Pop Singer: A Dark BWAM / AMBW Romance (2 page)

We laughed together now.

I thought further about Korea. What my new life would be like. And where I was going in life.

Back then, I thought that everything was possible.

But if I only had known: everything really
is
possible.

And that’s not always a good thing.

Now let me tell you why.

JONG-SOO

“Jong-soo,” I heard someone call out.

I was laying on my stomach, waking up in the early morning. Since it was about springtime, there was a little bit of humidity in the air, and a warmth rolling in. Soon it would be summer. A hot summer, by the way the weather was going.

Lucky me. By then, I would be out of the country.

Good thing, because I won’t have to put up with shit like this anymore…

“Jong-soo,” the voice said again. I rubbed my eyes, shaking off my grogginess. Hae-il walked in. He had a pair of dragons twisting up his arm, tattoos, and a snapback on, a pair of casual jeans and flip-flops. He walked over to my side, where I was sleeping on a bench press. “What are you doing inside of here?”

“You guys were being really fucking loud upstairs,” I said. “It’s kind of hard to perform well the next day when you guys are talking about getting smashed.”

Hae-il grinned. “Oh, so the princess can’t get any sleep, can he?”

I punched Hae-il in the balls. He groaned, reeling backwards against a barbell in the squat rack. “Whatever, man. I’ve got a job to do, and if you’re not going to take it very seriously, then I have to.”

“It’s not like you actually like what you do,” Hae-il said, walking around to the windows framing the gym. We were standing in my mansion house, on the topmost floor. Usually, I would have peace and quiet. But activity was sprouting up all over the gangster world. And I needed my crew—my close mates—to tell me what was up.

The Double Dragons were about to breathe fire over Asia.

Our pop Korean band—Boy’s Generation—was a front for our underground operations. My crew loved to make fun of me for it. Oh, shit, how they just loved giving me a hard time about being a singer.

I think they were partly jealous the fans liked me most.

“Did the deal go through?” I said. We were waiting on a couple of people from China to bring over some methamphetamine from the North Korean border. It was taking forever. I could only wait so long for the business to go through before wanting to rip someone’s eyes out.

If it were up to my parents, someone would’ve died a long time ago.

You see, the Double Dragons was their thing. It was a creation of their own imaginations, brought forth into reality. They wanted fabulous wealth off the proceeds from pedaling hard drugs. Tons of crimes. A real Asian Bonnie and Clyde. They had been successful, getting away for decades with their underground work. It started off with just petty stuff. But it escalated into bank robberies and other… things.

They were the ones who started the entire music label the Double Dragons owned, LBC Records. That’s how I got to be the face of the first CD album:
My Love Craze.
It went double platinum within two years. With so much money pouring in, running the Double Dragons became easy peasy.

Until people wanted more power. Not everyone was happy with mom and dad’s success.

Jealousy rose up from the lowest ranks. That’s how it always works, isn’t it? People get jealous of your success. They see you on the up and up, and then they think, “They didn’t deserve it. I did.”

Unfortunately, the song did not end well for either parent. A coup d’état stormed across the Double Dragons, splintering us into several competing gangs. Many of them died out, their members literally dying. Some were arrested instead.

One—Twin Swords—created a competing label: NNN Fugitives. I heard their women were prostitutes. I had not dealt with them in a long time, although our gangs frequently battled out in the streets of Seoul. I knew they operated an opera house there as well as a museum. They tried to break into other artistic arenas, with moderate success, I have to say. We avoided each other as much as we could in the end, not wanting to damage our relations too much. Because in the end, the police would see us the same. And we had to unite if we wanted our goals to be accomplished.

Now, you’re probably wondering how I survived, if my parents died…

♦♦♦

Shadows splayed across the dresser next to my table. I was downstairs in the lower levels of the mansion, looking out my window. A rain storm blew across the hillside. Thunder cracked in the sky, tearing apart the clouds. Light fluttered into my eyes, making me shut them. All I wanted to do was sleep.

Footsteps. I heard footsteps thundering across the ground floor. I got out of bed, wandering to the light. My parents were on the other side of the house, and it was unusual to hear someone
screaming
.

I raced across my bedroom, getting out into the hallway. With a SIG Pro in hand, I crept around the corner of their bedroom. I was fully loaded and ready to punch bullets into skin.

Of course, I suspected there were people who wanted my parents dead. Their cronies could not stand making less money than them. They wanted prestige that they had. They didn’t want to risk their lives anymore running around the streets of Tokyo and Manila, Jakarta and Singapore. The real Double Dragons sprawled across underground Asia, and everyone wanted a piece of our name. Our wealth.

One of the guys standing outside my parent’s door looked at me. They were all armed to the teeth—Smith & Wesson, Radom, some more brand-name pistols—and aiming at me. I did not flinch at all. I wasn’t scared of them.

There were only five of them anyway.

“If you die quietly,” one of them said, “then you will go to heaven faster. I promise it. God will still love you in the end.”

I laughed. “Please,” I said, “I have no god besides money!”

I fired the first round, knocking over some dude wearing black sweatpants. Then I ducked back into the darkness, rolling for shadow. They fired back at me, slinging metal all around my head. A hail of bullets struck the walls behind me. I crept back into my room, though they were unaware on account of how the blackness draped every corner, every inch of the house.

Suddenly, coming from downstairs—Hae-il. He grabbed my shoulder, his own SIG Pro in his other hand. “Stay with me,” he said.

The other goons came away from my parents’ room, some of them going inside. Adrenaline pumped through my body; I couldn’t have my parents die like this.

So Hae-il and I crawled upstairs, our heads low against the ground. With our hands raised, we propped ourselves against a nearby wall and took shots.

It was difficult to tell who was striking what. But I heard the sounds of men—grown-ass men—falling to the ground. Collapsing in a heap of hurt. I did not close my eyes.

I wanted to see those who would threaten us.
Who
would dare do this?

“Let’s go in,” Hae-il said, once we felled two men.

Too late. My parents…

Their bodies sprawled across the floor. And the moment I saw them, there came a light from the left side of the room, a spray of gunfire. Hae-il and I ducked, scurried out of the bedroom.

Our guns at hand, we made to kill.

I saw a man over my mother’s dead body, so I fired at him first. My strike was true, quick. He flopped over, as if an angel had struck him dead. Hae-il waited for his opportunity— he got it whenever the goons tried playing cocky, firing back at us in retaliation for their own deeds.

There would have been no deaths if they had not come.

They brought it upon themselves.

We wasted the goons who killed my parents. I didn’t feel anything at the time. There wasn’t anything to feel—how could you? Blood smeared their faces, holes riddled their arms. I looked away immediately, thinking nothing about the bodies beneath my feet. The goons who hurt them, the low-level thugs who didn’t know the end of a pistol barrel from the grip.

“Did you know anything about this?” I asked Hae-il later. He said he didn’t, but that didn’t explain what he was doing in my house in the middle of the night.

“I have a sixth sense,” he said. Though it was a very suspicious sense, and I had my own.

He wanted power. Maybe he changed his mind midway through the operation. I didn’t know at the time.

All I knew was that he couldn’t be trusted. Even if he had saved my life.

♦♦♦

My life? Very precarious. A thin tightrope to walk.

But I had a plan for myself. I had no intention of staying in the Double Dragons forever, even though I was branded for life, the tattoos sprawling across my arms, down my spine, several down my legs.

Branded.

For.

Life.

And my fans wondered why I always wore jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts? Yeah.

Hae-il walked the length of the windows, casually turning his eyes across the shoreline the mansion overlooked. The mansion stood in Gyeryong, a fairly remote and mountainous area of South Korea. No one could bother us. We discreetly bribed and paid off many officials, so many looked and turned the other cheek, though we were always ready to slap them back if they gave us any push. Many officials stayed in contact with the Chinese Mafia, the Triads, for us. Other officials dealt with the government itself. My parents had really set up an entire network to tap dry.

And it would all come crumbling down.

Eventually.

I hoped at the time that my head would not come off with it all as well.

Because truthfully, I never enjoyed the lifestyle. So many on the outside would judge me as a horrible person without knowing me. But imagine having grown up with criminal parents— a criminal family you can trust, individuals you simply called brother or sister, they just had tattoos and could shoot.

It was all I knew. Everyone backstabbing each other and playing politics. It wasn’t an easy lifestyle. Not at all.

“The shipment did come through,” Hae-il said. He paced the length of the windows again, pointing out the rising sun. Light poured through, making me hot and heavy, baking me alive slowly. I wiped my brow, watching him go around, his footsteps echoing around the room. “The shipment came through,” he said, “but there has been a problem. One of the local guys from North Korea has gone rogue.”

I clicked my tongue in disapproval. Shook my head. Made a fist. Smashed the bench rest and shook with rage.

Though it was all acting.

I didn’t want Hae-il to think that I was happy about our shipment going awry. Because in fact, I was.

North Koreans were unreliable on account of their lives being horrible. Chained to the demands of their oppressive government, an average person had no choice but to deal with the underground world. A shipment going badly didn’t matter much to me. I kind of hoped the guy made out like a bandit and won his freedom in the end.

“Just ask someone else to smuggle some goods out,” I said, casually. Hae-il pressed his face against the glass. His muscles bulged out of his shirt, although I never really felt threatened by him.

I was bigger than him.

I had more aestheticism than he, and if it came down to it, I could easily take him out and save myself. Fly off to a different country, create a new name.

I just needed more time.

I guess more than anything, I was conflicted. Growing up in such a rough environment changes you, changes your mentality about what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s sort of like Stockholm syndrome: you want to leave, but you can’t.

I had so many feelings tied up to LBC Records. Being that it was the brainchild of my parents, the culmination of all of their hard work, I couldn’t just throw it all away in an instant.

Tied to the Double Dragons, LBC Records had entrenched itself in me. Even if I didn’t enjoy a life of crime, I didn’t mind being a pop superstar.