Page 42 of The Way Back Home

“I reported it, obviously.” Mrs. Nam’s hands twist in her lap. “But by the time the police got there Sungkyu had sobered up enough to talk his way out of it. Said it was a family dispute, a misunderstanding. Promised it wouldn’t happen again.” She looks at me with sad eyes. “You know by now how these things go.”

My eyes sting. I blink hard, forcing the wetness back.

“He’s going to kill him,” I say. “One of these days he’s really going to kill him.”

Mrs. Nam reaches over and squeezes my hand, her fingers cold and papery thin.

“Ryowoon’s tough. And he’s smart. He’ll make it through this.” She squeezes harder, like she’s trying to transfer her conviction into me through touch alone. “The only thing we can do is be there for him. Until he can leave on his own someday.”

I nod and we sit there in silence, and I think about the years stretching ahead until Ryowoon turns eighteen. Three more years of this. Three more years of watching him show up bruised and hollow-eyed, of patching him up and sending him back into that house.

But how much worse will it get as Ryowoon gets older, bigger, less breakable, and his dad has even less reason to hold back?

Nothing comes of it.

Ryowoon leaves the hospital after four days. His face is still a patchwork of fading bruises when he shows up at school the following Monday, the cast bright white against the dark sleeve of his uniform jacket. Kids stare in the hallways, whisper behind their hands, but no one asks outright. By lunch the story going around is that he got into a fight with some older guys from Yeonsan. Ryowoon doesn’t correct them.

I know better. So does Haeil, Jinwon, Sihyung, Yoohan. But none of us say a word.

The cast stays on for six weeks. When it finally comes off his wrist is stiff, the movement limited. He flexes his fingers, testing the range of motion, and I watch his mouth tighten when they don’t curl all the way. Mrs. Nam gives him a stress ball to squeeze, tells him the doctor said he needs to exercise the joint to get mobility back. Ryowoon tries for a few days then stops carrying it around.

I see it every time he reaches for things with his right hand now instead of his left. The way he fumbles opening bottles or gripping his pencil too loosely. One afternoon at Mrs. Nam’s he drops a bowl reaching for it with his left hand and it shatters across the courtyard stone. He stares at the pieces scattered around his feet, his jaw working, then crouches to pick them up without a word. I help him clean it up and never bring it up again.

Every time I see him struggle with something simple my stomach knots up. I grit my teeth and look away before he catches me watching.

I keep dating Sohee. She’s easy to be with, doesn’t ask too many questions, laughs when I make terrible jokes. We sit together at lunch, walk home after school holding hands and kiss on the playground we’ve long since outgrown.

The school year crawls toward summer. Exams come and go, final projects get turned in, the weather warms until we’re all sweating through our uniforms by midday. Sohee and I break up the week before summer break starts. She says she thinks I’m not really present, that I’m always distracted. I tell her I’m sorry and mean it. She smiles sadly and pats my cheek and says take care of yourself.

I wake one morning to the sound of something tapping at my window.

I roll over, squinting at the clock on my desk. Six in the morning. The tapping comes again, soft but insistent. I drag myself out of bed, rubbing sleep from my eyes, and pull the curtain back.

Ryowoon stands in the narrow space between the house and the wall, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. No uniform. His bag is slung over one shoulder and there’s an emptiness in his expression.

I unlatch the window and slide it open.

“What are you doing?”

“Want to skip school with me?”

I stare at him. His face is calm, blank, but his eyes are too bright.

I know enough.

“Yeah.”

I grab my backpack, stuff it with the snacks I keep stashed in my desk drawer, pull on jeans and a shirt. My mom is already gone, left for the restaurant an hour ago. I climb out the window and drop into the space beside him.

We walk down the hill in silence, past the empty streets, past Mrs. Nam’s store where the roll-down doors are still shut. The bus station sits at the edge of town, a small concrete building with a faded schedule tacked to the wall outside. Ryowoon buys two tickets to Busan with a wad of crumpled bills he pulls from his pocket, money from selling cigarettes at school. The bus pulls up ten minutes later and we climb aboard.

We sit near the back, the vinyl seats cracked and sticky under our legs. I pull out the bag of shrimp chips and two bottles of cider from my backpack and pass one to Ryowoon. He takes it without a word, twisting the cap off with his good hand. The bus rumbles out of the station and we sit there munching chips, watching the countryside blur past the windows.

The ride takes an hour. Ryowoon stares out the window the whole time, his jaw tight, the bottle of cider balanced on his knee.

When we get to Busan the city swallows us immediately. The noise, the crowds, the smell of exhaust and grilled meat and salt from the harbor. Ryowoon guides us through the maze of streets like he’s been here before, even though I know he hasn’t. We wander the market first, weaving between stalls piled high with dried fish and vegetables and cheap clothing. Ryowoon buys hotteok from a vendor, the sweet dough oozing honey and cinnamon when I bite into it. We eat fishcakes on sticks as we walk, the broth dripping down our wrists. At another stall he gets us tteokbokki, spicy and chewy, and we sit on a bench shoving pieces into our mouths until my tongue is burning.

By the time we reach Haeundae the afternoon sun is blazing, the beach packed with families and couples sprawled across the sand. Ryowoon rolls up the legs of his jeans and kicks off his shoes. I do the same. We walk into the surf together, the cold water shocking against our ankles, foam swirling around our feet. The waves crash and recede, pulling the sand out from under us.