Story of A Prince

Chapter VIII

"Yuki-chan... It really is you!" Ji Hoo stepped forward, delighted. "You sure have grown up."

"I could say the same about you, Goldilocks!" She laughed. "Don't call me Yuki, though. My real name is still a secret to everyone else, except Geul and you. It's been Ja Rin for eleven years now."

"Ja Rin?" Ji Hoo tested out the foreign name, which rolled easily off his tongue, strangely. "It suits you, I suppose. Since it's been a long time, would you come on a ... Well, date with me?"

"A date?" Ja Rin thought about it for a moment. "I suppose it'd be fine. Where are we going?"

"Considering as you're Gideon, you must have been all over East of the country, but rarely in the other regions, right?" Ja Rin nodded. "Want me to show you around, maybe North for today?"

"Sounds good. Is that where the Castle is?" She was interested, and though she had never admitted it, she had always loved this Prince.

"No, the Castle is South," he laughed softly, still unable to believe that the love of his life was standing right in front of him. "I live up North in my parents' place. Do you want to go there?"

"Sure." Ja Rin took the elbow he somewhat hesitantly offered, with a bright smile. "Uh... did you come by car or... Well, how did you get here?"

"I came on my motorcycle. Why? Do you prefer cars?" He asked, as she steered them around the Emporium Building, towards the street exit.

"No... I hate them. We were taken in a car up to the ship, you know. And after we got to the mainland, we were all over the breaking news. Some thugs were the first to find us -" she flinched at the memories that came back - "It was car after car. It took me a couple of years to stop backing away every time I saw a car, after that."

"I thought you were free when you managed to swim to the mainland. Or at least, since Ga Eul didn't mention anything afterwards, I was under the impression that..." Ji Hoo broke off quietly.

"We were found by thugs, like I said. After five kilometres of pushing each other and floating, we were probably half dead when we reached. I only remember collapsing in front of some old cottage. Then I woke up in the boot of a car, tied up, with Ga Eul next to me, still asleep. There was a fight with some other thugs, who took us, again in the boot of a car, and they were the worst." A pained look crossed her face, and Ji Hoo pulled her close to him, squeezing reassuringly.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." He couldn't imagine who would do that to two innocent little kids. How cruel they had to be.

"It's fine. Like I said, they took us to the woods. Ga Eul put up a huge fight, and they knocked her out. They had some bigger girls with them, and they raped those kids right in front of us. It definitely shut me up, when they said we would be next, if we didn't stay quiet. So I stayed quiet, till they went to get supplies. I cut the ropes on some thorny bushes, freed Geul, and we ran. Literally ran for life, and Ka Joo Win, Gideon head, took us in, mainly out of pity." She sighed contently. "So that's how I ended up here. Geul got a job right since middle school, but I like my pay here."

"Pay?" Ji Hoo asked, amused. "Do they pay you for being... what, the Gideon Group mascot?"

"More like the terror figure?" She laughed. "Depending on if I stop a riot, defeat a gang, get a new member or conquer new territory, all those have different pays, in addition to a monthly thousand Won. If I were living on my own, I'd get more, but I loved the place, so I stayed on here."

"You really are something else," Ji Hoo smiled at her, then looked up. "That's my bike. Come on."

They walked up to the shiny white Gladiator, and he gave her his spare, smaller white helmet. She strapped it on, and he wore his own chisel-wood helmet, before kicking the engine to life.