Page 114 of The Way Back Home

I stare up at the sky. The stars are out. Faint, because the harbor lights wash most of them away, but I can make out a handful. My vision blurs. I’m not sure if it’s tears or my brain shutting down. The grey creeps closer, narrowing the sky to a pinhole, and I let my eyes close.

I think I go away for a while.

I come back to hands on me. Shaking me. Someone’s touching my face, my shoulders, and the contact sends jolts of pain through my broken body but the voice attached to those hands is what pulls me up from whatever dark place I’d sunk into. Distant and muffled, like I’m hearing it through water.

“Ryowoon. Ryowoon, please, wake up. Fuck. Fuck, please wake up.”

I know that voice better than my own heartbeat. I push toward it, drag myself up through the murky layers of unconsciousness, fighting because his voice demands it. Because Seyeon doesn’t beg. Seyeon doesn’t say please like that, broken and wet with tears, and if he’s doing it now then I have to come back because something is wrong and I need to fix it, need to get up, need to—

His face swims above me. I pry my eyes open. He’s there, blurry and bright, tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyes wide with terror. His hands are on my face, both of them, warm and shaking so badly I can feel them tremble against my jaw.

“Ryowoon!” His voice cracks on my name. “Oh god. Oh fuck.”

I try to speak. My mouth moves but all that comes out is just a wet cough and more of that warm copper taste. Seyeon makes a strangled cry. He isn’t supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be in Seoul. Why is he here?

More people. More voices over Seyeon’s. Mrs. Nam’s broom-sharp tone, wavering in a way I’ve never heard from the old woman. “Oh, child. Oh, look at you, child.” Her papery hands touching my arm, pulling back when I wheeze. Seyeon’s mom, her voice thick and choked, saying my name over and over.

Seyeon’s face stays above mine. He’s saying something to them, shouting over his shoulder, his voice ragged. “We need to get him to a hospital. We need to go, we need to go right now, help me, please—”

His hands tighten on my face. I can feel his thumbs brushing my cheekbones, smearing through something wet. Blood, maybe. Tears. Mine or his. He’s looking at me with those soft brown eyes that have looked at me every single day of my life, and right now they’re burning with a ferocity that cuts through the haze.

“Stay awake. Ryowoon, stay with me, you hear me? Don’t you dare close your eyes.”

I want to tell him I’m tired. I want to tell him it’s okay. I want to tell him to go to Seoul and forget about me and live the life he’s supposed to live. But my mouth doesn’t work and my eyes won’t stay open and the grey is coming back, softer and gentler, and the last thing I see before it takes me is his face, hovering above mine, and I think: at least the last thing I’ll ever see is something beautiful.

My eyes close. I can’t make them open.

I spend a week in the hospital this time. My second stay in the same building, same floor, probably the same damn ward for all I know. I stared at the ceiling for hours, days, drifting in and out of a fog of pain medication and shallow, whistling breaths.

Five broken ribs. Fractured arm, the same arm, the same side he broke when I was fifteen. My wrist that never healed right the first time now has a twin fracture running alongside the old one. Internal bleeding that required monitoring for three days before the doctors were satisfied my organs weren’t going to shut down. A concussion that made the overhead lights feel like someone was driving nails into my skull.

Seyeon didn’t leave. Not once that I can remember, and my memory of that week is admittedly Swiss cheese. But every time I surfaced from the murk, blinking against the fluorescent glare, he was there. Sitting in the chair beside my bed or pacing the room or standing at the window with his back to me, his shoulders rigid, his reflection in the glass tight with fury. Mrs. Nam and Seyeon’s mom rotated in and out, bringing food Seyeon barely touched, speaking to doctors in the hallway in hushed voices, hovering. But Seyeon was constant. His face was the first thing I saw each time I clawed my way up from the dark and the last thing I registered before I sank back down.

He wanted me to press charges. Kept saying it, over and over, whenever I was lucid enough to argue back. “He almost killed you, Ryowoon.” His voice shook when he said it but his jaw was locked, his face flushed a deep red that crawled up his neck, his eyes blazing with wrath. His hands balled up and opening and balling up again like he was imagining wrapping them around my father’s throat. He paced the room, back and forth in front of my bed.

I told him there was no point. What was I going to say? That the local cops would do anything? That the same department that sent a friend of my father’s to gently suggest I try being more obedient would suddenly care now that I was eighteen and technically not their problem anymore? Seyeon looked at me like I’d punched him, and then he turned around and punched the wall instead. His mom scolded him for that one.

He tried to get me to tell him what caused it. I could see the gears turning behind his eyes, the way he was trying to piece together a logic for something that had no logic, searching for the trigger, the catalyst. Seyeon’s brain worked that way. He needed reasons, causes, something he could trace back to a root and pull out. But he couldn’t find one because I wouldn’t give him one, and each time he pushed I just closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep until he stopped.

I slept and relearned how to breathe without feeling like my chest was full of broken glass. Let Mrs. Nam peel apples for me and Seyeon’s mom smooth the blankets over me with hands that trembled when she thought I wasn’t looking. And I said nothing.

A week and a half later Seyeon’s arm is around my waist and we’re shuffling through the doors of Mrs. Nam’s store like a pair of old men. He has my hospital bag in one hand and the other pressed firm against my side, taking more of my weight than I’d admit to. Every step sends a dull, rolling ache through my ribs that makes me clench my teeth, but I keep moving because the alternative is asking him to carry me and I’d rather crawl on my hands and knees through the street.

The cast on my arm is white and already smudged with fingerprints from where Seyeon’s been grabbing me to steady me. The ribs are wrapped in bandages beneath my shirt that creak with every inhale. My face still looks like someone used it to test paint swatches in shades of purple, green, and a sickly yellow that’s blooming along my jaw where the first punch landed.

Mrs. Nam’s already set the courtyard up. Seyeon steers me through the back of the store into the open air, the low table wiped clean, a cushion on the wooden platform, her good blanket folded beside it. She appears from the kitchen, her face creased but composed, and points at the platform with authority.

“Sit.”

I sit. My legs have had enough. Seyeon lowers the bag beside the platform and hovers, his hand lingering on my shoulder before he pulls it away and drops down next to me. Mrs. Nam disappears back inside and I can hear pots clanging, the tap running.

Seyeon’s quiet. He’s been quieter since the hospital, the rage banked but not gone. I can feel it simmering off him, his jaw sets when he watches me try to do anything with my cast, the flex of his fingers against his knee. He’s holding it in because yelling at me didn’t work and punching walls didn’t help and he’s run out of strategies for making me do what he wants.

Mrs. Nam comes back with a tray loaded down with enough food for six people. She sets it all down and gives me a pointed look.

“Eat. All of it. You look like a scarecrow.”

“Thank you, Halme.”