Page 23 of Lay It Bare

Rei hesitated, using the act of walking and climbing back into bed to cover his uncertainty. But getting settled meant that the question was still hanging in the air. Lisa was even lying facing him, waiting.

“I . . . I remind myself why I’m still here.”

“Why are you still here?”

“My group members. The other trainees. I was supposed to be an idol. There were five of us. I was the oldest, so I was going to be the leader. It was me, Jun, Geun, Yoihei, and Jaewoong.”

“But you got sold.” Lisa looked actually sane and normal for once, like a man in his later twenties who might get up, put on a suit, and go to work in an office building.

Rei gripped his hands together in front of his face, twisting his fingers. “They told me if I killed myself at the start, or escaped, then they’d go back and take one of the others. And I couldn’t, I wouldn’t let that happen. I found a way to . . . be a slave. For a while. Training was awful, but my first master wasn’t terrible. I think he forgot I wasn’t a pet sometimes. He wasn’t . . . he forgot a lot of things. He was old. But after that . . . I think I started dying. The fire almost finished me, but master—Sevastyan—pulled me out and got me help. I didn’t think they’d go back and get one of the others anymore. And I think that’s why I was sort of . . . fading, you know. It helps, thinking about them, knowing they are okay. I hold onto that.”

Lisa’s hand flexed between them like he wanted to reach out but stopped himself.

Rei took Lisa’s hand himself. “It’s easy, when he’s around. When he’s not, it’s scary.”

Lisa’s forehead creased. “Doesn’t . . . doesn’t your master hurt you sometimes?”

Rei swallowed. “He makes it better, when he can.”

“It shouldn’t happen.” Lisa’s eyes were hurt-angry, but like many slaves, he didn’t cry. It didn’t do any good to cry over just words or a story. You’d cry your face away and then just be a shell. At least when the hurt and the pain welled up inside, you still felt things.

It’s when you decided to stop feeling things that the world got murky. Sometimes murky was good. And sometimes it meant that all the hooks that were there to stop you from doing something terrible were running out.

“None of it should happen.” Rei put a hand on Lisa’s arm, stroking it. “You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. Master shouldn’t be here. He didn’t choose this any more than we did. Raska was making him run missions in grade school.”

Lisa frowned. “He was born into this?”

Rei nodded. “She likes to remind him of all the times she put a gun to his head, when he was in his teens and early twenties. Used him as a hostage against his father, to make him stay. The only way master can stop being Merchari is if she’s dead.

Lisa’s eyes darkened. “That can be arranged.”

“Then they’d hunt him. And they’d hunt me. Maybe when he’s more powerful. He’s been trying to become a region head, but some of the council and at least one of the directors are afraid that will give Raska too much power. They don’t want to elevate him until she retires. The only other way is to start building up his own operations and take it via force, money, and favors.”

“Why doesn’t he do that?”

Rei bit his lip. “It hasn’t been very long. Maybe he will, one day.” But it was a lie, and Lisa saw it.

“It’s all right.” Lisa put his hand over Rei’s. “You can’t tell me everything. I don’t belong to Sevastyan.”

Rei reached for Lisa, pulling their bodies closer. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Lisa pressed his lips to Rei’s hairline. “Just . . . be here. I’m tired. Fuck this illness. Counting on you. I don’t want to be fucking alone, so don’t off yourself while I’m sleeping.”

Rei kissed Lisa’s shoulder. “I’ll stay. But I’m going to make food soon, so I might slip out in a bit.”

Lisa squeezed him once and then held him more lightly. “As long as you’re in the flat.”

Within minutes Lisa was asleep. Rei wiggled out and went to the kitchen to cook rice for congee. It felt odd to not have clothes on without Sevastyan around. He pulled on jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, did laundry, then took his tablet to the couch in the living room. With his headphones in, he brought up the latest videos for 5N.

The group’s social media presence was fragmented. There were lots of comments among the fans about where to go to get the content and where the latest updates were being posted. A lot of hate was going around for BBB3. Evidently, Bak Gyeong had been threatening legal action to get social media companies to take down everything independently posted by Jun, Geun, Jaewoong, Yoihei, and Su-jin. Rei read through forum after forum, tracking the story back several days. 5N had started their own website with their own server and were posting their updates, video shorts, and photos there, for fans to grab and then repost on their own accounts. Dedicated fans of 5N, known as NowNows, had been faithfully cycling the content on 5N’s behalf.

Rei hugged himself, smiling at the picture of an angry-looking Australian goth girl, who called herself a burnt out thirty-year-old, dueting a video of Yoihei doing flips on a grassy hill and then giving the camera a thumbs-up. Yohei had captioned the video “practicing outside today, but it’s cold”.

This was why Rei was still alive. This was why he would swallow the barrel of Sevastyan’s gun as many times as he ordered it. Rei touched the screen by Yoihei’s satisfied face and smiled back.

Then he set the tablet up on a stand and replayed the video in slow motion so he could repeat the same flip. In the long days when Sevastyan was gone, dance was sometimes the only thing that made him tired enough to sleep and could take him away from his thoughts. Dance and singing. There wasn’t a single song in 5N’s repertoire he didn’t know by heart, every step of every part. Some of the steps were ones he’d choreographed himself. A few were melodies he’d written.

It helped to know that even if the NowNows didn’t recognize him, pieces of himself had debuted with Jun and the rest. Bits of what he and Jun had stayed up late plotting had gone on in his absence. Bits and pieces. Like he was a ghost in their lives, watching his stardust spread out into the universe. But it sparkled in these men.