Frank the Cartoonist

Inside his little flat Frank was sleeping quietly. Nothing could wake him up. Nothing could ruin this special moment. Then, suddenly, the phone rang and Frank woke up, hoping that it was only a nightmare. His tired hand reached the phone, and slowly he answered.

“안녕하세요[Hi] Frank!” said a weird voice, he was speaking in Korean.

“Who are you? What do you want?” asked Frank, he was shaking.

“You know who I am, and you know what we want too! We have your sister.”

Frank suddenly stopped talking. That man was the boss of the triad that had killed his parents, and that now had his sister, Yiruma, the most important person in his life.

“We’ll meet at the Bus Station, today, at 10 am!” continued the voice. “Bring the potion and your sister will be safe.”

“What potion?”

The man had already hung up.

He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know anything about the “potion”. He started thinking about what their parents would have done if they were alive, and he suddenly remembered the reason why they died: the invisibility potion.
But how? How could I make a potion? I’m not as smart as my father. I don’t even know how to start! he thought.
Frank spent hours and hours thinking about where his father left his researches, without finding anything. He was late, it was almost ten in the morning. He had to find something. He decided to bluff the Korean mob by giving them a fake potion, and hopefully they might discover the hoax when he and his sister had already left.
He took his bicycle and rode to the bus station carrying the fake potion. Scared Frank parked his bike in the bushes and waited for them.
“Hello Frank!” said the gangster, “We have never thought that you would really come!”.
“Where’s Yiruma?” yelled Frank, his all body was petrified, he was finally able to know the man that killed his parents, the man that ruined his life.

“She is inside that black car,” said the mob’s boss pointing at a car in the parking lot, “but if you want to see her beautiful face another time, you'd better do whatever I ask you. Deal?”

“Deal!” Frank knew that it was over, soon the triad would discover the bluff and he and his sister were going to die.

“Well, where is my potion?”

“It’s in my pocket, do you want it?”

“Not now, you are coming with us!”
“What?” screamed Frank. Two men came from the bushes and lifted the poor cartoonist, he couldn’t move, they were too strong for him.

“I did want you wanted me to do! Leave us alone.” begged Frank. But the two men didn’t listen to him, they took him to the car, they covered his eyes with a black rag, and they started driving.

When the cartoonist woke up, he was dizzy, they had drugged him. Black Scar was asking him where the real potion was, but Frank wasn’t able to understand. He was still under the influence of the drug.
“Well, I’m going to be courteous Frank: I’m giving you another day to give me the potion. You'd better do that, if you don’t want to die with your sister.” said the gangster.
Without waiting for response, he marched to the door, opened it, walked out, and gave some instruction to the guard.
The small jail cell was dark, cold, and bad-smelling. Old drawings and posters were standing on the walls. There were no beds, no closets, nothing useful but a terrible chemistry laboratory desk that Frank was supposed to use.

Frank decided to chuck up the sponge, he was going to die, even if he knew how to make the potion. He sat down in the corner of the cell and started thinking about his parents. He remembered the day that his dad had given him his glasses, and he had told him: “When you can’t see the answer, wear those glasses.”

Maybe this glasses are the answer, he thought, maybe the secret of the potion are inside the glasses. He started looking for bottom in the glasses, he looked everywhere, but he couldn’t find anything.

“Stupid Glasses!” screamed the cartoonist, and he threw the glasses in the floor, breaking them in a lot of small pieces. He was about to sit down again when he saw a small piece of glass different from the others, he picked it up and he read a chemical formula on it.. it was the formula of the Potion.

He ran to the laboratory desk and started following the formula in the piece of glass. As soon as he finished the potion he started preparing another one. He then drank the first potion and became invisible.

He knocked the cell door, asking for help to the guard. The guard opened the door not finding Frank, the cartoonist had already left and had closed the guard inside the little jail. He found his sister, she didn’t know what was going on, but Frank reassured her by saying that they were about to escape. He then left the second potion in the main floor of the building and they finally ran away.

“What is that?” asked Yiruma.

“It’s an explosive!”

Then there was a big explosion. It meant only two things: “Freedom and Justice!”