Chapter 12 #2
“May’s present,” he answered. The family’s presents had been arranged beneath the tree by proxy the night before. This was too large.
She looked at the box, then at him, then at the box again. The hm that followed was the approving one. She stepped back. He carried the box inside and set it against the wall beside the shoe rack.
Jaewon sat on the living room floor with a shoe. A bright red low-top slip-on, cheap canvas, certainly unbranded, but on the side in vinyl was an iron-on transfer of Foxy the Pirate. The cut was clean. Cricut work made by someone with a steady hand and the right machine.
“Uncle Cass!” Jaewon held the shoe aloft like a grail. “May-hyung got me FNAF shoes.”
“I see that.”
“They’re limited.” He rotated the shoe so Cassiel could appreciate every angle. “That means it’s the only one in Earth.”
“That’s technically true.”
It wasn’t, but it was Christmas. Cassiel wasn’t correcting his nephew on a technicality.
“May-hyung said it means special.”
“In this case, he’s correct.”
Jaewon looked at May. May looked at Cassiel. The grin was enormous.
“Did you hear that?” May said. “He said I’m correct. Someone mark the date.”
“The other one’s got Freddy,” Jaewon said, already reaching for the box.
The second shoe had Freddy Fazbear on the outer side, the vinyl slightly thicker than the Foxy transfer—a second pass, maybe, or a different sheet.
Whoever had done it had matched the placement on both shoes.
The eye-lines of the characters faced forward at the same angle.
Jaewon let out a small roar and shoved both shoes on. They were slightly too large. He didn’t care. He stood up and walked in a circle, Foxy on the left foot, Freddy on the right, and Hayoung watched from David’s lap and gurgled.
“Jaewon-ah, don’t forget to thank your uncle,” called Minju from the next room.
“Thanks!”
His nephew spun around, bumping against Cassiel’s leg briefly, grinning up at him.
Cassiel’s gift to Jaewon this year was slime encased in plastic dinosaur eggs.
This was nothing compared to limited edition FNAF shoes, he knew, and did not resent the fact.
He reached out and patted the boy’s hair.
Said boy immediately ran away and launched his body directly onto the floor.
May was wearing a blue oxford, sitting on the carpet beside Jaewon with his legs stretched out. The collar of the shirt sat evenly, and the shade of blue was good against his skin.
“Nice shirt,” Cassiel said.
May’s hand went to the collar. “Lauren.”
“I know. It looks good.”
May beamed.
Cassiel sat down on the carpet. He didn’t sit on the carpet at his parents’ house. He was an adult. The carpet was Jaewon’s jurisdiction. But May was on the carpet and the couch was full, so Cassiel sat with his back against the base of his father’s chair with his knees drawn up.
David sat on the far end of the couch with a book open on one knee and Hayoung on the other. He looked up when Cassiel settled.
“May’s telling me about the podcast,” he said. His thumb held his page—a paperback, dark cover, small font. “The Kevin’s Got A Guy thing.”
Cassiel was fairly sure it was Kevin Knows A Guy.
“People call in with stuff they can’t figure out,” May explained. “Kevin, Big Kev, he investigates, I do the post-production side. My brain’s a little—” The hand opened and closed. “I’m relearning the software. Slowly.”
“I was saying he should get in on the detective work,” David said. “I can see him in a trench coat. Deerstalker. Pipe.”
“All of the above,” May said.
David nodded seriously, then went back to his book. May crawled across to Jaewon.
Cassiel’s mother called them to the table. Dinner was japchae, galbi, rice, and kkakdugi. His mother had set the table for seven, Hayoung already lowered into her high chair.
May had brought Tsingtao from Lau Kee, six bottles in a plastic bag, and another bottle of grape-flavored soju. The soju was open, already taste-tested by someone. His father’s novelty shot glasses were out.
His mother had put May to work the moment he arrived—the japchae, the vegetables, the lesson she’d been promising for weeks. Now she placed the serving dish at the center and said, in Korean, to the table, “He did the vegetables,” and May straightened in his chair proudly.
Jaewon sat on May’s other side. This was not negotiable.
The shoe alliance operated independently of Cassiel, and Jaewon spent the first ten minutes of dinner explaining to May which Octonaut would be friends or mortal enemies with which Five Nights at Freddy’s character, with breaks to complain about the fact that his umma wasn’t letting him watch the movie.
Halfway through dinner, his father reached across the table and moved the japchae closer to May’s plate unprompted, the serving spoon angled for easy grip. His father’s serving patterns were mapped in Cassiel’s memory. This was not in the pattern. Across the table, Minju’s chopsticks paused.
May took it. “Thank you, Mr. Lim.”
His father shook his head.
“Uncle,” he said.
“Oh.” May’s chopsticks hovered. His eyes went bright and then his grin appeared, gap-toothed. “Uncle.”
His mother asked about May’s holiday plans. May answered with his mouth full, which his mother would have corrected in her own children. This was apparently permissible in May.
“We don’t really do Christmas,” May said. “Like, gifts and whatever. My sister usually tries to get everyone together but she’s in Sacramento. My brother is a shut-in, he’s probably just gonna play games.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Everyone’s doing their own thing.”
Cassiel heard it. The place where May’s voice became airy and the shrug came too fast and the room got warmer because the furnace was burning hotter to compensate for something cold. He heard it in ‘their own thing,’ and he didn’t know what was underneath it or if he should ask.
Then the moment passed.
* * *
Like the last time, his mother produced two sets of containers packed and labeled in hangul with the contents and the date, one for Cassiel and one for May. She handed May’s directly to him, and May took them with both hands.
Minju collected Hayoung, bundling her up. David collected his book before Jaewon was extracted from May’s vicinity, his new red shoes bright and loud on his feet.
“Appa,” Cassiel’s mother said. “Drive them to the station.”
His father was already reaching for his keys.
The car was warm. His father drove unhurriedly, using the turn signal on residential streets where it didn’t matter. The turntable box sat across Cassiel’s and May’s laps in the backseat, weight distributed between them. May’s knee pressed against his under the cardboard.
At the station, his father pulled to the curb. The shoulder grip landed—Cassiel first, then May through the open rear door.
“Drive safe,” he said.
“We’re taking BART,” Cassiel answered.
His father smiled and corrected himself. “Be safe.”
The taillights disappeared down the dark street. Cassiel stood on the sidewalk holding the box and May stood beside him holding the food. The cold was sharp, drier than the avenues, and sharper.
“Can we go to your place?” Cassiel asked. His throat caught on the last word but he carried on. “Together. Set it up tonight.”
The station’s fluorescent light was worse than the bulkhead on the porch, worse than 4000K, and May’s face in it was pale and real and close.
“Yeah,” May said. “Let’s go.”
He shifted the containers to one arm and found Cassiel’s sleeve with his free hand—fabric, not skin, the heat of his hand practically there—and they went down the escalator into the station where the last holiday train was already arriving.
* * *
The train carried them back across the Bay in near-silence, and the turntable box bridged the gap between their seats, kraft paper crinkling through the curves.
The Transbay Tube screamed, the rail frequency burrowing into Cassiel’s molars.
He gritted his teeth. His headphones were in his bag, but he didn’t reach for them.
May’s head was against the window, his eyes closed, and Cassiel watched the tunnel lights stripe across his face—yellow, dark, yellow—and stayed silent.
Two transfers and a bus that ran on holiday time. By the time they emerged into the Outer Richmond, the fog had come in and the temperature had dropped fifteen degrees from Fremont. May hunched into his corduroy jacket—too thin, both the jacket and May—as they walked.
“That one,” May said, pointing at a building half a block away.
A two-story stucco row house, Spanish-style roof tiles dark with moisture, the mint green color faded under the streetlight.
It looked grey in the orange sodium wash.
The upper unit had arched windows, and the streetlight caught them.
He could imagine May standing in the window, looking out into the street while writing in his notebook.
He shifted the box and walked toward the stairs. May walked past the stairs.
Cassiel followed him around the side of the building, down a short concrete path where the stucco met the foundation, to a ground-level door—around, below, behind the main entrance.
An in-law unit. The entrance sat where the arched windows ended and the foundation began—the thing the building rested on.
May shifted the containers to one arm, turned the key, and put his shoulder into the door. The frame must have swollen with the fog. He shouldered it again. On the third try, it opened.