Page 31 of The Way Back Home

I watch him and the way his body coils before each hit, the way his back arches when he kicks, the way his teeth clench so tight the muscles in his jaw jump. I watch the blood on his knuckles smear against the trunk and then I look at the trunk itself and see the stains already there, layers of red painted across the pale wood, meaning he’s been out here a while. Long enough that the first blood has turned brown.

And with each strike, each grunt out of him, the hot spark in my chest grows. It climbs up through my ribs and into my throat and fills my mouth with a bitter taste. Because he’s angry. He’s out here, hiding from me, hiding from the funeral, hiding from everyone, and he gets to be angry.

“Why are you angry?”

My voice carries through the clearing and Ryowoon stops mid-swing. His fist hovers near the trunk, his chest heaving. He turns, surprise flashes across his face when he recognizes me standing there at the edge of the trees in my too-big suit with the sleeves pinned up. His mouth opens slightly, his brow creasing, and then his gaze drops to his own hands.

“Seyeon,” he says tentatively.

I don’t want the tentative version. I don’t want the gentle tone or the guilty eyes looking at the ground. I want an answer.

“Why do you get to be angry?” I say louder, stepping into the clearing. My voice sounds hard and heated. “What right do you have?”

Ryowoon flinches, the skin around his eyes tightening.

“He was my father!” I shout, I can’t stop myself and I don’t want to. “He was my dad, Ryowoon! Not yours! Mine!”

The words send birds scattering from the branches above us. My hands are shaking and my eyes burn. Ryowoon winces, his face contracting for a moment before he straightens his shoulders and lifts his chin. He still doesn’t look at me. His fists ball at his sides, blood dripping from his torn knuckles onto the dirt.

“Because it should’ve been him,” Ryowoon says, seethes. “He should have died. Not your dad. Not uncle. Why did uncle—” He sucks in a shaking breath, his jaw trembling. “Why did uncle have to be the one to die!”

He’s yelling too now, both of us screaming in this stupid little clearing in our stupid borrowed suits with blood on Ryowoon’s hands and unshed tears burning behind my eyes. His voice bounces off the trees and comes back to us and for a second the whole forest is full of our grief.

Then it goes quiet.

The shouting stops and there’s nothing but our harsh bretahing and the faint rustle of wind through the pines above us.

I stare at the tree trunk. At the blood smeared across the pale bark, and I walk over to it. I look at the stains, at the dents Ryowoon’s fists have carved into the wood.

I kick it.

The jolt travels up through my shin. It hurts. I kick it again, harder, grunting with effort. I kick it again, again, then I’m slapping at the trunk with my open palms, smacking the bark until my skin stings and goes numb and stings again, cursing under my breath, cursing louder, cursing the machine that malfunctioned and the factory that didn’t fix it and the man who was too drunk to get out of the way and my father, my stupid, good, kind father who couldn’t just let someone else save him for once.

I kick so hard that the momentum makes me lose my balance, toppling backward. I hit the ground hard, the impact jarring up through my tailbone and spine, and I stay there, panting, soaked through with sweat, the borrowed suit covered in pine needles and dirt. My head drops forward, my chin against my chest and I stare at my knees and try to breathe.

Ryowoon drops down beside me. He doesn’t say anything or try to touch me or comfort me or offer any of those useless phrases adults have been feeding me for days. He sits with his shoulder near mine, I can hear his breathing slowly coming down from that desperate heaving into something approaching normal. I can smell pine sap and blood and the faint sourness of sweat.

We sit there long enough for the birds to come back, for the shadows to shift across the clearing as the sun moves. Long enough for my heartbeat to settle back into my chest where it belongs instead of pounding against my skull. The anger drains away slowly, leaving behind a hollow and exhausted feeling, almost peaceful in its emptiness.

“Stop avoiding me,” I say finally, not looking at him, flat and without any anger. “Don’t do that again.”

He’s silent for a beat.

“You’re not your father,” I say, and I mean it with everything I have. “It’s not your fault my dad’s gone.”

I turn my head then and look at him. He’s already looking at me, his eyes are red but dry, his bottom lip bitten, the blood on his hands drying in the creases of his knuckles.

“If you feel sorry,” I say, holding his gaze, “then make it up by staying beside me. That’s it. That’s how you pay my dad back.”

His throat works, the muscles in his jaw tense and release. Then he nods once, his expression set.

He gets up first, brushing off his knees, and extends a hand down to me. I take it, letting him haul me to my feet. His arm goes around my shoulder, pulling me close against his side as we turn toward the path.

“Come on,” he says, his voice still hoarse. “Let’s go down to the docks. I feel like a swim.”

I don’t argue. We walk down the hill together in our ruined suits with skinned hands and dirty knees, leaving the bloodied pine behind us. Neither of us mentions the funeral again.

Summer crawls forward. The funeral fades into the background noise of the neighborhood, folded away with the white envelopes and dried flowers and leftover banchan containers that the neighbors finally stop bringing to our door. The whole town seems to exhale after a few weeks. People stop lowering their voices when I walk past. The ajummas at the market go back to haggling with each other instead of pressing free bags of tangerines into my hands with pitying looks.