Page 13 of The Way Back Home

“Ryowoon-ah, sound it out,” she calls from across the room when he gets stuck on a word, not even looking up from the register.

He grumbles but does it, dragging the syllables out slowly, and when he finally gets it right she claps once sharply from wherever she’s standing.

“There you go. See? Not so hard.”

I finish my own workbook faster than he does most days, so I lean over and try to help too, pointing at the characters, but Ryowoon shoves my hand away and says he can figure it out himself, thank you very much. He always figures it out though, eventually, his tongue poking out the side of his mouth.

By October he’s not so grumbly anymore. He laughs more, not just the short huff he used to give when something was funny. Now when Mrs. Nam does her impression of Mr. Han yelling at his dog with her pinched voice and waving arms, Ryowoon laughs so hard he nearly falls right off his cushion, and I laugh even harder just watching him laugh.

He talks more too. Tells me things he never used to, like how he wants to fix cars when he grows up because he likes taking things apart and figuring out how they go back together. Tells Mrs. Nam about the drawing he did in art class that his teacher hung up on the wall, how it was of a car, obviously, what else would it be. She tapes a scrap of paper with his drawing above the register a few days later, right next to a photo of some drama actor, and he acts embarrassed about it but I catch him smiling every time he walks past it.

Some days he even beats me to the answers in our workbooks, grinning wide when Mrs. Nam praises him for it, like he can’t quite believe he’s the one getting told good job for once.

I don’t know why he seems lighter these days, why his shoulders don’t sit so tight up by his ears the way Mrs. Nam’s used to before, but I have a guess. I sit next to him on our cushions, our knees knocking together under the low table, and let it be good without asking too many questions about why.

34 Years Old

The address sits highlighted on my phone screen, I’ve read it enough times now that I don’t need to look again, but I do anyway out of anxious habit. Across the street, the auto shop looks like every other one I passed on the drive down, corrugated metal roof, a couple of cars up on lifts inside the open bay, a faded sign that reads Daeho Motors in peeling red paint. Nothing about it announces itself as significant. Nothing about it tells me whether I’m about to waste another afternoon or not.

I slide my phone into my pocket and stand there a second longer than I need to, letting the traffic pass between us. Busan smells different than Seoul. Saltier, warmer, the sun already bearing down even though it’s barely past ten in the morning. I can taste that faint brine if I open my mouth, it clings to the whole city no matter how far you get from the water.

This is a long shot. My mother said she’d already made the drive down here herself, more than once, walking into body shops and garages all over the city with a photograph in her hand, asking after a boy who probably didn’t even look the same anymore. Nothing ever came of it. But I had to try anyway.

I got this address from Sihyung four days ago, after a coffee that took some convincing on my part and a fair amount of guilt on his.

It’d been years since I called him. Years since I’d called any of them, if I’m honest, but Sihyung especially, because Sihyung was never someone I’d cut ties with on purpose. We’d just drifted, the way people do when there’s history between them that neither one wants to poke at too hard. So when I texted him out of nowhere asking if he had time to meet, I wasn’t surprised it took him a full day to respond. What did surprise me was the reply when it came, quick and warm, an exclamation point after every sentence like he’d been waiting for this.

He showed up at the coffee shop fifteen minutes early. I was already there, and I watched him come through the door searching the room until his eyes landed on me and his face lit up like a little kid. He hugged me before I had the chance to stand up all the way, thumping me on the back twice like men do to show affection platonically, and said my name with awe.

“Seyeon-ah. Look at you. You look exactly the same, you bastard.”

“You don’t,” I said, because he didn’t, really. He’d put on some weight in a good way, the type that comes from a settled life, and there were fine lines starting at the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there the last time I saw him. He looked well. He looked like someone who slept easy at night.

We sat and he ordered for both of us without asking and then he started talking. He always did talk more than me. He told me about his wife, who still made fun of him for crying during his own wedding vows. He told me about his boys, six and nine, the older one obsessed with baseball and the younger one who wanted to be a diver like the divers in the news specials. He told me about his seafood restaurant, half-owned with his cousin, right on the docks where you could smell the catch coming in fresh every morning. He pulled out his phone to show me pictures, his sons squinting against the sun on a beach trip, his wife laughing at something off camera, and I looked at every one, feeling warmth and sadness in equal amounts for all I’d missed.

It was strange, hearing about a life so full while mine had stayed so quiet, teaching in Seoul, coming home to an empty apartment with just my dog for company most nights. Not quite unhappy. Just quiet. Sterile might be the better word. Still, there was something healing about watching him talk about his family with unguarded joy, proof that people from Haemok could build something new and good, that it wasn’t all just wreckage behind us.

I let him get all the way through his updates before I brought it up, because I hadn’t wanted to be the person who called out of nowhere just to ask a favor. I wanted at least an hour of just being glad to see him first.

But eventually there was a pause, a natural lull where the conversation could’ve gone anywhere, and I took it.

“Sihyung,” I said, turning my cup in my hands, not quite looking at him. “I have to ask you something. It might be a strange thing to ask after all this time.”

He got quiet, and when I looked up his expression had shifted, a careful look settling over his features, like he already knew where this was headed before I said the name.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where Ryowoon is, would you?”

He didn’t look surprised, honestly. If anything, he looked like he’d been expecting it, maybe even from the moment I first texted him asking to meet. But he didn’t look offended either, which was a relief I hadn’t expected to feel this strongly.

“I wish I did,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. “I don’t. I’m sorry, Seyeon. Next to you, the only one who really stayed close to him was Haeil, and, well.”

He didn’t finish the sentence. The silence that followed sat between us thickly, me staring down at the table, tracing the rim of my cup with one finger, feeling that same old ache bloom in my sternum, the one that never really goes away no matter how many years pass.

Sihyung cleared his throat after a moment. “You don’t need me to tell you this, but he probably didn’t want to be found. Not by anyone.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m not asking for me.”

He studied me for a second, and then he nodded slowly, like he understood there was more to it than I was willing to say out loud. He didn’t push. Sihyung always was good about knowing when to let something sit unspoken.