Page 100 of The Way Back Home

I can feel Seyeon’s eyes on me. His attention like a palm between my shoulder blades as I dice the green onions and toss them into the heating pan with a sizzle, add sesame oil, scrape in the cold rice and start breaking it apart with the spatula.

“You can cook?”

I glance over my shoulder. Seyeon’s found the stool tucked against the wall and dragged it to the corner, perched on it with his knees apart, hair still damp and curling at his temples. My t-shirt hangs off his frame, the collar sliding toward one shoulder. I can see the edge of the mark I left on his neck peeking above the fabric.

I grin. “Been living alone for years on a budget. It was either learn to cook or starve.”

He doesn’t grin back. His face stays quiet, watchful, his brown eyes studying me. I turn away.

The rice crackles and pops in the pan as I stir it, adding kimchi, letting the edges get crispy before pouring the egg mixture over the top and letting it set. I pull down two of the old ceramic bowls from the shelf above the stove. They’re the same ones. White with the pale blue floral pattern around the rim, chips on the edges where years of use wore them down. I’ve eaten from these bowls a thousand times.

I portion the fried rice into the bowls, set out the rest of the kimchi and a few of the banchan containers from the fridge. Carry everything to the knee high table and set it down. Seyeon slides off the stool and lowers himself to the floor across from me, wincing slightly as he folds his legs, one hand pressing discreetly against his lower back.

We eat.

The rain fills the silence between us, but it’s no longer the tense, knife-edged silence of the last few days, the one that made me feel like I was holding my breath. This one feels subdued. Both of us turned inward, thinking.

I glance up to find Seyeon staring through the kitchen doorway, out the back door into the courtyard where rain hammers the stone. His chopsticks rest idly against the rim of his bowl. The expression on his face unguarded.

He sighs. “Doesn’t look like it’s gonna stop anytime soon.”

I scrape the last of the rice from my bowl and set my chopsticks down. “Good thing we’ve got plenty to do inside.”

The rain makes a steady wash of white noise against the roof and the open front doors. I go back to the ceiling, hauling the ladder to the next section that needs patching, while Seyeon spreads his papers across the counter and bends over them. The store fills with the sounds of my hammer and the scratch of Seyeon’s pen and the drumming of rain and Yuro’s occasional sighing as he stretches out on the cool tile floor. Hours pass like that.

I balance on the ladder replacing a cracked light fixture, stop to wipe sweat off my forehead with my arm. My gaze drops.

Seyeon leans on the counter, his chin propped in one hand, eyes scanning the columns of numbers in Mrs. Nam’s ledger. His brow furrowed, his lips moving faintly, figuring out a problem. His free hand buried in his hair, fingers raking through it absently, pushing it up and back and letting it fall, then doing it again. He’s been doing that all morning, making his hair is stand up in about four different directions, fluffy and unruly. He looks like he just rolled out of bed. Rumpled and sleepy, wearing my shirt.

I’m staring.

My eyes move down from his hair to the line of his jaw, the curve of his ear, the slope of his neck into the collar of my t-shirt that’s too big on him. The fabric bunching at his waist above my sweatpants that sit low on his hips because his hips are narrower than mine. He looks swallowed by my clothes. And the hot, possessive feeling in my chest coils tighter.

The afternoon wears on. I come down from the ladder and move to the freezers, pulling one of the units out from the wall to get at the wiring behind it. Yuro follows me, his nails clicking on the tile, and parks himself beside the freezer, sitting at attention with his tail sweeping the floor. I glance down at him. His brown eyes stare up at me, warm, trusting, his tongue lolling. When I reach down to scratch behind his ear his tail beats faster and he leans his weight against my leg.

“You’re shameless,” I mutter to him.

His tail goes harder.

I work on the wiring and Yuro stays put, lying down eventually with his chin on his paws, watching me with devoted patience. Every few minutes his ears twitch toward wherever Seyeon is in the store, checking on him, then swiveling back to me. A satellite dish orbiting between the two of us. When I pause to wipe my hands he lifts his head, perking up, tail thumping once in hopeful inquiry. I’m not even sure what he’s hoping for. Just that I looked at him. Just that I acknowledged he exists.

I scratch his ears again and his eyes close, his body going slack with contentment. The trusting weight of him against my leg puts a crack in my armor. I had a dog once. I loved her more than I loved most humans and I couldn’t protect her either.

I pull my hand back, clear my throat, and go back to the wiring.

When I come back out into the main room to grab a different set of pliers from the toolbox Seyeon is on the phone, pacing near the open doors with one hand on his hip. Talking to a colleague covering something for him. His voice is calm and professional, speaking with a clean, educated diction he’s adopted that sounds nothing like the way he used to talk when we were kids, the dialect and slang and the rough consonants of Gyeongsang boys who’ve never left the coast. I lean against the counter and listen to him talk to whoever it is and think about the distance between who we were and who we’ve become.

He hangs up and turns, catches me leaning there watching him.

This time I don’t look away.

Seyeon holds my gaze for a second, two, three. His jaw works. His eyes flick down to my arm where it’s resting on the counter, to the ink on my wrist. I watch him look at the constellation and I don’t hide it. Don’t turn my arm over. Don’t shove my hand in my pocket the way I have every other time he’s caught a glimpse.

His eyes come back up to mine.

I push off the counter, pick up my pliers, and walk back to the freezer where Yuro lifts his head and thumps his tail at me in greeting as though I’ve been gone for hours instead of ninety seconds.

“Idiot,” I say to the dog softly, crouching down.