Chapter 15 Little Creature
Little Creature
MARC
“It’s good of you to come,” I say, reverting to my mother’s tongue.
“I’ll go anywhere you ask, Marcus-shi,” she says, tagging my name with a Seongan honorific.
We pick up her breakfast smoothie on our way through the kitchens. The slurry looks like the underside of a boat dock, but she swears by it, happily sucking the straw as we adjourn to the library.
I hold the door but my gaze locates the exact spot where I tumbled to the floor with Ella in my arms. Was it only last week? I look at the window and the woods beyond, but there is no safety there. I might have to burn the little forest down.
I let Alix think I was industriously working last night, shooting off emails and outlining productivity schedules. Instead, I tore through her aesthetic piles of wood until they were reduced to a few bark chips, and cursed myself in every language I know.
Stultes es. Lines were crossed.
Ever since I returned from Seong, I haven’t been able to speak to Ella like a normal person, and it’s not her fault she has become my own personal kryptonite. When did that happen? Erasmus knows.
I should have backed away last night and explained with clinical precision that I didn’t mean she wasn’t as appealing as her sisters.
The problem was that I meant that she is much, much more appealing than her sisters.
Other people have different, worse opinions, I’m sure.
There were no words that were going to help me with that one.
So I kissed her like I was on the seventh round of a hot wings challenge and she was the last glass of milk. Desperate. Insatiable. My stomach tightens and I feel my heartbeat everywhere. If Alix hadn’t found us when she did, I might still be kissing her.
“Why do you look so tired,” Jang Mi perches on the window seat, “when I’m the one who took a red eye?”
I sink into the sofa and close my eyes for a moment. I bet Ella slept deeply. I bet she had her hand crooked under her chin at an impossible angle, cheeks flushed with sleep. I don’t have to wonder if she likes to push her icy feet under the nearest warm body. I know she does.
Jang Mi glances out the window and I sit forward, clasping my hands lightly as I remember how Ella kissed me back and the brush of her fingertips against my ear.
A satisfied shiver carries through my shoulders, but cold reason grabs me by the collar and hauls me back onto the crumbling ledge of reason.
Noah asked me to watch his sister and it’s my job to keep her out of trouble.
It’s not as simple as that. Even now, the memory of that kiss kicks me on the back of my legs, forcing me to kneel before it. Honor makes me frown.
Noah would send a hit man if he knew, and for the sake of the many ties that bind us, this lapse of judgement with Ella has to be regrettable. It must be viewed as a mistake. I rub a hand over the sudden pain in my chest.
“Did I understand correctly, Marcus-shi?” Jang Mi says, stretching to see the corner of the garden from the window. “Was that little creature really a princess?”
Little creature?
Irritation works under my skin as I translate her meaning.
Seongan can be a formal language, layered with sharp, Confucian boundaries delineating old from young, king from subject, teachers from students, constantly reinforcing hierarchies.
‘Little creature’ is a Seongan idiom and not as bad as it sounds in Sondish, but it firmly places Ella in the realm of children and much-loved animals—something to be protected rather than someone who could wreck me.
“Explain yourself, Jang Mi-yeo,” I charge. It doesn’t matter that she’s internationally famous. In the rules which govern our shared culture, she must give way.
Jang Mi crosses her long legs and takes a sip of her smoothie, eyes searching my face. “I was surprised after you described her. I was expecting one of the Four Ancient Beauties, but in the morning light, your princess has spots all over her face.” She gives a shiver of distaste.
“Freckles,” I correct. They make me want to run my fingertips along the ridge of her cheeks and plot them as carefully as ancient mariners mapped the stars. “They’re cute.”
Jang Mi pouts, her eyes open wide and innocent. Her hands are wedged under her chin in a kind of frame. “Aren’t I cute? Aren’t you happy to see me?”
This kind of performative flirtatiousness is common in Seong, but it doesn’t have the same effect in Sondmark. Despite my father’s attempts to purge the bloodline of sobriety, I’m probably too Lutheran to succumb to it. “Of course I am. I hope this stop means you’re accepting my proposal.”
She drops the wheedling tone, emits a little sigh, and shifts into being the entertainment mogul she is. “I ran your idea of a benefit concert past the other girls and our manager. Even with a stripped down production, it means diverting considerable resources from the tour.”
“Think of what all that charity will do to your public image,” I counter. “You’ll be the saviors of Seong. Your career might even survive an actual dating scandal.”
“Is that a proposition?” When I make no answer, she releases a sigh and sets her smoothie aside. “If certain conditions are met, we’ll consider it.”
“And those are?”
“Don’t rush me,” she says, kneading her neck. “The flight was exhausting.”
Negotiations move slowly in Seong. There are layers of ritual to be observed, and her reticence is not really about being too tired.
The rigorous Seongan idol system is meant to weed out mere mortals and I’m certain that Jang Mi could pop and lock from her deathbed.
No, she simply wants priceless treasures set at her feet and to be wooed with a ceremonial cup of tea as an ancient zither echoes across a formal Seongan garden. Slowly. Formally.
Her eyes flick up and she smiles. “When you needed help, your first thought was of me. Was it your idea?”
“It was Princess Ella’s.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I recognize it as a misstep. Jang Mi may be a hardened professional, but she still needs to have her ego stroked.
I would never have thought of appealing to pop stars.
It was Ella who recognized their potential as a driver of charitable donations.
It was Ella who worked out the logistics of where and when it would be easiest for BLUSH to take a four-day halt from the tour.
She spent weeks spamming me with Pixy shorts, and I dutifully watched each one, lying in my bed at the end of long days, until I finally gave in.
I give her the same smile I gave early investors. “This can’t work with anyone else. Why don’t we join my sister’s party and I can spend the day helping you make up your mind,” I add, getting ahead of an outright refusal.
Jang Mi stands, taking in the distant view of aristocrats milling about the walled garden in vintage silk pajamas and quilted robes. “I refuse to dress like a peasant.”
True to her word, when Jang Mi joins us at the stables for a group bicycling excursion, she’s wearing a mini jumpsuit and oversized jacket, paired with blindingly white high top sneakers.
She tugs on my shirt tails, shy when out of her element. “I haven’t ridden a bike in forever, Marcus-shi.”
“We’re going to ride tandem,” I say, pointing to the elongated bike.
Ella brakes next to us, tires biting into the gravel. Her hair has been caught back in a ponytail, and her clothes—a pair of cuffed jeans and a boxy top—should not be making me fight for air. Vede.
“He will go too fast down the hills and around the turns.” Ella smiles, slowing her English words, and looks directly into Jang Mi’s face. I can’t detect a speck of embarrassment or awkwardness. I could convince myself last night was a hallucination if I thought my imagination was that good.
Her nose wrinkles with silent laughter, freckles scrunching together. “If he gets carried away, be sure to pinch him.”
“Pinch?” Jang Mi echos, elegant even in her confusion.
Ella clips my waist, and I catch her fingertips without thinking. “Stop it,” I whisper. I release her, but not before the flame of attraction burns me again.
Tom, wearing a helmet like a good American, leads the party down the long drive and out onto the country road, Alix at his side.
Soon, we are strung out along fields newly sewn with barley and oats, a fresh wind at our back.
Up ahead, I see Mikkel flirting with Ella, making her laugh by pretending to lose control of his bicycle.
I increase my pace and Jang Mi pinches my side.
“Stop that,” I say, lapsing into Seongan.
“Slow down, Marcus-shi,” she counters. “This is not a race. What’s the hurry?”
I feel her weight shift to one side and I counter it by leaning in the opposite direction. “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking at something,” she says, rocking back into place. She pinches me again.
“Ow. What?”
“I didn’t know you were in love with someone.”
“I’m not in love with anyone.”
Jang Mi pinches me again, harder this time. “Does she know?”
We’re speaking in Seongan and there is a measure of relief when I stop guarding my tongue. Stop pretending I don’t know who she means.
“Her brother is my best friend. I’m looking out for her.”
“As you would look out for a ‘little creature’?” Jang Mi lays a palm against my back and pats slowly. “Does she know?”
Sunlight touches Ella’s hair and the ridge of her cheek when she turns her gaze on Mikkel, a man famous for smoldering in high definition. When she glances back at me, something shifts. Her chin dips and she swallows, looking away.
“It’s not love,” I insist. “Maybe.”
Jang Mi reaches for my waist but I bat her hand away before she can do me any more violence.
“Maybe, Marcus?” She drops the honorifics but I let her get away with it for once.
“‘Maybe’ is not the language of the Hanaya Clan,” she says, calling forth my ancestors whose rites I perform each season.
“‘Maybe’ is not a word used by people whose ancestors buried their enemies up to their necks in the sand and waited for high tide. Tell me then, do you like her?”
Joaen. Like. The Sondish translation is unsatisfying. We ‘like’ the color of a new car or the taste of Pankedruss. We would say “I like that girl” in the moments before we make our move, and be speaking of an emotion as thin as tea.
In Seong, Joaen isn’t a settled emotion. It’s not love, but it leads there. It’s craving. Worship, almost.
The line of bicycles begins up a long rise, and my chest constricts with the effort it takes to admit the truth. My eyes fasten on Ella and I accept that there’s no ‘maybe’ about this.
“Naui ta joaen,” I say. I like her.
I feel a sudden boost of power as Jang Mi begins to pedal, putting all her effort into the mechanism. She laughs as we begin to pass the others, flying down the hill on the other side, and when we coast to a stop near a quiet village pub her eyes are sparkling.
She dismounts and slips into my arms for a fierce hug.
“What’s this?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “You have given me a treasure, Marcus-shi. This little piece of your true heart.” She slips an arm through mine and looks up. “I’m ready to talk about the concert.”