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merryfuture2023-07-11 05:15 pm
staygame) wrote in merryfuture2023-07-11 05:15 pm
Entry tags:
lovelyz: love like pulling teeth (the school girl crushed remix) (2019)
love like pulling teeth (the school girl crushed remix) (ao3 link, see original work for author's notes) | lovelyz, babysoul/mijoo, mature, 3.5k words
tags: past relationship(s), creator chose not to use archive warnings
content notes: off-screen violence leading to on-screen gore, brief descriptions of attempted intimate partner violence, brief mention of vomit, references to sexual activity as teenagers
written for: kpop ficmix 2019, original work here
---
TRANSCRIPT
On August 25, 2019, Detectives Park Choowon and Kim Beomseok of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, Major Crimes division, interviewed Lee Soojung, stage name Baby Soul, at the Jongno Police Department. She was not accompanied by a lawyer at this time.
PCW: It's presently 1254 hours on August 25, 2019. This is Detective Park Choowon, along with Detective Kim Beomseok of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, Major Crimes division. Currently at the Jongno Police Station to interview Lee Soojung, witness in case number, uh, 2019-532. Lee Soojung, please state your name and date of birth for the record.
LSJ: Uh, my name is Lee Soojung. My birth date is July 6, 1992.
PCW: How did you come to be at the, uh [papers shuffling] 14 Pyeongchang 6-gil address on the night of August 24, 2019?
LSJ: Mijoo texted me and asked me to come.
PCW: Let the record show that Lee Soojung is referring to Lee Mijoo, legal name Lee Seungah.
KBS: And so you came over?
LSJ: Well, she said it was an emergency and [clears throat] you know, she's had a history of alcoholism and I thought that she might be hurt.
In the time it takes Soojung to arrive, Mijoo smokes four cigarettes in quick succession, lit with matches that she'd found in one of Junhyeok's kitchen drawers, because rooting around in there seemed preferable to lifting the lighter from his pockets.
im here, Soojung texts her, followed rapidly by whos house is this??
come around back, Mijoo types with trembling hands.
Mijoo meets her at the fence gate. She has to fumble with the lock, unfamiliar with this particular section of the Pyeongchang house, and she pries it open with a triumphant aha!.
Soojung, on the other side, does not look amused. She is wearing a t-shirt with big, baggy pants. Her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun and her cheeks have the plump, pinkish shine of someone who had just finished her skincare routine when Mijoo called. Mijoo remembers nights spent lying on the edge of the bed so she could watch Soojung in the bathroom, swiping toner-wet cotton pads over the bridge of her nose, under her bangs. Unlike Mijoo, who preferred to roll over and marinate in her sex sweat, Soojung almost never skipped her evening routine.
"Welcome!" Mijoo says with a PR smile.
"Whose house is this?" Soojung asks.
"Do you want a beer? I have beer." Junhyuk has a six-pack of Cass in his fridge with one removed, the one he'd been drinking when Mijoo arrived.
"You can't ignore my question."
Mijoo shrugs. "Maybe I just missed unni and, you know, wanted to hang out."
"Hang out where? Whose house is this?" Soojung asks again, furrowing her unfilled eyebrows. "Mijoo, what's going on?"
When Mijoo was a child, when she was just a normal kid whose face was not broadcast on millions of TVs, she broke her bedroom window by sending a karaoke microphone crashing through it. For a day, she hid it—drawing her curtain to hide the empty frame, corralling her mother away from her room when she'd tried to enter with clean laundry. It had been winter, and Mijoo remembers shivering when cold air blew into the room, wondering how long she'd be able to hide it. In the end, she cracked under her mother's suspicious gaze and admitted her mistake. The truth had been propelled from her with a huffing breath, and she had felt annoyed at her own lack of resolve.
With Soojung looking at her, no-nonsense expression on her face, Mijoo stamps her foot against the grass, feeling a wave of hysteria bubbling up in her chest. "Fine! Fine, whatever, God. But you can't freak out."
TRANSCRIPT
PCW: Could you describe, for the record, your relationship with Ms. Lee Mijoo?
LSJ: We were cast members of the Mickey Mouse Club show from 2003 to 2005, so, um. We started off as coworkers, I guess? But we were close with the entire cast.
KBS: And you maintained a friendship since then?
LSJ: Most of the time. We didn't speak for a couple of years.
PCW: Why not?
LSJ: No real reason. We just got busy with our own careers and meeting up was hard.
KBS: And when did you start talking again?
LSJ: I mean we didn't, not properly.
KBS: So you came over when she called you in the middle of the night, even when you weren't speaking?
LSJ: She was still my friend. People don't just call you in the middle of the night unless they need something important.
The puddle of blood is brighter than Mijoo remembers. It's pooling around Junhyeok's head, creating a twisted path around the corner of the edge of the kitchen island, the red of it stark against cream-colored tile. Mijoo feels the hot press of tears behind her eyes, the taste of bile rising up in the back of her throat. In the immediate aftermath, she'd gotten as far as the back porch before she vomited into a pot of pansies.
Soojung looks tempted to do the same. She covers her mouth with her hand, lowers it for a moment then lifts it back up again. When she finally speaks, it's with a shrill, "What the fuck?"
They'd had a swear jar on the Mouseketeer anniversary tour, as though keeping it PG behind the scenes would help sell the family-friendly image onstage. Never mind the fact that they were young adults then, with postpubescent voices and breasts and hotel room hook-ups. Mijoo loved cursing, her tongue touching the roof of her mouth as she spit out a gaesaekki just to make Sungkyu blush. Soojung contributed a measly 500 won over the course of the entire tour.
Mijoo feels a small, private thrill at hearing Soojung slip up, which is quickly replaced by a feeling of Jesus Christ, time and place.
"I can explain," Mijoo says.
"Well?"
Well, Mijoo was 24 when she met Kim Junhyeok at a rooftop bar in Gangnam. She was also broke, bank accounts depleted from keeping her third DUI and stint in rehab out of the papers, but that part didn't factor into their relationship until later. That first night, Mijoo was just horny and interested in the handsome guy who drank his whiskey neat, who laughed at her jokes in a way that didn't feel pitying. He took her back to his Pyeongchang house, which had all the warmth of a hotel suite. The sleek decor and abstract art hanging on the walls screamed impersonality. This was his fuck mansion, Mijoo had realized while on her back, fruit-punch red hair fanned out beneath her. At least he went down on her—more than she could say for the men she usually slept with.
It wasn't until two days later, when her bank card was rejected at a 7-Eleven and she'd had to scrounge together the coins at the bottom of her Balenciaga clutch to buy a goddamn bottle of water that Mijoo thought to look up Kim Junhyeok. "CEO of Yongseo Bank," his Wikipedia page advertised. Mijoo sank down into one of the plastic chairs outside of the store, even though it was midday and the mask/baseball cap combo wasn't the most elaborate of disguises. She scrolled down to the personal life section, thumb hovering over the words "wife of 15 years" and "two sons, 11 and 6." She thumbed back up to net worth, reading "900 billion won" with big, cartoon dollar signs in her eyes.
"What do you mean you don't have any money?" Soojung asks. "Mijoo, I walk by a picture of your face every day on my way to the station."
"Look, I'm sorry I'm not as responsible as you."
"Responsible?" Soojung repeats, incredulous. "You killed him. Responsible doesn't even begin to cover it."
"He was going to go to the police!" Mijoo shouts. It echoes off the walls of the room, the open-space concept and hard, heavy furniture doing nothing to dampen the noise.
"So you killed him," Soojung says, not a question.
"It wasn't like that." Mijoo tugs on the ends of her hair, now a color halfway between beach blonde and Big Bird, frustrated. "God, it was an accident."
TRANSCRIPT
PCW: So, you arrived at the house thinking that it might be an emergency. Can you tell us what happened next?
LSJ: Mijoo let me in through the back entrance and took me inside.
PCW: And what did you see inside the house?
LSJ: I saw a body lying on the floor.
PCW: The body of a man?
LSJ: Yes.
PCW: Could you identify the man?
LSJ: I didn't recognize him, but Mijoo told me that he was Kim Junhyeok.
PCW: And in what condition was the body of Mr. Kim Junhyeok?
LSJ: He was lying on the floor, in between the kitchen and the dining area. There was a pool of blood around his head.
PCW: And it was apparent to you that Kim Junhyeok was deceased?
LSJ: He was completely still and there was just, there was so much blood. So yes, I knew that he was dead.
"He attacked me first," Mijoo says.
Soojung has migrated to the leather sectional, sinking down against the cushions, gaze turned away from the body. Mijoo wants to join her, but she's going through each step like blocking a scene.
"We were arguing," she says, moving around to the other side of the kitchen island.
Here, she'd reached for Junhyeok's phone from the counter, and Junhyeok had responded by grabbing her arm. Not rough yet, but purposeful.
"I told him that I was going to tell his wife if he didn't, uh, if he didn't give me more money," Mijoo tells Soojung.
Mijoo had held his phone behind her, arm stretching out like she was playing keepaway, taunting him. Junhyeok hadn't liked that. He'd seized her by the chin, the thick metal of his rings digging into her skin as he wrenched her face up to look at him. His voice was low as he'd said, "You're not going to tell anyone shit, you got that?" Then, taking advantage of Mijoo's surprise, he'd plucked the phone from her hand, sliding it into his pocket.
"And you know me," Mijoo says as she comes around the counter. "I hate when someone tells me I can't do something."
"Mijoo," Soojung says sharply, like she can retroactively stop Mijoo from putting her foot in her mouth. Like she's ever been able to stop Mijoo when she has an idea in her head.
She'd followed him from the kitchen to the dining room, telling him that with the chat logs and incriminating photos she had, she wouldn't need to tell his wife. She could just go straight to the media. "Do you think your kids will understand that daddy fucks young girls on the side?" Mijoo had said, laughing for good measure.
"He hit me," Mijoo tells Soojung.
To be specific, he'd slapped her across the face, the meat of his hand landing sharply against her cheek. Mijoo had goaded him, but she still wasn't expecting it. She'd been slapped more than once before this, including, notably, by Soojung herself, but never with such force. When she cradled her face in her hand, it had felt warm, or maybe it was just her red-hot outrage rising up to the surface.
Mijoo had looked up at him, eyes watering from the impact, and spat out, "I will destroy everything you love."
Junhyeok seemed to react on pure impulse. His hands were around her throat before Mijoo even had time to process the step forward he'd taken. His thumbs were pressed to Mijoo's vocal chords and she struggled for air, feeling truly afraid for the first time since their argument started. She'd clawed at his hands, lungs burning, but his grip was firm and bruising.
There were spots in her vision when Mijoo's survival instinct finally kicked in. The loss of consciousness felt imminent. She summoned all of her strength, reached out, and pushed.
It wasn't the shove that did it, not really, Mijoo explains. She can't look at Soojung and she can't look at the congealing blood around Junhyeok's head, so she focuses on the unblemished stretch of skin showing below his pant cuff.
Junhyeok ha'd stumbled backward and directly into the metal leg of a dining chair, his foot catching. He was already off-balance and his flailing arms couldn't help him, so he went straight back, his skull cracking against the corner of the kitchen island. Mijoo had screamed. It did nothing to stop Junhyeok from crumpling to the floor.
"And you just let him die?" Soojung asks.
"I didn't let him. It all happened so quickly and he just made this noise like—" Mijoo mimes a gasp for air, summoning the acting skills that got her rated as one of the worst rookie actors of the fall 2014 drama season.
"You could've done something, called an ambulance," Soojung says.
"He tried to kill me first, you know," Mijoo snaps. "It was self-defense."
Soojung is silent for a moment. "I'm glad he didn't kill you," she says softly.
TRANSCRIPT
KBS: It says in our records here that Lee Mijoo has been arrested on at least two occasions for physical altercations. Were you aware of her propensity for violence?
LSJ: I wouldn't exactly say she has a propensity for violence. I mean, she drinks too much and she's got a loud mouth, but she's not a violent person.
PCW: The arrest records from her first incident note that [clears throat] "Lee Mijoo struck the victim's face with a closed fist. The blow resulted in a laceration to Lee Mijoo's finger due to the ring she was wearing." That doesn't sound like a violent person to you?
LSJ: I didn't realize that getting into a bar fight was that unusual for your line of work?
KBS: Miss, we understand that you are apt to defend your friend, but you should refrain from sarcastic comments if you want to help her.
The shrill ring of Junhyeok's phone from his pocket startles them both. Soojung yelps out loud and Mijoo automatically covers her ears until she processes where the noise is coming from.
Mijoo leans over, trying to figure out the best way to get into Junhyeok's pockets while Soojung hisses, "Mijoo! What are you doing?"
"It could be his manager," Mijoo explains. It's one of his phone's default ringtones, but Mijoo only associates it with him now. The first time she heard someone else's phone go off in public with the same tone, she instantly thought about the face of Junhyeok's manager, only ever seen through tinted windows when he arrived to the house to fetch Junhyeok. "He picks Junhyeok up and drops him off so Dispatch doesn't follow his car."
By the time Mijoo retrieves his phone, the call has already gone to voicemail. "Fuck, what if he's outside?"
"Then you invite him inside to see his client's corpse," Soojung deadpans.
Mijoo knows Junhyeok's PIN from looking over his shoulder in bed. It's his burner phone, the one he only uses to talk to Mijoo (and the other girls she's sure he's been seeing, but has never asked about), though he's made no effort to secure it. 1234, amateur. Decided to spend the night, let Yeonmi know, Mijoo texts. Her sense of urgency is impeded by her trembling fingers and it takes her longer than she'd like, but she finally gets it out, pressing send and then forcing it back into his pocket so she no longer has to look at it. When she goes to stand, half of her palm lands in the pool of drying blood, sticky and cool.
"Gross," Mijoo says, and wipes the blood on her arm.
She moves to the couch. Soojung is still watching her, with the same judgmental gaze that Mijoo is well-acquainted with. All of the things that Mijoo had ever done to get a rise out of Soojung, like kissing a backup dancer at her first concert or doing body shots with Soojung's stylist at the club, had only ever been met with the same impassive gaze. Sometimes it made Mijoo want to try harder. Sometimes it just made her cry until her mascara ran down her cheeks.
"Run away with me," Mijoo says and reaches out to hold Soojung's face. "We can live on the lam."
Soojung kisses Mijoo. It feels different from the last time Mijoo remembers, but then again, it's been years since she actually kissed Soojung instead of just thinking about it. Soojung's hands find Mijoo's thighs, all ten fingers digging in as Soojung pulls herself in closer. Mijoo swipes her tongue along Soojung's lower lip as Soojung gasps against Mijoo's mouth. The noise stirs something in Mijoo and she feels seventeen again, sucking on the inside of Soojung's thigh in front of a hotel room door because she'd been too high on adrenaline to make it to the bed. Mijoo used to think it was sad that some of the best sex she ever had was as a teenager. She wonders now if it wasn't the fumbling, clumsy fucking that was particularly good, but the feelings attached, the all-encompassing first love.
When they pull away, Mijoo's messy hands have left three delicate fingerprints of blood on Soojung's cheek. She thinks about the police collecting Soojung as evidence, gloved fingers zipping her body into one of those plastic bags, forever preserved like this.
"You could never survive without an adoring public," Soojung says.
"I could survive with you," Mijoo says.
Soojung smiles, cracking the corners of her mouth. "Liar."
"What else am I going to do?" Mijoo twists herself until she's lying with her head hanging off the couch, legs on the back cushions. The rush of blood to her skull is immediate and it isn't long before there are dots swimming in her vision, a more mild version of the way she'd felt earlier, seconds from blacking out. "I don't want to go to jail. How much do you have saved? I bet your savings account has more than enough for a decent bribe."
"Because bribes really worked out so well for you last time."
Without looking, Mijoo flips her off. Something occurs to her, though. "You could've just left. Earlier, when I showed you the body. Now you've been here all night and your fingerprints are probably all over everything. You're involved now."
"I should've left," Soojung agrees. Past tense. Mijoo hears Soojung getting up so she lifts her head to see, abs straining.
Soojung is standing beside the end table, her hand on the marble neck of a decorative lamp. "I have an idea," she says, gesturing for Mijoo to join her. "Do you trust me?"
"I trust you," Mijoo says.
"I've always wanted to do this," Soojung says. The lamp hits Mijoo square across the face.
TRANSCRIPT
PCW: How did Lee Mijoo explain to you what happened?
LSJ: Well, when I first came in, I noticed the cuts across her face and the bruises. I could tell that someone had hit her pretty hard.
PCW: And did she identify the person who had hit her?
LSJ: Yes, she said it was Kim Junhyeok. She told me that they were arguing and he got so mad that he picked up the lamp and hit her across the face with it. And then when that didn't knock her out, he tried to choke her. He was trying to kill her.
KBS: And yet it was Kim Junhyeok who ended up dead?
LSJ: Mijoo isn't even 50 kilograms soaking wet. Who was the one who should've been afraid for their life there? He intended to kill her, but Mijoo just wanted him off of her. It was self-defense.
The sun is rising over the backyard fence when Mijoo and Soojung step outside. Mijoo has another cigarette held to her mouth, the taste of tobacco mixing unpleasantly with the blood in her mouth, but the nicotine's effect on her nerves is worth the bitterness. She feels leveled out for the first time since Junhyeok snatched the phone from her hand. She offers the last one in the pack to Soojung, who waves her off.
"I don't smoke."
"Special occasion," Mijoo points out.
"If that's what you want to call it," Soojung says. "How are you feeling?"
"Maybe it's because I have a concussion, but this is kind of nice," Mijoo says, and it is nice. Soojung's body next to hers on the porch steps, warm and smelling faintly of rose-scented shampoo. Early morning birds chirping in the dogwood tree at the edge of the yard. Put aside the chipped tooth and probably-broken nose, and it's downright domestic. Truthfully, if Mijoo had ever indulged in any domestic thoughts of her and Soojung, they probably would've included a little blood.
She places her hand on top of Soojung's, watching the reflexive smile on Soojung's face before it's fixed back into a straight line. "Thank you for coming," Mijoo tells her. "You're the only person who would do this for me."
"I would hope so," Soojung says, fingers twitching under Mijoo's hand.
There are sirens in the distance. Mijoo flicks the ash from the end of her cigarette, drops her head onto Soojung's shoulder, and waits.
tags: past relationship(s), creator chose not to use archive warnings
content notes: off-screen violence leading to on-screen gore, brief descriptions of attempted intimate partner violence, brief mention of vomit, references to sexual activity as teenagers
written for: kpop ficmix 2019, original work here
---
On August 25, 2019, Detectives Park Choowon and Kim Beomseok of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, Major Crimes division, interviewed Lee Soojung, stage name Baby Soul, at the Jongno Police Department. She was not accompanied by a lawyer at this time.
PCW: It's presently 1254 hours on August 25, 2019. This is Detective Park Choowon, along with Detective Kim Beomseok of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, Major Crimes division. Currently at the Jongno Police Station to interview Lee Soojung, witness in case number, uh, 2019-532. Lee Soojung, please state your name and date of birth for the record.
LSJ: Uh, my name is Lee Soojung. My birth date is July 6, 1992.
PCW: How did you come to be at the, uh [papers shuffling] 14 Pyeongchang 6-gil address on the night of August 24, 2019?
LSJ: Mijoo texted me and asked me to come.
PCW: Let the record show that Lee Soojung is referring to Lee Mijoo, legal name Lee Seungah.
KBS: And so you came over?
LSJ: Well, she said it was an emergency and [clears throat] you know, she's had a history of alcoholism and I thought that she might be hurt.
In the time it takes Soojung to arrive, Mijoo smokes four cigarettes in quick succession, lit with matches that she'd found in one of Junhyeok's kitchen drawers, because rooting around in there seemed preferable to lifting the lighter from his pockets.
im here, Soojung texts her, followed rapidly by whos house is this??
come around back, Mijoo types with trembling hands.
Mijoo meets her at the fence gate. She has to fumble with the lock, unfamiliar with this particular section of the Pyeongchang house, and she pries it open with a triumphant aha!.
Soojung, on the other side, does not look amused. She is wearing a t-shirt with big, baggy pants. Her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun and her cheeks have the plump, pinkish shine of someone who had just finished her skincare routine when Mijoo called. Mijoo remembers nights spent lying on the edge of the bed so she could watch Soojung in the bathroom, swiping toner-wet cotton pads over the bridge of her nose, under her bangs. Unlike Mijoo, who preferred to roll over and marinate in her sex sweat, Soojung almost never skipped her evening routine.
"Welcome!" Mijoo says with a PR smile.
"Whose house is this?" Soojung asks.
"Do you want a beer? I have beer." Junhyuk has a six-pack of Cass in his fridge with one removed, the one he'd been drinking when Mijoo arrived.
"You can't ignore my question."
Mijoo shrugs. "Maybe I just missed unni and, you know, wanted to hang out."
"Hang out where? Whose house is this?" Soojung asks again, furrowing her unfilled eyebrows. "Mijoo, what's going on?"
When Mijoo was a child, when she was just a normal kid whose face was not broadcast on millions of TVs, she broke her bedroom window by sending a karaoke microphone crashing through it. For a day, she hid it—drawing her curtain to hide the empty frame, corralling her mother away from her room when she'd tried to enter with clean laundry. It had been winter, and Mijoo remembers shivering when cold air blew into the room, wondering how long she'd be able to hide it. In the end, she cracked under her mother's suspicious gaze and admitted her mistake. The truth had been propelled from her with a huffing breath, and she had felt annoyed at her own lack of resolve.
With Soojung looking at her, no-nonsense expression on her face, Mijoo stamps her foot against the grass, feeling a wave of hysteria bubbling up in her chest. "Fine! Fine, whatever, God. But you can't freak out."
PCW: Could you describe, for the record, your relationship with Ms. Lee Mijoo?
LSJ: We were cast members of the Mickey Mouse Club show from 2003 to 2005, so, um. We started off as coworkers, I guess? But we were close with the entire cast.
KBS: And you maintained a friendship since then?
LSJ: Most of the time. We didn't speak for a couple of years.
PCW: Why not?
LSJ: No real reason. We just got busy with our own careers and meeting up was hard.
KBS: And when did you start talking again?
LSJ: I mean we didn't, not properly.
KBS: So you came over when she called you in the middle of the night, even when you weren't speaking?
LSJ: She was still my friend. People don't just call you in the middle of the night unless they need something important.
The puddle of blood is brighter than Mijoo remembers. It's pooling around Junhyeok's head, creating a twisted path around the corner of the edge of the kitchen island, the red of it stark against cream-colored tile. Mijoo feels the hot press of tears behind her eyes, the taste of bile rising up in the back of her throat. In the immediate aftermath, she'd gotten as far as the back porch before she vomited into a pot of pansies.
Soojung looks tempted to do the same. She covers her mouth with her hand, lowers it for a moment then lifts it back up again. When she finally speaks, it's with a shrill, "What the fuck?"
They'd had a swear jar on the Mouseketeer anniversary tour, as though keeping it PG behind the scenes would help sell the family-friendly image onstage. Never mind the fact that they were young adults then, with postpubescent voices and breasts and hotel room hook-ups. Mijoo loved cursing, her tongue touching the roof of her mouth as she spit out a gaesaekki just to make Sungkyu blush. Soojung contributed a measly 500 won over the course of the entire tour.
Mijoo feels a small, private thrill at hearing Soojung slip up, which is quickly replaced by a feeling of Jesus Christ, time and place.
"I can explain," Mijoo says.
"Well?"
Well, Mijoo was 24 when she met Kim Junhyeok at a rooftop bar in Gangnam. She was also broke, bank accounts depleted from keeping her third DUI and stint in rehab out of the papers, but that part didn't factor into their relationship until later. That first night, Mijoo was just horny and interested in the handsome guy who drank his whiskey neat, who laughed at her jokes in a way that didn't feel pitying. He took her back to his Pyeongchang house, which had all the warmth of a hotel suite. The sleek decor and abstract art hanging on the walls screamed impersonality. This was his fuck mansion, Mijoo had realized while on her back, fruit-punch red hair fanned out beneath her. At least he went down on her—more than she could say for the men she usually slept with.
It wasn't until two days later, when her bank card was rejected at a 7-Eleven and she'd had to scrounge together the coins at the bottom of her Balenciaga clutch to buy a goddamn bottle of water that Mijoo thought to look up Kim Junhyeok. "CEO of Yongseo Bank," his Wikipedia page advertised. Mijoo sank down into one of the plastic chairs outside of the store, even though it was midday and the mask/baseball cap combo wasn't the most elaborate of disguises. She scrolled down to the personal life section, thumb hovering over the words "wife of 15 years" and "two sons, 11 and 6." She thumbed back up to net worth, reading "900 billion won" with big, cartoon dollar signs in her eyes.
"What do you mean you don't have any money?" Soojung asks. "Mijoo, I walk by a picture of your face every day on my way to the station."
"Look, I'm sorry I'm not as responsible as you."
"Responsible?" Soojung repeats, incredulous. "You killed him. Responsible doesn't even begin to cover it."
"He was going to go to the police!" Mijoo shouts. It echoes off the walls of the room, the open-space concept and hard, heavy furniture doing nothing to dampen the noise.
"So you killed him," Soojung says, not a question.
"It wasn't like that." Mijoo tugs on the ends of her hair, now a color halfway between beach blonde and Big Bird, frustrated. "God, it was an accident."
PCW: So, you arrived at the house thinking that it might be an emergency. Can you tell us what happened next?
LSJ: Mijoo let me in through the back entrance and took me inside.
PCW: And what did you see inside the house?
LSJ: I saw a body lying on the floor.
PCW: The body of a man?
LSJ: Yes.
PCW: Could you identify the man?
LSJ: I didn't recognize him, but Mijoo told me that he was Kim Junhyeok.
PCW: And in what condition was the body of Mr. Kim Junhyeok?
LSJ: He was lying on the floor, in between the kitchen and the dining area. There was a pool of blood around his head.
PCW: And it was apparent to you that Kim Junhyeok was deceased?
LSJ: He was completely still and there was just, there was so much blood. So yes, I knew that he was dead.
"He attacked me first," Mijoo says.
Soojung has migrated to the leather sectional, sinking down against the cushions, gaze turned away from the body. Mijoo wants to join her, but she's going through each step like blocking a scene.
"We were arguing," she says, moving around to the other side of the kitchen island.
Here, she'd reached for Junhyeok's phone from the counter, and Junhyeok had responded by grabbing her arm. Not rough yet, but purposeful.
"I told him that I was going to tell his wife if he didn't, uh, if he didn't give me more money," Mijoo tells Soojung.
Mijoo had held his phone behind her, arm stretching out like she was playing keepaway, taunting him. Junhyeok hadn't liked that. He'd seized her by the chin, the thick metal of his rings digging into her skin as he wrenched her face up to look at him. His voice was low as he'd said, "You're not going to tell anyone shit, you got that?" Then, taking advantage of Mijoo's surprise, he'd plucked the phone from her hand, sliding it into his pocket.
"And you know me," Mijoo says as she comes around the counter. "I hate when someone tells me I can't do something."
"Mijoo," Soojung says sharply, like she can retroactively stop Mijoo from putting her foot in her mouth. Like she's ever been able to stop Mijoo when she has an idea in her head.
She'd followed him from the kitchen to the dining room, telling him that with the chat logs and incriminating photos she had, she wouldn't need to tell his wife. She could just go straight to the media. "Do you think your kids will understand that daddy fucks young girls on the side?" Mijoo had said, laughing for good measure.
"He hit me," Mijoo tells Soojung.
To be specific, he'd slapped her across the face, the meat of his hand landing sharply against her cheek. Mijoo had goaded him, but she still wasn't expecting it. She'd been slapped more than once before this, including, notably, by Soojung herself, but never with such force. When she cradled her face in her hand, it had felt warm, or maybe it was just her red-hot outrage rising up to the surface.
Mijoo had looked up at him, eyes watering from the impact, and spat out, "I will destroy everything you love."
Junhyeok seemed to react on pure impulse. His hands were around her throat before Mijoo even had time to process the step forward he'd taken. His thumbs were pressed to Mijoo's vocal chords and she struggled for air, feeling truly afraid for the first time since their argument started. She'd clawed at his hands, lungs burning, but his grip was firm and bruising.
There were spots in her vision when Mijoo's survival instinct finally kicked in. The loss of consciousness felt imminent. She summoned all of her strength, reached out, and pushed.
It wasn't the shove that did it, not really, Mijoo explains. She can't look at Soojung and she can't look at the congealing blood around Junhyeok's head, so she focuses on the unblemished stretch of skin showing below his pant cuff.
Junhyeok ha'd stumbled backward and directly into the metal leg of a dining chair, his foot catching. He was already off-balance and his flailing arms couldn't help him, so he went straight back, his skull cracking against the corner of the kitchen island. Mijoo had screamed. It did nothing to stop Junhyeok from crumpling to the floor.
"And you just let him die?" Soojung asks.
"I didn't let him. It all happened so quickly and he just made this noise like—" Mijoo mimes a gasp for air, summoning the acting skills that got her rated as one of the worst rookie actors of the fall 2014 drama season.
"You could've done something, called an ambulance," Soojung says.
"He tried to kill me first, you know," Mijoo snaps. "It was self-defense."
Soojung is silent for a moment. "I'm glad he didn't kill you," she says softly.
KBS: It says in our records here that Lee Mijoo has been arrested on at least two occasions for physical altercations. Were you aware of her propensity for violence?
LSJ: I wouldn't exactly say she has a propensity for violence. I mean, she drinks too much and she's got a loud mouth, but she's not a violent person.
PCW: The arrest records from her first incident note that [clears throat] "Lee Mijoo struck the victim's face with a closed fist. The blow resulted in a laceration to Lee Mijoo's finger due to the ring she was wearing." That doesn't sound like a violent person to you?
LSJ: I didn't realize that getting into a bar fight was that unusual for your line of work?
KBS: Miss, we understand that you are apt to defend your friend, but you should refrain from sarcastic comments if you want to help her.
The shrill ring of Junhyeok's phone from his pocket startles them both. Soojung yelps out loud and Mijoo automatically covers her ears until she processes where the noise is coming from.
Mijoo leans over, trying to figure out the best way to get into Junhyeok's pockets while Soojung hisses, "Mijoo! What are you doing?"
"It could be his manager," Mijoo explains. It's one of his phone's default ringtones, but Mijoo only associates it with him now. The first time she heard someone else's phone go off in public with the same tone, she instantly thought about the face of Junhyeok's manager, only ever seen through tinted windows when he arrived to the house to fetch Junhyeok. "He picks Junhyeok up and drops him off so Dispatch doesn't follow his car."
By the time Mijoo retrieves his phone, the call has already gone to voicemail. "Fuck, what if he's outside?"
"Then you invite him inside to see his client's corpse," Soojung deadpans.
Mijoo knows Junhyeok's PIN from looking over his shoulder in bed. It's his burner phone, the one he only uses to talk to Mijoo (and the other girls she's sure he's been seeing, but has never asked about), though he's made no effort to secure it. 1234, amateur. Decided to spend the night, let Yeonmi know, Mijoo texts. Her sense of urgency is impeded by her trembling fingers and it takes her longer than she'd like, but she finally gets it out, pressing send and then forcing it back into his pocket so she no longer has to look at it. When she goes to stand, half of her palm lands in the pool of drying blood, sticky and cool.
"Gross," Mijoo says, and wipes the blood on her arm.
She moves to the couch. Soojung is still watching her, with the same judgmental gaze that Mijoo is well-acquainted with. All of the things that Mijoo had ever done to get a rise out of Soojung, like kissing a backup dancer at her first concert or doing body shots with Soojung's stylist at the club, had only ever been met with the same impassive gaze. Sometimes it made Mijoo want to try harder. Sometimes it just made her cry until her mascara ran down her cheeks.
"Run away with me," Mijoo says and reaches out to hold Soojung's face. "We can live on the lam."
Soojung kisses Mijoo. It feels different from the last time Mijoo remembers, but then again, it's been years since she actually kissed Soojung instead of just thinking about it. Soojung's hands find Mijoo's thighs, all ten fingers digging in as Soojung pulls herself in closer. Mijoo swipes her tongue along Soojung's lower lip as Soojung gasps against Mijoo's mouth. The noise stirs something in Mijoo and she feels seventeen again, sucking on the inside of Soojung's thigh in front of a hotel room door because she'd been too high on adrenaline to make it to the bed. Mijoo used to think it was sad that some of the best sex she ever had was as a teenager. She wonders now if it wasn't the fumbling, clumsy fucking that was particularly good, but the feelings attached, the all-encompassing first love.
When they pull away, Mijoo's messy hands have left three delicate fingerprints of blood on Soojung's cheek. She thinks about the police collecting Soojung as evidence, gloved fingers zipping her body into one of those plastic bags, forever preserved like this.
"You could never survive without an adoring public," Soojung says.
"I could survive with you," Mijoo says.
Soojung smiles, cracking the corners of her mouth. "Liar."
"What else am I going to do?" Mijoo twists herself until she's lying with her head hanging off the couch, legs on the back cushions. The rush of blood to her skull is immediate and it isn't long before there are dots swimming in her vision, a more mild version of the way she'd felt earlier, seconds from blacking out. "I don't want to go to jail. How much do you have saved? I bet your savings account has more than enough for a decent bribe."
"Because bribes really worked out so well for you last time."
Without looking, Mijoo flips her off. Something occurs to her, though. "You could've just left. Earlier, when I showed you the body. Now you've been here all night and your fingerprints are probably all over everything. You're involved now."
"I should've left," Soojung agrees. Past tense. Mijoo hears Soojung getting up so she lifts her head to see, abs straining.
Soojung is standing beside the end table, her hand on the marble neck of a decorative lamp. "I have an idea," she says, gesturing for Mijoo to join her. "Do you trust me?"
"I trust you," Mijoo says.
"I've always wanted to do this," Soojung says. The lamp hits Mijoo square across the face.
PCW: How did Lee Mijoo explain to you what happened?
LSJ: Well, when I first came in, I noticed the cuts across her face and the bruises. I could tell that someone had hit her pretty hard.
PCW: And did she identify the person who had hit her?
LSJ: Yes, she said it was Kim Junhyeok. She told me that they were arguing and he got so mad that he picked up the lamp and hit her across the face with it. And then when that didn't knock her out, he tried to choke her. He was trying to kill her.
KBS: And yet it was Kim Junhyeok who ended up dead?
LSJ: Mijoo isn't even 50 kilograms soaking wet. Who was the one who should've been afraid for their life there? He intended to kill her, but Mijoo just wanted him off of her. It was self-defense.
The sun is rising over the backyard fence when Mijoo and Soojung step outside. Mijoo has another cigarette held to her mouth, the taste of tobacco mixing unpleasantly with the blood in her mouth, but the nicotine's effect on her nerves is worth the bitterness. She feels leveled out for the first time since Junhyeok snatched the phone from her hand. She offers the last one in the pack to Soojung, who waves her off.
"I don't smoke."
"Special occasion," Mijoo points out.
"If that's what you want to call it," Soojung says. "How are you feeling?"
"Maybe it's because I have a concussion, but this is kind of nice," Mijoo says, and it is nice. Soojung's body next to hers on the porch steps, warm and smelling faintly of rose-scented shampoo. Early morning birds chirping in the dogwood tree at the edge of the yard. Put aside the chipped tooth and probably-broken nose, and it's downright domestic. Truthfully, if Mijoo had ever indulged in any domestic thoughts of her and Soojung, they probably would've included a little blood.
She places her hand on top of Soojung's, watching the reflexive smile on Soojung's face before it's fixed back into a straight line. "Thank you for coming," Mijoo tells her. "You're the only person who would do this for me."
"I would hope so," Soojung says, fingers twitching under Mijoo's hand.
There are sirens in the distance. Mijoo flicks the ash from the end of her cigarette, drops her head onto Soojung's shoulder, and waits.