Jisung pressed the ice pack harder into his head.
“You’re telling me. You tried to hit the target.”
His other hand busied with grading the assignments stacked up on his coffee table.
“Then some mysterious man shows up and is trying to hit him too. Or, sorry, no, wants the USB and laptop.”
Behind him, his couch digging harder into the top of his back as he leaned onto the support.
“AND THEN, the target is shoved into a car and is kidnapped. Just. Like that. Casually, you know.”
The muscle tape that now clung to his arms and legs causing his body to ache. Though he had the sneaking suspicion the other applied them too tight to his muscles on purpose (He didn’t. That’s just how tight they had to be to properly support his injuries).
“And I am supposed to believe that story?” Seungmin lectured him with something akin to disbelief, his arms crossed fully over his button-up and unbuttoned suit jacket sat loose around his ribs, the tie laid undone around his neck for safe keeping about as crumpled and disheveled as his hair flopped in different ways. At hardly 4am on a Monday morning, he seemed about as defeated as Jisung’s beat up body from last night as he sighed, “You can say you messed up you know, that’s completely fine, I understand, we have our off days. It happens. I can take care of that no problem. But kidnapping? That’s slightly too convenient for you to not be trying to bullshit me.”
“I’m not lying, Seungmin,” Jisung insisted. He circled another correct answer on the class paper, quickly underlining and adding suggestions in the margins of his student’s homework questions from the previous class. Grammar errors, parts of paragraphs that didn’t make too much sense, sentences that were impactful, question marks where their reasoning didn’t make sense, and ‘Good job!!’ pointing out their strongest arguments for or against the concept they were reading. Anything to ignore the person standing in the middle of his living room. He groaned around the soreness clung to his body, “I’m as confused and pissed as you are about what happened.”
Seungmin just sighed. Pinching the bridge of his nose in irritation as he squished his eyes shut. Somewhere between trying to decipher if Jisung was telling the truth or making it up; And giving up completely on dealing with this situation because it was way too early to be alive, much less having a serious conversation.
In his pocket, Seungmin’s phone rang loud into the silence of Jisung’s small living room. Filling the empty spaces of the minimal room, what few pieces of furniture existed besides the basics of the couch and coffee table he lived on religiously, invading on the flush leaves of the potted majesty palm kept in the corner by his balcony, nearly slipping into the echos of the kitchen nearby if the other had turned his phone volume up ever so slightly more. He quickly fished the device out, glancing once at that screen as he turned his back to Jisung. Answering the phone call with a murmur of, “Hang on a second, Ji.”
Jisung barely spared him a glance, watching wordlessly for a moment as Seungmin started uttering to whoever called him at this hour. His guess? Probably Seungmin’s boss. Like. His working a normal person job type boss. The thing was, the man was a legitimate person in the rea world, a government worker, a security-compliance officer, and that meant his ties gave him enough access to hit orders he could connect with the independent “contractors” he worked with. For 20% of the cut, of course. But anyway, he’d never admit that Jisung was his favorite to pass orders to. They both knew it. Neither of them would admit it. Even more, neither of them would ever admit the only reason Seungmin liked him so much compared to other contractors he managed was because Jisung was successful a majority of the time, and they both got paid as a result.
So, in other words, Seungmin was a pimp (For hitmen). And Jisung was his favorite whore (Hitman).
Truthfully, maybe he should be a sex worker… It’s probably not as illegal… Killing people to supplement his income is a lot dirtier…
Jisung resumed grading the papers as he glanced over the two assignment packets, cross checking the two answers he had marked as incorrect on the student’s assignments. The same names cropping up as usual. Those kids who tried their best to answer his questions earnestly, but couldn’t quite support or pinpoint their argument; The problem wasn’t what they were arguing for in these assignments, but how to argue. His students could argue that the author was a gay Jewish man who wrote this story because he was enjoying vacation out of wedlock with his husband who worked at an abortion clinic, he didn’t give a shit, as long as the student could find evidence to support their answer within the text. Argue anything you want, hell, the more creative the more interesting! But it needed to be supported.
My first and fourth period classes aren’t pulling strong enough evidence from the readings. I need to cover again what effective evidence and citations are in an argumentative writing question. When it comes to their assessments at the end of the year, they won’t do well if they don’t get it now.
Mindlessly, Jisung dragged over his own notebook and a blue ink pen alongside the stack of assignments. Scribbling down lecture notes to review when he was adjusting his lesson plans later that day, even if his hand clenched up with the strain inside of his palm or his arm twitched from a bruise that hit his coffee table, he kept at it; Writing down points to bring up, what evidence could be used from other student’s assignments that were strong, lines he pinpointed from the text that could be used to argue their thesis statements, he’d need to target their individual weaknesses if he wanted them to effectively remember these things. They were smart students. All of them were. It was only a matter of the concepts sticking through trial and error. If this method didn’t work, he’d have to change his approach soon.
When he finished taking notes, he set his pen down and quickly flipped through the stack of already graded papers. Thumbing through them as he looked for any particular irregularities. For a student to miss a question here and there, that wasn’t strange. But, for seven students to repeatedly get the same question wrong too…
Question 6 seems to be consistently difficult for everyone across all of my periods. I’ll address that too.
He plucked the irritating blue ink pen up once more, making another subnote underneath the previous chunk he wrote down. Too busied thinking about the task at hand to really care much for what Seungmin was still doing inside of his living room, or doing in the corner of his eyes as he saw him stop nodding to the phone call; He seemed to be turning back around to Jisung (albeit exceedingly reluctantly in the most sloth-like movements he had ever seen unwinding from that man), his outline against the dim backlighting of the television screen droning some useless weather forecast or another to ears the report fell dead to, his arms gingerly twisting behind him to pocket that device once more into the back of his professional work slacks.
“So.”
Jisung paused the tip of the pen against the notebook lines. Glancing up from beneath his eyelashes to Seungmin.
To the scowl that marred his face as Seungmin conceded, “You’re… not lying.”
“I told you,” He scoffed as he returned to finishing marking up the page, closing his pen into the notebook as he pushed the roughly drafted lesson plans aside and resumed grading the remaining stack. Only a few more to go. Only the assignments from his six and seventh periods. Hopefully he could finish these up before he had to leave for work, and hell, worst comes to worst, he would just sacrifice his lunch break to completing the rest of his grading. Maybe he’d just order delivery for lunch today too, he really didn’t feel like packing himself a lunch after finishing up these assignments. Maybe he’d get lunch from a convenience store on the corner of the street… or… there were small shops inside the stations, maybe he could get lunch from there instead…
“Okay. Okay. That’s fine. That’s okay. We can work with it,” Seungmin started pacing in circles around his living room, traversing the same ocular pattern enough times he would’ve thought the hardwood floors would wear down underneath the clicking heels of his polished dress shoes. He seemed to be talking more to the floors below him than Jisung as he rambled off, halfway between complaining from the pits of his hearts and analyzing the situation hand, “Okay. Okay. See, so, the issue is, the hit is still open. Because there’s no confirmation he was dead, the hit is still going, but you can’t finish it because he’s missing, he was taken, AuuuGGHHHH what the fuuuucccckkkkkk….!!!!!”
Or maybe Jisung could just deliver like he originally wanted. If he scheduled the delivery from one of the nearby fried chicken or hometown restaurants, he could probably have it delivered in time and dropped off at the main office as he usually did. Still… would he be in the mood for fried chicken later on? Gimbap sounded delicious too. But maybe he needed the energy from the fats, oils, and carbs from fried chicken, he’s been craving yangnyeom chicken lately anyway. Or, what about tteokbokki? Tteokbokki was soft, squishy, full of carbs, and spicy. Maybe pizza. Pizza sounded great too. But if he ordered tteokbokki and gimbap he could also order boba tea in the same delivery. Or did he want coffee? A sugary latte sounded heavenly right now at 4am, he could probably stop by a coffee shop on his way…
“Okay. Scratch everything. New plan,” Oblivious to the intense meal debate Jisung was having in his mind as he stopped writing on the papers to chew the end of his red pen between his teeth in thought, Seungmin stopped his repetitive pacing. His gestures turning to classic meeting room debriefing style, authoritative point downward, flat hand pointing out the balcony window, hands to the chest, authoritative point downward with two fingers, “The contractor still wants the hit done on Seo Changbin, somehow, you need to confirm whether or not he’s been hit. Track that fucker down, and if there has to be collateral in order to find him, I’ll handle the clean up later. If that mysterious bitch shows up again, I want you to put a bullet in him. I will pay you with a Apple Pay gift card.”
Removing the trapped pen from between his teeth, Jisung interrupted his mental tangent by tapping the end of the pen ontohis lip instead, “Seems a lot of trouble to go through for one person who’s probably been killed by now.”
“Yeah, well, I guess he pissed off enough people,” Seungmin finished. Pausing before he pointed at himself, “Including me, now! Can you take time off of teaching to find this guy?”
“You know I can’t do that to my students.”
“They’d be happy to have a substitute teacher for a few weeks.”
“They won’t learn anything.”
“They don’t care.”
“But I do.”
“So stubborn,” Seungmin clicked his tongue, murmuring the words underneath his breath regardless of if he knew Jisung could hear his rather loud and irritating protests. But he seemed to dismiss the topic for now. As per usual. As he always did as soon as Jisung refused to give into that frequent request to take time off for an order. Thankfully. He’d rather Seungmin bring it up, he dismiss it, and his boss drop the topic instead of constantly bickering about it, or Seungmin forcing him to through more covert manners. As if to reinforce the conversation was finished, Seungmin spared him one last glance before turning over his shoulder and heading for the front door of that apartment.
With groans he bit back behind the pursing of his lips, muscles stretched along his legs and upper back screaming in agony for him forcing them to move when they wished for nothing more than to marinate their soreness away, Jisung set the ice pack and pen down on the table before commanding himself to stand up. Every bit of his body hating him. Loathing him. Despising his existence. Aching with the slightest jerk of movement he took as he miserably hobbled himself to the door as well. Brushing past Seungmin as he went to unlock his door and see him out of his homely apartment. To shoo the varmint as far from the serene bliss his secure apartment allowed him.
“Oh, so I don’t forget. This is from the last job,” Seungmin spoke up from where he waited behind Jisung. When the hitman turned to entertain whatever the hell the younger was talking about, his hand hesitating on the door knob yet to have tugged the door open yet, Seungmin dug something out of the inner pocket of his dress jacket. A dense stack of cash, rubberbanded to keep the bills from slipping out. He smoothly slipped the band off, rapidly counting underneath his breath as he took a handful of the bills from the stack even a mob boss would be envious to see, pocketing the amount he took back into the inner compartment of his suit jacket before he rubberbanded and handed the remaining amount out to it’s proper owner, “20% for me. The rest is yours.”
Jisung snatched the amount from his hand and finally tugged the door open, “How much does that 20% make you?”
“That’s for me to know and you to assume,” Seungmin smiled. He rolled his sleeve back, subtly flashing his F.P Journe brand watch. He pulled his Chopard De Rigo Vision sunglasses from his suit jacket pocket, setting them on, before checking his new Samsung Galaxy Fold. He then reached down, smacking Jisung’s ass as he left through the opened threshold, “Thanks Toots. I’ll be in contact soon.”
As soon as the door slammed closed behind him, Jisung raised his fist in a mock punch, hissing at the wood barrier that greeted him. Slowly, he dropped his fist to his side. Glancing at the bundle of cold cash in his hand.
Maybe I should just call myself a whore at this point.
He sighed to himself, shuffling back to his living room as he tossed the cash on his couch and slumped back onto the floor. Marking a mental note to stash the money away before he left that morning. It was about 4:29 a.m by now, that meant he had enough time to finish up with grading the assignments, have a light breakfast that could sustain him until his fourth period and chug a few cups of coffee so he didn’t fall asleep halfway through the day, even if stood underneath a cool shower for a while or watched a few episodes of the TV show he was binging on, he could probably catch the earlier express trains and swing by the tteokbokki place for a fast lunch. But it wouldn’t be warm by lunch… Could he heat it up in the staff room microwave? Maybe he’ll deliver in the end afterall.
Compared to the orders he completed, these mornings were exceptionally uninteresting to him. Boring, he would say. Or, perhaps more accurately to say, they were exceptionally ordinary. A typical routine for a typical person, doing typical things to go to his typical job, a typical life without any untypical catches; Eggs with toast and sausage, a crunchy side salad on the side for an excuse of vegetables, admittedly he was trying to be more concious about his health these days, though the mug of steaming coffee would argue he still didn’t give a shit; A frigid shower that slipped over his sore muscles and woke his body up from it’s half concious purgatory, the ordinary slacks and buttonup, today was supposed to be chillier with the settling autumn so the sweater he threw over too.
His backpack stuffed with the graded folder of assignments and the new papers he planned to hand out during the lesson today, his laptop slamming against his spine as he rushed. Dashing from his house to the closest station, hurrying down the steps to push past the crowd of waiting ants, hardly managing to step into the train car as the doors narrowly avoided trapping his sweater inside the crack. Squished between some businessman and a housewife, trying to catch up on news (Though most of the articles were about Seo Changbin going missing and the current situation with Athanasia Laboratories), or watching on his phone to distract himself from the cramped space. He forgot his earbuds today too. Jisung often told Seungmin forgetting his earbuds on the trains was the same feeling as rawdogging. Slightly painful, uncomfortable, and violating.
These daylight hours were so… Ordinary. Filled with peacefully ordinary things. The public park and the pond outside of the train station, joggers in the early morning that passed by him with a tucked wave before continuing on their way. The apartment buildings sat atop second hand shops, usually at this time, the grandmother on the third floor would be watering her plants on the balcony. The gum on the sidewalk his shoe accidentally slipped into and gooed into his soles. The students who jogged past him, few from his own high school he taught at that would greet him as they ran past, or elementary school students that waddled hand in hand in the opposite direction. He was another part of it. Another cog. Another ant that marched along. Another leaf that drifted in the current of a grand river carrying them downstream.
That was the truth of it all, in the end. The reason he always refused to take time away from teaching despite Seungmin’s insistence. The stubbornness to quitt despite earning more than enough off of orders to support himself. It was this. The fresh autumn breeze that combed through the dark strands of his untamed hair, the roaring of cars that passed by him on the busier streets he walked along on the way to campus, the hair salon shop named “Cut Brains” because the owner didn’t speak English well and used Google translate, the broken vending machine on the corner that always ate an unsuspecting victim’s money, the students who nearly tunbled over their feet as they dashed through the front gates of the high school and to protect his dignity as a teacher Jisung had to tell to slow down (He laughed at them).
He was certain if he lost these things, these simple ordinary things in his life that reminded him he was human, he would lose his sanity. To the adrenaline rush of the trigger resisting his finger. To the moment a bullet connects to it’s target. To the jolt of an impact, the scarlet spray that painted his temporary victory against walls, carpets. How addicting, tripping off a precipice could have, would have been, if it wasn’t for the humming of the air conditioner in the hallways as he hurried toward his classroom. The familiar sliding doors coming into view. Knowing a few of his first period students would already be inside the room waiting for class to start.
Jisung leaned his head against the door. He closed his eyes, inhaling a deep breath. Swallowing down what pain lingered inside of his swollen body.
Before opening his eyes again as he emptied his lungs out. He straightened up, plastered a smile onto his face, and entered the classroom.
“Good morning~!” He greeted the cluster of students inside, as he predicted a few of them already scattered at their desks as they waiting for the first period bell to ring out and announce the start of their long day. Checking them over, where a few of their heads slumped on the desks or where their sleepy eyes stared mindlessly into empty spaces beyond them, he wandered to his desk in the corner of the classroom as he tried to spark up a conversation with them, “Why does everyone look so defeated? Did you all stay up late binging shows again?”
One of his students in the far corner spoke up. Lifting her head up from the pillow of her crossed arms as she answered him as spokesperson for the other students in the room, “Mr. Han, we’re tired.”
“Already?! School hasn’t even started! You can’t be tired yet,” He cheered back to her. He slipped the backpack off his shoulders and set it gingerly onto the chair behind his desk, already unpacking his laptop onto the desktop as he busied himself with getting the device ready for class. Pulling up the laptop from where he bent awkwardly over the screen, logging in, plugging the wires in to connect the laptop to the projector, not necessarily to show anything important, but his kids liked having music in the background while they worked. From his backpack, he pulled out the graded assignments for first period too, wandering over to spread the stack out atop the front most desks for the students to collect.
Jisung, or in this case Mr. Han, allowed his students a while. First period always took longer to get started even after the second bell announced they should be inside of their classrooms. Between students filtering in late due to missing their alarms or delays on the trains, students naturally being chatty with one another at the start of the day, others still waking up, he had quickly developed the habit in his first year of teaching to give the first class an extra seven minutes or so before anything began. Allow them to chat, allow them to collect their graded assignments from the front, allow them to ready themselves for the day, and allow him to silently take roll call down as he greeted each one that walked in with a smile.
“Alright, sleepyheads. There’s a few things we’re going to do today,” He started up, closing the strong leather bound file that held the rollcall paper up as he set his favorite blue pen down on the desk too. Marching from around his desk to the whiteboard in the front of the room. And, regardless of if his arm yelped in pain when he lifted it, he got to filling out the side of the board with their agenda while his students quieted down, “I want to readdress what strong supporting evidence looks like in your argumentative essays. And, I noticed in the group work, there seemed to be a bit of confusion around last chapter’s concepts so, uh, I want to go through those questions together, particularly the questions about the control of the World State, we need to go over chapter 4 and 5 too, that will take the majority of the class period, soooooooooooo…”
It was a terribly normal day.
He turned back to the class, pointing the whiteboard marker over them as he scanned through their tired faces, “Questions? Are we ready to start?
With his button up and his sweater, Mr. Han was an ordinary man. His students said he was a normal person, a passionate and energetic teacher without a love life they adored to tease him for, who ranted about Pokémon and Fire Emblem, who said he wanted to see you succeed and would fight against you to make it happen. The youngest teacher on staff, the easiest one to relate to.
But beneath that classic button up and sweater, bruises stained his skin. Muscle tape kept the tears in his arms and legs from paining him too terribly. The irritated skin on his bruised knuckles were covered with layers of concealer.
Jisung was an ordinary man, that did ordinary things.
And his hands often twitched to feel a cold metal against them again.
“No complaints? Really? That means you’re ready! Alright~ let’s do it!”
▄︻デ â•â•â”一á°.áŸËŽËŠË—
By the way, “cut brains” is a real place I found while out with my friends, I still have a picture of it 💀
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