Page 133 of The Way Back Home

“And now you’ve figured it out,” she says.

“We’re figuring it out,” I say. “Yeah.”

My mom is quiet. I can hear Ryowoon out back telling Yuro to move, that the box he’s sitting in front of needs to go inside. Yuro doesn’t move. Ryowoon sighs and picks the box up over the dog’s head.

I watch my mother’s face and wait. For the hesitation. The careful phrasing. The are you sure or the have you thought about this or the gentle redirection that loving parents do when they’re afraid for you but don’t want to say so.

“Well then,” my mom says. And she smiles. A full smile reaching her eyes, the same smile she gave me when I told her I got into college, the same one she wore at graduation. She reaches across and takes my hand, squeezes it. “That Mrs. Nam,” she says, shaking her head with a laugh of exasperation and admiration. “This was her scheme from the very start, wasn’t it?”

I laugh, startled and relieved and so full of gratitude that my eyes sting. “Yeah,” I manage. “Yeah, I think it was.”

My mom pats my hand twice, firmly, decided and settled and she’s moving on. She pushes off the stool and starts unpacking the containers of food she brought, lining them up on the counter, and I watch her and breathe and feel the tightness I’ve been carrying in my shoulders for weeks finally let go.

She stays through the afternoon. Eats with us in the courtyard, the three of us and the dog, the containers spread across the platform. She uses her chopsticks to pile pickled radish onto Ryowoon’s rice until he protests and she ignores him, and she tells us about Mrs. Yang’s stove breaking again and old Mr. Han’s ongoing feud with the stray cats. When she gets up to leave Ryowoon walks her to the front, bows, and she pulls him down into one of her hugs that last a beat longer than polite. She cups his face when she pulls back, her thumb brushing his cheekbone, and the look on her face is tender and fierce all at once. She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have to. Ryowoon’s eyes get just a little glassy before he blinks and straightens up and clears his throat.

She turns to me next, hugs me tight, and when she steps back her eyes are shining with something I think she’s been holding back all afternoon. Joy. Simple, uncomplicated joy.

“Take care of each other,” she says from the doorway, looking between us. “And come by for dinner this week. Both of you. That’s not a request.”

“Yes, Auntie,” Ryowoon says behind me, I can hear the grin in his voice.

She waves and walks out into the cooling evening, her silhouette growing smaller as she heads up the hill. I stand in the doorway and watch her go.

I find Ryowoon’s wrist behind his back. My thumb traces a slow arc over the inside of his wrist, sliding down until it settles over the tattoo. The constellation. I press my thumb against it, hold it there, feel his pulse beating steadily beneath the ink.

I lean into his shoulder. He leans back. And we stand there in the doorway of our store as the sky turns orange and pink over the harbor and the first autumn wind comes up off the water, cool and clean and carrying the salt smell of home.

Seyeon

35 Years Old

The hill is going to kill me.

I swipe at the sweat beading on my forehead, hands dropping to my hips as I stop to catch my breath near the top of the climb. This is ridiculous. I used to tear up these same hills at a dead sprint, vaulting over walls, cutting through yards, barely winding myself even in the worst of the August heat. Now I’m huffing and puffing from a walk. A walk. My back aches low near my spine and my knees are staging a quiet revolt with every step.

Thirty-five. I’m thirty-five years old and I’m winded from groceries.

I shift the bag to my other arm, the plastic handles biting into my fingers. There’s pork belly in here for tonight, a couple heads of garlic, green onions, the good gochujang from the stall Mrs. Yoo’s daughter-in-law runs now, and enough snacks to keep Ryowoon from complaining for at least forty-eight hours. Maybe I’ll buy a scooter, I think. One of those little electric ones the delivery guys zip around on. The image forms suddenly in my head: Ryowoon, all six-foot-two of him with his ripped jeans and his tattoos and his permanent scowl, puttering up the hill on a pastel blue scooter, knees nearly at his chin. Compared to the way he used to look straddling his motorcycle, helmet under one arm, jacket open, windswept and flushed from the ride. I grin to myself, still breathing a little too hard. Yeah. I’m buying a scooter.

The hill levels off and the store comes into view. The front is freshly painted, a warm cream that catches the late afternoon sun, the old signage replaced with a clean new one Ryowoon hung last week. The roll-up doors are open, lights on inside, and Mrs. Nam’s old short cab truck is parked in the narrow alley to the side, its bumper still a little crooked from where Ryowoon backed it into a post hauling roof tiles a couple months ago.

I lift my brows as I take in the scene out front.

A gaggle of kids, maybe seven or eight of them, elementary schoolers by their size, are clustered around the table and bench we put outside the store for customers. On one of the benches sits Ryowoon, one leg propped on the opposite knee, ripped jeans and a black tank top, both arms on full display. His tattoo sleeve stark in the sun, dark lines over tanned skin, and his hair’s pushed back off his forehead with what I think might be one of my hair clips. He has a box open on the table in front of him and he’s handing out popsicles, looking for all the world like some tattooed, pierced Pied Piper holding court.

Two of the kids are bickering, both of them yanking at the same popsicle wrapper. Ryowoon reaches over and snatches it clean out of both their hands with a look that sends them scattering a step back.

“You get this one,” he says, shoving a different popsicle at the shorter kid. “And you get this one.” He hands the disputed one to the other. The shorter kid scowls down at his consolation prize.

“But I wanted the Melona bar.”

“Too bad. The red bean one is better anyway.”

“No it isn’t, it has a weird texture.”

“It’s protein. It’s good for you.”

The kid gapes at him like Ryowoon just suggested he eat dirt. I’m close enough now to catch the tail end of the outrage on his small face and I have to press my lips together to keep from laughing out loud.