Page 23 of The Way Back Home

I don’t know where he appeared from or how he knew I was in trouble, but I heard him, this furious noise like an alley cat that got its tail stepped on, and then he was there flying into the middle of them with both fists going. He got Deukho with a solid hit right to the side of his face that sent him staggering back into the bike rack, and then he was on the second kid, grabbing him by the collar and headbutting him, which I don’t think anyone expects from a ten-year-old but should, honestly, expect from Ryowoon specifically.

It turned into an absolute mess after that. All six of us tangled up together, throwing elbows and yelling, someone’s backpack getting kicked halfway across the lot, dust and gravel getting kicked up around our shoes. I got my knee scraped up pretty bad dragging myself back up off the ground, and Ryowoon took a hit to the eye that I heard land but he didn’t even flinch, just turned around and hit the kid back twice as hard.

We didn’t win, unsurprisingly, four against two is never something you win cleanly, but we didn’t lose either. In the chaos Deukho’s friend grabbed a fistful of Ryowoon’s shirt and it tore straight down the seam, and I think that startled everybody enough to give us a window, Ryowoon grabbing my arm and hauling me up, both of us running, laughing hysterically from the rush, all the way up the hill until we ducked into Mrs. Nam’s, bursting through the door of the shop breathless and grinning like idiots.

Which brings us here, sitting cross-legged in the courtyard while she works ointment into every scrape she can find, complaining the whole time.

“Deukho and his bully friends jumped him,” Ryowoon says, jerking his chin toward me, wincing as Mrs. Nam presses a cotton ball to the cut over his eyebrow. “Four of them caught him alone while I was up by the woods helping Mom.”

“Four against one,” Mrs. Nam repeats, shaking her head, but I notice she doesn’t say anything sharp back at that, just keeps dabbing at the cut, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

“I got one good hit in before they grabbed me,” I say, a little defensively, because I don’t want it to sound like I just stood there and took it.

“I saw,” Ryowoon says, grinning at me sideways, the swelling around his eye making the expression look lopsided and a little ridiculous. “Deukho was holding his stomach after. You got him good.”

Pride warms through me despite the sting still radiating from my lip, and Mrs. Nam mutters something about hooligans and troublemakers and how she doesn’t know why she bothers patching us up if we’re just going to go looking for more trouble the second she turns her back.

“We weren’t looking for it,” I say honestly.

“No,” she agrees. She looks over at Ryowoon, at the state of him, torn shirt and split brow and knuckles scraped raw from all the swinging he did, and her frown softens. “Well. You did right by your friend, at least.”

Ryowoon shrugs, poking at the cotton ball taped over his eyebrow until Mrs. Nam smacks his hand away from it, but his ears turn red at the compliment, his head ducks a little and he looks at the ground instead of at either of us.

“He’d do the same for me,” he mutters.

“I would,” I say immediately, because it’s true, and Ryowoon looks up and grins at me again, blood still crusted along one corner of his mouth.

Mrs. Nam sighs, screws the cap back on the ointment, and goes to get us ice for our various bruises anyway.

Three days after Deukho and his friends jump me, Ryowoon shows up at my window before the sun’s up, tapping on the glass with a stick until I stumble over half asleep and shove it open.

“Get dressed,” he says. His swollen eye’s gone from plum-purple to a sickly yellow-green, but he looks pleased with himself about it. “We’re going up to the woods.”

“It’s not even seven,” I mumble, rubbing at my face.

“Exactly. Nobody’s parents are up yet.”

I don’t ask what for until we’re already halfway up the trail, my shoes slipping on wet leaves, the woods still cool and damp with dew that soaks through my socks. Ryowoon marches ahead of me with his hands in his pockets, whistling off-key, and when I ask again, he just says, “You’re gonna learn how to fight.”

“I know how to fight.”

He turns around and gives me a look. “You know how to get hit,” he says. “You need to how to throw them too.”

We stop in a clearing where the trees open up and let the light through in long stripes, pine needles carpeting the ground, soft under our feet. Ryowoon drops his bag, pulls off his jacket, and squares up in front of me with his fists raised the way he’s seen older boys do it outside the arcade downtown.

“Okay. Hit me.”

I stare at him. “What?”

“Hit me. Come on.”

I don’t want to. It feels wrong, hitting my own best friend on purpose in broad daylight with no one chasing us, no reason for it except that he’s telling me to. But he keeps goading me, jabbing a finger at his own chin, calling me a coward, until I finally swing, and he catches my wrist before it gets anywhere close, twisting my arm to make me yelp.

“See,” he says, grinning. “Too slow. And you’re swinging with your shoulder, not your hip. You gotta put your whole body behind it or it’s nothing.”

So that’s how the mornings start going. We meet up in the woods before either of our parents notice we’re gone, and Ryowoon teaches me everything he learned from getting the hell beaten out of him his entire life.

He shows me how to make a fist properly, thumb tucked outside my fingers instead of curled in where it’ll snap if I connect wrong. He shows me how to plant my feet, how to twist my hip into a punch so the force comes up through my legs instead of just my arm. He shows me how to duck, how to get my forearms up to block a hit to the face, how to read the shift in someone’s shoulders right before they swing so I can get out of the way in time.