Page 68 of The Way Back Home

My heart squeezes in my chest.

The memory of him straddling his motorcycle outside the shop with the engine still ticking, his helmet under one arm, his hair windswept from the ride, cheeks pink, eyes bright and alive flashes through my mind. The way he looked free.

“Do you still have your bike?” I blurt out impulsively.

Ryowoon startles. His arm draws back from the window, his head turning. Our eyes meet for a second. The looks in his eyes shifts, I see the same memory flickering across his face. He looks away, out the windshield.

“No,” he says tonelessly. “Sold it a long time ago.”

I nod once. Roll up the windows. Neither of us reaches for the radio.

We stop once more. Ryowoon smokes against the side of the building while I walk Yuro through the grass, letting him sniff every post and trash can he can reach. I watch Ryowoon from across the lot, the orange ember of his cigarette flaring as he inhales, his shoulders against the brick. The way he has one foot propped flat against the wall behind him, his head tipped back, eyes on the purple sky above us.

I call Yuro back and we load up again for the last stretch.

The sun drops below the horizon as we merge back onto the expressway heading south. The light bleeds out of the sky and the headlights of oncoming traffic start to blink on one by one. Ryowoon doesn’t lean his arm out the window this time. He sits upright, both hands resting on his thighs, watching the road ahead.

When the first highway sign for Busan appears in the headlights, white letters glowing briefly before sweeping overhead and disappearing, Ryowoon shifts in his seat.

The next sign reads Yeonsan — 45km.

His fingers start to tap. Index and middle, drumming restlessly against his kneecap. His jaw tightens, muscle jumping beneath the skin. He stares out the windshield but I can tell he’s not seeing the road anymore. He’s counting down.

Busan — 28km. The sign flashes overhead and Ryowoon’s tapping stops. His hand closes into a fist on his thigh.

I keep both hands on the wheel, my eyes forward, giving him the privacy of not being watched even as every nerve in my body is tuned to the man sitting a foot and a half away from me. I can feel the tension building off of him like static charge.

The exits for Busan slide by on our right. Familiar names on green signs, neighborhoods I walked through weeks ago searching for him, streets I drove up and down until I knew them by heart.

Yeonsan — 12km.

The tendons in his forearm stand out where his fist rests on his leg, knuckles pale.

The Yeonsan exit comes and goes.

After that there are fewer cars on the road. The expressway narrows, sheds a lane, and the landscape outside flattens and darkens as the suburbs give way to rice paddies and the long, open stretches of countryside that lead to the coast. The GPS on my phone shows thirty minutes remaining. I can smell the sea already.

Haemok — 18km.

Ryowoon’s chin lifts. His eyes fixed on the horizon where the last purple stain of twilight sits above the waterline. His face in the glow of the dashboard is expressionless, still, his features carved from stone.

I take the exit.

The car curves down the off ramp and the road tightens beneath us, the pavement rougher here where the coastal salt and weather has chewed it up over the decades. The headlights sweep across the old welcome sign, faded and rusted, and then the road dips and Haemok opens up below in the dark, the harbor lights strung along the waterline, the stacked houses climbing the hills above it, and beyond all of it the black expanse of open water stretching south.

The town slides past in the dark. Most of the shops along the main road are shuttered for the night, metal gates pulled down, only the pojangmacha carts near the harbor still glowing with their plastic tarps lit from within.

Ryowoon’s head moves as we drive. Slowly scanning, his eyes sweeping the storefronts and the narrow alleys branching off between buildings. He’s unnaturally still in his seat, worse than the restlessness from before, it’s like he’s coiled to spring.

I take the turn away from the harbor, steering us up toward the hill roads, and in my periphery I see Ryowoon’s head swing toward the water. His eyes move over the harbor as it passes, the dock lights, the black shapes of moored boats, the breakwater wall stretching out into the dark. He watches it until the road curves and the view disappears behind the row of houses climbing the hillside.

The streets get narrow so I park at the bottom where there’s still room to pull over without blocking the lane, killing the engine. The quiet rushes in. Absent of the highway noise and city hum. Just the distant sound of water against the breakers and somewhere up the hill a television playing through an open window.

I glance over. Ryowoon is staring through the windshield at the street ahead, the houses stacked above us in the dark, their walls stained and close together, laundry lines strung between them. His throat bobs once.

I get out without a word. Open the back door for Yuro, who hops down and immediately puts his nose to the pavement, tail swinging in cautious circles. I wrap his leash around my hand twice and grab my bag from the trunk. Behind me I hear Ryowoon’s door open, the rustle of him pulling his bag from the back seat.

I start walking.