Chapter 13 Jin
I haven’t slept properly in days.
The nightmare comes every time I close my eyes, playing on an endless loop I can’t escape.
Monroe on the heated floors of my family’s old hanok, her throat torn open, her hand still resting on her pregnant belly that’s been mercilessly slit too.
Our son, Jaden, sprawled among his toys, bathed in his own blood.
Standing over them, the masked figure.
The Black Shell.
I lie in the darkness of our bedroom, staring at the ceiling while Monroe dozes peacefully beside me. Her face is serene and blank, each breath drawn leisurely. She’s curled toward me, one arm tucked under her pillow and the other swathed over her ever-growing belly.
She’s always looked so… natural and beautiful like this.
But whereas in past times she brought me comfort and set my mind at ease, all I can think about as I glance at her beside me is the nightmare where she’s slaughtered.
Where she and our unborn second baby and our son all die.
If she knew—if I troubled her with these worries—she probably wouldn’t be able to sleep much either.
So I keep it bottled up. I resign myself to sleepless nights as the message from the mysterious Black Shell echoes in my mind.
The Black Shell sends his regards, Baekho-je Seo Jin-tae! It’s been so long since you’ve seen each other. But never worry—you’ll meet again soon.
When the message was delivered to me outside the underground boxing arena, I had no clue what the fuck they were talking about.
I had never in my life met anyone with the moniker Black Shell. Yet the more I turn over the phrasing in my head and agonize over the nightmares, the more I wonder if I’ve been viewing the situation wrongly.
I’ve assumed the nightmare was some arbitrary reenactment of my childhood trauma. But what if it was my subconscious trying to tell me something? What if it was my mind bridging the gap between the past and the potential future?
The horrific evening so many decades ago where my family was slaughtered before my very eyes.
I was a very small boy at the time. I was three, maybe four, years old.
The evening had started like any other until my father grew tense. He seemed to realize danger was imminent. I was told to hide in the wardrobe and not come out no matter what happened.
The memory grows so fuzzy; I have no real recollection of what happened next.
Such a deep and disturbing trauma so early in life that my mind has consciously blocked it.
But, vaguely, I remember the inches of blood soaking the floor. I remember the screams and pleas for mercy. The cruel men that came to our home and changed the course of my life forever.
…maybe I even remember one of them—a man whose back was turned to me, who wore a mask and basked in the suffering he had caused.
As I zero in on this possibility, I strain the recesses of my memory to determine if it’s real. If I really did see such a menacing masked man or if I’m only convincing myself I have now.
Still, what else could it be if not somebody from a past I don’t remember? Some bitter gangster with a score to settle with the son he didn’t kill?
There’s no way to know for sure only relying on my fuzzy, distorted memory. Memories from a childhood I’ve largely spent decades trying to forget.
But there is one other person I know who might have answers.
I kiss Monroe goodbye when she’s escorted by Sang-cheol to the car. It’s her second to last day at Suyeong Academy before her leave of absence. As she smiles at me and mentions maybe going out to dinner with her mother later, I simply nod and suggest I’ll be with Sang-cheol to pick her up.
Then I make sure Monroe’s mother is out of earshot when I place the call. Thankfully, she’s still adjusting to the time zone from her long international travel, so she’s decided to spend the day in recovery.
It rings a few times before the other line answers. Answered by the sage and whisper-soft voice of perhaps the only other person who ever cared for me after my family died.
“Jin-ah? Is that you?” asks Auntie Yong-sun.
“Yes, Auntie. It is me.”
“It has been so long since you’ve rang me. Is this about the American expat again? She never came to stay with me.”
For a second, I almost forget I ever asked. Back when Monroe was wanted dead by the old Baekho-je Jae-hyun and potentially also a target of the Bulgeomhoe, I had devised a plan to smuggle her to Taiwan.
There, she would be able to stay with an old family friend of mine. The woman who once considered herself my mother’s best friend.
“Uh, no, Auntie. This isn’t about the American expat coming to stay. It’s… something else. I have a question for you.”
“Of course, of course. Is everything alright? Have you been staying out of trouble or is that too much to ask?” She adds a gentle laugh.
“Everything is complicated right now, which is why I need your help. It’s about my parents.”
“Your parents?” she repeats. Any humor disappears from her tone, and she suddenly sounds wary. “Jin-ah, why are you asking about this now? After all these years?”
“Someone is threatening my family. Monroe—the American woman—she and I fell in love. We’re engaged to be married, and she’s pregnant.
We’re having a son,” I explain speedily.
“Threats have started coming in. Some man calling himself the Black Shell claims we’ll see each other again.
He claims it’s been a long time since we last met. ”
“That could be anyone. What does this have to do with your parents?”
“There’s no enemy of mine that fits his profile. Which means it could be someone not from my past… but my parents.”
My theory is met with drawn-out silence on her end. I can almost hear her thinking, weighing how much to tell me.
“Auntie,” I press, my tone hardening, “this has to do with my parents, doesn’t it? What was my father involved in?”
“I don’t know the details,” she says reluctantly.
She sighs as if physically ailed by my request. “I was close with your mother, not your father. But I… I knew something was wrong. Your father… he was involved with bad people, Jin-ah. Characters from the crime world. I never knew exactly what he did or who he worked with, but I knew enough to be afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of what might happen if those people ever came looking for him. They eventually did. They killed your entire family, and I... I fled. I was terrified they would come for me too, just for being close to your mother. That’s why I moved here to Taiwan.
That’s why I’ve stayed hidden all these years. ”
I absorb this revelation, turning it over in my mind. My father—the man I always imagined as a regular civilian living a humble life—was involved with criminals. Bad enough that his entire family was slaughtered as punishment.
“Who were they?” I ask tightly. “The people he worked with.”
“I don’t know. I truly don’t,” she answers.
“But there was a man who owned the bar where your father used to do business sometimes. I know of him because he once tried to date me. His name is Baek Dok-su. Last I heard, he still runs the same bar in Jangnim-dong. If anyone knows what your father was mixed up in, it would be him.”
I commit the name to memory. “Thank you, Auntie.”
“Jin-ah, be careful. Whatever your father was involved in... it was dangerous enough to destroy everyone he loved. Don’t let it destroy you too.”
I hang up without responding. Nothing will stop me from getting to the bottom of what’s going on.
I go alone to the establishment in Jangnim-dong. Where normally I’d bring a few hubaes with me, I decide it’s best to tackle this matter alone.
Hubaes like Min-gyu are dutiful, but they haven’t exactly been the most useful as of late, and, even worse, can be said for lazy and incompetent lieutenants like Nam Joo-wan.
When I turn up to the bar, it’s what I would expect of a place far past its glory days. It’s a cramped and dingy hole in the wall situated next to a shuttered pharmacy, a massage parlor, and some dumpsters. The sign above the door flickers so badly you can barely read the characters.
Inside there are only a handful of customers. Most old men who are either nursing glasses of soju or inhaling cigarette smoke into their lungs.
Behind the bar, wiping down glasses with a rag that’s seen cleaner days, is a man who must be Baek Dok-su.
He’s in his seventies, at least—grizzled and weathered, with a face like cracked leather. His hands are gnarled, his posture partially hunched. It seems like his patrons, he’s had several glasses to drink himself.
I approach the bar and take a seat on one of the rickety stools. Dok-su glances up at me, his expression instantly wary.
“We’re not hiring,” he says in Hangugeo. “And if you’re looking for trouble, find it somewhere else.”
“I’m not looking for trouble,” I answer plainly. “I’m looking for information. About my father.”
Recognition flickers in his eyes, yet he gives a single shake of his head, switching to English. “I don’t know your father.”
“Seo Jung-hoon,” I say, closely watching his cryptic expression. “He used to come to this bar thirty years ago. You were associates.”
The name drop triggers something in Dok-su. He goes still in the middle of wiping down the glass with the dirty rag.
The ambiguity on his cracked, leathery face fades as he releases a scoff and sets down the glass hard.
“You’re his son,” he says accusatorially. As if it’s damning. “The one who survived.”
“Is that how I’m known?” I ask in return. The corner of my mouth twitches. “So you know all about what happened to my family that night. How they were slaughtered like pigs.”
“I don’t know anything about it. You need to get out of here. You’re not welcomed!”
“I’m not asking to be polite,” I say, then I gesture at the claw marks along my neck. A well-known symbol of the white tiger the Baekho Pa is named after. “I’m telling you to provide the information I need or else.”