Chapter 5 #3
From the living room, he heard May’s voice followed by Jaewon’s giggle, the pure, helpless laugh of a child who’d been surprised or delighted or… whatever. David’s voice underneath, low and amused. They were fine.
Breath in for four seconds, held for seven, out for eight.
Cassiel ducked into the bathroom and turned off the fan, then straightened his shirt and went back.
May was talking to his mother, who had shed her apron and was sitting in her armchair in the living room.
Not through Cassiel—to her, directly, the Korean bypassed entirely, working in English that his mother was following with the intent concentration she gave to recipes in foreign cookbooks.
Mooncakes. Mid-Autumn Festival. Same moon, May was saying.
Different cakes, same calendar. His family did this too, the lunar thing, the harvest thing, everybody eating too much.
His mother was nodding. She asked a question Cassiel didn’t catch, and May answered with his hands, forming the shape of a mooncake, the gesture of pressing one into a mold.
She said ah and compared it to something, her own hands moving.
The two of them were having a conversation without a buffer, with nothing even resembling a script, and it was working. He heard ‘mandu’ as he sat back down.
* * *
At the end of the night there were two sets of containers packed: one for Cassiel, one for May. Galbi, japchae, kkakdugi, jeon, rice. The containers were his mother’s good ones, the thick glass with the locking lids, and giving them to May meant she expected them back.
“Make sure he eats this. Don’t let it sit in the fridge,” she warned.
“I’ll tell him.”
“We’ll make mandu when he comes again. He agreed.”
This was news to Cassiel. The containers suddenly felt heavier in his arms. May accepted his set with both hands, a small bow and a “Thank you, Miss Mary,” that made his mother laugh.
At the door, his father gripped Cassiel’s shoulder. The Lim Sungho special, thought a voice in his head that sounded more like May than Cassiel. Then his hand moved to May’s shoulder, a brief pat and a nod.
His father produced a business card from his shirt pocket and held it out to May.
Cassiel was intimately familiar with the layout of this card.
Sunny’s Dry Cleaning: Standard. Large font, central placement.
Then, two font sizes smaller, placed beneath: SUNNY SUNGHO LIM - OWNER & PROPRIETER.
May, who made no comment on the misspelling of ‘proprietor’ and who, as far as Cassiel could tell, did not own anything that required dry cleaning, took it with both hands and solemnly thanked him.
“Drive safe,” his father said.
“We’re taking BART,” Cassiel replied in English.
“Drive safe,” his father said again.
Jaewon was clinging to his grandfather’s leg, watching Cassiel and May intensely, his small hand gripping the corduroy.
“Let us know when you get that ten dollars, man,” May said, and Jaewon nodded jerkily.
* * *
They made it to the platform. BART to Embarcadero, the long way back.
The train was half-empty, the East Bay scrolling backward into the dark outside the window.
The pink box was gone. His mother had distributed the egg tarts within twenty minutes of arrival—and in its place May held the bag with the glass containers on his lap, stacked, the locking lids clicking faintly with the train’s vibration, plastic rustling.
May was quieter. Whatever had powered him through six hours of Lim family had dropped to idle.
“Your family is really nice,” May said.
His face was turned toward the window, and then toward Cassiel.
His dark eyes were warm and tired and those facts were all Cassiel could see.
There was nothing behind them that he could read.
The warmth, the dark, the fatigue, these were opaque, so he had no option but to accept them as transparency.
“They liked you,” Cassiel said.
May didn’t answer, just hummed and smiled loosely as he closed his eyes. The train rocked them both, and for a while neither of them spoke.
“My mother expects you back,” Cassiel said. He turned his ring. “At the next dinner. She said you agreed.”
“Yeah. Well, kinda. I didn’t say no.”
“Then… it makes sense to continue, at least for a while, if your schedule allows.” He could hear himself constructing the argument backwards.
It had to be clean, logical, the same framework that he applied to purchase decisions.
“There are other dinners. There’s a calendar.
If you have—your own family, other commitments—”
May was looking at him. The gap in his teeth was visible, his mouth slightly open, but he wasn’t grinning. Cassiel wasn’t sure what to make of that.
The train passed the bridge and the lights off the western span washed through the car, blue-white, moving across May’s face.
“Yeah,” May said. “I’m down.”
His eyes were sleepy, and he was smiling.
“Okay,” Cassiel said, instead of everything else he had been prepared to say. The explanations, the logistics.
The bridge fell behind them. The train dropped into the Tube and the windows went dark and the city was somewhere ahead of them, waiting.
They parted at Embarcadero. May transferred to the 38. Cassiel crossed to the Muni platform for the N-Judah. The platform was cold and the containers were still radiating heat, condensation coating the bag by his feet. They settled together, glass on glass.