TITANIC ~ A Yoonmin Story

Au Contraire Mon Cher

Jimin, now fully dressed, returns to the sitting room. They hear a key in the lock. Jimin takes Yoongi's hand and leads him silently through the bedrooms. Namjoon enters by the sitting room door.

"Lord Jimin? Hello?" He hears a door opening and goes through Pilwoo's bedroom towards Jimin's.

Jimin and Yoongi come out of Jimin's stateroom, closing the door. Jimin leads Yoongi quickly along the corridor toward the B deck foyer. They are halfway across the open space when the sitting room door opens in the corridor and Namjoon comes out. The valet sees Yoongi with Jimin and hustles after them.

"Come on." Jimin and Yoongi break into a run, surprising the few ladies and gentlemen about. Jimin leads him past the stairs to the bank of elevators. They run into one, shocking the hell out of the operator. 

"Take us down. Quickly, quickly!"

The operator scrambles to comply. Yoongi even helps him close the steel gate. Namjoon runs up as the lift starts to descend. He slams one hand on the bars of the gate. Jimin makes a very rude and unprincelike gesture, and laughs as Namjoon disappears above. The operator gapes at him. 

In the E-Deck foyer, Namjoon emerges from another lift and runs to the one Yoongi and Jimin were in. The operator is just closing the gate to go back up. Namjoon runs around the bank of elevators and scans the foyer... no Yoongi and Jimin. He tries the stairs going down to F-Deck.

Inside a fan room, Jimin and Yoongi are leaning against a wall, laughing.

"Pretty tough for a valet, this fella." Yoongi says.

"He's an ex-Pinkerton. My father hired him to keep me out of trouble... to make sure I always got back to the hotel with my wallet and watch, after some crawl through the less reputable parts of town..."

"Kinda like what we're doin' right now - uh oh!"

Namjoon has spotted them from a cross-corridor nearby. He charges toward them. Yoongi and Jimin run around a corner into a blind alley. There is one door, marked 'Crew Only' and Yoongi flings it open.

They enter a roaring Ran Room, with no way out but a ladder going down. Yoongi latches the deadbolt on the door, and Namjoon slams against it a moment later. Yoongi grins at Jimin, pointing to the ladder.

"After you, my lord."

Yoongi and Jimin come down the escape ladder and look around in amazement. It is like a vision of hell itself, with the roaring furnaces and black figures moving in the smoky glow. They run the length of the boiler room, dodging amazed stokers, and trimmers with their wheelbarrows of coal.

Yoongi shouts over the din. "Carry on! Don't mind us!"

They run through the open watertight door into boiler room six. Yoongi pulls Jimin through the fiercely hot alley between two boilers and they wind up in the dark, out of sight of the working crew. Watching from the shadows, they see the stokers working in the hellish glow, shoveling coal into the insatiable maws of the furnaces. The whole place thunders with the roar of the fires.

Amid unparalleled luxury, Pilwoo sits at a card game in the first class smoking room, sipping brandy.

"We're going like hell I tell you." Colonel Hak Chunso says. "I have fifty won that says we make it into New York Tuesday night!"

Pilwoo looks at his gold pocket watch, and scowls, not listening. 

Back in boiler room six the furnaces roar, silhouetting the glistening stokers. Yoongi kisses Jimin's face, tasting the sweat trickling down from his forehead. They kiss passionately in the steamy, pounding darkness.