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Noemi stands up from her seat to spoon an egg onto my plate, and Natalie offers me kimchi.
“So glad I’ve turned invisible,” Nathaniel complains in English, before switching to Korean. “Sori, you want grape juice?” His chair skids against the tiles as he stands and moves to the fridge. “What happened to the grape juice?”
“It’s in the outdoor fridge,” Nadine answers without turning around.
He leaves the kitchen and heads toward the garage. Everyone is silent until the back door bangs. Then all four sisters start talking at once.
“Sori, I’m so glad you’re here.”
“We didn’t think we’d see you again after...”
“That summer you stayed with us was the best.”
“Nadine is studying abroad in Seoul this spring. I’d feel a lot better if she knew someone in the city besides Nathaniel.”
I turn to Nicole, who’d spoken, then to Nadine. “You didn’t say anything last night! Yes, please contact me when you get there. I’ll take you shopping.” It’s the least I can do after all the kindness their family has shown me.
She grins. “I’d love that. What’s your number?” She’s plugging in my number just as Nathaniel returns with the grape juice.
After breakfast, I’m shooed from the kitchen so that Nathaniel and Natalie can clean. After quick goodbyes, Nicole and Noemi run out the door, with Nicole dropping off Noemi at the clinic before going to her job at the elementary school. Nadine sprawls on the couch beside me, flipping channels on the television. I sit cross-legged beneath a blanket, which Noemi had curled around my shoulders before she’d left, my hands circled around the glass of grape juice.
My chest feels warm. I have to leave soon to make it back to the hotel in time, but Iwantto stay a little longer. I had felt this way the last time I’d visited. As if, even if it was only for a short while, I was part of a family, a home.
“Ooh, the Korean channel,” Nadine says, settling on a channel. “Our grandparents watch this one every morning when they visit.” On the screen, a television presenter sits at a news desk, a foggy backdrop of the capital city, Seoul, laid out behind her.
“Last night, around 18:00, Assemblyman Min was spotted leaving a hotel suite...”
I sit up on the couch, the blanket falling off my shoulders. The screen changes to a late-night video of a man in dark sunglasses leaving the lobby of a hotel. “That’s—that’s my father.”
“Wait, are you serious?” Nadine raises the volume.
“He was accompanied by an unidentified woman who was not his wife, Seo Min Hee, CEO and founder of Joah Entertainment.”
“Sori...”
In a daze, I place the glass on a side table, standing to retrieve my phone from the charging station. As it powers on, it floodswith messages and missed calls from both my parents’ secretaries. My hands are shaking so much that I drop my phone and it clatters on the kitchen floor. I reach for it, but Nathaniel gets there first, picking it up.
“Are you all right?” he asks softly, handing me the phone.
I don’t know how to answer that. I’m upset. I’m shocked.I’m embarrassed.
“I-I have to go to the hotel. I need to pack.”
“I’ll drive you,” Nadine says. “Natalie, get the rest of Sori’s things.”
“I’m sorry,” Nathaniel says, once they’re gone, and I know he’s remembering the reason why I came to his home that summer.
Because of my father’s extramarital affairs, I was being bullied at school, treated like an outcast. My mother couldn’t divorce my father—he owned too many shares in her company. And he wouldn’t divorce her, not if he wanted to one day be president. It didn’t matter that they hated each other, that they no longer slept in the same room. By then, my father had already moved out, living in a penthouse suite of a hotel. But somehow information about our private life had leaked to the public, and everyone in school found out about it.
I broke down in this very living room the morning we had to fly back. I didn’t want to go back to Korea. I wanted to stay here, with his family, withhim.
Looking at Nathaniel now, it’s almost laughable how different our lives are. Seeing my father on the news is like having a bucket of ice-cold reality dumped over my head. I was a fool to havecome here. I need to leave. Because the longer you stay in a dream, the harder it is to wake up.
A calmness settles over me. My hands stop shaking. This is my life, the life that was dealt to me, but also the life that I choose. A car honks from outside—Nadine.
“Goodbye, Nathaniel,” I say, turning from him. Natalie hands me my coat in the foyer, then holds open the door. This time I know, when I walk out of this house, I’m not coming back.
Five
