So Goodbye

So goodbye, don't cry, and smile.....

“It’s too easy.” Deko quipped as soon as the elevator opened, and I stepped out onto the rooftop. 

I had lagged behind him by less than 10 minutes. 

“You can do anything in this country if you’re a foreigner, no questions asked.” He snickered as he reached into the GS25 bag I held, searching for the lifeblood that would knock off the chill of the chilly damp evening. 

“How many calls and texts did you get while I was gone?” I asked reluctant to look at my own phone which had been on silent for the past few hours.

“They’re not calling anymore. Just texting. The usual stuff.” Deko rolled pitch-black eyes for effect. “Gonna send me home to my parents for misbehaving. That’s the company’s ultimate threat.” 

“Not going to send us anywhere. I just had a photo shoot the other day! Until 2 a.m. and then I still had to get up at 5:30 to get ready for school!” I set the bag down gingerly on the ground and pulled out my own bottle. “Cheers!” 

The moment I took the first swig my brain was enveloped in a protective veil from all that normall ailed me, stress, loneliness, unfairness, anxiety. 

“Drink quicker! You’re gonna need the courage later!” Deko said right before he turned up his bottle and killed half of it. 

He didn’t need to say more, because I knew exactly what and how he meant. We had both been so young when we joined the company, within about 9 months of each other, and knew well how things went. We would not get away with our rule-breaking without a scratch or two or three.

I gulped a huge mouthful, felt my throat constrict momentarily then relax as warmth flooded my body.

“How did you get out this time?” Deko asked as we both leaned over, fortified and brave enough now, to look down at the traffic and acknowledge how high up we actually were. 

“Simple. The manager said I had a voice lesson with the voice coach in a studio on the fifth floor, so get changed out of my school uniform quickly, and he’d escort me there since you know they don’t let us go nowhere by ourselves…..” I shrugged.

“And you gave him the slip, how?” Deko chuckled. 

“I told him that I was in high school now, and I knew enough to get on the elevator by myself. Then it was a simple matter of pressing 1 instead of 5.” 

“Man, I didn’t even say anything to anybody when I came back from school. Just put on my own clothes and rolled out…..while the manager over there was busy yelling at somebody else for whatever.” 

Deko was a true rebel.

I merely acted rebellious. 

“You gotta snap outta that good girl mentality!”

Somehow he knew my thoughts. 

And that’s why I couldn’t stay away from him. A connection that had formed initially based on a shared native language had evolved with time. 

“You wanna know how to take this to the next level?” 

Why did I even tear my eyes away from the lights racing along the streets through misty half-sleet ? 

To see Deko holding up his bottle, now almost empty. There were four more in the bag, two apiece. How could it get any better?

“Managed to get it a few weeks ago and been waiting to try it.” 

It was a vial, pulled from the inner pocket of his coat. 

I wish I had hurled the thing from the 20th floor where we stood, wish I had sent it straight to hell as little, twinkling glass shards and ominous life-wrecking poison to be trampled to death.

But I didn’t. The thought didn’t even cross my naive sophomore mind. Instead, I had said nothing, did nothing, as he dribbled some into his bottle and then into mine. 

He fished his phone out of his pocket and activated the camera. 

“Smile! It’s Deko and Ziya 2013!” 

We clinked bottles and chugged. 

“Ack!”

It wasn’t a word but rather a sound, one made in disgust, by both of us. Whatever this mysterious next level was, it carried a bitter acrid flavor. 

“Lame!” Deko declared and quickly cut the video. 

Carefully, very carefully for obvious reasons, we sat down on the ledge and quietly finished our drinks. Suddenly there was no urge to talk. 

“Do I want to know what it was?” I do remember saying, or rather slurring as I held up my bottle. "And why I feel like I just killed 10 of these in an instant?"

“Probably not any more than you want to think about what’s going to happen when we get back to the dormitories.” was Deko’s expected reply. “Next time I’ll get something different.” 

So I forgot about it. 

What’s one time? It certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Months passed, seasons changed, and the weather warmed to a typical unbearably hot and humid summer before slowly cooling again. It wasn’t yet cold, though. 

The evening had begun with a passing thought that both startled and confused me. Early elementary school-aged me propped up on my father’s tattooed arm. Something had happened in the news, a suspected revenge or gang killing, somebody snitched or tried to snitch and didn’t live to tell the tale. “One survivor, my daughter.” Papa had said. “That’s the only way two or three or however many people can keep a secret.” 

It had been years since I had seen that arm and by the time I had started high school emails had become infrequent and phone calls non-existent. Distance and the passage of time hadn’t made the heart grow fonder, distance had merely served to drive a deeper wedge in already strained and complex relationships.

Maybe that was another reason that I couldn’t leave Deko alone. We went to the same school, spending time together whenever we were away from the company's pervasive almost obsessive monitoring and controlling of the lives of its' contractees. Eating lunch together, although a year separated our grades, we would have so many good laughs out of sight and then secretly look and smile at each other in passing when back under supervision.

We chose a different building to hang out in each time, sometimes a different nearby district, although we never really cared about getting caught. We were minors, just kids, having fun and experimenting.  

There was a routine by then. I, tall for my age and brown-skinned with a withering wizened gaze, would go into a convenience store for the drinks while Deko scouted the spot. Of Filipino descent on both sides, he was small in stature for a teenage boy and couldn’t have hoped to pass himself off as even a year older. When he’d found the place then he’d take a picture of the front of the building for me to find my way there to meet him. We did it once or twice every couple of months. 

That night I veered off into a CU while Deko continued on his way. From the drinks coolers, I took six bottles of 16% soju and grabbed a bag of overly sweetened “spicy” Cheetos as a snack, paid with the card my father had given me before our last goodbye and kept steadily funded month after month over the past 5 years, and stepped back out onto the crowded streets with the clinking plastic bag. The allowance was 350,000 KRW per month, more if I emailed or texted Papa with a request, and thus I guarded that card with my life pausing to tuck it safely back into my phone case. A man came out right behind me, so close behind that he bumped into me, but said nothing when I turned to half glance behind me. Just then my phone buzzed and I decided to let it go, though. Time to make my way to the night’s hang out. 

Holly’s Coffee and Tous Les Jours were on the first floor of a 15-story highrise building. I entered like any other customer or resident and made my way to the elevators through an open side door by the mailboxes. I punched the number for the highest floor with the corner of my phone and melted into the back of the elevator since I would be the last to get off. Before the elevator could take off, right as the doors closed fully, I felt a jolt, like my hand had been plunged into ice water. 

On the roof, I found Deko, impatient and antsy like he was jonesing or something. He pulled the small waxy package from his pocket at the same moment that he reached into the bag for the chaser. Since our first time, he had managed to find an upgrade from the mystery liquid to proper pills. The effect took a little longer to kick in, but the slight delay was worth forgoing the gag-inducing taste. 

“How many text messages did you get?” Deko popped the bag of sickeningly sweetened Cheetos open and crammed a handful in his mouth. 

“Good question.” 

I went fishing my phone out of the pocket of my baggy drooping sweatpants. The pants, first owned by a cherubic overweight sixth grader now barely clung to the slim waist of a high school junior who had grown taller while losing tens of kilograms. With one hand I hitched them up again to meet the hem of my t-shirt and scanned my recent calls and messages. 

“None, nada, zilch,” I reported slowly, confusion evident in my voice. 

“Must be our lucky day,” Deko smirked before he tossed more fake Cheetos into his gullet. 

Or rather an omnious sign that our luck might have finally run out .

He offered the bag to me and I shook my head. Not only did I hate every knockoff of American food in this country, I was still forbidden from snacking. One day soon, very soon, I’d be strutting and twirling on stage in some minimally decent costume like T-ara or Wonder Girls, at least according to the company's latest plans.

One bottle was finished then the second bottle was almost finished. The booze made me hungry. And I wanted real food, not snacks, a meal. Rice, meat, soup, side dishes, etc. I checked my phone again. Still no texts or calls from anyone trying to find out my whereabouts and berating me for skipping the company’s schedule for me for the second time in as many months. The time though was spot on. Almost midnight, exactly when I would usually start fantasizing about what dosirak would taste best. I wasn’t picky anymore. I’d even eat fishcakes by then, and certainly, nobody had to browbeat or menace me into finishing a meal. 

Why do thoughts of food take up my memory now? Instead of capturing everything that went down on that rooftop? 

“Let’s eat some ramyeon.” Deko seemed to read my mind. “I’ll stay with the stash. I like Chapaghetti.”

Wimp!

I rolled my eyes as I headed for the entrance back into the building, already knowing his choice of cup noodles from our shared lunches. There wasn’t even the tiniest hint of spice in Chapaghetti. 

12 minutes, that’s how long it took to change everything, to shake up what had been my grueling but rather mundane reality for almost 5 years. Two minutes to walk back to the CU, 4 minutes to cook Deko’s japaghetti in the store’s microwave and 4 more minutes to cook my own cup of samyang buldak, 2 minutes to return to the hangout spot. 

As I went to head back into the building, a cup of noodles in each hand and disposable chopsticks in my pocket, the back of my hoodie was grabbed. I stifled a scream and kept my grip on the cups of noodles. “It’s all over for your friend, but it doesn’t have to be for you.” A voice said.

I recognized the voice, vaguely and indistinctly, like I had heard it a few times before around but not directly. 

“You’re so close, so close to success, so close to debut. Your friend is barely a B-grade trainee.” 

The grip on my sweatshirt didn’t loosen and I made no effort to go forward. My phone buzzed in my pocket. 

“You’ve been a part of the company since you were in elementary school. Probably the youngest ever when your contract was signed.” The voice continued.

And my best friend, my compatriot, was in the first year of middle school, so what has age got to do with it? 

“You’re not rebellious. You’re not a troublemaker. The boss refuses to let you become a failed investment….” 

A police car pulled up in front of the building. The chiding voice released its grip on me. Yet I remained frozen as the two police officers passed by. When they had entered the building, the voice became a man in his early 30s, not much bigger than me. He relieved me of the instant noodles and disappeared for a minute or two before returning empty-handed.

“Don’t contradict me and don’t speak a word of English.” were his curt instructions upon his return. 

We remained by the building’s entrance as the sounds of raised voices drifted down from the rooftop. 

“You can’t take me to jail! I’m not even from this country! My parents live in Stockton, California, USA!” 

But his efforts were futile, his voice followed by frenzied shouts faded, minutes ticked by, and the elevator suddenly came to life. 

Up to the 15th floor. Then slowly back down. 12th floor, 3rd floor, first floor. Seven people emerged. Two couples and two officers of peace with their latest detainee, an adolescent less than 3 months shy of his 18th birthday but not bigger than a smallish 13-year-old.

“Lousy half-breed!” The man grabbed my arm hard, jerked it, and delivered a swift non-too-gentle cuff to the side of my head. “Sneaking off to the karaoke when you know your parents sent you to this country to study! For 5 years, you’ve known that you don’t have the right to go anywhere without permission and you can never ignore your phone, but who did you ask?” The rhetorical question was followed by another blow on the other side of my head. “Nobody has seen or heard from you since you left the school in Yongsan!”

“Ziya.” Deko croaked, my company nickname, as his captors frog marched him out of the building’s entrance.

A third slap landed on the crown of my head. 

“And you talked to foreign laborers too? Who is Ziya? You got a Chinese father and dark-skinned American mother! The company boss is always talking to your possessive parent and the name on the passport and identification card is Xi Xian Yeh Kaziyah ! You came to Korea from China at only 11 years old international age so you've been raised in this country and should know better! Do you have any idea how much the company promised your father in order to sign your contract?"

Once the spectacle had served its purpose, Deko was bundled into the backseat of the police vehicle, and it had pulled away, I was finally released. The blows had made me teary-eyed and that was such a blessing because it obscured my vision behind my clunky glasses. 

Then it was just a matter of retracing the steps that I had taken hours earlier with Deko, back on the subway and a few stops away. 

“Pretend that you just got back from your schedule.” The company handler left me at the entrance to the trainee building. Shower, put on my own casual clothes, do my homework/study enough to keep a passing average and not waste tuition fees, eat something, and go to sleep or at least close my eyes until 5:30. It was a routine as familiar as my own scent. The place felt like a chicken coop at times, with me as the chick and unable to get any peace from micromanaging mother hens. But at least I had creature comforts. What did my best bud of over 4 years have?

Only broken dreams and gut-wrenching loneliness brought on by betrayal.

I didn’t sleep that night, although I laid down on the floor and covered myself with a blanket. 

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the headlines. 

“17-year-old US national caught with drugs on a rooftop in Mapo.” 

But the reality I woke up to, guess I did finally doze off, was much worse.

“18-year-old US national, detained on suspicion of illegal drug use, dies in police custody.” 

“He had a name,” I muttered. “He had a dream.”

“Diego Ong,” I whispered. “Thank you. Thank you for teaching me how to live. And for taking our secret to the grave with you." 

So goodbye to me who has been alone in the darkness.....I need you, I need your love again.