“Born into a body & told it was on loan.”
Parents that fall behind are common. Children that fall behind thanks to it is more-so. For Jiyeon, that's life; no more than another grain of rice in a field that's washing away. Always has been, always will be. So, she makes the most of it. People chalk it up to her anger and her fury, talk about it as if it were a development after that incident but, really, she's always been that way. From the moment she could run she was a gunshot of a girl, chasing down butterflies nearly as often as she chased down danger. And always, she would play it off: fibber, her parents would say, chastising her before her lies turned into smoke and mirrors. It was the best they could do. It often was.
Classes with her brother were the colors of the day. Rather than dance, Jiyeon was in Taekwondo; rather than painting, Jiyeon was playing baseball. It wasn't the worst of things really, especially when it came to how Myungsoo was born with a giving little heart. Even when it came to photography and using disposal cameras, Myungsoo always let his baby sister take the last two. One for you, he'd say, and one for me. Making due came a long way in the big round eyes of a young girl in Changwon. For better or worse Park Jiyeon wasn't bound to being just another child who broke under the weight of a dream that the world didn't agree with. She'd persevere, even if it meant only accepting what happened and working around it.
But her destiny was a little different. Snatched at the tender age of nine, Jiyeon doesn't remember much. The rich smell of gasoline, the damp dark of a trunk and the brittle rub of rope against her wrists as her mouth went dry around the dirty rag they shoved they tied around her. Days later, when she was found stumbling in the streets bleeding and crying, still terrified, the police piece together what they could. The abduction, the smuggling ring for young girls, the gunfire that'd gone off. Bad deal, they figured. Someone went wrong. How Jiyeon got away was a miracle of nature and a blessing from God — they had called it that, even in the papers, even as her parents wrapped her in blankets and tears and her brother stood aside unsure how to function. Jiyeon accepted that. Miracles sounded nice. Nicer than the truth, anyway.
You learned to make due, with whatever laid around you.
“I keep remembering — I keep remembering. My heart has no pity on me.”
Learning to live with the lie wasn't really in the cards for Jiyeon though. A month after returning home from the ordeal, her family was visited. At first, they thought it was about the rumors or some follow up to the investigations. The Haven officers were there for helping Jiyeon, though. There was something she wasn't dealing with they told everyone, something important. She was forced to confess everything: the truth of what had happened. When the trunk opened she'd tried to fight, tried so hard to get them to let her go. One of the men got mad at her and slapped her in the face, hard, before punching her in the stomach. She could taste the blood and hadn't any idea where it came from really, not until she was thrown in the run down shack of a home and tied up against the heating pipe.
Everything stunk. It smelled like the old bathroom of a stadium and a park after too many dogs were there when it rained. But that wasn't the focus: it came down to the men, the men again and again and again. The night of the gunshots. Jiyeon remembered it in vivid detail and explained it as best as her stuttering, crying mouth could. How the ugly one had tried to shove one of the other girls out the door and she'd bit him; how Jiyeon had barked and tried to get off the pole but her restraints were too strong. There had been a commotion, a bit one, that resulted in someone smacking Jiyeon in the face with the back end of a broom and breaking it against her. Even there, she could almost feel the cut as it'd torn open her cheek. That, The Haven said, was what did it. Jiyeon hadn't even realized what changed as her blood soaked into the broom handle and the room began to change. She hadn't ever wanted to understand it, or question it. Because the pipes burst and flooded the room with steam and Jiyeon was free and suddenly, the guns were going off on their own.
They offered to help her. To teach her, how to control this, explaining all the news of requite and new status in the young girl. It was terrifying, at first, but her mother accompanied her every week to train and stayed the entire time watching over her child. In fear, sometimes. In dread others. But there, at least. Her brother didn't ever come. And her father looked to her less often at dinner time. Between being freak and reason they began to need to move, Jiyeon figured it was a kind of justice. Who could love someone who brought problems and rumors and troubles? She accepted it. She nodded, every move, and she went to her training diligently. When her brother quit taekwondo, she continued on, even taking the train and bus herself to the Haven just to train further without hindering her parents after class. It continued that way, for a while.
By the time high school rolled around they had finally made their way to Seoul. Training was easier then and Jiyeon began to flourish, even as the rumors hurt. She found a few friends and a few reasons to try to cope with herself but it didn't help, completely. The best help came from fighting: her taekwondo instructor had introduced her to hapkido and then, realizing that her problems were more than just energy and discipline, introduced her to kickboxing. It was like a therapy session. Three days a week, an hour at a shot, Jiyeon would remember everything. Her brother, her father, the men who'd taken her, the girls who'd died; and she'd let it all out against the bag until she was left sobbing for reasons she never wanted to talk about. And he never made her. Instead, he'd do the same thing each time. Pass her a bottle of water, a towel, and tell her that she'd do better next week.
It was a goal. School was fine, really, and Freshman year Jiyeon actually escaped the whole time without one rumor about her coming around the school. It gave her time to make a few friends, to even find herself a boyfriend. A future music producer, he'd always brag, a little annoying but somehow able to make her laugh. They'd walk to the bus together listening to new music he thought she'd like and mostly, he was right. He even got her into some stupid television shows at the time, always quoting the English back at her until she was able to do the same. It was a good life. An easy life, as her training made her feel sane and safe again. Jaebum, he even found some old pictures of Jiyeon's and tried to get her to take new ones. She'd told him she couldn't, that it wasn't the same without her brother and it had been left at that.
But that Christmas, her second year of high school, Myungsoo surprised her. With a new camera he saved up for from working and a letter. A letter about everything, from the day she went missing to the day he heard her voice shake about not wanting to take pictures anymore. He apologized. For not protecting her, for not being a good brother, for not being a good man. She was a mess by the time it was done but it didn't stop her from kicking down his door and hugging him stupid over it all. They were better, then, even if she still worried for awkward messes here and there; better was good enough. She began to snap pictures again and even found herself interpreting films and shows with a different view. What colors worked, what scenes could have done better with a new touch. It was like the further she got away from the trafficking, the more she could be normal again.
Until someone recognized her in her third year and it broke. The joke of her — her lying about it all, her not possibly being able to escape that, her obviously having been left by some boyfriend somehow like it'd happened yesterday and not years ago — hit like a gunshot in the hallways. And Jiyeon had a brief tremble of fear in her standing at Jaebum's side while the stranger mouthed off loudly about the stupid slut who couldn't keep a man. But the tremble went into her fist and she ended up breaking the boy's jaw in two places before teachers managed to get her off of him. Trouble came, bad trouble, but so did infamy; kids let things travel like wildfire on the internet and Jiyeon's attacks became the new talk of the town for a bit. Long enough that she was approached by a fight organizer about getting into the ring for real, doing something fun.
After that, things with Jaebum didn't last long. He was nice and their friendship continued on but Jiyeon had more important things. Her career began to bloom and her personal life took a, well, sharp turn. The break between high school and college was met with a party Jiyeon braved through just for a change of pace. But she ended up with a few too many drinks and a conversation with a girl that became so much more: in one kiss with her was more than even hours at night with Jaebum had ever been. That helped, Jiyeon figures, with the final steps. Finding herself made Jaebum happier in their friendship, made Myungsoo someone she could confide in again and even actually let her father break through to accepting his daughter. She isn't sure why, why everything began to fall into place, but she's always been halfway sure it has to do with love.
University balanced itself with fights and part time jobs here and there until, after four years of fighting her way through the amateur and semi-professional market in Seoul Jiyeon found herself with a new opportunity. A scholarship to New York and an offer at the UFC for their women's division was... well, a lot more than making due. And when it came through that Suzy had also been able to get off to it, Jiyeon knew there wasn't a chance in Hell she'd stay behind. New York it would be, through the thick and thin, with nothing but the future waiting for the both of them.
