Page 73 of The Way Back Home

I can’t talk. I press my lips together and stare down at the ledger, at the final balance, at every deposit my dead father made for a future he’d never get to see. The numbers swim and smear as my eyes fill again and this time I can’t blink it back. It spills over, dripping onto the table, onto my hand where my mother holds it.

She gets up, comes around the table, and pulls my head against her stomach the way she used to when I was small. Her hand smooths through my hair.

“He’d be so proud of you,” she says quietly. “I wish you could’ve seen his face when you first started reading on your own. He came home that night and told me our son was going to be someone important. That he was going to make sure of it.”

I press my face into her apron and cry.

The next morning Ryowoon finds me sitting in the stands at the athletic field, alone, my bag at my feet, the bank ledger balanced on my knee. I’ve been staring at it since before the sun came up, the pages open to the last entry, my father’s handwriting neat and small in every row.

I hear the scuff of shoes on concrete, a stride I could pick out of a crowd blindfolded. He climbs the stands and drops beside me without greeting, his knee bumping mine as he settles. He smells like cigarette smoke and the cold morning air and that cheap bodywash he uses. He sits and says nothing but tilts his head to look at what’s in my lap.

I hand it to him.

He takes it, flips it open, and I watch his face as he reads. His brow pulls together. He turns a page, another, his eyes moving down the columns. He gets to the last page and goes still.

“My dad started it the month I was born,” I say. My voice is scratchy from crying last night. “Every paycheck. Five thousand, ten thousand won, whatever he could put away. My mom kept it going after he died. She went without for years to keep putting money in. She could’ve used it. There were months we had nothing, and she sat on this and didn’t touch it.”

Ryowoon stares at the balance. He closes the ledger gently, sets it back on my knee. His jaw works for a second, he’s quieter than usual when he speaks.

“So you’re going.”

I nod. “I have to. I can’t let what they did go to waste.”

“Seoul,” he says.

“Seoul.”

He lets out a long breath through his nose, tipping his head back, looking at the pale sky above the field. Then he leans forward and claps me on the back, his between my shoulder blades.

“You deserve it, Seyeon. You’ve been killing yourself for this. And this town was always too small for you anyway.”

I should just take it, let it be what it is. But the impulse takes over, the one thing I still want.

“Come with me.”

Ryowoon snorts. “How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

“Apply for colleges in Seoul. There are tons of them, not just mine. Trade schools, technical programs. We can live together. Split rent, it’ll be cheaper that way.” I start picking up speed, the idea forming on the spot. “You can apply late to some of them, the deadlines haven’t all passed. We can figure it out.”

He’s shaking his head before I finish.

“That’s not going to happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that, actually.”

“How can you say that without trying?” I say sharply, turning toward him on the bench, my knee pressing into his thigh. “If you just looked into it, if we sat down and went through the options—”

“Seyeon.”

“—there are programs that don’t need the same scores, places that take work experience and practical skills, I’ve seen the pamphlets. You’re good with your hands, you’re brilliant with engines, there has to be something—”

“Enough.”

He snaps, not a shout but loud enough to be. His shoulders are bunched up around his ears, his jaw set hard.

“You’re not living in reality. Someone like me can’t dream about shit like that.”