#kk.log

If they ever find it at all, that is. Like a pathetic string of words swallowed into the guts of a ghost. Sometimes I hope a fire would somehow kindle near and I'd lose all those sluggish hours spent hunched under a lamplight to the flames, so one would ever have to read in ink about how much I've truly suffered in my life. But then, at other times I pray to any God that might still be willing to forgive me that the recipients, you, do find my words prematurely, while I'm still alive and intact and probably lounged in your living room, so I could finally get the help I've too much pride and arrogance to ask for myself. Don't know which scenario I'd prefer best just yet, but I do know that either way someone else will have to suffer as well, because of me. Because I'd been so selfish, all my life. Because I never wanted redemption as much as they wanted it for me. Are you someone who'll know me well enough to remember that I would hate it if you cried for me?

You are, because tonight I'm writing to you, pops. Y'know, it's been four months since I'd last been here, in this filthy, black fucking gutter. I somehow remember the sober tidbits in between, and that I'd dedicated my last letter to Yejin, my noona who's grin you adored so much. I'd written it over the long course of a week, and I recall writing many unfair accusations at first, about being destructive as I was then because she'd broken my fucking heart. But I'd ended up scrapping most of it after a few days of coming back to, as none of it was true and she would hate me more in my death than she ever has when I'd been alive. Later, I'd realized that I just wanted forgiveness and through that, I'd learned what to take with me into my next relapse. This time around, this grace I offer to you–as most of them have been, frankly. Hopefully, I don't cross any lines you wouldn't want me to take with me to my grave. Though I don't think it'll matter anyway.

Dear dad,

You're in the driver's seat next to me and you know that I'm high. There's a pooch in my lap–he's not yours, but hers although you feed him too, and he licks my palm while you murmur a curious concoction of Korean and Japanese onto deafened ears. How much longer do you think you will last like this? You ask me in the end, later that night on my balcony. I don't know anymore, I finally admit tell you nothing else. And you hold in an expression I think would've made the timid boy in me cry, were you to let it loose. It's evident you know that too, because you just stare ahead into the dark and speak no more of what may seem like an addiction in disguise. It's not, I promise. I swear. We go to bed sober, the two of us, and I sweat throughout the entire night in my futon. Without any clothes on, come morning. Did you know? Four months is the longest I'd been sober, since I started using again, three years ago. I'd tell you I could do five, then six, until I'm over it again, but I'm sick of unmet expectations. You get it.

The wrist I told you I'd broken again during an unfortunate accident, I'd actually broken it in an unfortunate fight that almost killed me passively. You're not stupid and know I'm lying through my teeth—I'm not the best liar when I'm high, but why haven't you been reacting to it as you used to anymore? The hardest thing for me to do has always been to lie to you, to tell you that I'm completely fine with two burning nostrils, so how could you nod and let me get away with it now? I don't get it. I really don't get it, but you seem happy to do it anyway, as if letting me off is the only thing that could save me. Maybe letting me go is the only way I could be saved. I'd just have to want it more than I do now. It's not easy to want anything good when all I can think of is retracting my steps. Of going back to when I truly felt purpose, to when I hadn't the need to save myself because it was easier to believe I couldn't be. Why is this so hard, dad? Tell me some day, how you did it. I would gladly sit by you and listen, as I've done from the beginning. And then, if you can still see, hear and touch me, I'll tell you after, how I did it, too.

Dear dust caked journal,

This is the longest I've gone without a word to you. Without the debilitating need of your familiarly, your tacit comfort. It feels strange– almost novel, to stroke your back and split you open again. Your blank pages nearly blinding me out of thought. It would seem that people hardly ever stir unless they're upset, depraved, or content. Today I'm here to confess that finally, finally, I'm the latter.

The year's close to ending and reinventing itself again. I remember where I was at this time a year ago; skin between my teeth, on my stomach, my eyes jaded and sleepless. The pain sewed throughout my vertebrae, unending. I remember everything, as does my body. I shiver at the thought of turning my back to the stove. I never do, but that's the only remaining tendril I've left of that person I was last year. Maybe someday he'll find the courage to rest alongside the ones who came before. Make more room for whatever or whoever else I'll become in the future.

That's not to say that I have any inklings of who I am today, though. I still don't fucking know. In my head I'm still six, eight, twelve, sixteen, seventeen, twenty-one, twenty-six. In my head, I'm still just surviving, even in the secure safety of mundanity. Still figuring out what exactly I'm supposed to do with this life I've repeatedly been given a second chance at, for whatever reason. (What is the reason?) Only thing I'm aware of is that I'm alive, that many graves are full because of me, and that somehow, by some sort of divinely conjured up miracle, exactly twelve days ago, I got married.

In Thailand, the knot was tied. 14th of November, ten days after my 30th birthday. Neither of us could speak Thai and yet we signed their papers and welcomed their cheers. Then it was about ten of us combined in a party room, including our photographer and makeup artists. I never knew I could cry so much. Never even thought I'd hit this particular milestone in this life, let alone bawl my way through my vows like a broken dam. Now I understand why marriage is so sought after among all generations. It's not about the wedding itself, but the feeling of it. Like a once in a lifetime high; like the first drug you ever do. Humans are notorious for chasing after euphoria, to the point of inevitable divorce. Or death. As it's only death that could do two apart, after all.

Upon landing back in Seoul, just married and very exhausted, I quit the office job my husband gave me about a year ago. Instead, I'll be opening a bar with my dirty money and setting us up with a second stream of income and thus securing our early retirement in place. Found the perfect spot a while back; a tiny, obscure nook in Itaewon. The alley elevation slightly downturned. Barely touched by the light, drowned in the shores of night. Byungwoo did not trip once on the way up to it, which is how I knew it was perfect. L.32 it'll be called; serving as the perfect little spot for my husband to swing by and hang out after work–alongside others, of course. Who knows? Perhaps while I'm doing this, as I adapt to and grow from it, I'll finally manage to figure out for good what kind of man I am. Or want to be. Will this new thing keep blood off my hands long term, or will I find and hide the crusts beneath my fingernails while fixing a framed wedding photo on my desk?

Only one way to find out. But for now, it's needless to say that I'm happy. I've stopped collecting scars. I've stopped running for my life. I'm sober and have gained weight. I no longer flinch in my sleep. I sleep. I've never been more safe and content than I am right now. My fists have no need to fly anymore, not to protect my life.

2024.

one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine (1/2), nine (2/2)

Let all the vile and suppurating venoms of the night spit in the eyes of God and blind her to our evil.

[Breaking News (31 October, 2023): Notorious drug ring gang members arrested en masse after a major brawl breaks out near Incheon Port in broad daylight]

[30–31 October, 2023. Somewhere between Yongsan and Incheon]

Have you seen the news going around on the 31st? Do you recall the full context of the coverage articles? Let me jog your memory for you: written by an obviously politically motivated prick, spreading bullshit about violent gang members, mass arrest, and body counts. Then something else about a notoriously wanted drug ring leader turning up dead a few hours after, his leaked identity shocking the general public into an instant uproar. Yeah, I mean that news, something about... trouble, trouble, and more trouble.

Was not my cup of tea in general as you would imagine, at least not that abysmal holier-than-thou attitude it'd been written with. But I can't deny that the evidence was still all there. And as per usual, it made the population anxious. What the president of a well known major corp. being the mafia all along implied for the rest was that any thriving day-to-day establishment they adored so much could also have been sponsored by the 'bad guys'. Any neighbor or relative a pawn to other men and women who would reach all horrifying ends with their lives to get what they wanted. This allows me another chance at reminding you, though, that crime organizations have always been deeply ingrained in our society, even more than they are today. It's just a matter of getting caught at the wrong moment and having no connections to back yourself up with.

I'd been heavily medicated and asleep when it all first blew up in the early morning. Didn't even notice my body being dragged from one room to another and finally laid to rest, despite all the excruciating aches and sores I'd earned during the many hours spent in captivity. My dad had to read it to me twelve hours later, twelve hours of the final escalations and then de-escalations of the day before being real and strictly unrefuted. I didn't somehow dream it all up. It was real how all it took was one night for more of my old friends to end up dead. My boss had been killed on his own turf, the drug ring he'd lead for most of his life and the life of his father before him crippled beyond repair. A legacy left behind to rot on the bloodied doorsteps of history. Finally, scores I've taken part in rousing all these years have been settled and I was allowed to walk free. Everybody lost, everybody won. But at what cost?

My dad had been caught by the same people who had me in their custody, tied at the same joints I was and thrown around along with some other guys on our side. They'd recognized him, though, and news of him being at large again spread far and wide enough in the ranks to reach my ear within an hour or so, if I had to make a guess. We didn't even catch him, I heard them whisper behind my back, he came and purposely gave himself up. He'd been pretty roughed up, and I could tell for sure by just looking at him, though it wasn't nearly as bad a hand as the one I'd been dealt.

"They were afraid. And they didn't exactly know what I wanted, though it was obvious," pops had said after I asked him why. "I could tell. They were perplexed and afraid". Even after all these years and secure layers of thick rope, they were still afraid of Kim Junseo. They had not washed the blood off my back the night before. Not until after I'd heard of my father's presence, almost a day later. I wonder what they'd say now if they were to see him in the kitchen, humming around a cigarette while he cooks dinner in an apron.

I do wonder if Yunho had heard he was here, too, and what his presence meant in terms of the future. Did he linger on purpose? Is that why he'd disappeared entirely?

As for me, the abrupt news of my father's captivity had shocked me so profoundly I think I had slipped into some sort of comatose state for a while. I swear I couldn't breathe nor feel the pain of my injuries ripping apart all the sinews in my back, thighs and arms with every miniscule movement. I could only stare at the ground and hold in my mouth a tongue that felt far too large for it, and a desperate series of pleads and cries that may get me burnt again. He was so close yet so far away from me. Was supposed to be in Kyoto. Was supposed to be far away from all of this. And yet he was there, and with him came an opportunity the syndicate would've never again gotten. A bone made of gold for the wildest dog.

They struck the deal with me over the phone as though they knew they had hardly any time left to relay the message, let alone come in personally to slap or carve it into me. A man whose voice I scarcely recognized growled to me, and I quote, "It's either you and your father's lives, or Lee Gun-pyo's life. Two piglets to a boar. We let you go, you take us to him. Kill him, and you and your father will never hear from us again." Later, my father would tell me that he leads the Reds.

I said only—or rather croaked, "Yes."

And only truly felt the sheer gravity of that choice after waking up to my pops beside me the next day. After seeing my partner for the first time in two eternities. Only then could I finally grasp at and understand the one and truest meaning of my life. Love so hard that it kills you.

They let me go just shy after our location had finally been leaked. Bound, still, though, I couldn't run even from myself. Only talk, for the lives I intended to save. This had been my bone, and I no other choice but to chew on it blindly while it was still intact and mine to bury. I've recently been such a bad dog to my owner, anyway. Give a dog a bone and he'll find his way home.

We got there sometime past twelve in the morning when they finally began to untie me. It's was a really small and narrow 떡볶이 restaurant cornering two empty streets, and was often empty. I knew the area and place very little, except that it was ran by the unfortunate mother of a man who'd passed away serving Gun-pyo years ago. I believe he was their sponsor. Before, I had been there only twice to eat and then exchange information for pay and new tasks with the same one man that sat inside every time. October 30th would it's last day in business for a really, really long time. If only the food had been any good.

Now, I don't want any of this to read as though I'm an innocent saint that harbored not even a fraction of desire to kill my patron myself. Believe me, the size of my desire had grown fucking behemoth at this point. I was thirsty to bite off the same hands that had been feeding me scraps all my life. That's how bad of a dog I was, and still am. I don't even consider myself a victim at this point. It's just karma. I might even forgo surgery and instead bear these scars on my back for the rest of my life, as I already do the rest.

What particulars I had against this was that me gutting my patron with kitchen scissors that night had not been a choice I'd decided on by my own terms. My hands, breaking the law and fixing another all at once, were forced, the fighting a brutal blur in time, and my back fucking ached. I was hanging by a thread exhausted and tattered to such awful degrees that I'm sitting here now, writing this and considering the fact that I'd been one of the only survivors alive in the end to be a complete miracle. The van had been full when we arrived on location, and left only with three in the end.

I'd just killed a man, I thought. Before he slipped out of my grip he managed to grab my shirt sleeve with what had been the last of his strength, looked up at me and said, "I should've put you down when I had the chance."

I hadn't been able to register it in the chaos of the moment back then, but as I think of his eyes now I can trace back no hatred in the brittle frost of them on me, despite his words. He'd made me into the dog that I am now, after all. He knew all along that this day would come for the both of us. So I killed him and simultaneously, part of myself, knowing that it would've, too.

one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine (1/2)

I'm writing this down now while it's still fresh on my mind, so in the case I'm ever found and arrested for it, I'll have this log as some sort of proof. Or even a confession.

[October 29, 2023, Somewhere between Yongsan and Incheon]

On the 29th of October of this year, four days ago, I was supposed to land safely on Japanese soil by 6 in the evening. My dad had agreed to pick me up from the airport and together we planned to grab a meal and some beer on the way back to Kyoto, where we live. It cuts me deeply now to remember how happy I'd been that day. After such a fun weekend spent with my boyfriend and friends, and of course, getting back to pops, which always excited me to all ends. I spent all morning holding my precious partner before he went to work, then gave him my afternoon, too. We had some lunch together right before my flight, though eating had been a challenge as parting for us was nothing short of bittersweet. We already knew we'd be apart for four days; he had work. And yet it had never occurred to me then that on top of that, I'd disappear entirely.

In hindsight, my joy had been a red herring of sorts.

Something strange happened around eleven, same day. The other gangs have been more aggressive lately, especially the Greens who've recently suffered a few greater losses than they've had to deal with in a while. The general goal had shifted from yielding for peace to blood for blood. They wanted Gun-pyo's head and would not stop until the hit is finally made on the right man. So around eleven that morning, I heard the burner phone I'd stolen a while back ringing for the first time since I found it. At first I had no clue what the sound was, until I realized during the second time it went off from somewhere in my closet. I found it but waited for the call to go dead prematurely, then waited until the very last ring to pick up. Up to my ear, while standing within the darkness asleep among my jackets I heard someone on the other end murmur, "I know it was you."

And for a horrifying moment the voice sounded like it came from the other side of my closet door. It didn't, but remembering now how I felt back then, how I held my breath and flushed with ire, I'm sure, despite everything, that I would've killed him on the way out.

Instead I quietly shrugged it off, drowned and then smashed the phone, blackmail material be damned. Because according to my logic and possibly greed, yeah it was me, so fucking what? Everything has already gone to shit and I was not about to be in Korea at all after the three following hours anyway.

At least I thought I shouldn't have been, but life wouldn't be life if it didn't have other plans in store for me, of fucking course. Halfway to the airport I'd asked my hyung to drop me off somewhere quiet so I could get a taxi instead, right after I noticed we were being followed. He has a kid so I didn't want him to get in trouble along with me if it came to it, although he'd stubbornly refused to abandon me at first. I hope to tell him soon that although my insistence got me kidnapped almost immediately after, I don't regret it. I could've died like he said, but I lived, after all.

As I expected though, my kidnappers were an odd mix of Greens, Reds and Blues, all guys we did business with. And I'm under the impression, still, that they'd followed me from home or somewhere too close to home for my comfort. I tried to fight them off and run, but I had nothing to protect myself. Next thing I knew I was somewhere in an abandoned building, disoriented as all hell. I didn't know in the beginning where exactly I was, though it couldn't have been too far from where they'd first apprehended me as I likely was not out of it for long. Alas, in that short amount of time they'd moved my unconscious body on location, stripped me of my clothes and belongings entirely, and was bound by the wrists and ankles on my knees.

I braced myself for a beatdown as soon as I was conscious again and rightfully so, as a beatdown I received after every question and threat of theirs I refused to answer (Tell us where your boss is. Do you know what will happen to you if you keep secrets? If you just talked, we wouldn't have to kill you). So their priority hardly was to keep me alive and that's the thing, I didn't mind it. I never could mind a split lip, some deep and tender bruises and black eyes, not even a stab. Even if they broke my bones and spit in my swollen eye and open wounds, I wouldn't snitch, though not for loyalty—not even fucking close. I have people to protect and if I had to die to guarantee their safety, I would.

Realizing this, the bastards started to burn my shit. Threw my suitcase and handbag into one of the braziers in the area. I lost my phone in that fire, alongside a lot of precious memories, messages and some of my skin. Which they burnt with a rod that's been cooking in the flames, dragging the thing down my back with a slowness so infinitesimal the space momentarily became hell itself. I saw red, I saw white, and then I couldn't see at all but just squirm there with the smell of my burning skin. While I tried to hold in my tears I imagined: this is what it must feel like to an angel having its wings ripped off.

That was the first night I disappeared.

[October 30, 2023, Somewhere between Kyoto, Japan and Seoul, South Korea]

The following section will be literal word of mouth, though as verbatim as I can help it. I trust my pops wouldn't lie to me.

He said and I scribe: he knew something was up within the first hour after I was supposed to land in Japan. I've warned him in the past before that while apart, if I ever went for more than 24 hours without replying to his messages or calls, assume I'm missing or dead. So he was more than prepared for situations like this though he also thought about waiting a while—maybe my phone had ran out of battery and I somehow forgot to charge it, while simultaneously forgetting he was picking me up. He went home, he said, and waited precisely another two hours before finally booking himself a flight to Korea for the morning. Nothing could get in the way of him finding me at that point, dead or alive, he said.

Much to my dismay, that's how he met Byungwoo for the first time. Instead of how I'd planned to introduce them in Japan, they were forced to meet prematurely at the expense of my safety. In front of my apartment proper, both of them desperate for some kind of sign of life from me. Maybe one of them might've even hoped it was all a bad dream and that they'd wake up in the next minute to me back in their realities. I would've hoped the same, yet that was our reality: his immediate suspicion upon seeing my boyfriend—who at the time to him was just another stranger, possibly some unsavoury figure from another gang waiting by the door for me to show up or come out. But pops' ability to read people is really impressive. Always has been. He could tell right away after getting closer that Byungwoo meant no harm, that they were both vulnerable flies approaching the same trap.

He told Byungwoo straight up about my position: his guess on point, being that I'd been taken somewhere and my phone had been shattered to limit contact. I don't really want to repeat what he'd said about Byungwoo's reaction to this, though. It truly breaks my heart to disastrous degrees to think about his face, the horror overtaking the beauty he'll always possess. The instantaneous panic, then a worry so raw and harrowing that it'd probably kept him up at night, waiting for who would not return so soon, nor as whole as he'd left. Who might've never returned. All I ever wanted was to do better for him. To not leave him behind to sleep and eat alone again, or have him worry to the point of tears and anger he hardly knew. All I wanted and will want, breathing or six feet under, is for him to be happy. Yet I've failed him again, to the point where my father had to warn him about getting near my apartment, lest he wanted to get hurt.

But in scenarios like this, I'd noticed, he becomes as determined as he is afraid, my partner. Last time I returned home hurt, he swore that he'd kill the people that wanted to hurt me. The hatred in his eyes at the time shocked me more than anything ever has before. It was real. Have you ever loved someone so much that you'd risk in a heartbeat something so incredibly horrendous for their sake? That'd make the two of us, at least. They ended up tracking my phone together. Two months or so ago Byungwoo and I decided to install a tracker app on our phones so he could track me in the case of an emergency. This was life or death, pops'd said, after they finally came across a distinct crosshair on the map that would serve as the first clue to my location.

Desperate but hopeful, my father rushed to Incheon with his eyes wide open, diving headfirst and alone into a full blown brawl between too many gangs to count. Kim Junseo, a legend of his own time, returned and purposely falling within the same trap his son did.

First, I have to get my money, then I count more seriously. Why wouldn't I get my fucking money? I made it. I did this. It won't be easy.

I think I want to live. I want a better ending for myself. I would mind it if I died in a random ditch somewhere. If I have to die, I have to die where you'll find me. I promise. And it won't be your fault. It's mine. I ran myself into the blade. Tell that to God while he devours my flesh in the flies.

Fuck.

I sewed all the seeds that no longer served me in the sand, on Sokcho Beach. Dead names, dead faces, dead legacies. I'll miss them when the nights get cold again. I wish I could cry for them. Maybe someday I will, when I break down entirely and every shelved shard of grief spills out of me. I don't look forward to blood in my eyes.

In turn, the sun accentuated the freckles on my face.

I can't tell if my heart is breaking or if it's burgeoning. Maybe it's both. Maybe it's my entire being, shattering and reconstructing itself over and over. I'm so confused. My body's still so confused. I don't think I'll make it, at least not in one piece. Part of me might fall prey to the rest of me forever, and it might be a matter of me losing them. So why do I look forward to it? How do I tell them they might never see me again?

How do you tell someone you're going to break their heart, without breaking their heart? What if that someone is yourself?

I only just wish I'd thought beforehand on what to do next. On what would be best.

What is it like? To be alive. To be sentient. To be human. I think, for me, that is to give and take away meaning from everything I do in ways only I find fitting, as a measure of making sense of myself. It is to camp on the border of desperateness, and bow to anything it'll take out of me, regardless of how mad, for my next chance at surviving. It is counterintuitive to play with the fire you know will hurt, yes, to receive some high degree burns while juggling all the shiny flames, yes, to still return to the bonfire in the end, like a moth, yes. But what if that is the only way that I have—what if that's the only way that makes sense to me as a tool of making sense of myself? Because otherwise, if I don't cohere, then what's the point of me existing at all? And what is extant without a little bit of peril? Nothing, says I. They're yin and yang, and I know many that would tuck my opinion back in my hands and send me away. But I never wanted peace or redemption. All I've ever really wanted was to make sense to myself.

I never had a mother, either. She never wanted me. My father had told me the story in full one night, while he was drunk out of his wits; most eloquently, of how he had to beg my mother on both knees to have me, so he could raise me himself. And maybe, back then, he just needed me as a scapegoat for his utterly fucked up life–as if a child could save anyone, I thought–but you did save me, more than I'd expected from anyone in this world, he'd said. He fell in love with me before I had the chance to take my very first breath into this burning house of a world, and had refused to abandon me ever since, although my mother had adjacent plans. I can imagine she did not even want to touch me, let alone bother with fulfilling her role any further beyond her deal with my father. Is it sad that I don't even know what she looks like? I don't know, nor want to and never could, anyway. I was born my father, through and through.

Consequently, I think because I have not a sliver or inkling about what a mother is really supposed to feel like, I haven't really been able to get accustomed to his girlfriend. She's a nice lady, sweet, even. Petite little thing who's always got an expensive bag at her hands. Korean, though practically not as she'd grown up here in Japan under arms of wealth. I can tell she loves pops, and she tries to appeal to me as best as she could. But as a mother in law, I simply cannot find it within myself to locate any merit in the thought of her taking up such a role. At least not for me, not at this big age of mine. Mothers are for boys, and my inner child, timid as he is, would spit at her feet.

Her son is twenty-five and seems to have formed an opinion on me that's, for now, majorly ambiguous than anything else. He gets restless when we're alone, which, I applaud and consider as good intuition. When you can tell that someone is bad news without them disclosing anything to you at all, that's usually a sign of grace. He knows the difference, which is something that'll keep him from my mess for good. Anyway, I've decided I'll keep my dictum of him just as whimsical. Not like I care much.

Christmas was nice (I got a haircut, cigs from dad and made catnip tea for my girls), but happy new year, me. What is it like? To be alive with blood on your hands? What is it like to smile, embrace joy and forget while your kin are dying back home? What is it like to close your eyes at night and see Sangyeon's gaping throat and the murder weapon in your hands? To be fair it's nothing new, and although it still makes me sick to my fucking stomach every new day, such is the nature of my life. This is the only way I can turn to as a reliable source of making sense of myself. Of making sure that I am alive.