Page 125 of The Way Back Home

He doesn’t come.

Days pass. I go to the garage. I work on engines and crawl under trucks and let Mr. Lee talk at me about his daughter’s wedding plans and I smoke on the corner after my shift and I walk home and Seyeon is not there. His absence is an emptiness pressing against the walls of the apartment, filling the rooms with a silence so loud it makes my ears ring. Sihyung notices but he doesn’t push, gives me careful sideways looks and leaves food on the counter for me and stays out of my way when I disappear into my room after work.

Seyeon’s stuff is still scattered around the apartment. A spare toothbrush in the bathroom cup. A pair of his socks balled up behind the couch. One of his textbooks on the kitchen table, a receipt tucked between the pages as a bookmark. I don’t touch any of it. Can’t bring myself to move it. Can’t bring myself to look at it either, so I just stop going into the kitchen unless Sihyung’s there and I brush my teeth with my eyes on the sink basin and not the shelf.

Two weeks after that night, I hear from Jinwon that Seyeon’s going back to Seoul. End of summer, just like planned. Says Seyeon’s mom organized a send off at the bus station, that everyone’s going. Jinwon gives me a pointed look and says you’re coming, right?

I tell him I have a shift.

Jinwon opens his mouth, closes it. Says nothing.

The day Seyeon leaves I’m at the garage. I stay late on purpose, tell Mr. Lee I want to finish the brake job on the sedan in bay three. He shrugs and tosses me the keys to lock up. So I stay. I lie under the sedan and stare up at the rusted undercarriage and listen to the radio playing and I think about the bus station. About Seyeon standing there with his bag over his shoulder, his mother fussing, smoothing his collar, tearing up. About Haeil and Jinwon and Sihyung and Yoohan crowding around him, clapping his back, making jokes to cover up the fact that they’re going to miss him. About the empty space in the group where I should be standing. Where I’ve always stood. At his side. His shadow.

Around four o’clock I feel a weird jolt in my chest, like missing a step on a staircase. I lie still beneath the sedan and press my palm flat against my sternum and breathe. The bus to Seoul leaves at four fifteen. He’s getting on right now. Handing his bag to the driver, climbing the steps, finding a seat by the window. Maybe looking out at the station one last time. Scanning the faces.

Not finding mine.

I close my eyes and press harder against my chest as if I can reach in and hold it together.

By the time I lock up the garage and walk home the sun is going down over the harbor. Orange light on the water, the gulls circling, boats rocking in the swell. I walk past the docks without stopping. Past the corner where Seyeon and I used to buy hotteok from the cart. Past the market stalls closing up for the night, the vendors pulling tarps over their displays. Past every street and storefront soaked in twenty-three years of shared memory.

Sihyung is in the kitchen when I come in, stirring a pot on the stove. He looks over his shoulder when he hears me and I can see on his face that he went. Probably helped carry Seyeon’s bag. Probably stood there waving like an idiot as the bus pulled away.

“You missed it,” he says.

I pull open the fridge and grab a bottle of water. Unscrew the cap. Take a long drink. “Missed what?”

“Seyeon left today.”

“Yeah, I know.” I lean against the counter and take another sip. Keep my voice flat. Bored. “He was always going back. It’s not a funeral.”

Sihyung frowns. He turns back to the stove, stirs the pot. “He asked about you.”

My hand tightens on the bottle.

“I told him you were at the garage,” Sihyung continues, still facing the stove. A pause. The spoon clinks against the rim of the pot. “You two haven’t spoken in weeks.”

“People fight, Sihyung. It happens.”

“Not you two.” He says simply. “Not like this.”

I push off the counter, toss the bottle cap at the trash can and miss. Leave it on the floor. “It’s fine. He’s gone, I’m here, life goes on.” I head for my room, lifting a hand over my shoulder. “I’m not hungry. Night.”

His silence follows me down the hallway like a third person.

I close my bedroom door. Stand in the dark for a second. Then I walk to the bed and fall face first onto the mattress, burying my face in the pillow.

Breathe in the ghost of him in the fabric.

I let out an animal, anguished sound. I press my face harder into the pillow and let it come, all of it. My shoulders shake. My fingers twist in the sheets. Ugly sobs I muffle into the cotton and hope to God Sihyung can’t hear me through the wall.

I cry the way I cried when we left Nuri at that vet clinic. With my whole body. With everything in me that knows how to feel pain, which is most of me. I cry for the look on his face when I said those things. For the way his eyes went bright and then went dead. For the flinch when I told him he wasn’t special. For every kiss I’ll never get back and every morning I’ll never wake up to and the feeling of his fingers curling against my chest in the dark, reaching for me in his sleep.

I cry until there’s nothing left. Until the pillow is soaked and my throat is raw and my eyes are so swollen I can barely open them. Then I lie there, hollowed out, staring at nothing, breathing.

I roll onto my back. Stare at the ceiling.

He’ll get over it. That’s what I tell myself. He’s young and brilliant and the whole world wants a piece of him. Seoul will swallow him up the way big cities do, all noise and light and forward motion, and he’ll meet people who match his stride. He’ll finish his degree and start his career and build the life he was born for and one day this summer will be a faded thing. A memory he can look back on without the sting. And he’ll be glad, eventually, that I didn’t let him throw it away on a broken mechanic in a dying town.