The tyres loudly crunch against the concrete beneath them as I slow the car down.
My hands peel away from the steering wheel that I have been clenching my palms against if my white knuckles are any indication. Taking in a deep breath that makes my chest rise greatly, I expel it and slump into my seat, the tension slightly evaporating from my body and I have to mentally tell myself to relax. I am still alive and I have not killed anyone. The reminder causes me to lose all the panic simmering within my body.
Turning around, I check on my siblings who I find tightly hugging each other. At my unimpressed expression, they shakenly peel themselves away from each other.
While kissing my teeth, I chastise, "Oh, come on. It wasn't that bad."
"Yang Jin is driving when we go back home," Chu Hua immediately states adamantly, taking her seatbelt off.
"I second that," Ji Ho inputs, nodding vigorously with his eyes widening and the flicker of fear I see in them causes me to frown at him dryly. "I mean, I knew you were a horrible driver, but that was… there were a few times there where I thought I was going to meet my maker."
"Hardy ha-ha," I reply mirthlessly. Once I have turned off the car's engine, I look over at them again and sternly say, "Okay, so I'm gonna need you guys to stay in the car while I go and check on Yang Jin in the police station."
"We wanna come with," Chu Hua protests, turning the corners of her mouth down petulantly.
"No, stay here. A police station is no place for an eleven year old."
"But we wanna see Yang Jin, oppa," she says sadly, blinking up at me with a hangdog look in her eyes.
"That's not gonna work on me, Chu Hua." She frowns angrily and huffs into her seat, crossing her arms over her chest in defeat. "Stay in the car. I mean it."
I can feel my heart pounding in my chest. I know I have to act fast, so I hastily unbuckle my seatbelt and grab my driver's license and my phone. Then I grip my car keys in between my fingers.
I take a quick glance at the back seat and watch the twins looking at me curiously. I know they can be a handful, especially Chu Hua, who has a tendency to defy authority and drag Ji Ho along with her. I make sure to lock the car before I leave, hoping to prevent any mischief. Then I sternly remind them to stay in the car no matter what.
"Even if someone is stealing your car?" Chu Hua muses smartly.
"Yes, might as well save some money to pay off the debt. If you both disappear along with the car, it will save Amma and Franklin loads of money."
Glaring daggers at me, she sticks her tongue out. I grin in amusement.
"Just stay put," I say to her, chancing a glance at Ji Ho who's sat obediently in his seat. Why can't Chu Hua be more like him? "What kind of person robs a car at a police station anyway?"
Before she can even retort to that with something smart, I turn around and approach the police station where Yang Jin is being held at. The name of the building stands out at the very top and I read it to affirm that I'm at the right place and also because it's a tendency I have when I don't have anything else to distract myself with. City Of London Police Station, it reads.
What have you done, Yang Jin?
Trying to calm myself while flexing my fingers, I hurry up to the door of the building. Reaching it, I step back when the door suddenly slides open on its own. A man steps out with a mean scowl on his face. His eyes meet mine and for a second, I don't look away. It might have something to do with the many tattoos staining his face. Are those three tear drops coming from his eye?
"Wha'chu looking at?" he growls menacingly.
I jump away from him, hugging my items close to my chest. Slowly inching away from him some more, I stammer frightfully, "Uh… n-nothing. I wasn't… looking at anything, mister–sir."
He eyes me up and down with a venomous glare before shoving his way past me and I stumble off balance. Once he's a few feet away from me, I heave a sigh of relief from my chest and hurry into the police station before anyone else with tears tattooed on their face can size me up when really, they don't have to, because I am exactly like an opossum who would play dead when faced with a mere raccoon.
I stand on the side until one of the windows is available to accommodate me. Whilst waiting, I place my finger on the home button of my phone to unlock it and check my messages. I don't have any, which is somewhat relieving. That means that my parents aren't at home yet which means that they aren't wondering where all their children have disappeared off to.
I make Taylor guess where I am and when she asks me where, I quickly take a selfie with the place in the background, clearly showing that I'm at a police station.
"Excuse me?" I'm snapped out of it when the woman calls for my attention and I glance at her as she arches a brow expectantly. Hastily, I send the image to Taylor before making my way to her.
"Uh… hello," I begin nervously, a wobbly smile appearing on my face and I quickly pocket my phone when she merely stares at me blankly. "How are you doing this afternoon, officer?"
"I'm just a clerk," she answers dismissively and then she adds, "How may I help you?"
Perturbed by her deadpan behaviour, I stammer my next words out, "Um… I'm here to bail my brother out."
"What's the inmate's information?" she asks, fingers already reaching towards her keyboard, prepared to type away the so-called inmate's information.
"Oh, he's not an inmate. He's just in jail," I clarify. She looks up to blink at me in bemusement. While rubbing a hand down my arm to compose myself from this surprisingly unnerving interaction, I question her, "Uh… what kind of information, ma'am?"
Watching me earnestly, she muses, "Have you received the inmate's booking number?"
What?
"Booking… what?"
I blink in confusion, anxiously scratching the little hairs on the back of my neck. What the hell is a booking number? I genuinely have no idea what that is. Oh my days, what have I gotten myself into?
Should I have looked a bit more into how to bail someone out of jail? I just thought I'd need my driver's licence, that's all. My credit card too to post bail. I don't know what a booking number is. They don't show these types of things in the movies. I think I am going to have to get my parents involved at this point.
Blowing a tired breath from her lips, she resorts to asking me something else, "What's the inmate's full name and date of birth?"
"Yang Jin Lee." I awkwardly clear my throat afterwards, trying to remember when my brother was born. Sometimes, I forget my own age. "I believe he was born on the thirtieth of June in two thousand and one if I'm not wrong."
The woman stares at me blankly again and then she shakes her head defeatedly before vigorously clicking away at her keyboard. "How are you planning to post bail?"
"By credit card," I respond almost musingly. She nods understandingly which makes the tension and worry I was feeling dissipate. I thought they wouldn't accept that here. Some police stations apparently don't want credit card payments. I'm just glad I can get Yang Jin out of here without getting or parents involved.
"I will need you to fill out some forms. Your brother got into a scuffle at a bar. The bail amount is seven hundred and sixty nine pounds and eighty nine cents."
I glance up and gape at her, taken aback by her words. "Seven hundred and… sixty nine pounds?"
"And eighty nine cents," she makes sure to add, quirking her eyebrow up expectantly.
"I-I don't have that kind of money."
She merely stares again and then as if to add onto my problems, she states, "There's also a booking fee and a merchant fee added to that."
"So… more than seven hundred and sixty nine pounds?"
"It could go above a thousand pounds," she informs me while nodding and again, her words hit me like a slap in the face. Stumped, I bring my hand up to scratch my head.
"Uh… can I come back later on?"
"We close at nine p.m.," she makes sure to relay to me and after thanking her for her assistance, she tells me to have a nice day.
I urgently jog out of the police station back to my car, scrolling through my phone to check my bank balance. I don't know how much I have, but what I do know is that it doesn't even amount to five hundred quid let alone seven hundred. Where the fuck am I supposed to get that kinda money?
Once seated in the driver's seat, my lips irritably turn down when I taste how stuffy it's beginning to get. While sliding the windows slightly open, I remain quiet and gnaw on my thumb, contemplating what to do now.
"What's going on? Where's Yang Jin?" Chu Hua eventually interrogates me when I don't say anything pertaining to what just happened in there.
When I glance at my younger siblings through the rear-view mirror, I see them both curiously blinking at me. Looking away, I hesitantly say, "The bail amount is seven sixty nine."
"Okay, I have five quid and a couple of cents. Ji Ho, how much do you have? Come on, I know you've been saving up to buy the new God of War game, but your brother's safety is more important."
"Like… twenty quid," Ji Ho fastidiously signs.
"Okay, so Ji Ho and I will both give you two quid each and I'm sure you have some money lying around, Seong Jin. It wouldn't be fair to make Ji Ho pay more just because he has more mon–"
"Seven hundred and sixty nine pounds, Chu Hua," I correct her, cutting off her nonsensical blabbering. "Maybe even more."
The car is filled with dead silence until my sister exclaims in horror, "What?"
"Yeah," I murmur, bobbing my head up and down slowly.
"Where are we gonna get seven hundred pounds?"
"Wow Chu Hua, that's a really good question. When I know the answer to it you shall be the very first person to know, m'kay?" She scrunches her face in annoyance at my fed-up tone. I add, "I don't have seven hundred pounds and neither do you… obviously."
My gaze flickers over to the police station again and I rub a hand over my nose as I ponder what to do next. Do we attempt to break Yang Jin out of jail and become siblings on the run? Even as that thought enters my mind, an amused scoff escapes me from how delirious it sounds. With Ji Ho's panicky behaviour and Chu Hua's aggravatingly smart mouth, we probably wouldn't even make it past the foyer.
"So what? We leave Yang Jin here?" she muses rhetorically and honestly speaking, I'm actually considering it. Maybe that'll teach him not to get into scuffles at fucking bars. "He'll die if we leave him. Do you know what they do to Asians in jail?"
"No, I don't. Why would you know that exactly?" I turn around to watch her curiously.
"I'm just saying. They probably do something horrible to them."
After a few more seconds of unfilled silence droning on in the car, I say what everyone is probably afraid to suggest, "We need to call Amma."
"You can't. She'll kill him."
"Yeah, well he'll die either way so I say it's better to die at the hands of someone and amongst the people who love him. Besides, it's better than what they do to Asians in jail, right? What do you say, Ji Ho?"
"Why are you doing this bit?" Ji Ho signs and the anxiety in his gaze makes me want to comfort him, tell him that everything is gonna be okay except that would be lying.
"It's the only way I can mentally cope with this. Trust me, you'd prefer this over the alternative panicking."
"Wait," Chu Hua suddenly exclaims and we both look over at her in question. Catching the smile inching onto her lips, I realise that she has the face of someone with solution, the sort of solution though that I wouldn't like. "Who do we both know that has parents that are millionaires?"
"Whose parents are millionaires, Chu Hua," I correct her, shaking my head in disappointment. "Don't let Amma hear you phrasing your sentences like that."
"That's not the point. We know someone who's rich."
Ji Ho asks, "Who?"
"Domi–"
"No," I immediately cut in, turning around to face forward again. I knew it was gonna be the sort of solution that would require sacrificing my dignity.
"Why not? You know he'll help us if you just ask him."
"I'm not asking Dominic for seven hundred quid, Chu Hua. How am I gonna pay him back?"
He has shown that he has blackmail tendencies. What would he make me do to repay him that almost one thousand pounds? I don't think I wanna find out.
"He wouldn't make you pay him back."
"Oh, trust me, he would."
"You always think the worst of him. That's probably why he's still with Jodie and not you."
"Excuse me?" I pivot around so quickly that I'm sure my head would've gotten unhinged if I turned around any faster. I direct my glare at her before lifting my hand to scare her. She flinches away into her seat. "I will knock your two front teeth out."
"This is not helping at all," Ji Ho signs and I drop my hand, still keeping my scathing stare on Chu Hua who pouts indignantly. "Either we call Amma and Yang Jin gets grounded for the rest of his life, or we call this Dominic person, get Yang Jin out and no one gets grounded."
"Believe me, if he was only getting grounded, I would've called Amma a long time ago."
I hang my head in defeat, releasing a sigh.
The night draws near and I painfully bite down on the inside of my bottom lip as I watch him taking his card from the clerk after he has paid for the bail. When the woman looks over at me whilst arching her eyebrow upward, I quickly fumble the paperwork that I've just filled out into the space at the bottom of the window and smile at her nervously. A smile that she flat-out ignores.
She merely observes the paperwork, the clickity clackity sounds emitting from her keyboard.
"I'll process the paperwork and your brother will be out in a jiffy," she informs me, without sparing me a glance and I nod comprehendingly before turning to face the person I'm indebted to, yet again.
"Thank you again for doing this. You really didn't have to, but I'm glad you did." I eye Dominic with widened eyes to make sure he sees how grateful I am. "Thank you."
"It's fine. I don't mind. It's what friends do for each other," he pauses for a while as he looks at me in question, "right?"
His question throws me off for a quick second until I manage to stammer my response out, "I… I suppose so. I've never been in a situation where I've had to ask one of my friends to bail my brother out."
"Neither have I." He puts his card back into his wallet and then slots the item back into the back of his pocket. "Believe it or not, but I don't have that many friends and the few I have don't normally call me to bail their brothers out of jail."
"I don't know why you think I wouldn't believe that," I state playfully and he narrows his eyes at me dangerously, but I don't fail to miss the mirth in them. I purse my lips so I don't chuckle aloud.
"Yeah, insult the guy who just bailed your brother out, that seems like a good idea?"
That sobers my amusement pretty quickly and sombrely, I promise him, "I'll make sure to pay you back every last cent. Even if it takes five to ten years."
"You think we'll still be in touch in five to ten years?" he muses curiously, the corner of his lip twitching in hilarity. My gaze meets his and unwittingly, my mouth dries up as his eyes darken heedlessly. Until his eyes flicker to glance over my shoulder and he opens his mouth awkwardly. "Uh… is that creepy-looking, smiling paedophile your brother or are we about to get jumped?"
"Where?" He tilts his head over in that direction and I turn around to see Yang Jin walking over to us, with a bright smile on his face looking like what Dominic described him to be. Pursing my lips, I reluctantly reply, "Yep, that's him alright."