Page 120 of The Way Back Home

I give up, I think. On the fight itself. The one I’ve been waging since I was old enough to understand what I was fighting against. The one where I convinced myself that distance was the only gift I had to offer the people I cared about. That the kindest thing I could do for Seyeon was disappear, remove the source of damage before the damage spread.

Because this was never a fight I was going to win. Not against him.

Maybe I never wanted to.

I pick up the sandpaper again, working at a stubborn rough patch near the corner of the shelf. Yuro lifts his head, ears perked, looking back through the open door into the store. I follow his gaze and catch Seyeon watching me through the glass from the counter, papers spread in front of him, pen in one hand, but his eyes are on me. Like he’s checking. Taking note of my continued presence.

I can tell what he’s thinking. The fierce certainty that if he looked back and the courtyard was empty, if the shelf was abandoned and the tools left scattered, he’d be out the door and down the street before the dust settled. That he’d run twice as fast this time, hunt me through every city and backroad and rathole apartment building until he found me, and then drag me back by the collar like a stray dog that keeps slipping its leash.

My mouth twitches. I duck my head so he can’t see it, bend back over the wood.

Seyeon. Stubborn, relentless, infuriatingly determined Heo Seyeon. Who decided that every one of my ghosts was his to fight too, whether I gave him permission or not.

So there it is. What else is there to do at this point? The man has his mind made up. I’ve seen that look enough times in my life to know there’s no arguing with it.

I’ll do what I’ve done since the day we were born. What I was probably always meant to do, if you believe in that kind of thing. Be his shadow. Hover at his side and watch his guard and make sure his light shines brighter than anyone else’s. And selfishly, greedily, soak in all of that light until it fills the spaces inside me where darkness used to be.

I finish the shelf, start on the next one, replace a couple of rotted boards in the platform where the wood has softened from seasons of rain. Yuro supervises from his spot in the shade, occasionally lifting his head to track a butterfly or sneeze at the sawdust. I scratch behind his ears when I pass and he rolls onto his back, all four legs in the air, tail going wild. Ridiculous animal. He’s become my second shadow these last few days, following me from room to room, sitting beside me while I work, pressing his warm body against my leg when I sit down. I’ve started talking to him when Seyeon’s not around. Telling him about the repairs I’m planning, asking his opinion on tile choices. He tilts his ears like he’s seriously considering it and I think Seyeon has the only dog in Korea with better listening skills than most people I’ve met.

When the light starts to turn golden and the air finally cools, Seyeon orders food. I don’t ask what. He brings the bags out to the courtyard and we spread the containers between us on the platform, sitting side by side. I eat without thinking about what I’m eating.

Yuro rolls onto his side next to Seyeon’s thigh, snoring softly, his paws twitching. The cicadas start up, their hum rising from the bushes and the trees on the hillside, filling the air with that sound of summer in Korea. The sky above the harbor is turning, going from blue to peach to a deep orange that makes the water glow. I can smell the salt from here, underneath the black bean sauce and the warm wood and the faint trace of Seyeon’s shampoo. It’s peaceful.

I can feel the question coming before Seyeon opens his mouth. I’ve felt it building all day, hovering at the edges of our silences, sitting in the looks he keeps giving me when he thinks I’m not paying attention. He’s been tiptoeing around it since this morning, and Seyeon is not a man built for tiptoeing. So when he finally speaks, setting down his chopsticks and turning slightly toward me, I don’t tense up. I let him talk.

“The nightmares,” he says carefully. “Do you get them often?”

I look at the sky. The orange is deepening to russet where the sun is dipping below the ridge of hills across the harbor. I think about how to answer that. Could deflect, could downplay it, could give him the version of the truth that’s easiest to swallow. But I’m tired of that. Tired of managing what Seyeon knows about me, picking which pieces he’s allowed to see. He’s seen the worst of it now anyway. Held me through the worst of it. There’s not much dignity left to protect.

“Yeah,” I say. “Pretty regularly.”

I feel him watching me.

“What about?” he asks.

I knew that was coming too. I pick up a piece of radish, turn it between my fingers, put it down.

“Different things,” I say. “Sometimes I’m back in my room. The old one, at my dad’s house.” I pause, let out a breath through my nose. “Sometimes it’s me on the floor. Sometimes it’s my mom. But someone’s always screaming.” I stare at the point where the water meets the sky, the line blurring in the fading light. “Sometimes I can feel the hits. The way my ribs would crack. The way the floor felt cold underneath me when I went down. Other times it’s just noise. Just screaming and crashing and the sound a bottle makes when it breaks against a wall.”

Seyeon says nothing. I can hear him breathing beside me, keeping himself still on purpose.

“And sometimes,” I continue, my voice flat, “sometimes it’s not him at all. It’s me. I see my own face. His eyes looking out of my face, bloodshot, out of his mind. And I’m doing what he did. Becoming what he was.” I swallow. “Those are the worst ones.”

The silence sits between us. Yuro makes a soft whimpering sound in his sleep, his paws paddling at nothing, chasing something in his dreams. I don’t tell Seyeon the rest. Don’t tell him about Jinwon standing at the bow of that fishing boat, the line snaking around his ankle, the water closing over him as the anchor pulled him to the bottom. Don’t tell him that sometimes in my dreams I hear the sound of Jinwon’s father on the other end of that payphone I called him from when I heard the news, the way a grown man’s wail sounds when it comes through a crackling receiver while you stand in a phone booth gripping the handset so hard the plastic creaks, tears running down your face for the gentlest soul you ever knew. I don’t tell him about Haeil and his handful of pills. The bathroom mirror. The dream where I’m standing behind him reaching out, trying to grab his wrist, pull him back, and my hand goes through him like smoke. How I wake up from those ones sobbing, staring at the ceiling, feeling them in the room with me. Jinwon and Haeil. The two empty chairs in our circle that no one can fill.

I wonder if it would do Seyeon any good to know all of that. To see just how deep the darkness goes. Whether even his light is enough to chase it out. But I can’t bring myself to discourage him anymore. I’m too selfish for that. Too tired and too selfish and too hungry for the warmth of him to do anything but sit here and let him try. I’ve hurt him enough by pushing him away. Tried and failed, spectacularly, to make his life better by cutting myself out of it.

I can feel the next question forming too. It’s the one he’s really been working toward, the one all the other questions are just leading to. I can see it in his eyes when he turns to look at me, that determined lift to his chin, the way his jaw sets. He looks ready to hit me again if I don’t give him what he wants, it almost makes me smile.

“I think I get it now,” Seyeon says quietly. “Why you left. Why you thought it was something you had to do.”

I hold his gaze. Stay calm on the outside while everything inside turns inward, my mind moving backward through the years, still fresh in my memory even now. Like it happened yesterday. His face that day, the look in his eyes when I said the things I said.

I can see him remembering the same things. His eyes move over my face and I know he’s replaying it too.

“But did you have to do it like that?” Seyeon’s voice drops without anger. He’s just asking. “Did you mean any of the things you said to me that day?”

He watches me with that look. One that says he’s prepared to accept the answer either way but God help me if I lie to him again. The fierce set of his jaw, the slight forward tilt of his body, like he’s ready to lunge if I try to slip sideways. I press my lips together, holding back the smile that wants to surface, because he doesn’t need to see that right now. It’s not funny. None of it is funny. But Seyeon looking at me like he’ll fight the truth out of me if he has to is so perfectly, painfully him that it makes my heart tumble.