Page 19 of Angel of Thursdays

“I have to ask my mom,” he said carefully. Behind him, David shrugged, having been left out of the scheme.

“Tell your mom I’ll put in a wisdom tooth. You get those for being wise.”

Jaewon didn’t know what a wisdom tooth was, but he knew the sound of allyship when he heard it. He grabbed May’s hand and dragged him in the direction of the living room. May went. He caught Cassiel’s eye as he was towed around the corner and winked.

Cassiel watched them go. His ring was still, his hand at his side with the colored beads motionless, the kitchen behind him full of his parents’ voices. His nephew had taken May away and Cassiel stood in the hallway with his shoes off and his world quiet.

* * *

As was tradition, songpyeon happened before the meal.

His mother’s kitchen—the one Cassiel had grown up in, the counter he’d done homework on, the window above the sink where his mother kept a small jade plant—was arranged for production. Glutinous rice flour dough in two bowls, one white, one tinted pink with beet. The filling station was sesame seeds and sugar, ground and mixed, in a pale blue dish. Pine needles lay in a shallow pan for steaming.

His mother positioned May at the counter between herself and Minju. David was exempted—he’d done his songpyeon with his own family over the weekend. Jaewon sat on a step stool at the far end, destroying his portion of dough.

“Like this,” his mother said, and her hands moved precisely. A ball of dough flattened in her palm, the filling placed, the edges pinched into a half-moon with a seam that looked like it had been machined. She set it on the pine needles. Perfect. Twelve seconds.

May watched, nodded, picked up his dough. His first songpyeon took shape and he held it up.

“It looks like a shoe,” he said.

His mother studied it.

“Hold here,” she said, and took his hands. She repositioned his thumbs, pressing the dough thinner at the center, pulling the edges up. Her grip was firm. “Too thick. Thin here. Yes?”

“Like jiaozi,” May said. “Thinner at the edges.”

“Mandu,” Cassiel supplied.

His mother looked at May’s hands with renewed interest. “You make mandu?”

“Jiaozi. At work, when it’s slow.” May tilted his hand side to side. “Auntie’s still deciding if I’m any good.”

“We teach you good mandu, later,” his mother said, having transformed into Mary from the PTA again. She patted his hand twice and then returned to her own station, and May glanced at Cassiel and mouthed later?

Cassiel’s second songpyeon split along the seam. Sesame filling bled onto the pine needles. Minju, beside him, was producing songpyeon that were symmetrical and correctly sealed and slightly smaller than their mother’s. He considered this showing off.

“Oppa, you missed your calling,” Minju said, looking at Cassiel’s tray. On the other side of her, May made a sound best described as snrk.

“Mind your own business,” Cassiel muttered, and focused in.

May’s third attempt was better, lopsided but sealed, the filling contained if not centered. His fourth split. He laughed at the split one, pinched it back together, kept going. His mother was watching him like he was the dough, assessing his structure.

“He doesn’t get upset,” she said to Cassiel in Korean.

“No,” Cassiel said.

“He just keeps trying?”

“Yes.”

His mother made a sound, a short hm that he had learned was versatile, and that he had inherited. This one was a hm of acceptance. She wasn’t looking at the songpyeon anymore. She was looking at May’s hands, still working, still wrong, still going.

Jaewon’s dough had become a snake. The baby slept in the portable crib in the dining room, audible through the monitor as small, rhythmic breaths that David checked every four minutes; Cassiel counted, because Cassiel counted things. His mother hummed something, not a song Cassiel recognized, maybe not a song at all, just a sound she made when her hands were busy and her house was full.

During the meal, his mother put a piece of jeon on May’s plate. May looked at it, looked at her, and ate the fritter without comment and a thumbs up. Correct response.

“She’s feeding me aggressively,” May said quietly, leaning over to Cassiel’s chair, his shoulder pressing against Cassiel’s arm. His skin was hot through the thin fabric of his button-down, felt through the blue wool of Cassiel’s sweater. Contact area: maybe four square inches. Duration: the length of a sentence and its reply.