Page 126 of The Way Back Home

And I have to leave.

Because I know Seyeon. Know him better than I know myself, better than I know anything in this world. And what I know is this: he’s angry now. Hurt now. The wound is fresh and bleeding and everything I said is still ringing in his ears and right now, tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, he believes it. Or at least enough of it to stay away.

But Seyeon is the smartest person I’ve ever met. And he knows me. Knows me the way you know your own hands, your own voice, your own breathing. He’s going to sit with what I said and turn it over and over in that stubborn brilliant head and start picking at the seams. He’ll replay every word and watch for the flaws. Remember the way my eyes couldn’t quite hold his when I said you’re not special. He’ll think about every time I touched him this summer, about the way my hands shook, about the things I whispered against his skin when I thought he was sleeping. And the doubt will creep in.

It won’t happen right away. Might take weeks. Might take a month or two of distance and silence. But I know Seyeon, and eventually the fury will cool enough for him to think clearly and when it does he’ll see it. The lie. And then he’ll come back.

He’ll come back swinging, furious and righteous, and he’ll plant himself in front of me and look me in the eye and demand the truth and I won’t be able to give him anything else. Because I can lie to everyone. I can lie to myself. But I have never once been able to lie to Heo Seyeon when he’s standing in front of me asking for the truth. He sees through me like glass. Always has. He’ll crack me open in five minutes flat and everything I did will be for nothing.

So I have to be gone before that happens.

I start planning. I don’t have a lot. Some savings from the garage work, enough to get me through a month or two if I’m careful. The bike. The clothes on my back and whatever fits in my bag. That’s my whole life, inventoried and accounted for in under a minute.

I give the garage two weeks’ notice. Mr. Lee looks disappointed but not surprised. People leave Haemok all the time. It’s what the town does, swallows you or spits you out, and the ones with any sense take the exit while they can. He shakes my hand and tells me I’m the best set of hands he’s had in his shop and that if I ever need a reference I should call. I nod and thank him and try not to feel anything about it.

I don’t tell Sihyung until the morning I leave. I can’t. If I tell him in advance he’ll tell the others and they’ll try to talk me out of it or worse, they’ll tell Seyeon, and then it’s over. So I write it down instead. Sit at the kitchen table at five in the morning with a pen and a scrap of paper torn from the notepad on the fridge, Sihyung still asleep down the hall, the apartment quiet.

The note takes me four tries. The first three I crumple and throw away because they say too much. Things like tell him I’m sorry and make sure he’s okay and I know you don’t understand but please trust me. The fourth one I make simple.

I’m leaving. Don’t look for me. I’m sorry about the rent. You’re a good friend. Take care of yourself.

I fold it and leave it on the kitchen counter next to the coffeemaker where I know he’ll find it.

My bag is already packed. Has been for two days, sitting in the bottom of my closet. I sling it over my shoulder and take one last look around the room. The desk with its scratched surface. The bed I shared with Seyeon, sheets still rumpled from the last time I slept in it. The pamphlets, still stacked neatly where I left them.

I pick them up. Hold them for a second. Then I open the desk drawer and put them inside, face down beneath a couple of old car magazines, and slide the drawer shut.

There’s one more thing. I crouch by the bed and reach beneath the frame, feeling along the floor until my fingers close around the worn edge of a photograph. I pull it out, sit back on my heels, look down at it. Two eight-year-old boys at a kitchen table, a cake between them, candles lit. Seyeon grinning so wide his eyes are squished shut. My younger self beside him looks sunburned and gap toothed and happy. Seyeon’s dad is in the background, slightly out of focus, one hand raised mid clap.

I tuck the photo into the inside pocket of my jacket, against my chest. Zip it in.

The ride across town takes fifteen minutes. I could do it with my eyes closed. The streets are mostly empty this early, just a couple of aunties heading to the market and a stray cat bolting across the road ahead of me.

The house looks worse than I remember. Smaller too, the way places from childhood always shrink when you come back to them with adult eyes. The concrete walls are stained dark with years of coastal damp, paint peeling in long, curling strips. The courtyard out front is overgrown, weeds pushing through the cracked cement, the rusted gate hanging crooked on one hinge. I haven’t been here in years. Haven’t had a reason to. My father could be inside or he could be dead in a ditch somewhere and I honestly couldn’t care either way.

I kill the engine and sit on the bike, looking at it.

I get off and walk through the courtyard. Past the overgrown weeds, past the faded doghouse with Nuri’s chain still lying coiled in the dirt beside it, the clip rusted shut.

The front door is locked but the lock’s been cheap garbage since before I was born. One solid kick just below the handle and the frame splinters inward, the door swinging open and bouncing off the wall. The sound echoes through the empty house. Nobody comes running. Nobody’s here.

It smells the same. Stale cigarettes and soju and mildew, the smell of a house where nothing good happened for a long time. The floors are filthy. Dishes crusted in the sink. Bottles on the counter and the table and the floor by the couch, lined up like soldiers. My father’s handiwork.

I don’t linger. Don’t look at the kitchen table where I sat across from him with my eyes dead and my hands in my lap while he told me what a waste I was. Don’t look at the hallway wall where the plaster is still dented from the shape of my shoulder. I walk past all of it to the back bedroom, the one my mother used, and open the closet.

The safe is still there. Shoved in the back corner behind a box of my mother’s old clothes she never came back for. A squat ugly thing, scuffed metal. My father thought he was clever hiding it here. Thought nobody knew about it but my mother because she’s the only one who put anything worth keeping inside it in the first place. I used to watch her through the crack in the door when I was supposed to be sleeping.

I crouch down and spin the dial. 0-4-1-7. His birthday. The idiot never changed it.

The lock clicks. I pull the door open.

Not much inside. Some folded cash, maybe three hundred thousand won in mixed bills. A couple of old documents, insurance papers, something from the factory. My mother’s wedding ring in a small velvet pouch, the gold worn. I take the cash and count it, fold it into my jacket pocket. Leave the ring. Leave the papers. Close the safe and spin the dial.

I close the closet door and walk back through the house without stopping.

I get on the bike and ride.

There’s one more stop before I go.