Oh Me! Bakery #16
Thank you for joining our
Grand Opening!
Transaction: 01
Name: Lee Jeong-Young
07/01/2024 — 14:00:58
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Item Descript — Quant Amnt
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Promo Hotteok – 2 — 8.99
Me!tro7 Plush — 1 — 15.99
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Sub T - 24.98
Tax — 2.50
Total –27.48
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Comp: 100%
Total — 0.00
Lee-Anne Jeong-Young lurched back into a hard wooden seat and slammed her hands down on the flatpack wooden table before her. She sat, dazed, wondering where she was and why she was looking at a tiny version of herself on a table, a promo display… in English. A promo for a product she hadn’t advertised since last summer.
The panic that began to set in from that moment, beset by the voices around her and the smell of a smashed stage light flavoring the air, could best be described as a slow burn. It started in her feet, which were still, when just a moment ago she had been dancing on stage, in one of the smallest venues she’d been in since her debut. Still, she’d given the dance her all, and as the panic rose to her hips, the lurch moments ago, she realized, not from the surprise but because she had been midway through a back handspring and had tried to right herself when she had somehow already been righted. The panic rose to her stomach as something delicious burned nearby, the cloying scent adding to the overwhelming wash of senses.
Lee-Anne’s delicate fingers trembled viciously, then gripped the edge of the table to steel herself. Slowly, she raised her eyes to regard the long, narrow room. People, faces she barely recognized, a half dozen running to the door. Next to the door, she stood in two dimensions next to a massive photo of her favorite dessert, Hotteok ala Mode. She could hear screams and smell burning brown sugar and see a sky that was certainly not the blustery, snowy South Korean night she’d seen outside the greenroom door.
The panic finally reached Lee-Anne Jeong-Young’s brain and all senses of reason evacuated her mind. Her eyes, used to the flash of stage lights, adjusted quickly as she pushed her way out of the door of the smoky restaurant. Taking her chances, she turned down the length of the mall and dashed alongside another group of people led by the motivation only to move.
All that Lee-Anne could think of was getting back on stage, getting back to her manager, explaining to the girls why she’d suddenly vanished, as if… as if anything so strange had an explanation. Tears clouded her vision as she and the dozen or so others made it out of the south stairwell and faced a wide, swift river. A few stopped, but at this point, to Lee, the movement felt good, it felt , to get far away from whatever had just happened. So she ran, and ran, past brilliant stalks of grain, and jogged, through mud and rock along the bank, and stopped… alone. Alone and so far up the river that the mall was a spot on the hillside.
The Korean-American C-lister slumped against a steep cut bank and finally stopped to catch her breath. The tears had run out, as had the adrenaline, leaving her suddenly cold and aware that she had nowhere she was actually running She slid further into a crouch and put her head in her hands. The world had changed in some messed up way and had stolen her from her groupmembers, her life, her career, and left her in a restaurant she’d promoted as a joke. Something her manager had more hand in than she.
Yet here she was, alone on the banks of a strange river, under an unfamiliar and quickly darkening sky.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“What now?” She asked herself, voice strained with emotion and the duress of the day. Stars began to glint overhead, but try as she might, she could not discern a direct answer from them. She demanded again, louder, “What now?”
Silence remained her response, frustrating, maddening silence. After the noise of the crowd and the rush of the run, the silence was… . “So you can take me and not tell me anything, huh? Not explaining what the fuck I’m doing here? Just going to take me?! FUCK!”
Lee-Anne snatched a heavy stone from underfoot and hurled it into the sky with a frustrated, defeated scream. It skipped across the surface twice before skittering onto the far point bar and out of sight. She hadn’t meant to skip it and the fact that it had gone so far made an absurd laugh bubble up in the pits of her stomach. She tried to hold it in, but it boiled over into a hysterical cackle that sent her sliding down the cut bank until her feet were soaking in the fast, cold water.
Maybe this was an opportunity. Away from the judgements and glamor of the stage, away from the pressures of her educated parents, away from… the music?
The thought caused the panic to creep in and she took a deep breath, then another, then began to sing. It wasn’t her best show but in a way it became the most important of her life.
Lee-Anne stepped onto the blessedly flat half of the road that ringed the mall, her shoes having enough heel to them that the run and following wet plod back caused her ankles to protest in ways even a dedicated career dancer like her had not yet known. She picked her way around a few cars that had been parked there and followed the sidewalk back to the south stairwell.
“Hey!” A voice bayed from the darkness, shocking her from her thoughts. A pudgy man in dark blue appeared at the railings on the second floor, a small yellow pistol in hand. “I haven’t seen you before, are you from here?”
“Me?” Lee-Anne asked, slightly stunned, then laughed, “No, I was in the bakery, when we got here, I…”
“Ah! The olympian!” the guard laughed heartily and quickly made his way down to her. “Yeah I heard from the runners. You really just took off, didn’t you? Bakery you said? They said they’ve got everyone accounted for.”
Lee-Anne was about to respond when he snapped his fingers and said “Ah, but you’re our best scout, aren’t you? Come with me, Scott will want to meet you!”
Without looking back, the short man stepped back up the stairs, leading her to the roof. He stopped at the second floor to catch his breath, adding an apologetic gesture to the elevator. “Elevator repair guy says he needs to inspect them before we can use ‘em. Something about the new ground settling, so it’s the stairs.”
“The elevator engineer was brought too?”
“Yeah, all staff, all staff vehicles, everyone accounted for so… it’s a bit of a surprise to find one more, hey?”
They reached the rooftop terrace and Lee-Anne admired the small ferris wheel as they passed it. Just as there were rollercoaster junkies, she was a ferris wheel junkie, something her social media manager had capitalized on and promoted among her fans, something she’d gotten tour locations changed for. It was why she chose this mall out of all of the bakery locations.
“Damned by the wheel.” She whispered dramatically to herself with a giggle.
To her surprise, a pair of young men with binoculars leaned out of the top basket and watched her pass, giving her a small wave before one elbowed the other and they returned to their watch.
“Scott!” The guard called again and another short man in a thick leather bomber jacket looked up from a stack of papers in his hand. He raised a cup of black coffee by way of greeting, one of many that festooned the steel table that he and a half dozen or so others were working at.
“Bill!” The man said, beaming a warm grin in their direction from under a colossal mustache. He offered Lee-Anne a seat and glanced between them with mild concern. “Well, hello, nice to meet you! I’m Scott, from Bellevue Executive Travel and Tours.”
“Lee, I… did I promotional crossover with the Bakery.”
“Yes!” Scott laughed, “I recognize you from the poster! You made the melty pancake, right?”
“Yes! Oh! Hothot Hotteok!” Lee-Anne sing-songed with a laugh. “It was a joke from an interview, because I like icecream and hot foods but I eat so slow. The bakery reached out and my manager, he loves cross promotions like this so…” She trailed off, her cheeks reddening as she realized she had begun to babble. Her gaze wandered towards the parking lot and the dark rustling grasses beyond. “So I think I’m just here because I was here for the grand opening. I helped make a few behind the counter for the photos. I’ve been taken away from everything…” Lee-Anne’s voice cracked, “because of… nothing, really.”
Scott let out a heavy sigh, his cheeks puffed out. “Ooee. That’s tough, I’m sorry. A single day, not even a real employee?”
“I wasn’t even in the same when this all…” She gestured weakly around them and he nodded.
“You hear that?” Scott said to someone at the table. They gave a thumbs up and he turned back to the singer, “She’s working on a theory for the who and the why. So far it’s employees, but this all, from where you were and everything, this is good data. Listen, Lee? Lee, we’ve got bedrolls set up downstairs, it’s cramped but it’s safe and warm. Take a rest-”
“Actually, Scott, there’s something else. She’s the runner, y’know? Got further upriver than the rest.”
“Oh!” Scott said, hand going once more to stroke his mustache. “What’d you see?”
“Nothing really important, it’s the same as here the whole way-” She responded, then quickly proceeded as she saw disappointment, “I think I may have found some kind of…”
She searched for the word. Creature wasn’t the right word. Lifeform was closer but somehow, alarming. She had the right word in Korean instantly, but that wouldn’t help communicate with this dumpy white man that clearly hadn’t left the greater Seattle area in his life. Finally she gave them the best, least alarming answer.
“A guide or maybe an ally.”
