PR15M: (A story) Catalyst

PR15M:  (A story) Catalyst

By Ice

 

Life has a habit of taking unexpected twists and turns. You have a few simple choices when this happens; you can ignore them, roll with them, or fall. I tend to choose to roll with them because you never know where the path may lead. Of course, it may be pointed out that some of these twists and turns leave us with no choices at all and one of the first major twists in my life occurred far too early on for me to have any control over it.

I was kidnapped at six and, needless to say, at six years of age, I was pretty damn helpless to do anything about it. The only redeeming feature in my kidnap was that my twin brother, Ink, who was also a target, the whole point, apparently, being to take us as a pair, happened to be unexpectedly absent on the day and the hapless kidnappers took my friend Tae instead. I say hapless because the kidnappers themselves were merely hirelings and they had no idea what they were looking for aside from two six-year-old boys at a certain time and place and on a certain day. The parameters were laid for them and they followed instructions to the letter only to discover they’d missed a vital piece of the equation, that being that those two boys were supposed to be identical.

Tae and I were definitely NOT identical. (I almost said are not, out of habit, but it’s were, although I’ll get to that later). The point I was about to make was that the kidnappers suffered the consequences of their mistake, even if it wasn’t really their fault, and the incident left an indelible mark on me which lingers to this day. How could it not? They were shot. In the head. Right in front of us. Fairly impressive to a pair of already traumatized six-year-olds and which pretty much set the benchmark for all that was to follow.

I spent nine years being ‘owned’. It took me that long to realize, when the opportunity arose, that the only one who could be responsible for my freedom, was me. My only regret remains that Tae did not get to share that freedom with me although, again, I’ll get to that. It also took me nine years, or the better part of it, to discover exactly what had happened and why.

At six years old, I’d never heard of child traffickers or, if I had, it certainly hadn’t meant anything. I don’t think my parents had ever given it any thought, either. Who would? Really? Parents do their best to keep their children safe but kidnapping to order is something that happens in dramas or to other people’s children. Rich people’s kids get kidnapped, not your own. Right? Apparently not and apparently especially not when you’re the kind of twins Ink and I are.

My parents were, are, fairly ordinary folk. Dad was a soldier and then worked as a PMO with the UN. ‘No more than a simple grunt’, he says. I think he was a little bit more than that but, for all intents and purposes, that’s what he was. Mum was, and still is, a book-keeper. Not an accountant, not a CEO, nobody of any special importance. She works in an office and ticks up the numbers in a ledger. They were moderately well-off at the time of the kidnapping and certainly didn’t have the resources for a ransom of any significance. Although a ransom demand never came.

The motivation for the kidnapping wasn’t money by ransom. It was because of us. Because of Ink and I. We’re identical twins, except that Ink (proper name Inkhyun) has black hair and mine is so pale as to be almost, but not quite, white. And we both have blue eyes, though Ink’s are a few shades darker than mine. Seems we’re also considered good-looking though I guess ‘pretty’ would have defined us better when we were six. And we were ‘desirable’. Desirable enough to be worth a LOT of money, as a pair. Tae isn’t quite as good looking (though that’s debatable as I never saw him as anything but perfect) and Tae and I weren’t what the buyer wanted. Neither did he want just me, on my own, and, after the kidnap, you can count on it that the security on Ink went to DefCon 1! Despite everything, if there’s any one other thing for which I can be grateful, it’s that Tae and I stayed together to the bitter end. We were sold, even if for a great deal less than the original contract was for, to a Triad boss who we knew from the moment of our introduction to him only as Master. And he was, our Master.

Master bought us as ‘ornaments’, I guess you could say. We were a statement of his wealth and power although, no, before you ask, we were never used in a sexual manner and for this, too, I count my blessings. In many ways, being with Master could be said to have had its benefits. We received education we could never otherwise have dreamt of. To begin with, we were more private pleasures to him but, as we got older and more capable, there were few places he did not take one or other or both of us. We learned multiple languages, we learned music and dance, and we learned to fight. By the time of my escape, I was a black belt in several martial arts and had defeated very challenger Master had put me to. I had become both his personal bodyguard and his companion. I almost, almost, felt I had betrayed him by leaving.

Were it not for Tae.

Tae. Tae, my best friend, my companion and, at the very last, even though we were both still so very young in years, my lover. Tae and I only ever had each other. I had lost my brother. He had lost his sisters. We had both lost our entire families, our friends, our connections. There was Master, our teachers, and ourselves. It was inevitable that we would turn to each other for comfort. We lived together, slept together, ate together, trained together. Because of our positions as Master’s living display pieces, we were kept separate from everybody else. We had our own, locked, room wherever Master was residing and everything we did, we did as the two of us. Master had two sons of his own, much older than us, but they had nothing to do with us and never spoke to us, whether by choice or command I still don’t know. And, except for our teachers, nobody else ever spoke with us, either. Who else did we have? Like I said, inevitable.

But Tae isn’t here. Tae will never be here again. Although I have regained my life and my freedom, Tae isn’t here to share it with me. He was the catalyst, the reason I finally decided that enough was enough and that if I wasn’t going to leave, I never would and Tae’s death would have been in vain. I wish I’d decided earlier. I wish Tae and I had gone together.

But wishes and lingering in regrets over the unchangeable accomplishes nothing. All I can do now is live for the both of us. I have only one life but I intend to live it for two. For Tae as much as for myself. And not only for Tae, but for our families. Both of them.

I said I’d get to this part. I said I’d explain. I’ve been hesitating because this part is the hardest part and stating it is reliving it and I don’t want to relive it, even if it’s necessary in order to move on. In order to do justice to Tae’s memory.

The funny thing about cataclysms in life; they very rarely brew on the horizon with fair warning, like storms. They’re more like earthquakes or tornados. They seem to spring out of nowhere and simply happen and you’re left standing in the aftermath wondering what the hell went wrong. Tae’s death was just like that. Sudden, unexpected, and it left me reeling.

There was no foreshadowing. Foreshadowing happens in movies and novels, or so I’d always thought. Maybe, looking back, there had been indicators but, if there were, we’d missed them. To us, to Tae and me, it was simply another day, much like the one before and the one before that and the one before that. We were up well before the dawn, which was early enough anyway given it was mid-summer in whatever random corner of the globe I forget now where, and dressed and ready to accompany Master to one of his high-end engagements. Master may have been a criminal but he was a well-placed one and regularly rubbed shoulders with all sorts of political and financial figureheads from around the world. I never thought about it. It wasn’t part of our education and I had no care to know. Perhaps I should have.

We had breakfast with Master and I recall it clearly because he was in a good mood and the sun was out and we ate on the deck of his yacht, with bright blue waters all around us and an equally bright blue sky above us. Tae was particularly cheerful and I remember his laughter and the sparkle in his brown eyes and the dimples in his cheeks. I remember looking at him and thinking if there was ever a moment to be happy, that moment was it. I wanted to hold on to that one moment forever. I wanted to cherish it and remember it. I never knew it would be held and remembered the way it is.

We took the speedboat to another, even bigger, yacht and it was then that Master informed us he’d pledged Tae in a fight. Tae, not me. It never occurred to me till afterward that he’d already known I wouldn’t lose, no matter what the circumstances. The details of the fight are irrelevant. Suffice it to say it was bloody and brutal, as they’re meant to be. Illegal blood sports fought in international waters, beyond any reasonable chance of interception or interruption by authorities. Tae lost and I held his battered and bleeding body in my arms while he died. His last words to me were that he loved me and then, that he’d wished we could have gone home. My heart broke.

Not too long afterward, completely by accident, I discovered Tae had gone in at high odds to win, which was logical given our reputations, but that Master had instructed for his knuckles to be broken before he went into the ring. And then, he’d advised a potential business partner to bet against him. Master had as good as killed him, as effectively as putting a gun to his head. Between Tae’s final words and my Master’s betrayal, I knew it was time to cut free. I was fifteen.

The details of my escape are also somewhat irrelevant. This isn’t about my escape nor about the journey home. It’s about knowing that ‘home’, wherever home was because I couldn’t clearly remember the details, was at the forefront of my mind. I knew my name, my real name, Ai Xia, and I knew I had a brother, Inkhyun, and a mother and father who might still, maybe, be searching for me, and, beyond that, I was traveling blind. I simply traveled, as far and as secretly as I could from the captivity I’d suffered for the greater part of my life and, if I’m to be honest, from the guilt I couldn’t help but feel at Tae’s death.

Fortune found me in Morocco. One of those twists of fate, one of those moments I could have ignored or turned away from and didn’t, and it saved my life.

But that’s a story for next time.