Page 61 of The Way Back Home

“You’re insane.” He turns back around and falls into step beside me, shaking his head. “You know that right? You’re actually insane. When you get into whatever fancy college you’re gunning for they should study you. Put you in a glass box. ‘Here we have the Heo Seyeon, a specimen so obsessed with studying he forgot how to be a human person.’”

I snort. “Nice. Did you come up with that one while you were drawing carburetors instead of studying?”

“You—” He shoves me sideways and I stumble, laughing, catching myself on a wall. “Stay out of my notebook, you nosy bastard.”

I’m still laughing as I start to smell smoke in the air, acrid and sharp in the back of my throat. I stop walking and Ryowoon stops a half step later, turning to look at me.

“What?”

I sniff again, frowning. “Is that smoke?”

We both turn at the same time, looking up. Above the dark silhouettes of the rooftops, barely visible against the night sky, a thin thread of grey curls upward, lit from beneath by a faint orange glow.

A bad feeling forms in the pit of my stomach. I start walking toward it, then faster, my bag bouncing against my hip.

Ryowoon follows right on my heels.

We reach the top of the street and my legs nearly give out.

Mrs. Nam’s store.

Flames crawl up the side of the building, licking along the wooden frame of the roll-up doors, eating into the awning above the entrance. Smoke pours from the seams of the storefront in thick dark ropes, billowing upward. The fire hasn’t consumed the building yet but it’s working on it, the orange glow pulsing inside behind the glass.

“Halme!” Ryowoon shouts, rushing toward it. I’m right behind him, my bag hitting the ground.

I reach the front door first and slam both palms against it. Locked. The metal is warm under my hands.

“Mrs. Nam!” I bang harder, my voice cracking. “Halme, can you hear me?”

Nothing. Just the crackle and pop of the fire eating through the store’s old bones.

“I’m gonna check the back!” Ryowoon yells over his shoulder, sprinting around the side of the building. I bang on the door again, once, twice, then step back and look at it, at the frame, at the glass panel beside it. I back up further. Run. Throw my shoulder into the door and pain blazes through my arm, jolting through my teeth. The door doesn’t budge.

Ryowoon reappears, breathing hard. “Back’s blocked. Something fell against the courtyard door.” His eyes sweep the storefront, land on the wooden stool Mrs. Nam keeps outside for the old men who sit and gossip in the mornings.

“Get back,” He warns me, giving me a second to scramble backward clear of the door.

He scoops it up with both hands, pivots, and swings.

The glass panel shatters. Smoke pours through the opening, a wall of it, black and hot. I pull my shirt up over my nose and mouth.

“I’m going in,” I say. “She might be in the bedroom. Go get help.”

Ryowoon grabs my arm. “Seyeon—”

“Go.” I yank free and shove him. “I’m smaller, I can get through. Find something to put it out, I don’t think it’s spread to the back yet. Go, go!”

He hesitates one agonizing second, his face caught in the orange light, jaw clenched. Then he turns and runs.

I climb through the broken window.

The heat wraps around me, presses into my skin, my clothes, finds every gap. The smoke is worse. It fills the store from ceiling to halfway down the walls and it’s dropping, a churning dark mass that swallows the lights, turns them into dim yellow smears. I can see the fire now, crawling along the shelves near the east wall, consuming the cardboard displays, the chip bags curling and blackening, flames dancing across the top of the old wooden counter.

I drop low, crouching, one hand on the wall to guide me. The air is marginally better down here but my lungs are already burning, each breath like swallowing sand. I try to take shallow sips. Short inhales through my shirt but it’s not enough.

“Halme!” I shout, my voice rasping. I cough and it sends a searing pain through my chest.

The store isn’t big. I know every inch of it. From the front counter it’s a straight shot past the shelves to the back wall, where the connecting door leads into Mrs. Nam’s living quarters. I move along the wall by memory, can barely see two feet in front of me. My hand finds the door frame and I shove the door open.