Page 5 of The Way Back Home

My chest tightens, air caught behind my ribs. For a second I can’t seem to take a full breath, the weight of it pressing down until my head swims. I step onto the lot, my shoes sinking slightly into the soft earth where a floor used to be. I stand right about where the couch used to sit, where a fifteen-year-old version of him used to sprawl with his feet propped up, mocking the daytime drama playing on the small television across the room.

There’s nothing here now. Just grass and silence and the ghosts I brought with me.

I stand there a long moment longer before I finally force myself to turn away, leaving them behind in the weeds where they belong.

The provincial office sits three streets over from the harbor, a squat gray building with peeling paint on the trim that no one’s bothered to fix in the years I’ve been away. I stand outside it for a second longer than necessary, smoothing down the front of my shirt, checking my reflection in the glass door. Nicest button-down I own, slacks pressed this morning on my mother’s ironing board while she hovered and fussed over the collar. I look like I’m heading to a job interview instead of a will reading, but I couldn’t think of what else felt appropriate.

The second I step inside, a small crowd near the reception desk turns toward me like they’d been waiting.

“Seyeon-ah!” Mrs. Cho calls out first, already crossing the linoleum floor with her arms open. She’s got to be near eighty now, her hair a soft cloud of white, but her grip when she pulls me into a hug is stronger than I expect. “Look at you. All grown up and handsome. You’re a teacher now, your mother tells me?”

“Yes, ma’am. Middle school.”

“A teacher!” She pats my cheek like I’m still twelve, beaming up at me. “Your father would be so proud.”

Before I can respond, Mr. Song shuffles over, leaning on his cane, squinting at me through thick glasses. “This the Heo boy? The one who went up to Seoul?”

“That’s me,” I say, bowing slightly.

“Good, good. You look well fed, at least. City life treating you alright?”

“Can’t complain.”

They keep coming, one after another, faces I half-remember from childhood, names that surface slower than I’d like. Questions pile up faster than I can answer them. Am I married yet? Do I have children? What’s the traffic like up there? Is it true the subways are always packed? Someone asks if I still remember how to fish, and someone else laughs and says of course he doesn’t, look at those soft city hands.

I answer as best I can, smiling through it, though my chest stays tight the whole time, that same tightness that hasn’t loosened since my mother’s phone call. Eventually a woman I don’t recognize steps out from a side office and calls for everyone to take a seat, and the small crowd disperses toward a row of folding chairs set up in front of a plain wooden desk.

There aren’t many of us. Maybe ten people total, mostly the elders who just greeted me, along with the young woman who used to help run the register at Mrs. Nam’s store on weekends. I remember her vaguely, a shy girl who never said much. Now she sits with red-rimmed eyes, twisting a tissue in her lap.

The lawyer is a middle-aged man with a tired face and reading glasses pushed low on his nose. He waits until everyone’s settled before clearing his throat and opening the folder in front of him.

“We’re here today for the reading of the last will and testament of Nam Jangsook,” he says, his voice carrying easily through the small room. “As many of you know, Mrs. Nam had no living children, and her closest relatives passed some years ago. Given that, she made her wishes known to those she considered close, which is why you’ve all been asked to attend.”

A murmur passes through the small gathering, a few soft sniffles from Mrs. Cho beside me. The lawyer continues, reading through a list of possessions, most of them small and sentimental. A jade hairpin to Mrs. Cho, something Mrs. Nam apparently promised her decades ago after admiring it too many times. A set of brass cooking pots to a woman I don’t recognize, described only as a longtime customer who used to help carry deliveries. A framed photograph of the harbor at sunset, taken back when the store first opened, given to Mr. Song because he’d always said it reminded him of his late wife.

Each name draws a small reaction, a nod, a quiet thank you, sometimes tears. It feels like Mrs. Nam reaching out from wherever she is now, handing pieces of herself to the people who loved her, making sure no one leaves empty-handed.

I sit through it quietly, my hands folded in my lap, waiting for my name, not entirely sure I’ll hear it at all. Maybe she left me nothing. Maybe that’s fair, considering how little I gave back these past years beyond the occasional visit that always felt too short and too far apart.

Then the lawyer’s gaze lifts from the folder and finds me.

“Heo Seyeon.”

My stomach drops. Every head in the room turns.

“Yes,” I manage quietly.

The lawyer reaches into the folder and pulls out a sealed envelope, plain white. He doesn’t hand it over right away. Instead, he holds it for a moment.

“Mrs. Nam left specific instructions regarding this envelope,” he says. “It was to be given to you, and you alone, at the reading of her will. However, she was clear that its contents come with certain conditions.”

I frown, my fingers curling around the edge of the folding chair beneath me. “What conditions?”

The lawyer clears his throat, adjusting his glasses before glancing back down at the folder. “This part of the will is sealed. It can only be accessed by both Heo Seyeon and one Cha Ryowoon.”

My head snaps up. “Excuse me?”

Around me, the small crowd shifts in their seats. Mrs. Cho stops sniffling into her tissue long enough to glance at me, then quickly looks away, suddenly very interested in the hem of her cardigan. Mr. Song shifts his cane between his hands, staring hard at the floor. Even the young woman who worked the register won’t meet my eyes anymore, twisting her tissue tighter.