Page 18 of The Way Back Home

We sit there in silence for a long while, neither of us willing to look over at the other, both still simmering. But by the time she brings out dinner, setting the tray down between us without a word, we’ve already scooted closer together, close enough to bump our knees when we reach for the same side dish, and neither one of us moves away.

The good days outnumber the bad ones, even if the bad ones stick harder in memory.

Most afternoons after we finish our chores at Mrs. Nam’s, the whole pack of us, our friends from school who all live on nearby streets, tears loose into the neighborhood like a litter of unleashed puppies, Nuri included, since Ryowoon almost never keeps her chained anymore once his father leaves for his shift. She runs circles around us as we go, tongue out, ears flapping, barking at nothing and everything, at gulls overhead, at the delivery trucks that rumble past too close for comfort, at Haeil whenever he tries to race ahead of the group just to prove he’s faster than the rest of us.

“Slow down, you’ll trip and split your head open,” Jinwon calls after him, always the one worrying about somebody cracking their skull on the pavement, even though nobody ever listens.

“Then I’ll die a legend!” Haeil shouts back, laughing, and Ryowoon whoops in agreement, the two of them tearing off ahead while the rest of us groan and chase after.

Sihyung and Yoohan trail at the back most days, the two of them slower, content to walk instead of sprint, always the last ones to catch up whenever we stop to wait. Yoohan’s got asthma that flares up if he pushes too hard, so Sihyung sticks with him out of habit, the two of them muttering to each other about the cartoon that aired the night before while the rest of us race ahead without waiting.

We climb the bent pine at the edge of the hill almost every week, the one that grows sideways out of the rock. Ryowoon’s always first up, scaling the trunk without hesitation even though the bark’s rough enough to leave red marks on his palms. I follow after, slowly and more careful about where I put my hands, while Haeil shoves past both of us trying to claim the highest branch before anyone else gets there.

From the top you can see the whole harbor spread out below, the boats bobbing at their moorings, the water flashing in the sunlight that hurts to look at directly. Jinwon never climbs past the first few branches, says he doesn’t trust the thing not to snap under all our weight at once, but he sits below anyway, keeping watch, ready to yell if any of us slip.

“You’re gonna fall one of these days,” he tells Ryowoon, who’s balanced on a branch that’s definitely too thin for a boy his size already.

“Nah,” Ryowoon says, grinning down at him. “I never fall. Falling’s for cowards.”

“Falling’s for people who don’t understand gravity,” Jinwon mutters, and Haeil cackles from above us, nearly losing his own grip in the process.

The marketplace is worse for our reputations, honestly. We descend on it most Saturdays like a small storm, weaving between stalls, snatching up free samples the vendors put out before they can stop us, Haeil always the boldest about it, grabbing double what everyone else manages and running before the ahjumma behind the counter can swat at him with her tongs.

“You’re going to get us all banned,” Sihyung says one afternoon, breathless from running after him.

“Worth it,” Haeil says around a mouthful of stolen tteokbokki, grinning wide enough to show the gap where he lost a tooth last month.

Ryowoon’s usually right there beside him, egging him on, the two of them a matched pair of trouble that Jinwon and Sihyung try, mostly without success, to rein in. I trail somewhere in the middle, not brave enough to steal outright but happy enough to eat whatever gets handed off to me afterward, splitting the spoils like it’s some kind of fair trade for staying just far enough away to avoid getting caught myself.

Some days we make it down to the harbor and sneak onto the fishing boats when the old men have wandered off for their own lunch, climbing over the sides, pretending we’re captains sailing off to fight sea monsters or pirates, whatever story Haeil decides on that day, since he’s always the one directing our games.

“I’m captain,” he announces, standing at the front of somebody’s boat with his chest puffed out.

“Why do you always get to be captain?” I complain, though I already know the answer’s going to be some version of because he said so first.

“Because I called it,” he says, exactly as expected, and Ryowoon backs him up as I roll my eyes, the two of them a wall I know better than to argue against for long.

We jump off the pier, stripping down to our shorts and leaping into the water below, shrieking the whole way down before the cold water knocks the air out of our lungs. Nuri waits up top every time, barking down at us like she’s scolding us for leaving her behind, pacing the edge of the dock until Ryowoon climbs back out soaked and shivering to scratch behind her ears and reassure her he’s not actually drowning.

The old woman who sells mackerel from her cart nearby yells at us every time without fail, waving her rag in our direction, telling us we’re going to split our heads open on the rocks below one of these days if we don’t quit it. We ignore her, mostly, until one of the fishermen mending his nets a few boats down finally hollers something sharper, threatening to tell all our mothers, and that gets us climbing out fast enough, dripping onto the wood planks, laughing so hard none of us can catch our breath.

“You’re all going to end up at the bottom of the harbor,” the fish ahjumma mutters, shaking her head at us as we scramble past her cart, dripping a trail behind us. “Worse than a litter of stray cats, the lot of you.”

“We’re good swimmers,” Haeil calls back over his shoulder, unbothered as always.

“Good swimmers with no sense,” she snaps, but by the time we’re halfway up the road she’s already gone back to arranging her fish on ice, muttering to herself about kids these days.

We walk home slowly after that, salt drying on our skin, sun sinking low as the whole sky turns the color of a ripe persimmon. Nuri trots ahead of us, shaking herself off every few steps, water flying from her fur in every direction. Ryowoon walks close beside me, our shoulders bumping every few steps, neither of us bothering to move away, for a while nobody says anything at all, just the sound of six pairs of feet on the road and Nuri’s tags jingling up front, and it feels like nothing bad could ever touch us here.

As the evening cools down my mom brings out the thin blanket to throw over our knees, even though it’s still summer, still the kind of humid night where the cicadas won’t stop singing until well past dark. We sit on the wooden platform outside our half of the house, the one that sits low against the yard so the Parks upstairs don’t have to look down at us too much. My dad has a stack of flower cards spread out between us, showing me how to play seotda for what feels like the tenth time this week, patient no matter how many times I mess it up.

“No, no, look,” he says, tapping the card in my hand. “You match by month, not by color. See the pine, the plum, they’re not the same just because they’re both green.”

“I knew that,” I lie, and he laughs, his shoulders shaking.

My mom watches us both from where she’s peeling a cucumber into a bowl, her knife moving without her looking down at it. When I slap the wrong card onto the pile with a little too much confidence, she snorts, covering her mouth with the back of her wrist.

“He’s hopeless,” she tells my dad.