Page 86 of The Way Back Home

His footsteps retreat down the hall. I hear him say something politely to my mother. The front door opens and closes.

I’m asleep before the latch clicks.

I don’t remember how I got home.

I spend the rest of the morning in recovery, shuffling around the house in a t-shirt and shorts, squinting against the sunlight, eating the hangover soup my mother places in front of me without looking up. She doesn’t lecture me. She just refills my bowl and pats my head on her way by.

By early afternoon I’m feeling human again and restless. I grab my bag, the one stuffed with textbooks and notes I brought down from Seoul and head for the garage.

Moon’s place is busy. Two cars up on lifts, another pulled halfway into the bay with its hood propped. The trot music on the radio has been replaced with something poppier today, and one of the younger guys is humming along as he sorts lug nuts into a tray. I spot Ryowoon’s legs sticking out from under a sedan near the back wall and grab an empty bucket from the supply area, flip it upside down, and plant myself beside the car.

He rolls out when he hears the bucket scrape the concrete. Looks up at me, oil on his jaw, his brow creased.

“You alive?”

“Barely.”

“Good.” He rolls back under.

I settle in. Open my textbook across my knees and find where I left off. I read, turning pages, and talk to Ryowoon about my professors between sections.

Ryowoon grunts and hmm’s from under the sedan, occasionally sliding out to grab a different tool, listening. When I tell him I’m leaning toward a middle school internship he lets out a bark of laughter that echoes off the undercarriage.

“God help those children.”

“Says the man who once put firecrackers in Mr. Han’s fermenting pots.”

“That was Haeil.”

“That was both of you and I watched you do it.”

He slides out grinning, reaches for a socket head on the tray beside my bucket, and his arm brushes my knee as he stretches. I flip a page and keep reading.

This becomes a daily thing. I show up at the garage in the afternoon with my bag and a bucket. Ryowoon works and I read and we talk in the gaps between. He rolls his eyes every single time he slides out from under a car and sees me with my nose in a book, that familiar look of amusement folded into exasperation on his face.

“You know summer break means you’re supposed to stop studying, right?”

But he doesn’t tell me to leave. He doesn’t tell me to go find something better to do. And when I look up from a paragraph sometimes I catch him glancing sideways at me from the engine he’s elbow-deep in, his expression unguarded for a half-second before he looks away.

When his shift ends we head to the apartment he shares with Sihyung. It’s a cramped place on the second floor of a building two streets back from the harbor, two bedrooms, a bathroom with a door that doesn’t shut all the way, and a living room dominated by a sagging couch and the TV Sihyung bought secondhand from someone at the factory. The console is Sihyung’s too, an old PlayStation hooked up with wires that look like they could short-circuit at any moment.

Sihyung’s already home most nights when we arrive, sprawled on the couch with a bag of shrimp chips balanced on his stomach. He yells at us to grab controllers and we settle in, the three of us crammed together on the couch that really only fits two, shoulders pressed together, cursing and shoving as we take turns losing spectacularly at the racing game Sihyung has loaded up. Ryowoon’s competitive streak turns him ruthless. He leans forward with his elbows on his knees, jaw clenched, his thumbs working the controller with a focus he never once displayed in a classroom. When Sihyung bumps his car off the road he threatens to throw him off the balcony.

We play until the sky outside goes black and the only light in the room is the TV glow. Sihyung raids the kitchen for snacks and comes back with ramyeon cups and the random leftovers in the fridge, the three of us slurping noodles on the couch between rounds.

One morning I open my eyes and don’t know where I am for a second. The ceiling’s different and the light’s coming from the wrong direction. There’s a controller digging into my hip.

I blink. The TV’s still on, the game idling on a menu screen, its little jingle looping endlessly. Sihyung’s nowhere in sight, his bedroom door closed. The morning sun streams through the window above the couch.

I’m lying on my side. That much I piece together. The couch cushions are warm beneath me and my neck is stiff from sleeping at a bad angle. My face is pressed against fabric that smells like spice and clean soap and cigarette smoke, and something rises and falls against my cheek in a slow, steady rhythm.

Ryowoon is stretched out beneath me. Not quite beneath, more beside, our bodies slotted together on the narrow couch in the only formation that would’ve fit us both. He’s on his back with one arm thrown over his head, the other hand still curled loosely around a controller resting on his stomach. His head is tipped to the side, his lips parted, his breathing deep and even. At some point in the night I must have rolled into him, or him into me. My face is tucked against his chest, right below his collarbone. One of my hands is fisted in the front of his t-shirt.

I hold still for a few seconds, breathing.

His eyelashes fan against his cheekbones. The scar below his mouth looks paler in the morning. Up close I can see the shadow of stubble along his jaw and the way his hair’s grown just long enough to fall across his forehead in soft, unruly pieces.

I detach myself carefully. Peel my fingers out of his shirt, ease my weight off the couch, swing my feet to the floor. He doesn’t stir. His breathing stays even, his head still turned to the side, his expression slack and unguarded in sleep.