Page 80 of Damian & Jun: Episodes 1-4
“I hope you’re not too proud.”
There was a time when I had no pride.
There was sauce on the man’s lips, and rice stuck to the corner of his mouth. His lips moved, loose and floppy, slurping meat off the end of his chopsticks. “I’m not a man who accepts impertinence.”
The police chief slammed his cup down on the table. “Do you know how much I paid for this retreat?”
Jun stared back at him.
The police chief threw the table over. Food flew across the space. He lunged, grasping the loose front of Jun’s shirt. His breath spread across Jun’s mouth and nose, disgustingly warm with clouds of soju and smoke, mixed with something sickly sweet beneath it all.
The rot of his soul.
He rubbed his thumb across Jun’s lips, his thumb coming back streaked in black. “What’s this?”
Jun snapped his teeth. The police chief struck him across the face, throwing him back. Warm hardwood stopped Jun’s fall. The older man ripped Jun’s shirt apart. His eye caught on the characters ??? inked onto Jun’s skin.
Crazed butterfly. Crazy delicate beauty. What interpretation do you see?
“What’s this! Bak said you were unblemished?”
“It’s paint, sir,” the man in black said from nearby.
“Get me a cloth.”
Jun twisted. It was one thing for them to have his words, but to erase them was a crime. He pushed up, uprooting the police chief.
“Hold him.”
Hands forced him back on the floor. A rough hand dragged wet cloth across the marks. The ink smeared, losing none of its shape but spreading its color across Jun’s skin. It marked the chief’s hands.
“How’d he do this?”
“A type of makeup, sir. He used the same thing on his eyes and lips.”
“How does he take it off?”
“Don’t know, sir.”
“Boy, how does this come off?”
Laughter bubbled up out of Jun’s throat. Lying on the floor beneath them, he stared up at the fine wood ceiling and open beams, his body laughing without his direction or inhibition.
The chief rubbed the cloth across Jun’s ribs again, dragging Jun’s skin back and forth across his bones. “It’s spreading!”
Someone slapped him. “Boy, how do you clean this?”
“You can’t wipe it away.” Jun pushed up, and they let him. The black was on both of their hands now. It had transferred to the chief’s white shirt and rimmed his cuff. There was a streak on his face, right across his lips. The ? man’s fingers were smudged in the ink.
The police chief stood. He kicked Jun in the belly. Jun gasped, curling around the strike. “Tell me!”
Jun grinned through the pain. It felt like a drug, burning through his system, something bright and real.
“Give me a drink.”
The man in black struck him across the face, his hand coming down on the same cheek the chief had already struck.
Stars glittered in a glass ball of a world only Jun could see.
