Page 79 of The Way Back Home

Sihyung snickers, and Yoohan keeps pushing, his face the picture of wounded indignation. For a brief, disorienting moment it could be any summer. Any afternoon. We could be sixteen, sitting on these same stones with soda and stolen snacks, giving each other hell about nothing. The light feels the same. The sound of their voices, overlapping, an argument that’s really just affection in disguise. It’s the same.

But it’s not.

My laughter quiets as I look around at their faces, see the new lines fanning from the corners of Yoohan’s eyes that crinkle when he laughs. The weathering on Sihyung’s hands, his knuckles rough, the hands of someone who works with them for a living now. Their voices are lower, the registers of men who’ve grown into themselves.

And there are two empty spaces in the group.

I can feel them. Between me and Sihyung, where Jinwon used to sit, always in the middle, always the buffer. Between Ryowoon and Yoohan, the gap where Haeil would’ve been leaning in, stealing food off Ryowoon’s plate, talking over everyone. Their shapes are as real to me as the living bodies beside me. The ghosts of the boys who should be here, who’ll never sit on this platform again. I swallow past the tightness in my throat and pick at a piece of chicken I’m no longer hungry for.

Ryowoon’s attention is on Yoohan, bickering about the debt that clearly neither of them cares about, his tone annoyed, but that means he’s comfortable. So I take the opportunity. Guiltily, selfishly, to look at him.

The sunlight highlights the ink on his left arm. Over the last few days we’ve been close enough to work in the same space but never close enough to really study it. The tattoo has been a blur of dark lines I’ve been avoiding looking at directly. But he’s leaned back on one palm now, his arm extended, the sleeve of his t-shirt pushed up past his shoulder, and the sun illuminates every line.

I look at where it starts near the top of his shoulder. My brow furrows as I make out the shapes. The distinctive five-petaled bloom of the Rose of Sharon, rendered in clean black linework, its stem curving down toward his bicep. My fingers go still around the soda bottle in my hand. Below the flower, a jindo stands proud and alert, ears forward, tail curled, so detailed I can almost make out the texture of its coat.

My eyes travel further. Near the crease of his elbow, a fishing boat, its hull low in the water, nets draped over the side. Along his forearm, a dragonfly in relief, wings spread, hovering. And scattered between all of it, traditional goblin masks, their expressions wild and laughing, filling the negative space, tying the images together into a single unbroken piece.

My stomach twists. Each image drags something out of me. Each one is a specific memory, and every one of them belongs to this place. To us.

I tear my gaze away. Tune back in. Sihyung is telling a story about his neighbor’s goat getting loose and ending up in someone’s kitchen. Yoohan is wheezing. Ryowoon smirks. I laugh when I’m supposed to laugh and nod when I’m supposed to nod and force myself not to look at his arm again.

Sihyung and Yoohan leave late in the afternoon, finally, after making us promise we won’t disappear without meeting them for dinner. They’ll be back, Yoohan says, pointing at both of us in turn, a warning and a promise. Sihyung hugs me at the door, claps Ryowoon on the shoulder with a loud slap, and then they’re walking down the hill, their voices carrying back up the street in snatches until they fade.

The store drops into silence.

I go back behind the counter. Put my head down over the ledger. My pen moves across the page but I’m not seeing what I’m writing, because my eyes keep lifting. Going to where Ryowoon is working. Watching his arm as he reaches for a tool, as he braces against a shelf, as he wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist. The Rose of Sharon. The Jindo. The dragonfly. The fishing boat. All of it inked into his skin, permanent. Chosen intentionally.

It doesn’t make sense.

None of it matches the person he’s been showing me since I found him. The indifference. The clipped, irritated responses, the locked apartment door, the way he talks about this town and his past like they’re things he’d rather be rid of. You’re acting like you didn’t care, I think, staring at the page without reading a single word. You’re acting like none of it mattered.

But you put it on your body.

I go through the motions, marking columns, adding figures. The pen shakes a little in my grip. Ryowoon moves around the store behind me and I follow his movements by sound alone, refusing to look up again, refusing to let myself get pulled back into the spiral.

Just before evening, Ryowoon’s voice carries from across the store. “Seyeon. Come hold this for me a second?”

I push off the stool, my expression carefully blank. He’s bent over one of the old chest freezers, its lid propped open, a piece of refrigeration equipment dangling by wires from the interior. He nods at it.

“Just hold that steady while I get the connector loose.”

I take the piece, grip it where he points. Ryowoon ducks down into the freezer, his upper body disappearing inside. I hear him grunt as he reaches up, fiddling with something deeper in the housing. I hold the piece and wait, looking at nothing. Looking at the wall. Looking at the floor.

He shifts, lifting his right arm to reach higher, and his wrist turns toward me.

My breath stops as I stare at his right arm. The one I’ve assumed this whole time was bare. The one that’s always angled away, always turned inward, wrist down against his side or shoved into a pocket. But now it’s turned, the soft inside of his forearm exposed, and there on the inside of his wrist, small enough to miss unless you’re looking, is a single tattoo.

Black pinpricks connected by fine parallel lines. A cluster of dots, joined together to form a shape.

A constellation.

The floor tilts beneath me. I hear his voice in my head, tracing dots in the dirt with his finger. See? Looks like a constellation. The ghost of his fingertip poking the spot on my lower back, the place where my skin is scattered with freckles I’ve never been able to see myself. Trust me, it’s very cute.

The spot tingles now.

I’m staring. I know I’m staring. The piece of equipment in my hands forgotten, my fingers white around it. The blood roars in my ears.

Ryowoon surfaces, wiping his hands. He looks at me. He frowns, a question forming. Then his eyes follow mine. Down to his own wrist.