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“Maybe I’ll just murder you for being annoying.”
“They hated her for she spoke the truth,” Jules says, her chin in the air. She pushes away from the deck and heads toward the house. I make a booing sound as I follow her inside. My plans to make my trip to Seoul into a beautiful memory are going to take a lot of work.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“There you are,” Sangki cries when I climb out of the subway. He rips the bouquet out of Yujun’s hands and runs forward to embrace me. “Are you taking a picture of us?” he calls over his shoulder to Yujun, who is standing a few feet away with an endearing smile playing around his lips.
Yujun, who always looks delicious, is wearing a fairly form-fitting white T-shirt with interlocking Cs across his chest tucked into a pair of flat-front black slacks. His brown eyes are covered in big tinted shades and I’d like to go over and lick the column of his neck where his vein sits prominently. Will I ever be able to forget him? I avert my gaze in an effort to hide my reaction, but when Sangki starts laughing, I know I’ve been caught.
“Are you happy to see me?” he says between bursts.
“Of course.” I try to keep my eyes on the man in front of me and not the one waiting patiently ten feet away. I’m so glad I bought a new outfit. Down in the underground shopping centers, clothes are cheap and plentiful. It was easy to find a short black miniskirt and an oversize off-white cotton top with black trim. The wide neck shows off my collarbones, and despite the volume, the cut makes me look slender. I even have a pair of new flats I purchased for the criminally low price of twenty thousand won. They might fall apart tomorrow, but they’re perfect for now. I guess that’s my new life motto. Tomorrow may be miserable, but this moment is great.
“These are for you. Yujun will say he bought them but it was my idea.” Sangki tucks the flowers in my hand and takes the bag I am holding. “What’s this?”
“A gift.” I mentally pat myself on the back. “For my friends.”
While he digs into the bag, I bring the flowers to my nose. Out-of-season tulips are a quiet extravagance. How Yujun-like. I clutch them tightly, pleased that I finally remembered to bring gifts of my own. “It’s nothing extravagant,” I call out to Sangki, who pulls out the first gift. In fact, now that I look at the flowers, I wish I’d spent a little more.
“Oh, there are three gifts here,” the DJ notes. “This one is yours, Yujun-ah. I know this because it has your name on it written in Hangul.” They both turn to me with impressed faces.
I feel especially proud of my effort.
“The third is for Boyoung,” Sangki reads out loud. “Is that one of your roommates or do you have friends here we don’t know about?”
“I have friends here you don’t know about,” I tease.
“Impossible.” He pretends to be outraged.
Yujun watches us banter with an extremely fond expression. He likes that we get along so well. I like it, too. Choahaeyo. I lock eyes with him and his smile grows. His dimples appear, exclamations of his happiness. This dinner, this meeting, was exactly the right thing to do tonight. So enraptured am I with Yujun, I don’t notice Boyoung climbing out of the taxi or the horrified shock that causes her mouth to fall open. I hear her cry out, though.
“Boyoung. You’re here.”
“No. No.” She stutters out an apology and stumbles backward. “I thought we were meeting for dinner. Just you and I, Hara.”
“Kim Bomi-ssi?” Yujun says. “How do you two know each other?”
Bomi-ssi? That’s what I want to know. “I came over with her. She’s my friend from America but I know her as Boyoung, not Bomi-ssi. How do you know each other?”
Confusion flickers over Yujun’s face and then settles into suspicion. His narrow-eyed, almost flinty expression is what puts all the puzzle pieces together for me. It wasn’t all a coincidence—not the meeting at the coffee shop that I went to regularly, not the friendship, not the long delay in hunting down the women in the photographs, not the intentional misdirection. Bile creeps up my throat, and a hot, sickly feeling washes over me. Boyoung—no, Bomi—brings a hand up, as either a shield or a mask, and then spins on her heel, but I’m too fast for her. I catch her by the elbow.
“No. You don’t get to leave. Not until you explain everything.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Bomi tries to wrench free but I’m not having it. My hand is glued to her arm.
“Let’s go,” I tell Yujun.
“Where?” he asks, not even questioning my order.
