Chapter Twelve
Istand in the doorway of what used to be my bedroom with my arms crossed over my chest and watch two men in matching gray uniforms wrap my bedframe in sheets of industrial plastic, their movements quick and coordinated as they secure the corners with packing tape.
The mattress is already gone, hauled out ten minutes ago and loaded into the truck idling in the parking garage below.
The bookshelves are empty, the contents packed into cardboard boxes labeled in black marker.
My closet door hangs open and there’s nothing inside it. Not even a hanger.
Fifteen years I’ve lived in this apartment.
Fifteen years of rent payments and faulty heaters and the particular way the kitchen faucet squeaks when you turn it too far to the left.
Fifteen years of Sungyoon’s growth marks penciled onto the hallway doorframe in increments, each one dated in my handwriting, starting at knee height and climbing steadily upward until the most recent one from six months ago sits level with my head.
The living room is already bare. The couch where Sungyoon used to sprawl doing homework is gone, the coffee table with the ring stain from a mug I set down too many times without a coaster, the TV stand with the wobbly leg I kept meaning to fix.
All of it wrapped and boxed and carried out by strangers while I stood here and watched.
The kitchen took less than an hour. We didn’t own much worth packing in there.
Hongjoong handled the sale of the apartment with the same ruthless speed he’s handled everything else this past week.
I don’t know who he called or what strings he pulled, but the listing went up on a Tuesday and by Thursday there was a buyer, and by the following Monday the paperwork was signed.
I wasn’t consulted on the price or the terms. I found out it was sold when Hongjoong texted me a move-out date and the name of the moving company he’d hired, and that was that.
The paperwork for everything else went through just as fast.
One day after Hongjoong shoved that manila folder into my hands, I sat in a sterile clinic waiting room next to Sungyoon while a nurse drew blood from the inside of his elbow.
Sungyoon didn’t flinch at the needle. He watched it go in with his jaw set, his free hand resting flat on his thigh.
I sat beside him and said nothing because there was nothing to say.
We both already knew what the results would confirm.
The registrar’s office was worse. A small beige room with fluorescent lighting and a clerk behind a desk who processed claims all day long.
Hongjoong sat on one side of the desk, I sat on the other, and Sungyoon sat between us in a plastic chair that was slightly too small for his lanky frame.
The clerk read through the documents in a flat monotone, checking boxes and flipping pages, and when she got to the paternal claim filing, she read Sungyoon’s registered name aloud for confirmation.
“Jung Sungyoon,” she said, glancing up over her glasses.
“That’s to be amended,” Hongjoong said, his voice cutting across the room without hesitation. “It should be Lee Sungyoon.”
I looked at him. He didn’t look back. His eyes were on the clerk, steady and certain, his posture straight in the chair, one ankle crossed over his knee.
The clerk made a note, asked if the birth parent consented to the name change, and I heard myself say yes in a voice that sounded far away from my own body.
Beside me, Sungyoon’s face did something I wasn’t prepared for.
His lips pressed together and then curved upward, slow and unguarded, and his dimple appeared in his left cheek as he looked down at the paperwork bearing his new legal name.
Lee Sungyoon. His father’s name. The name of the family printed on the hoods of every car he’d ever pinned to his bedroom wall.
He practically glowed with it, a quiet fierce pride radiating off him that I’d never seen before.
I had to look away because the sight of my son’s happiness at being claimed by his father made my eyes sting in the middle of a government office.
Then the clerk moved to the second filing.
The omega claiming declaration. She read through it, checking the alpha claimant’s information against Hongjoong’s identification, then checking the omega respondent’s information against mine.
She asked if I understood the terms of the claim.
I said yes. She asked if I consented. I looked at Hongjoong across the desk, and he looked back at me for the first time since we’d sat down, his expression unreadable, his sharp brown eyes giving me nothing.
I said yes. She stamped the document twice, had us both sign, and slid the completed forms into a manila envelope.
Just like that. Over a decade of independence, of scraping by on my own terms, of refusing to let any alpha own me, sealed away with two stamps and a signature.
Sungyoon is enamored with Hongjoong. There’s no other word for it.
The night after the registrar’s office, I found him cross-legged on his bed with his laptop open, dozens of browser tabs filling the screen, articles and interviews and race highlight reels all featuring Lee Hongjoong.
He’d gone down a rabbit hole so deep I don’t think he surfaced for hours.
I stood in his doorway and watched him scroll through photo galleries of Hongjoong on podiums, Hongjoong in racing suits, Hongjoong at press conferences with his team, and the expression on my son’s face was one of pure, unfiltered wonder.
All those years of car magazine clippings pinned to his wall, the glossy cutouts of racing vehicles and engine diagrams and driver profiles, suddenly had a source that Sungyoon never could have imagined.
His father wasn’t just some nameless alpha who’d abandoned him.
His father was famous. His father was wealthy.
His father drove the cars Sungyoon has been dreaming about since he was old enough to hold a magazine.
Now, as the movers clear out the last of the apartment, I lean against the bare hallway wall and watch Hongjoong and Sungyoon carry a box of Sungyoon’s belongings toward the front door together.
Sungyoon is talking nonstop, gesturing with one hand while balancing the box against his hip with the other.
Hongjoong walks beside him, nodding along, and every few seconds his gaze drifts sideways to study Sungyoon’s face.
I can see what he’s doing. He’s taking in every feature, every expression, every mannerism, recognizing the parts of himself that exist in this boy he didn’t know about until a week ago.
And underneath the fascination, there’s a heavier grief in Hongjoong’s eyes for all the years he wasn’t here that he’s trying very hard not to let Sungyoon see.
They don’t need my help. The gravitational pull between them is so strong and so natural that I’d only be in the way if I tried to insert myself into it. So I don’t.
I follow them out into the hallway and stop at Mrs. Han’s door.
She’s already standing there, the way she always seems to know when something is happening in the corridor, her small frame wrapped in her usual knitted cardigan, her eyes red-rimmed and watery behind her glasses.
I open my mouth to thank her, and my throat closes up on me, the words stacking and jamming together, so I just stand there for a second with my lips parted and nothing coming out.
“Mrs. Han,” I finally manage. “I don’t know how to—thank you.
For everything. For all the years you watched him, all the dinners, all the mornings you came over at five a.m. so I could get to work.
” My voice cracks slightly, and I clear my throat hard.
“You didn’t have to do any of that, and you never let me pay you, and I’ll never be able to repay what you gave us. ”
Mrs. Han smiles, the deep creases around her eyes folding, and reaches up to cup my face in both of her weathered hands.
She pulls me down into a hug that’s stronger than her small body suggests, her arms tight around my back, and pats me firmly between the shoulder blades the way she used to pat Sungyoon when he was a toddler having a tantrum.
“I’m happy for you,” she says against my shoulder.
Then she pulls back slightly, her mouth close to my ear, and adds more quietly, “I’m happy Sungyoon’s other daddy found his way back to you both.
” She pats my back once more and releases me, holding me at arm’s length to look at my face. “Good luck, Yoonjae.”
I hug her back and say nothing because if I open my mouth again I’m going to cry in this hallway, and I’ve already done enough crying this week to last me another decade. I squeeze her hands once, bow deeply, and turn away before my composure breaks.
The car ride to Hongjoong’s apartment is loud in the front and silent in the back.
I sit behind the passenger seat with my hands folded in my lap, watching the city slide past through the window, while Hongjoong and Sungyoon carry on an animated discussion that I’m not part of.
Sungyoon is in the passenger seat, twisted halfway around to face Hongjoong as he drives, firing off questions at a pace that would exhaust anyone who wasn’t equally obsessed with the subject matter.
“But the naturally aspirated V10 has better throttle response, right? So why did the series switch to turbocharged V6s if the power delivery is worse?”
“Because the FIA wanted to push for fuel efficiency and hybrid technology,” Hongjoong answers, checking his mirror as he changes lanes. “The turbo V6 with the energy recovery system actually has similar horsepower, it just delivers it differently. The torque curve is fatter in the midrange.”
“But you prefer the V10.”