Page 35 of The Way Back Home

In the spring, when I find the first pink flower of the season sitting on top of my history textbook in the morning when I come back from lunch, a smile curves the corner of my mouth and a warm feeling fills my chest. I grip the flower and carry it in my pocket and keep it between my fingers until it wilts.

13 Years Old

As the ball goes sailing past my head and into the net behind me for the fourth time I just want to sink into the grass and disappear.

Ryowoon doesn’t celebrate outright, but the grin he throws my way as he jogs back to midfield says plenty on its own with that loose cocky stride, arms swinging. Nonchalant about destroying my team in front of everyone. Our classmates on his side are whooping, slapping his back, and Ryowoon takes it all in with a nod, barely winded, while I’m standing here with my hands on my knees trying to remember how lungs work.

The end-of-term soccer match has the teachers watching from the sidelines with their clipboards and their whistles, the sun pounding down on the dirt field behind the school. My team’s down by four with fifteen minutes left and I’ve been chasing Ryowoon around this field all afternoon like a dog after a car. Every time the ball comes near me he materializes, shoulder-checks me off it, nutmegs me once in front of everyone—which gets a howl from the sidelines—and then blazes past me toward goal. He’s not even showing off. That’s what pisses me off. He’s just better than me at this and he knows it and he’s not trying to hide it.

The final whistle goes off, it’s 6-1 and I don’t shake anyone’s hand. I just grab my bag off the sideline and walk.

I hear Jinwon calling after me, asking if I want to head down to the harbor, but I wave him off without turning around. I’m sweaty and sore and my ego’s in pieces and I don’t want to talk to anyone. I cut around the back of the school building, past the equipment shed, and take the dirt path that leads up into the woods where the pines crowd together and the noise from the schoolyard drops away.

I find him in the clearing past the first ridge. Sitting on a fallen trunk with his bag tossed in the dirt beside him, jersey pulled up to wipe the sweat off his face, a bottle of water balanced on his knee. He doesn’t look surprised to see me, but he glances up, pushes his hair back, and takes a drink.

“You look pissed,” he says.

“You were targeting me.”

Ryowoon stops mid-sip, brows lifting. “What?”

“Out there.” I drop my bag. “Every single play. You came at me specifically. You could’ve gone around, could’ve passed to anyone else, but you kept coming at me.”

Ryowoon sets the water bottle down and scratches the back of his neck, squinting up at me. “You were defending. What was I supposed to do, walk around you?”

“You nutmegged me.”

“You left your legs open.”

“You’re a fucking show-off.”

He stands up slowly, rolling his shoulders, the tilt to his jaw I know too well. His voice drops into a flat tone. “Stop taking it personal, Seyeon. I’ve always been able to beat you.”

It’s like throwing gasoline on the fire, because it’s not untrue. Ryowoon’s always been faster than me, scrappier, dirtier when he needs to be. I know this. I knew it long before he was teaching me how to throw a punch up in these same woods. But hearing him say it out loud in that almost bored way, calmly disinterested while the sweat still dries on his forehead from running circles around me for an hour—it pushes me over the edge.

I shove him hard with both hands and he stumbles back a step, eyes wide.

“Yah—”

I shove him again but this time he catches my wrists. “Seyeon, what the hell—”

I twist free and swing. The punch catches him in the ribs hard enough to knock the air out of him, and then we’re on each other. Ryowoon grabs the front of my jersey and yanks me sideways, I hook my foot behind his ankle and we both go down, crashing through the underbrush, rolling in the dirt and pine needles. He gets an elbow into my side and I grunt, grab a fistful of his hair and pull, he curses and drives his knee up, catching my thigh, for a few seconds it’s just tangled limbs and gasping and the dull thud of fists hitting whatever they can reach.

I land another hit, knuckles glancing off his jaw, and his head snaps sideways. He spits and there’s blood on his lip, his eyes wild and furious, and then he surges forward with all his weight and flips me, my back slamming into the ground hard enough to rattle my teeth. Pine needles stick to my sweaty skin. Before I can get up his knee drops onto my chest, pinning me, both his hands on my shoulders shoving me flat. My ribs creak. I buck against him, gasping, trying to throw him off but he’s got leverage and he’s heavier than he looks, that wiry muscle giving him an advantage, I can’t move.

We stay like that for a beat, both panting, filthy, sweat and dirt smeared across our faces. Ryowoon’s split lip drips a thin line of red down his chin. His eyes bore into mine, burning, but then his expression shifts and he shoves off me with a disgusted sound, pushing himself backward until he’s sitting in the dirt a few feet away.

I lie there wheezing, one hand pressed to my side where I can already feel the bruise forming under my ribs. The canopy above us spins, dappled light through pine branches, and I think about how I’m going to explain this to my mother and then I think about the look on Ryowoon’s face when he nutmegged me and a sound comes out of my mouth, a wheeze that turns into a cough and then, for no reason I can defend or explain, it becomes a laugh.

Ryowoon stares at me like I’ve lost my mind.

I keep laughing. My ribs are killing me and my cheek throbs where his elbow caught me and there are pine needles in my hair and probably down my shirt and I can’t stop.

Ryowoon’s mouth twitches. He fights it for a minute, jaw clenching, lips pressing together, but then he cracks and he starts laughing too, dropping his head back, blood still smeared on his chin.

“Fucking idiot,” he says, grabbing a stick off the ground and tossing it at me. It bounces off my knee. He grabs another one and throws it at my head. “You hit me.”

“You deserved it,” I manage between wheezes, pressing my palm harder against my side. Laughing hurts. Breathing hurts. I don’t care.