCube that’s seen better days, two days later: a high end propane camping stove that you weren’t even sure the shop could accept. On April 1st, he brings a baseball bat and his coy, buck-toothed grin, and you try not to smile despite seeing some humor in the joke. April 4th: another game cube, April 6th: more jewelry, and on April 9th, a soggy, rain-laden Friday, he deposits an ancient hunter’s rifle before you with the pride of a golden retriever displaying its prey.
Even you, no great connoisseur of weaponry, can appreciate its beauty. The stock—its handle—is deep brown, walnut if you had to guess, carved into sensual curves and lines to form a comfortable rear. The grip, trigger, and bolt handle gleam silver, untarnished even beneath Park’s Pawn Shop’s undignified and faded lights, with an intricate, painstaking motif carved into the metal. Ejecting from the forend of the weapon, a singular black barrel, as foreboding as it is unassuming. The gauge can’t be larger than a 20, but you imagine that when it comes to shooting, to killing, a bullet is a bullet, no matter the size they all tear through flesh just the same.
You can count on one hand the amount of times someone’s come in to pawn a gun, let alone an antique hunting rifle like this one. New York, at least the city, isn’t the type of place to attract those types. People here tend to vote blue, and tend to look down on those with guns as unhinged, people trapped in a delusion of persecution in which they think the government is going to kick down their door at any second and they’ll need to defend themselves. Either that, or as grizzly mountain men who stalk out into the woods every day to catch their dinner, proclaiming themselves ‘off the grid’ even though their house still runs on electricity from the city power grid, they fill their monster trucks with gas from the local station, and jack off to the newest editions of Playboy, all things that wouldn’t exist without that pesky society they revile so. The only thing worth hunting in Queens are the rats that scurry from storm drain to storm drain and crawl all over the subway tracks, but knowing the idiots in this city, they’d shoot each other in the ass by accident before ever hitting their mark.
But you’re a professional, so with deft, if careful, hands, you make a show of examining the rifle for any faults or imperfections. No rust, no warped wood, the bolt handle slides back and forth with ease, and the magazine opens for you without protest. The polished wood grain is smooth under your fingers. You ignore Jungkook’s eyes on you, and don’t ask where he got something that the shop will potentially be able to resell for thousands of dollars. You don’t care to know, even suspecting that he’s been using less than legal means. It should bother you that Jungkook takes property that belongs to others, that he’s essentially profiting off their loss, and that he’s doing it all to see you because you told him not to come back without something you could jot down in the shop’s books. If the people he stole from come looking for their belongings the shop could be in serious trouble, you should be telling Jungkook to put all of this shit back where he found it.
You don’t.
Considering the parade of items he’s brought in thus far, maybe the people he’s stealing from are rich, maybe they don’t even notice that they’re short a tennis bracelet or watch because they’ve got ten more just like it sitting in a shiny display case in their two story McMansion in Forest Hills.
“The best I can do is $550,” you say. On the counter, the rifle erects an untraversable border, separating your hands from Jungkook’s by mere inches.
“Damn, baby, you really gonna do me like that? The guy at that other shop around the corner said I could get at least twice as much for something this fresh.” Despite his complaint, Jungkook doesn’t look too upset at being undersold. He’s leaning forward on his crossed arms, his t-shirt gaping open at the neckline, exposing a simple silver chain choked up against the pale skin of his neck. You know you’re staring, so does Jungkook, but he does nothing to stop you, in fact he obliges your greedy eyes and tugs further at the collar as if to fan himself. It’s not even fucking hot.
“Then go sell it to the guy around the corner.”
“But if I did that, then I wouldn’t get to see your pretty mug every day.” Jungkook has acne spots on the flat of his breast bone just above his pectoral muscles, the kind that you get from picking at pimples instead of letting them go away on their own, blotchy red circles that could be mistaken for birthmarks or moles if you didn’t recognize them as nearly identical to the ones you have on your shoulder blades. Your acne is mostly gone now but the dark marks are stubborn and refuse to fade, and you can’t be bothered to splurge on the expensive cosmetics advertised to lighten skin. You don’t know why it feels significant that you both have acne scars; Jungkook is a child, but so are you in the eyes of others. You wonder what the rest of his skin looks like.
“Baby?” Jungkook says, not for the first time.
“Quit it with that, I’m not your baby.”
“Well I ain’t exactly got a lotta options with you refusing to give me your name and all. Fair’s fair, baby, I showed you mine. When you gonna show me yours?”
You scoff. “Do you only know how to speak in infuriating innuendo? You sound like a cartoon character.”
Jungkook’s brow furrows.
“Innuendo is—”
“I know what innuendo is,” he says. “If you don’t like the way I talk, I got more interesting things I can do with my mouth. I can show you if you’re down, just gimme a time and a place. Baby.” The last word is punctuated with intent. You’re amazed at how deftly he sees right through your bluster for someone who’s known you a grand total of three weeks. You think of yourself as toughened but really you’re made of glass, hard until something harder comes knocking, and utterly transparent. He’s already caught on to the fact that when it comes to him, you pretty much always say the opposite of what you mean, that you love it.
“$800, take it or get the fuck out,” you say. Sweat pools in your armpits, clinging to their sparse hair down there and dampening your shirt. Maybe it is hot, summer is all but around the corner after all.
“Now you’re talking. That’s a mighty generous offer that I’d love to take you up on, baby. Where do I sign?”
Jungkook takes the pen you hand him without touching your fingers, clicks the top while studying the paperwork like he hasn’t filled out the exact same legalese at least a dozen times by now.
“You ever turn in that homework or whatever?” he asks, eyes still trained downwards.
“What homework?” Between your five classes, you turn in what feels like a hundred assignments a week.
“The one from the first time. Or I guess, the second if we countin’ proper.”
You think back. “Pretty sure I did, why?”
“Dunno, just wonderin’ I guess. I read that book, you know.”
You feel the surprise on your face. “Out of the Forest, Into the Wood ?”
“Yeah,” he mumbles.
“For me? To—what, impress me?”
“Nah, it’s not like that.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Jungkook loses his grasp on his cool persona, and seems embarrassed. “Seriously, it’s not like that, I just … I dunno. I pictured you in your room reading at your desk or on your bed, with that cute little frown on your face highlighting notes and shit, and it felt like … felt like I was getting to know you, reading the same thing you were. Man I dunno, it sounds stupid when I say it like that.” Sincerity suits him.
After a time, thinking of a reply that won’t send him running, you ask what he thought of the book.
“I—huh?”
“What did you think? You actually read it didn’t you? You’re not just faking it?”
Jungkook shrugs cagily. “I dunno. I thought the main character, Will or whatever his name was—”
“Wesley,” you say.
“Right, this Wesley guy was annoying as hell. Always whining about how hard he’s got it, fucking up other people’s lives because he can’t get his head on straight, how things that ain’t got nothin’ to do with him like his ex-girl’s job ‘invalidates his masculinity,’ whatever the fuck that means. I mean, for real, who wants to read five hundred pages from the inside of that guy’s skull? And then he leaves his whole life behind, just up and fucks off without even telling his momma where he’s goin’ because some sexy elf bitch who used to be a tree told him he’s ‘destined for greatness?’
“And then, not only does he fumble the tree bitch because he’s too far up his own ass to see that she’s into chicks and wouldn’t sit on his dick if she was dying of cancer and his foreskin had the cure, instead of actually getting the job done, you know, saving the kingdom with the fuckin’ sword of truth or whatever, he spends the last two-hundred pages going on and on about ‘reclaiming’ his fucking manhood! Hey, baby, be straight up with me for a second, is Wesley’s ‘manhood’ supposed to be some euphemism for his dick or some shit? Because there were a few lines that had me wonderin’.”
For a moment, you only blink, trying to process the torrential outpour of words that just left Jungkook’s mouth. Then, all you can do is laugh. Not because Jungkook’s reading is incorrect or ridiculous, but because you had the exact same thoughts while slogging through the book.
“It’s both, I think.” You wipe the tears gathering at the outer corners of your eyes. “Both his literal and figurative manhood. The sword too. Or swords, plural.”
“Huh, I was confused why they kept talkin’ about pokin’ bitches with swords. Didn’t really get the joke.”
“So I take it you didn’t enjoy my professor’s choice?” you ask.
Along the bottom line, he scribbles a surprisingly legible signature, Jungkook Jeon, and slides it over to you. “You really wanna know what I think? Wesley spent ten years letting the point fly over his empty fuckin’ noggin. He never figured out what deep down in here—” he points to your chest, right over your heart, “—we all know but don’t wanna say out loud: you can ice as many guys as you want, fuck as many bitches as you want, swing your sword around braggin’ about how big it is, sit on a throne and spit on the poor sap who shines ya shoes, but none of that shit makes you real. Ain’t no such thing as a real man. All of it’s just frontin’.”
Summer’s approach means longer days, long stretches of shadow painting the sidewalk from the buildings and budding trees, an early evening sun that hangs low in the sky, as yellow as an egg yolk. Soon the basketball courts, parks, and street corners will fill with kids released from school and impatient to make the most of their two months of freedom, and you’ll walk past them and try not to envy them, their carefree laughter and lackadaisical posture, slouched as they are against a the staircases of brownstones, melting into the cement like ice cream. In high school, summer was the opposite of a respite for you because no school meant more hours at the store, summer camp was for kids from rich families, tropical vacations were for kids from rich families—leisure remained out of reach, meant for someone else.
The fastest way from Park’s Pawn Shop to your home is to walk five blocks south, then make a sharp left at the public elementary school and carry on straight for another mile, during which you pass the basketball courts, Clintonville Playground, and Browne Park. The least painful way involved a longer, more circuitous route down several alleyways that reeked so strongly of urine and rotting food that it sometimes made your eyes water. Occasionally you’ll cross a homeless person or a colony of giant ants constructing their home atop a ripped garbage back, but the dangers end there. On April 30th, Jungkook has come and gone, trading a set of steel cutlery for two hours of your time, and you decide on the longer, less painful route home.
You walk briskly, with purpose, shoving one foot in front of the other and are careful not to make eye contact with anyone for too long lest you find trouble or conversation you aren’t looking for. The straps of your worn down Jansport itch between your clenched fingers while you lose yourself in daydreams of turning around and stopping by the park for an hour, less, thirty minutes, just thirty minutes where you’re beholden to no one, owing nothing, possessing no purpose other than to exist in the warmth of the egg yolk sun. You don’t notice that you’re being followed, or that you’ve turned down the wrong alley, until the narrow darkness takes what little light you have left and leaves you shivering at the abrupt change in temperature.
At the mouth of the alley are three boys, tall yet reedy, blocking your way through. Two are dressed like wannabe rappers, legs swimming in baggy jeans that fall almost to their knees, clad in wife-beater tank tops with brown stains and durags tucked under New York Mets baseball caps. The third is shirtless with chains hanging from his neck, in Adidas track pants. All of them have tattoos like Jungkook’s. One has a black teardrop under his right eye.
After it becomes clear that common decency won’t move them out of your way, you excuse yourself while trying to squeeze past. Teardrop moves to block your path.
“Ay yo, maybe you can help me and my buddies out. See we gotta a bet going and we need someone to settle it, and it’s real dire for real man, see my man Trap G’s momma just got a new job singin’ four nights a week at some fancy night club in Astoria. S’owned by some white guy who would normally never give her the time of day, and him and all his white buddies—real good tippers, mind you—slum it to play poker there every once in a while, and there’s drinkin’ and shit too, you know how it is.
“Now I’ve heard Trap G’s momma sing before, he swears up and down she’s the next Mariah Carey but I’ve heard better from a cat in heat and I know ain’t no way she got that job without bangin’ the boss, either that or he brought her on as a little entertainment for his poker buddies—and not entertainment of the singing variety if you know what I mean. Which, to me, makes more sense when you look at her—”
Durag number one, presumably ‘Trap G’ reaches around his friend to shove Tear Drop into the brick wall. “Man, fuck you, that’s my fuckin’ mom.”
“Listen man I can’t help that I tell it like it is, I got eyes and yo momma’s gotta a tight ass body. Plus you didn’t mind when we was talkin’ ‘bout Viet’s sister just a minute ago. That’s some hypocritical shit man.”
“Amara’s my cousin—”
“—It was his cousin, disphit—”
“Man whatever, first cousin’s like a sister anyway. Hey, where you goin'?”
You’d turned around, hoping that they were too involved in each other to notice your escape attempt, but don’t stop when their Tear Drop—their ring leader—calls after you. There’s a scuffle, a sound like feet scrambling, then Durag number two jumps the closed dumpster and lands in front of you. You’re effectively blocked in on both sides.
“I asked you a question, where do you think you’re going?”
“Home,” you say simply, betrayed by the tight, locked up feeling in your throat.
“But you didn’t settle our bet.” By the sound of his voice, he’s closing in behind you.
“Please move,” you say, and are abruptly aware of how stupid you sound. As if saying please will help you any.
Their ring leader sighs, put upon by your politeness. “I wanted to do this all nice-like, we get to chatting, I learn a little about you, you learn a little about me, you see that I’m a nice guy and happily do me this solid, but now you just bein’ rude. Gimme the bag, man.”
Although tall, and made larger by their clothing, these boys can’t be any older than Jungkook, and your first instinct is to blow them off. What do they think they’re playing at? You think longingly of the pepper spray sitting at the bottom of your bag that your mom always makes you carry around.
“I don’t have anything on me,” you say. “Any money or whatever. Can I just get past?”
“You heard the guy,” a familiar voice says. “Let him through.”
“Man, mind ya goddamn business unless you wanna be next. This is between me and my friend here.”
Jungkook, of all people, is standing at the far end of the alley where you’d entered earlier, arms crossed, face mean.
“I wanna be next.”
“The fuck you say?”
“Your ears full of cotton like your head is? I said, I wanna be next.” Jungkook stalks forward, shoving Durag number two aside and getting in the face of their ring leader. “Come closer, I got something extra special under my belt just for you.”
Your blood freezes in your veins when you look down to where Jungkook lifts his shirt just enough to expose the waistband of his jeans. A revolver, tucked in just above his right hip.
“You know whose block you on? Everything north of Bayside ave is YD territory, and I don’t see no scales on ya, so why don’t you go run your little circus sideshow clown routine some place else, you feel me?”
Viet grabs the ring leader’s bare bicep. “Man forget this, let’s just go. I’m not tryna get capped for ten bucks and some loose change.”
The ring leader looks Jungkook up and down as if assessing whether he really means to use it, then decides that you’re not worth the trouble. He sucks his teeth, spits a wad of foamy saliva at your feet. “Whatever, shit is lame anyways.” And they scurry off.
Only when the three boys are far enough that you can no longer hear their footsteps do you release the breath you were holding. Lightheaded, you lean forward to rest your hands on your knees and try not to throw up, your heart slamming against the inside of your throat like it wants to break free. “Shit. Fucking hell.”
“You good?” The hardness is gone, revolver stowed away behind the flimsy curtain of Jungkook’s shirt. You stare at its outline, marvel at how it is at once ambiguous and unmistakable; had you not just seen it for yourself, you’d think Jungkook was just hard in his jeans, horny.
You’re fine. Nothing happened. Nothing would have happened because if Jungkook hadn’t come you’d have just given those gangbangers in training your bag without putting up too much of a fight, even though your laptop was precious, your ticket on the only train out of this place, your one shot, it wasn’t more important than your life, besides bleeding out in an alley from a knife to the gut because you wanted to play tough guy was a lame way to go out.
You take another moment to gather yourself.
“You’re going to shoot your dick clean off carrying that thing around like that,” you point out. Wiping your mouth at the corners where you’d begun to drool, fear and the anticipation of possibly vomiting causing saliva to pool under your tongue.
Jungkook smirks, taking your ribbing as a sign that you’re more or less unfazed. Your bravado works. “What do you take me for? I’m a professional when it comes to this sort of thing. Come on.” He lays a hand on your shoulder, only the second time he’s touched you. “Let’s get you outta here. Which way’s home?”
“I don’t think I should tell you,” you say, but lead him in the direction that will take you to your house. A sense of gratitude washes over you that he doesn’t take your teasing to heart, and follows you eagerly. You won’t have to look over your shoulder the whole way home. “It’s not loaded, right?” That’s why Jungkook felt so comfortable carrying it around like that.
He glances at you out of the corner of his eyes like your question is odd.
“ ‘A knight who unsheaths his sword unprepared for the indu-indubitable probability that its sharpened edge will one day take another’s life is undeserving of his title, and the weapon he wields, besides.’ Ain’t that what that old man said?” It’s a quote from Out of the Forest, Into the Wood, counsel gifted to Wesley by one of his masters before the start of his journey, counsel that Wesley ignores in favor of the rush of power he feels with the sword gripped in his hands.
“You’ve got a good memory. You’re a little young to be anyone’s knight though, I think,” you tease. “Grow a few inches and get back to me.”
Jungkook huffs a laugh through his nose and jostles your shoulder. Side by side like this, you realize that on the contrary, Jungkook is in reality only a scant inch or so from overtaking your height. Despite your old school nurse’s assurances that men grew well into their early twenties, your height hasn’t budged since sophomore year, and Jungkook will likely outpace you, you think.
“Hey, tell me something, baby, since you’re so intellectual and all, probably read more books than me, in those fairy tales doesn’t the knight get a kiss for saving the princess?”
You shove him away while biting down on your lip to keep from smiling, pleased enough to ignore the fact that he called you a princess. “You’re right, the way you hid behind the barrel of that thing was so chivalrous, kiss me now.”
Undeterred, he leans over, puckers his lips. “If you insist.”
The laugh flies free, unfettered as you halfheartedly dodge his advances. Now your heart is racing for a different reason. “Fuck off—oh, this is me.”
Your home is an uninspiring rectangle of gray brick and dated architectural design. A teal-colored fire escape snakes down the side like ivy, and matching teal metal bars barricade each window, supposedly to deter break-ins but also, you hypothesize, to remind those living within that they’re trapped, stuck in a rat race with no way out.
Jungkook stands with his back to the street and you, with your back to your building, and, given your positions, you’d think that Jungkook might take this opportunity to memorize the name of the street they’re on or the building number so that he has another place to sniff around, but his eyes never waver from your face.
With one solemn arm crossed over his chest, he bows deeply like a true chevalier, then looks up to wink at you.
“See you around,” he says.
“Seokjin,” you blurt out. “My name.”
Jungkook’s smile lights up his face. Divested of the sun, you think you could bask in it. His smile. “See you around, Seokjin.”
You’re nineteen when you meet him.