Page 5 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 1-4 (The Residency Boys #6)

Bak shook his head. “I thought I’d be hearing from you this morning, but look.

” He held up his phone. “Nothing. After all these years, everything we’ve done for you, I come to you telling you what your family needs, and what do I find you doing this morning instead?

” He reached into Jun’s desk, snagging one of the statements, ignoring the open notebook of lyrics.

“Are you still doubting me? After everything?”

Jun swallowed, hard. “There has to be a mistake. 5N is an economically viable product. There’s no reason BBB3 is in the red.”

“Junseo!” Bak shook his head and rubbed his face, looking back at his goons as if to say see what I have to deal with. They shook their heads.

Bak put his hands on Jun’s shoulder and pushed him down into his chair, standing over him.

“You’re shaming us, Junseo. BBB3. Me. Your bandmates.

The other groups. People talk. I know you’ve been asking lawyers to investigate your accounts.

And now a forensic accounting firm? What are kids watching these days?

This isn’t a Bollywood film. This is real life. Actions have consequences.”

Jun’s face burned.

“You know what the problem is, and you know how to buy us time.”

“I’m not doing that . How can dinner with him be enough to get us out of debt?”

“He knows people. He has the connections. And money. Stop being a child, Junseo. Save that idealistic shit for your music.” Bak jabbed his finger at Jun’s notebook.

Jun gritted his teeth, keeping back a growl only by dint of knowing it would do no good and only cause himself more pain and possibly others as well.

That notebook and Jun’s music had made Bak a lot of money over the years.

He’d written hundreds of songs, not just ones used in BBB3 groups like 5N but ones licensed to other groups as well, in and outside of South Korea.

That was one of the perks of being able to write in multiple languages and compose tunes that appealed to a global audience.

And unless Bak was extremely stupid, royalties from all those songs should have been keeping BBB3 afloat.

Because that was more money Jun wasn’t seeing.

He hadn’t realized how much money it should have been until recently.

Bak had always told him songs were cheap and almost worthless until produced.

But they weren’t. Not at the volume he’d been writing.

“What he wants is indecent,” Jun bit out.

In some deep part of himself, perhaps the nine-year-old boy who’d first met Bak and believed his promises, he still hoped that if he just phrased it the right way, made the man realize what was really being asked, then he’d rescind his demands and talk, for real.

“It’s dinner.” Bak’s eyes narrowed, daring Jun to talk back.

Jun’s nostrils flared. So much for being polite about an impolite matter. “He wants to fuck me.”

Bak’s hand connected with the side of Jun’s face. Jun’s ears rang, and he blinked at the wall ninety degrees away from where he’d just been looking. His cheek burned.

Slowly, he turned back.

Bak’s cheeks were flushed, and his eyes flared. “Careful before you smear a good man’s reputation, boy. He is a highly respected member of government.”

Jun narrowed his eyes.

Bak’s chest heaved. “You may be like a son to me, Junseo. I’ve looked out for you for seventeen years, but I will do what I have to save this company.

You will go to dinner with him, you’ll do whatever he wants, and you’ll do it again until your debt is paid off to BBB3, or I will find a way to make you. You will not take us down with you.”

Doubt that had been niggling for weeks at the back of Jun’s mind flared into full technicolor.

“I don’t even know why we are in ruin!” Jun spread his hands over the paperwork.

“Because we should be doing well. I fucking work every day, Bak. Me and the others, we all do. Tour after tour. Album after album.” He stood, pushing the chair back all the way to the wall.

“If other companies can make a go of it with similar numbers or worse, why aren’t we?

Why aren’t we profitable? Where’s the numbers, Bak? ”

“ Maybe—if you were a better leader—we would be. But you make expensive choices, Jun. Always have to have the best of the best. This choreographer. That set. Live musicians at an awards show. And I’ve respected that.

But you also have to survive as a business.

I love you like a son, I do; do you think I’d be calling on your debt unless I had to?

I’ve been letting it slide for years. I even stopped the interest while you were in the army. ”

Jun’s hand curled into a fist. “I want to understand, Bak. The numbers don’t add up. Show me where the money’s going because I know?—”

“No.” Bak stalked forward, backing Jun into his bed.

“You don’t want to understand. You’re spoiled and selfish, and you won’t even have dinner with a friend of the company to save us.

” Bak’s eyes turned positively dangerous with a hint of dark elation.

“Don’t forget what happened to Rei can happen to you. ”

Cold flooded through Jun’s body. Fuck . What had happened to Rei? He’d never been satisfied with the answer back then, and now….

Bak was still talking. “You have until the evening of January first. And since you’re…going through it, let’s just make sure you’re not getting harassed online, why don’t we? You two, check his room. Make sure none of his fans have bugged it again. We can’t be too careful about security.”

Jun closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see them toss his room. It wasn’t the first time, but since he’d returned from the military, it was the first time they’d done it in front of him on such a flimsy excuse.

His ever-quick brain ran through scenario after scenario, but the only path that held any hope was to hold still, as still as a rabbit, and wait.

Eventually, Bak would shut up. Eventually, his goons would stop tearing into the thin, pretty much nonexistent privacy of his bed and his keepsake drawers and his desk.

It was three against one, and he knew all too well what had happened to Rei. The boy wasn’t even a private citizen anymore. He was in a mental hospital. Severe stress and complete psychotic snap were the words on the street, but some people whispered the problem was sanity, not insanity.

“I know people stress you out,” Bak was saying, his voice mixed into the roar in Jun’s ears.

“I’ll handle your calls and social media.

Let’s just make sure that you have some quiet time to think about it.

Come to my office when you’re ready to set up a date.

Oh, and actually, I came in here because we need to update your ID and bank cards. ”

“I’ll do it myself,” Jun mumbled.

“Obviously, you’re too busy and stressed. We at BBB3 provide everything our talent needs.” Bak lifted Jun’s wallet from his desk.

He didn’t even take out the bank cards, just took the entire wallet. As if he wasn’t already holding Jun’s passport for business purposes and “security.”

Now he didn’t even have an ID. Though maybe he didn’t need one. All he had to do was get someone to search the internet for his face.

Bak and his goons were at the door. Bak looked back, fake kindness all over his expression. “Don’t worry, we’ll get everything back to you shortly. So sorry about the inconvenience. Computers are the worst.”

And then they were gone, shutting the door behind them.

He stood there a long time, his hands curled into fists.

One by one, his senses seemed to return to something like normal.

He could feel his heartbeat thumping too fast in his chest, feel the air from the air-con moving against his skin.

Like a robot, he started to put the room back to rights, pulling the sheets back down over the mattress and putting the cover back on the duvet.

They’d pulled it entirely off. His pillow had been opened.

He closed it and put the pillowcase back on it.

Then he started on his desk, picking up dropped bits of paper and putting items back in the drawers and pens back in their cups.

And then he remembered. He’d left Damian on read.

Damian would see that he’d read his message, and he’d be waiting for a reply, but…he had no phone.

Jun’s knees gave out. He dropped, by inches to the floor and curled up, pressing his eyes into his kneecaps and hugging his legs against his chest.

Inside his house shoes, he could feel the sim card, but that was all he had left. They’d even found the battery.

At least the phone would wipe itself when they failed to break into it.

Fifteen years of work, and this was all he had to show for it. One tiny room that didn’t even belong to him, a boss who was going to have him committed or raped, and a sim card without a phone.

He was as helpless now as he had been the day he first arrived in this country.

* * *

Seventeen Years Ago: Jun

Nine-year-old Jun looked around the Incheon International Airport. It was full of things he didn’t recognize like large line pictures that looked kinda like Chinese characters but somewhat kinda wrong.

“Mama, what does that say? The writing is weird.” He pointed to a red and gold advertisement with shining white diamonds on it. They looked like real versions of a reward on one of his video games.

“That’s Hangul.” His mom squeezed his hand and did that smile thing that told him she was trying to be happy but wasn’t.

He pushed up against her in a half hug as they walked away from the gate they had just arrived through.

Through the windows, it was late afternoon, but everything felt off.

His body said it was a completely different time, and he felt like he’d been awake for days.

“Hangul is one of your languages, too, Jun, just like Mandarin or English. It belongs to you.”

“But I can’t read it?”