Saving seoul sword punk.., p.23
Saving Seoul (Sword Punk Book 1), page 23
“You’ve got a look to you, Akio,” Sang Hee said. Her voice was full of foreboding, and, unless I was sorely mistaken, perhaps a bit of desire. She seemed to come to her senses, stepped back again and would have gone over into the shallows had it not been for my reaching out to steady her.
We were standing very close, close enough to seem staged if it had been in a movie or play. I don’t know if I leaned in or she did, but that kiss borrowed some of our remembrance from a week ago, and added a hell of a lot more to the mix than I realized had been there. Before we broke off, it became clear to me why Sang Hee would have come to meet me.
“So,” she said, not so much breaking off from the contact as slipping out of it, “what now? What’s your endgame?”
I told her. There, in a private forest on the borders of Seoul, I told her how I wasn’t going to run. I told her I was going to stay, and that Kuzu Tokoro and Mal Chin were just the beginning. I told her my plans to make Goro sweat, and eventually to make him bleed, perhaps to kill him, if I got the chance.
I was nearly panting when I finished, and the stream seemed more silent after, as if the woodlands had taken in a long breath, uncertain of the killer in their midst.
If she looked at me differently, Sang Hee did a good job of hiding it.
She chewed it over for a time, standing with her arms crossed, more aloof than she had appeared before. She spit into the water. It was a vulgar move that somehow made me more attracted to her than I already was.
“I knew you took a fall,” she said, returning to the earlier point. I frowned. Seeing it, she shrugged and threw her arms up. “What do you want me to say, Akio? I’m already doing my damnedest not to act like you just told me you were going to singlehandedly take down the Hachinin. I mean … how? Just … how are you even going to start—”
“One at a time,” I replied evenly. Sang Hee bit back her reply. She might be flabbergasted, but the entire exchange had a markedly different feel from my arguments with Min.
“What’s that stupid grin for?”
“You agree with me,” I said simply.
She swallowed and raised her eyebrows. “Everyone in Seoul agrees with you. The Hachinin are a cancer. Their thugs have infected every street and corner, their product coursing through Korean veins like organic highways.”
“No,” I said. “No, no. Not that. I mean you agree with what I’m doing. You agree with how I’m doing it.”
Sang Hee looked confused. She turned it over, and whatever conclusion she came to surprised her.
“You’re going to get yourself killed, Akio. Is that what you want? To become a martyr?”
When I didn’t answer right away, she took a step toward me. I’d yet to fight her under League rules, but I had my doubts over whether or not I’d prevail. Here, with no rules to protect me, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to raise her hackles any more than I already had.
“You should have taken the fall, Akio.”
I would have felt it more keenly if she had believed it.
“I didn’t. And here I stand.” I spread my arms out.
“For now.”
“For now,” I echoed.
Sang Hee looked toward the shore, scanning as a car whizzed past on the mountain road. The sun was getting low, and the fog was rolling back in. The water of the stream cast a mist that enveloped the rippled surface and rose up to kiss our fingertips.
“Killing Goro isn’t going to solve this city’s problems. You know that, right?” She didn’t look at me as she spoke.
“It’s a start,” I said. “I may have been born to squalor, but it was a safe sort. The streets raised me and they did it well, all things considered.” That drew another dubious appraisal, but I forged on. “But this city is poisoned, Sang Hee. You know it, I know it. Everyone knows it. And that fat prick’s at the heart of it.” I smiled. “I’ve already got him riled.”
“More than riled.” She seemed to try to say it with a hint of warning, but it came out more mischievous. Seeing my questioning look, she rolled her eyes. “He’s released a press clipping this morning, responding to SMC’s allegations.”
“Did he, now?”
That was intriguing. I expected Goro to wall himself up in his offices, devote all attention to the League Finals tomorrow night, and put off addressing the media ‘investigation’ until it blew over, or until I was dead. He might be waiting a while on that last account, but Goro hadn’t got to where he was without being a patient man. Gabriella was playing a game, and she thought she was using me as a puppet. Now, one of the great powers of the East was launching salvos across the bow of the Hachinin, even if not quite on their home soil. And I’d started it.
“He refuted all claims against his name.”
“Yeah,” I said distractedly, lost in my own thoughts.
“He’s going to be at the Finals, according to my little birds.”
Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “And how many little birds do you have?”
“Enough.”
Sang Hee was connected. I didn’t know how and I didn’t know the extent of it, but I did know that fighting was a hobby for her. She might not be an heiress at the level of Gabriella. For all I knew, she was self-made. I’d seen the sorts of purses she brought in from the League. Healthy. Much healthier than my own, despite my victories, but even with her lucrative sponsorship deals, she was known by many, and respected by more. It dawned on me then that she’d make a hell of an enemy, and that I should do everything in my meager power to keep her as a friend.
That probably shouldn’t include asking more favors. But then, I was a ghost, after all. And what was a ghost to do but find people to haunt?
“I suppose a part of me expected him to hop on the first plane to Tokyo,” I said.
“That would involve admitting defeat,” Sang Hee said. “Goro’s weathered media storms and investigations before. They almost had him strung up four years ago on the port charges—”
“Not even close,” I said, shaking my head. “They weren’t close to a conviction. It was all a song and dance. They had nothing on him. Just some of his loose-lipped lackeys. Goro keeps a lot of friends, but he doesn’t keep any of them particularly close. Not close enough to implicate him, in any event.”
“Your girlfriend at the precinct tell you that?”
“Maybe.”
“Hmm.”
“No,” I said, not willing to go down that particular road any farther. “Goro wouldn’t run from me. He doesn’t fear me enough yet.”
“How do you know he fears you at all?”
“You don’t try to kill someone you don’t fear.”
“That can be turned around, Akio.”
“Fair enough.” I smiled, flashing back to my recent League match against King Kwan. I wondered where the big fella had got to. “I guess it’s a good thing that’s my trick.”
“Your trick?”
“It’s nothing,” I said, waving it away like so much smoke.
The silence stretched for the first time, and I didn’t think this one was going to lead to a kiss. The realness of the situation was beginning to infect Sang Hee like a rot. She still stood with her arms crossed, but now they seemed to be holding in warmth and suppressing a shiver rather than displaying calm in the face of my madness.
“Maybe it is time we take the city back.” She said it almost under her breath. Quiet enough to seem deadly serious.
“‘We,’ is it?” Not that I was complaining.
Sang Hee cleared her throat. “So, my ethereal Ghost of Seoul, my Sword Punk.” She seemed to like the name, though not for the reasons others did. “Why did you really call me here, if it wasn’t to profess your undying love?”
“How do you know it isn’t?”
Her look might best be described as withering bored.
“What do you want?”
“I need a new suit,” I said, a little sheepish. I’d stuck my hands into the pockets of my hoodie and turned them out like a teenager. “This isn’t going to get me very far when I tangle with one of Korain’s crew next time—”
“Korain?” Sang Hee looked nervous and surprised all at once.
“Mal Chin was one of his, apparently.” I nodded. “Errand boys for the Hachinin.”
“More than errand boys, Akio,” she said, and now she didn’t have to work to suppress the chill. “Korain’s the best the League ever saw. How much money do you think it took to pull him away from it when he was on top?”
“Right,” I said, only half ignoring the point. I spoke past the growing lump in my throat. “I also need new blades, and I’ve heard you know a guy.”
“League blades?” she asked. “You want League blades to go along with a spiffy new League suit? Are you staging a coup, or a play? You may as well put up billboards that you’re alive and—”
“He already knows, Sang Hee,” I said. “Which is quite the point. And besides, how am I supposed to live up to the hype that’s building on every forum across the land if I don’t continue my rebellion with the same flair I started it with?”
“Rebellion …” she tasted the word. It didn’t go down right.
“You do know a guy, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I know a guy, but I’m guessing you’re going to want a League suit that stops more than blunted blades and glowing batons, and I’m guessing you’re going to want blades that can do what your little red flares never could. Namely, kill.”
I didn’t answer and Sang Hee began to turn it all over, tapping her foot and looking everywhere but at me. She must have examined every slick stone, floating leaf and errant bit of bark in the vicinity before she came back.
“That’s it?” she asked.
“Wh … what’s it?”
“You were going to use me for the odd tumble before your epic and quite dramatic fall, and now you’re going to use me to supply you with weapons to take down the most powerful man in Seoul, who would only be the eighth most powerful man in Japan.”
“I—” I started but she wasn’t finished.
“And all without inviting me into your little group?”
She seemed to be as genuinely hurt by the prospect as I was surprised and confused at it.
“Team?”
“Your rebellion, Akio,” she said, twirling her fingers like she was ripping cobwebs. “Whatever it is. Clearly you haven’t got this far alone. Someone’s been hiding you, and I’d guess it’s either that little minx you’ve got at the precinct or the cute one who teaches at Ken’s old place downtown.”
“It’s not—” I started and stopped again.
The truth was, I hadn’t done it alone. Sure, I’d made my grand, public stand against Goro, and I’d certainly been the one to kill Zoo. I had been the one to scale Gabriella Burtahn’s tower.
But then, I hadn’t pulled myself out of that river. I hadn’t slain a mechanical demon in a broken lobby that may as well have been a throne room from a storybook without something borrowed, and I certainly hadn’t stayed fed and warm on my own. My team was small, but I couldn’t argue that it didn’t exist.
“You’re really not going to invite me to join your little group?” Sang Hee continued, misreading my pause.
I started to reach my hand out once more, but the sound of a cycle cruising by—slowly, by the sounds of it—had both of us perking up. There was a pop from the motor, and whoever it was sped off.
“Welcome to the team,” I said, gripping her hand firmly. She took it reluctantly, not liking the idea of having to ask.
“But,” I pulled her in a bit, leaned into her ear, “let’s not pretend I provoked those pre- and post-match tumbles.”
When I released her, she’d pursed her lips into a tight line to hide the smile. “And who’re you calling cute?” I asked as she stepped down into the water, making her way back to the nearby shore. “Joon’s hardly the dating type.”
“And you are?”
“Well …” I didn’t have much to say to that. Luckily, she let it go.
I spent a few minutes shaking loose pebbles from my shoes while Sang Hee made a call.
“Right. No. No. Yes. Exactly. Not like that. Well … it’s private” were just a few of the clips I heard, and questions of who Sang Hee was and where she had found a man who’d not only make the best sponsored weapons the League had ever seen, but would also turn them lethal with little more than a phone call, flooded my mind.
She ended the call, slipped her phone back into her back pocket and bent over the seat of her cycle, rooting through one of the pockets in the long black pack that probably housed her brilliant staff.
I’d just finished retying my shoes when I felt it, like a threat on the breeze. Like ill intent drifting in my direction, fast as the crow flies.
I followed the drainage ditch back up to the guardrail along the side of the road. I didn’t see anything untoward, but just before I returned my attention to the dirt clearing, I saw something black glinting in the fog-filtered sun. It was farther up the rise and obscured by a thicket of small trees and scrub. It was a cycle, likely the one that had taken its time in passing just minutes before. And it was riderless.
My pulse quickened as I scanned the surrounding trees. Sang Hee must have sensed that something was amiss. She paused in her rooting, frozen like a hare cornered by a snake. I saw the shadow detach itself from the tree line just a stride or two from her, and I knew I wouldn’t reach him in time.
A different sort of black glinted in the filtered light beneath the trees as the masked hitman leveled his rifle, and even before I could shout a warning, Sang Hee exploded into motion.
She ripped her pack free and ducked behind her cycle. The gun flashed, but the barrel was longer than it should have been, and silent but for the horrifying ringing clacking sounds as bullets embedded themselves in the leather and plastic, and bounced off of the metal bits, of Sang Hee’s cycle.
I knew I wouldn’t make it in time, but I charged forward anyway, without the time to snatch up so much as a loose stone to hurl as a desperate distraction. The barrel of the gun swung up and scanned toward me, reminding me of the spider’s turret at the base of Gabriella’s tower. Only this had a man behind it. I don’t know why it felt different, why it felt worse to be about to die that way, but it did.
I was less than two strides from him, and knew I was too far.
There was a flash that I at first mistook for the blinding light of the gun barrel, and I dove to the side, my shoulder slamming hard into the bank that rose up to meet the road above. I only realized the light had been blue when I was midway through a scramble that would have seen me shredded had the gunman had any sense of aim.
Had Sang Hee not skewered him on the spot.
I stood on shaking legs and stared at the scene before me, dumbstruck. Sang Hee had come around the front of her cycle, blue staff—more a pulsating blue spear, from the looks of it—in hand, and had thrown it with the might of a Greek god. It had taken the gunman off his feet, passed through his chest and planted itself tip-first in the hard-packed dirt a short distance away, taking him with it like a kebob.
He sighed a bloody sigh, arms drooping to his sides, chin lolling. The gun hit the ground with a thud, and the woods were quiet once more.
There was a pregnant pause that felt like a readjustment, and Sang Hee and I approached the impaled corpse with trepidation.
When we were close, Sang Hee reached out and ripped his nylon mask away with a savagery I found oddly disquieting. She was breathing heavily, but seemed remarkably calm, given the circumstances.
“Know him?”
“No,” I said.
He was older than I would have guessed, with gray hair cut in a military style. His eyes had already glazed over, heavy lids half closed, and a trickle of dark blood ran from his chin like syrup. He looked European. Maybe even American.
“One of Goro’s errand boys,” she spat.
“An assassin,” I said, “but military. Not a fighter.”
I looked from him down to the blue shaft that was still pulsating. A foot length of it stuck out of his chest, while the rest had passed through him.
“The hell is this?”
Sang Hee shoved the assassin forward. He slid down the length of her glowing resin spear with a sickening squelch that wasn’t as bad as the wet sucking sound as she yanked the weapon’s tip free. The spear buzzed and crackled.
“That thing a taser, too?”
“When I want it to be,” Sang Hee said. She pressed a button I couldn’t see and the light faded from the shaft, along with the buzzing sound.
“It’s like you said, Akio,” she looked at me, caught between a smile and a grimace, “city’s been getting bad. Can’t be too careful.”
We both looked down at the sorry soul who’d tried to cross us—that had tried to cross Sang Hee without knowing that she was some kind of lethal urban ninja.
“Guess that’s a yes, then.”
“What?” I asked, foggily.
“To joining the team.”
“You don’t have to kill someone to prove you’re on—”
“A team of killers?” she interrupted.
I didn’t have a good response to that.
“They came here. They saw me. They tried to kill me,” she said, pointing at the corpse while looking at me. “That makes them my enemy just as much as yours.”
“I … I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Sang Hee walked away, passing through the narrow, brush-choked trail toward the stream. I heard her splashing in the water, cleaning the gore from her spear while I stared numbly at the man she’d killed because of me.
Joon popped into my mind then, and I cursed myself for spending time outside of the dojo this morning. I didn’t know if I’d been followed, but I didn’t see how they’d known where to find me. Maybe Sang Hee’s cycle had simply been too conspicuously placed to escape notice. Or maybe they’d been tailing her ever since my reemergence, since we’d been connected even prior to being matched up in the League Finals.
I heard Sang Hee make her way back over, heard her zip up her pack and kick at the pipes of her cycle.
