PR15M: Serendipity (Ink)

PR15M: Serendipity

By Ink

 

Losing somebody close to you is always going to feel like losing a part of you. Losing a twin is like losing half of you. It doesn’t just tear a hole in you, it tears you in half and leaves you broken and incomplete and empty. Losing Ice was like looking in the mirror and seeing only an empty space, and that’s scary shit!

The peculiar thing about being twins, however, is that it’s true what they say. There’s an inexplicable connection beyond what science or reason can explain. I think there was some Nazi psycho during the second world war who experimented on twins trying to prove it but I really don’t think it’s as simple as that. It’s not something you can measure or define. It just is. I knew, I always knew, that Ice wasn’t dead. Wherever he was, I was convinced I could feel him, a shadow in the back of my thoughts, a silhouette behind me, waiting for me to find him.

On my own, I was powerless. I was six when Ice and our friend Taehyun were taken. What could I do? 

This is where parents who listen to you and believe in you come in. I don’t know whether they truly believed or whether I merely validated what they wanted to believe but not only did they never deny the possibility Ice was out there, alive, somewhere, but they actively changed their lives to pursue his recovery. Even though they were told he was gone and to give up on him, they never did. As long as I said he was there, they believed.

My father and his best friend from childhood, Jung Hae-jin, left the PMO they were with and formed their own company, Black Dragon International. Initially, my mother remained in her clerical position with a bank, supporting us for the brief time it took to get the ball rolling, and then she, too, joined the company. If on the surface, Black Dragon provided security services, behind the scenes, it was dedicated almost solely to finding my brother.

For ten years, the business grew, expanding at exponential speed and establishing branches in multiple countries. And for ten years, data was collected, collated, and analyzed, with barely a hint of what had happened to either Ice or Taehyun.

Sometimes, whispers and rumors got out and there would be criticism and mockery. The boys are dead, they’ve been dead since 48 hours after the kidnapping, people would say. They ought to know when to give up, They’re making fools of themselves, They need to let it go and move on. As if! It seemed to me, the more time went by, the more determined we all got. Wherever he was, Ice was getting older. If he’d not forgotten us as we’d not forgotten him then maybe, just maybe, one day, he’d make a break for it. We intended to be ready when he did.

Morocco was an accident. Or do you call it serendipity?

I was sixteen. I went to school and studied hard but I also trained within the company. Black Dragon’s primary assets were the employees. The company dealt with every conceivable element of security, from static security to cyber-security to active security in high-risk regions and hostage prevention and recovery and everything in-between. I wanted to learn it all and it had nothing to do with inheriting the company when my father and Jung Hae-jin, who had no children, one day stood down.

 Everything I did, I did with the goal of being an active part of Ice, and Taehyun’s, eventual recovery.

I’d become a music addict. Music was the backdrop to all my studies. It was as if the rhythm and beat echoed both my heartbeat and my missing twin’s, and I nearly always had music either playing or waiting to play. One of my martial arts instructors recommended dance as a means of increasing both my flexibility and body-awareness. I could lose myself in the choreography, close my eyes, feel Ice at my side. Music became a lifeline.

But I was sixteen and I had my limits.

When I fainted one afternoon, exhaustion and stress finally catching up on me and landing me a brief stay in hospital, it was Hae-jin who told me about Morocco.

“Casper’s taking his team to Morocco to provide security for an idol group music video shoot,” he said, sitting on the end of my hospital bed and idly checking his nails.

I sat up, far too suddenly, and held my head against a head spin. “Morocco? Music video? Who? Can I go?”

Hae-jin shrugged. “I don’t know who. Does it matter? One of those pop-groups of the sort you always seem to have blasting in your ears, I imagine. You really want to? Go?”

Want to? Of course, I did! Not only would it be my first time out on assignment, even if I was likely to be no more than a gofer, but I’d be getting up close and personal with an actual real-life idol group! I was ecstatic. I mean, staying focused on a missing brother is all well and good, and I never really forgot he was there, but I had my own interests, too, and there are times adrenalin runs through your veins and you have absolutely no control over it.

“Yes, thank you, yes! I’m in!”

“You have forty-eight hours, then,” Hae-jin said. “Best you get some rest and look at least halfway as if you’re fit to go or I won’t be able to convince your dad, never mind your mother.”

He had a point. Having lost one son tends to make parents even more protective of the one that remains. At least Dad tended to be a realist and accepted that studying within the company could only keep me safer, however, my mother tended to be far more protective of me. It had been hard enough to convince her to stop having me escorted to and from school by the time I entered Middle School. Morocco? Even with Casper’s team effectively providing protection for me as much as for the actual contract, it was going to be a hard call. It would be impossible if she didn’t think I was at least capable of my own defense in a pinch.

She surprised me by giving in without too much drama.

“You really want to go?” she asked me when she visited that evening.

I bit my lip and nodded. “Yes.”

“Any particular reason?”

I knew that giving her a long-winded, detailed account of logic wouldn’t sway her. She didn’t want a lecture or an essay, she wanted how I felt. I looked at her while I considered my answer, and understand here that I wasn’t looking for a way to manipulate her but that I truly wanted to give her my honest reasoning.

To me, my mother is pure and beautiful. Despite losing Ice, and despite her instinct towards over-protection (and who could blame her), she always did her best to not only respect Ice’s absence/ presence but to not make me somehow live in his shadow. I’ve seen that happen, where an absent child ends up having an even greater presence than the living one. That didn’t happen to me. My mother always managed to permit me my own identity even while we all searched equally diligently for Ice. I would NEVER lie to her or manipulate her.

“I need a time-out,” I said. And I knew she’d know immediately what I meant and that she’d not take it personally.

She smiled at me.

“Go. Be careful, be safe, enjoy. Do you want me to pack for you? Do you need anything?”

Maybe any other sixteen-year-old boy would be more than a little embarrassed by their mother offering to pack for them. Me? Hell, no. My mother had been packing for my dad their entire marriage. I figured she knew a good sight more about packing than I did.

“I’ll leave it to you,” I said. I grinned at her. “I’m counting on you to not embarrass me, ok?”

She grinned back and held up a closed fist. “Fighting.”

I thought my heart might burst.

Morocco. Fate. Destiny. Call it what you will. I had my chance to look in the mirror and see, not an empty space, but the face I’d been missing for far too long. Ice. Gaunt and haggard and definitely nothing like I expected, fleetingly between shadows and light but, unmistakably and incontrovertibly, Ice.

And then, he was gone again. Just like that. Just as I’d convinced myself he was real, that my search was finally over and I could once more be complete, he was gone. I stood frozen, incapable of thought or motion, and stared at the empty space in which I’d far too briefly seen him. I breathed.

And I took out my phone and made a call.

“Casper? Where are you? Yes, I’m all right. I guess. No, I’m not hurt. No, Casper, nobody did anything. Casper! It’s Ice. He’s here.”

My final statement had the desired effect. Within minutes, Casper was pushing his way through the crowd of organized chaos in the throes of packing up the set until he stood in front of me, staring at me with equal parts confusion and concern. He pulled off a glove and laid his hand to my forehead.

“I knew you shouldn’t have come, especially not here. You’ve got a fever, haven’t you?”

“Casper!” I shook off his hand and took an exasperated step back. “I haven’t got a fever and I didn’t imagine it and you need to listen to me. Ice… is… here!”

“You’re serious.” It took only a split second for Casper to switch gear. “Where exactly did you see him? Did he see you? When? How long ago? Which direction did he go?”

I held up a hand, grateful for Casper’s instantaneous acceptance but more than a little overwhelmed by the deluge of questions.

“We’re going to stay until we find him, aren’t we, Casper? You won’t let us go home without him?”

Casper was already two steps ahead of me. Clicking into his comms unit, he fired off instructions to his team and pulled out his work phone while laying a comforting hand to my shoulder.

“If you say you saw him, we’re not going anywhere. I’m calling your father now, ok?”

Much to my embarrassment, tears rolled down my cheeks. Finally, finally, it was happening. I was going to be reunited with my brother at long last. I knew it. I felt it.

“What about Taehyun?” Casper asked, interrupting my thoughts and sending a cold shiver of apprehension down my spine. “Did you see him, too? Was he with Ice?”

Although I’d had eyes only for Ice, there being no time or thought for anything else, I knew just as clearly and instantly that Tae had not been with him. And somehow, instinctively, I knew we wouldn’t find them together. I bit my lip and shook my head.

“I didn’t see him,” I admitted.

“He can’t have been far,” Casper said reassuringly. “I’m sure that when we find Ice, we’ll find Taehyun with him. Don’t worry, ok? At least you’ve seen Ice. Now, hold on just a moment.”

He turned his attention to the phone and I walked away and waited, my head too full of thoughts to be able to take in his side of the pending conversation with my father. 

Ice. Where are you and why didn’t you wait? Why run? I’m right here, Ice. And I’m coming for you.