Page 78 of Angel of Thursdays

“Cassiel? Uh, no. I… wanted to come on my own.”

“Okay.” She nodded. Her eyes flicked to the bag in his hand. “What’s that, duck?”

“Good Luck duck,” he replied, sing-song in a way that was obviously forced and didn’t help the tension, but the look in Minju’s eyes had softened.

“Set it on the counter. Appa’s in the back. He’s doing a re-press on a wedding dress that came back with a crease in the train, so he’s in a mood, but… it’s Appa.”

May set the duck on the counter. Behind Minju, the racks stretched back into the shop—suits, dresses, coats, plus a terrycloth bathrobe that someone had apparently decided needed professional attention.

“Minju, I—” he began.

“You don’t need to say anything to me right now, really.” She held up a hand. “Go talk to Appa. He’s been wanting to show someone the pressers and the new UPS guy doesn’t care. Jaewon’s here too, fair warning, he’s gonna try to jump on you.”

May let out a small laugh, nodded, and walked past the counter.

“HYUNG!”

Jaewon rocketed into him at full speed. He was wearing a puffy vest over a long-sleeved shirt and the red shoes, already scuffed at the toes. He ran into May’s legs. In a feat of athleticism, May braced, caught him, lifted—he’d definitely gotten bigger since the end of January and May could feel it—and set him back down quickly.

“Hey, buddy. Where’s your grandpa?”

“Back! He’s doing a dress!”

“Should we go bother him?”

“Yeah!” Jaewon grabbed May’s hand and pulled. May looked at Minju, who tilted her head toward the back—go—and said something to Jaewon in Korean that May loosely understood as Jaewon, don’t Grandpa’s something.

Jaewon, showing no indication of whether he’d heard his mother or not, dragged him through a plastic strip curtain, and the back of the shop opened up. Two massive machines flanked the center aisle. Overhead, fluorescent tubes hummed at a frequency even May could feel in his teeth. The air was instantly warmer and the chemical smell was sharper, more… chemical. Clothes in plastic garment bags cycled through the space above them like ghosts in a spooky dark ride.

May thought of Cassiel. Then stopped, because Cassiel wasn’t the point. The man at the far press was—both hands on the guide rails, positioning something white and poofy on the bed.

“Harabeoji!” Jaewon yelled.

Cassiel’s father turned.

“May,” said Sunny Lim, the owner himself. The only sign of surprise on his face was the slight raise of his eyebrows. The man was otherwise as unreadable as ever, like a Buddha statue.

“Uncle.” The word came out before May could second-guess it. It had been offered at Christmas dinner. He’d been carrying it around ever since, and had to assume it hadn’t been retracted. “Hi, uh. I brought duck. On the counter. Not here. Figured you wouldn’t want duck in here.”

“Thank you.” Cassiel’s dad nodded. “I like duck.”

Was that it? Was that the whole thing? May stood there, uncertain. Jaewon had already moved on, climbing onto a stool to watch his grandfather work.

“I wanted to say—about Seollal. I’m sorry for leaving the way I did. And for making everyone worry. And—” May swallowed. “Thank you, for… looking. Cassiel told me.”

Sunny Lim pressed the guide rail down. Steam hissed from the bed. He lifted the rail, inspected the train with his bottom lip stuck out thoughtfully, then adjusted a fold.

“You came back,” he said, glancing back at May. “And you feel okay now?”

May nodded, even though ‘okay’ felt grandiose for what he really was. It was close enough.

“Then good.” The man gestured over at the machine. “You want to see how this works?”

He didn’t wait for May’s nod, just started walking. May followed, the ghost of the apology that apparently nobody wanted on his tongue.

Sunny showed him both presses—the utility press for everyday garments and the specialty press for wedding dresses and coats, then the station where stains were treated before pressing, bottles of solvent arranged by type with labels that looked fresher than the bottles. There was a tagging system and a conveyor and so on and so forth. The man explained everything as if prepping May to start working the next shift.

At some point, May found his eyes drawn to a diagram on the wall by the spotting section. How to wrap garments on hangers, two columned and bilingual, laminated and faded at the edges. Tiny illustrations with arrows in thick black marker, filled in with faded colored pencil.