Page 141 of Lethal in Pink

Then Amiyah is there. Her body materializes between me and the nearest phone with the particular efficiency of someone who has assessed the geometry of the situation and identified the most direct solution. Her smile is bright, fixed, the particular polished version she deploys for difficult rooms—symmetrical, camera-ready, the kind of smile that says I am fine and I am capable and I have everything under control while her eyes are doing something considerably more complex.

“Sorry, everyone,” she says, loud enough to cut through the noise, her voice carrying the particular melodic authority of someone who has argued in front of judges. “We’re actually late for a thing that’s none of your business.” Her hand finds mine. Her grip is tight, almost painful, her fingers lacing through mine with the particular insistence of someone who is not asking. “Jae, come on.”

She pulls. I let her. My body follows hers through the press of bodies, my free hand raised in a wave over my shoulder—the particular casual, backward gesture that I have performed approximately eight thousand times at airport security and red carpet exits and the loading dock behind venues where the crowd was too much and the handler’s hand was on my elbow exactly the way Amiyah’s is on mine now.

We walk quickly. Her pace is just shy of a jog, her hand still locked around mine, her shoulder occasionally brushing against my arm when the path narrows. The crowd thins behind us. I can hear voices calling—someone saying “wait” and someone else saying “that was definitely him” and the particular fading dissonance of a moment that started as recognition and is ending as confusion. My heart is hammering against my ribs with a force that feels disproportionate to the actual threat, which is the particular humiliation of a body that remembers fear long after the mind has decided there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Amiyah doesn’t look at me when she asks. Her eyes are forward, her jaw set, her pace unwavering, but her grip on my fingers tightens by one degree, and the question arrives sideways, like she’s afraid of what the answer might be if she looks at it directly.

“You okay?”

I take inventory. My breathing is slightly faster than baseline. My palms are damp. The diploma under my arm has acquired a crease from being clutched too tightly. The performer smile has dissolved, leaving my face feeling oddly empty, like a room after everyone has gone home.

“Yeah,” I say, and the surprise is genuine—the particular startled quality of a man who has just discovered that the thing he expected to feel and the thing he actually feels are not the same thing. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

She glances at me then. Just a flick, quick and assessing, her eyes scanning my face with the particular focused attention of someone reading for tells. Whatever she finds seems to satisfy her, because her pace slows by half a step, and her grip on my hand loosens from desperate to merely firm.

“It’s strange,” I say. The words come out before I’ve fully arranged them, which is not a habit I typically allow myself. “The attention. It used to feel like oxygen. At eighteen, in those venues, with the lights and the—” I gesture vaguely with my free hand. “It was the thing. The only thing. I needed it the way you need water. And now it just...” I trail off, hunting for the right shape. “It just feels like noise. Loud, meaningless noise. And I don’t miss it. At all. I thought I would. I expected to. But I don’t.”

Amiyah is quiet for a beat. Her thumb moves across my knuckles—a slow, deliberate stroke, the kind of touch that isn’t asking for anything, just acknowledging.

“Growth,” she says finally, and the word carries the particular dry warmth of someone who is trying very hard not to sound impressed and failing completely. “It’s disgusting. Stop it immediately.”

I laugh. The sound is real, startled out of my chest, and it bounces off the limestone buildings and comes back thinner, and for a second the weight in my ribs lightens by a degree I hadn’t thought possible.

We reach the edge of the quad where the paths fork—one toward the law building, one toward the east gardens, one toward the parking structure where both our cars are probably sitting in the particular patient neglect of vehicles that have been abandoned for ceremony. I stop. Amiyah stops with me, her hand still in mine, her body angled toward me with the particular attentive set of someone waiting for information.

“I’m going to call my family,” I say. The words come out steadier than I expected. “I’ll find you in a little while. Text me where you end up.”

She reads my face. I watch her do it—the particular quick, comprehensive scan, her eyes moving across my features with the focused efficiency of someone who has learned to extract data from minimal input. Whatever she finds seems to answer whatever question she was asking, because she nods. Once. Clean. No hesitation, no push for details, no performance of concern that would require me to perform reassurance in return. Just a nod, and the particular trust in it makes my throat tight in a way I am not going to examine right now.

“Don’t take too long,” she says. “I’ve got a champagne bottle with a stupid bow on it that isn’t going to open itself.”

She squeezes my hand—once, firm—and then she’s walking, her gown dragging at the hem, her cap tilted at its particular defiant angle, and I watch her go with the particular weighted attention of someone who is memorizing a sight he may not get to see again.

I walk until the noise of the celebration drops behind me. The path narrows, gravel underfoot, the limestone buildings giving way to the softer geometry of the Elias Blackthorn Memorial Garden. Empty benches. Dappled light through oak leaves. The fountain somewhere in the distance, its sound reduced to a white-noise murmur that blends with the general background hum of a campus that is, for the moment, concentrated elsewhere. I find a bench in a patch of sun and sit.

My phone is warm from my pocket. I hold it in my hands and look at it for a long moment, and the particular weight of what I’m about to do settles across my shoulders with the familiar pressure of something I have been carrying for much longer than today.

I call my mother first.

She picks up on the second ring. I can hear it in her voice before she says a word—the particular careful steadiness of someone who has been waiting, who has cleared her schedule, who has positioned herself near a phone at a specific time and is now doing her very best not to sound like that’s what she’s done.

Hyunjae,” she says. My name in her mouth. The old suffix, the one she used when I was small enough to carry. The sound of it lands in my chest and stays there.

“I graduated,” I say. The words are simple. Flat. Nothing adorned, nothing performed. Just the fact, laid between us like something I’m handing her across a table.

She makes a sound. Not quite a word. Something smaller, warmer, the particular caught breath of a woman who has been holding something close for a long time and has just been told she can set it down. I have to pause. I have to close my eyes and press my thumb to the space between my brows and breathe through the particular tightness in my throat that feels like it belongs to someone much younger than I am.

“I’m proud of myself,” I say. The words come out rough. I haven’t said them out loud in years. Possibly ever. The particular grammar of self-acknowledgment is not a language my family speaks with fluency, and the sound of it in my own mouth feels foreign, like a accent I’ve acquired without noticing.

“My son,” she says, and her voice is steady now, the particular warm certainty of a woman who has never once doubted the thing she is about to say. “I have always been proud of you. Every version of you. The one on the stage and the one in the clinic and the one sitting on a bench somewhere right now, calling his mother when he has a hundred other places he could be.” A pause. I can hear her breathing—slow, even, the particular measured rhythm of someone who chooses her words with the same care she chooses everything. “You built something there. Something that belongs only to you. That is a rare thing. Do not underestimate it.”

I call my father next.

The conversation is shorter. Quieter. My father is not a man who fills silence with sentiment. His pauses have weight. His words, when they come, are selected with the particular careful precision of someone who understands that language is architecture and every sentence is a load-bearing wall.

“Congratulations,” he says. His voice is low, measured, the particular register he uses when he means something completely. “Your mother has been checking the weather in Los Angeles for three days. I told her you would be fine regardless. The Kim family does not melt in sunlight.”