Rei
In the suitcase, Rei kept his eyes closed. He had been able to tell when Ellisandre put him in a vehicle and started to drive. They were stopped now. Ellisandre moved around. The zipper on the suitcase hissed. Ellisandre opened the lid. Rei blinked up at them.
Ellisandre held out their hand to help him out. “We need to talk.” They were in the back of a van without any windows. Ellisandre sat down cross-legged across from him.
“We can play this two ways. I can bring you in with me early and hide you. You’ll be able to see bits and pieces. Or I take you in under an assumed name. You keep your masks on, wear these glasses—” They held up a pair of almost ugly, large tinted glasses.
“Keep your hoodie up and help with the shoot as the weird, quiet person I brought with me.”
The air inside Rei’s chest froze. He’d been under the impression that he was going to be stashed somewhere safe near where Ellisandre was working.
“Master?” he managed to whisper.
Ellisandre tilted their head. “Sevastyan is trusting me with you.”
“Junseo will be there.”
“They’ll all be there. Junseo, Yoihei, Geun, Jaewoong, Su-jin, Damian, Collin, Richard, émeric—and Alice and Ash. Alice has already seen you once. She knows I’m protecting you and she’ll help. She won’t tell anyone who you are. She doesn’t know.”
Rei pressed his palm to his chest, rubbing at it. His heart was beating too fast. So many years and he hadn’t seen his chosen brothers. To be this close . . .
“How close would I be to them?”
“You’d be part of the crew. I’m running costumes. You could help me or help someone else as well.”
Rei closed his eyes, feeling his pulse beat. “I haven’t . . . been with outsiders . . . since I was sold.”
“You’ve traveled and assisted Sev in public.”
Rei nodded. “But he knows what I am. I’m still his slave, even then.”
“And you’re still his slave now.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Rei whispered, starting to lean back. “I’m not . . .”
Ellisandre reached out, steadying and catching him all in one motion. “Rei.”
Rei met Ellisandre’s eyes. They were wide, larger than he’d realized and softer than he’d seen before.
“This is their first music video without Bak. This is their journey to freedom. This is all of yours’ journey away from the man who’s controlled your lives for the last decade and a half or more. You should be there, with them, even if they don’t know it’s you.”
Tears sprang up in Rei’s eyes.
Ellisandre reached into their pocket. “I got Jun to give me a copy of the lyrics. He wrote them.”
“Jun writes most of the lyrics,” Rei whispered.
“And you used to write a third of them. They used your songs in their debut, you know.”
He did know. It had made him cry when he’d finally heard the album. He rubbed at his eyes and took the paper. The title “Raw” was scrawled in Jun’s handwriting across the top. The rest was typed up and printed.
I was a sarcophagus of un-screamed screams
So many fears, so many years
When I cry, my tears will taste like wine
Aged beneath the yoke
of all the world’s stage against my throat.
* * *
Chorus 1:
It’s raw, the way you let me bleed
It’s wrong! The way you cut me, see!
Before you I was a seed.
Germinated on all their greed
Now I bleed and you let me be
A perfect wound, a fallen free
Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Pain so sharp I finally breathe
Rei stopped on the last line of the first chorus. Pain so sharp I finally breathe. That was how Sevastyan had come to him. He knew that feeling. The lyrics went on for two more verses and a rap section. But his sight was blurring.
“I’ll do it. I’ll be crew. They just can’t know who I am.”
“But one day they will, and they’ll feel better knowing you were there with them.”
Rei met Ellisandre’s eyes. “You can’t be sure of that.”
“Why?”
“I’m not what I was, before. They are five now. Su-jin completed them. I’m the ghost.”
“From one ghost to another, sometimes the living still talk to us.” Ellisandre held out their hand. “Let’s go pick up Alice and Ash.”