6. Jae
Chapter six
Jae
Istand in the entryway with my carry-on zipped and my jacket half-on.
The duffel sits by the door, packed last night.
Two checked bags already loaded into the car.
My phone is on the side table, face-down.
My passport is in my jacket pocket. My ticket is on my phone.
The plan is set. The plan has been set for weeks.
My mother checked my visa paperwork three times.
My father reviewed the housing contract line by line.
My sister stole my favorite protein bar from the pantry and ate it while making eye contact with me through the doorway, which I’m choosing to interpret as her own personal farewell ritual.
I zip my jacket. The sound is too loud in the quiet.
My mother appears from the hallway.
She's wearing a cream-colored sweater and dark pants, the kind of outfit that probably costs a lot but looks like she just threw it on. Her hair is pulled back into a simple knot, and she's not wearing any jewelry except her wedding ring.
I notice she's been fidgeting with that ring all morning, which means she's nervous. She does that when she's anxious or upset.
“You have your phone charger?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Your adapter?”
“Yes.”
“Your—”
“Mom.” I cut her off, but gently. “I’ve got it.”
She comes to a halt, her eyes locking onto mine.
For a moment, her mouth contorts, the corners dipping down before quickly recovering, like her face is wrestling with its own emotions and her self-control is barely holding on.
Then, in a swift motion, she bridges the gap between us and envelops me in a warm hug, her arms circling my waist.
“I still feel like this is a terrible idea,” she says into my shoulder.
A laugh escapes me, a sharp, choked sound that scrapes my throat on the way out. “You’ve mentioned that.”
“Once or twice,” she says, still holding on.
“Seventeen times.”
She leans back, her hands still grasping my arms, and examines my face, smiling. “Then I have shown admirable restraint.”
Her eyes which are normally bright and energetic just look sad now.
I hate it.
Not because she looks sad. I’ve seen her sad before. Quietly, tastefully sad. The kind of sadness that gets tucked behind a closed office door and handled with an espresso and a twelve-hour workday.
This is different.
This is mother sad.
Deeply inconvenient. Extremely unfair. Borderline illegal.
My father enters the room. He is already dressed for work, even though it is barely morning. His presence exudes authority, the kind that makes every person in the room straighten their posture which is both astonishing and kind of annoying.
As I walk towards him, the sound of my shoes on the hardwood floor seems amplified, echoing through the space with a loudness that feels almost disproportionate.
My father stops in front of me.
For a second, neither of us says anything.
This is very on brand for us.
Some fathers give speeches. Some fathers cry. Some fathers say things like I’m proud of you, son and then they hug in a way that probably makes everyone involved feel briefly healed.
My father places his hand on the back of my neck.
His eyes hold mine. Dark. Still. Moving through a catalog of emotions I can almost read—concern, pride, resignation, maybe even fear.
He says nothing.
I say nothing.
Rather, he nods, then his hand drops, and he turns, and he walks into the kitchen without looking back. For some reason, that almost undoes me more than if he had actually said something.
My sister is on the couch in the living room. Soon to be eighteen, all limbs and attitude, curled into the corner of the sectional with her knees drawn up and her phone balanced on her shins. She doesn’t look up when I walk in.
“Hey,” I say.
Nothing.
“I’m leaving.”
Her finger slides on the screen of whatever she’s scrolling through. Her hair is in a messy bun on top of her head, strands escaping everywhere.
“I ate your protein bar,” she says, finally. “The chocolate peanut butter one. I’m not sorry.”
“I noticed.”
“Good.” She slides her finger across the screen again. “I’m not going to miss you. Just so you know.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t expect any texts. I’m very busy. I have a life.”
“I would never dream of interrupting your extremely important schedule.”
She looks up then. Her face is set in this expression of maximum teenage disdain, chin lifted, mouth a flat line, eyes narrowed in a way that she probably practices in the mirror.
But there’s something underneath it—a wobble in her lower lip that she’s fighting, a shine in her eyes that she’s blinking back hard enough that I can see her eyelashes flutter.
“Whatever,” she says, and looks back down at her phone. “Bye.”
I do my best to keep my face neutral. But she’s better at it.
“Bye, Yuna,” I say.
She doesn’t respond.
I don’t say anything else. I just turn and walk out the front door because if I stand there any longer I’m going to do something stupid like apologize for leaving, and I don’t owe anyone an apology for wanting to breathe.
The driver is already standing beside the car with the trunk open. He nods at me, takes my carry-on, placing it in the truck with my other belongings. I slide into the back seat and almost instantly look back to the front door.
My sister is there.
She’s standing on the top step, one hand pressed hard against her mouth, the other arm wrapped around her own waist like she’s holding herself together.
Her hair is coming completely loose from its bun.
Her shoulders are shaking. The composed facade is gone, replaced by something I know she didn’t want me to see.
I don’t acknowledge it. She would hate me for it—for witnessing the collapse of the performance she’s been running since I told her I was leaving, for having proof that underneath the attitude and protein bar warfare, she is just a kid who’s going to miss her brother.
As we drive past the large gates and exit the driveway, the car gains speed, and the neighborhood becomes a blur.
Soon, the city of Seoul unfolds before us, its massive presence feeling almost indifferent to my existence, already moving forward without me, its rhythm and pace unbroken by my departure.
***
Incheon International is the size of a small city and twice as loud.
I stand at the check-in counter with my passport in one hand and my ticket on my phone in the other and the distinct, unsettling sensation of being entirely on my own.
No manager with a clipboard hovering at my elbow.
No security guy with an earpiece scanning the crowd for phone cameras.
No handler materializing out of nowhere to steer me through a side entrance because the main concourse is “too exposed.”
Just me, in a baseball cap, pulled low over my forehead with a carry-on at my feet, and a line of people ahead of me who have no idea who I am, which is the entire point.
The woman at the counter takes my passport, types something, looks at my face, looks at the passport photo, types something else.
“Final destination Los Angeles?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Any checked bags?”
“Two.”
She tags them, prints my boarding pass, and hands everything back with a smile that is professional and completely uninvested in whether I live or die.
It’s magnificent.
“Have a nice flight, Mr. Kim.”
Mr. Kim. Not Kai. Not the stage name plastered across multiple continents. Not the heir. Just a regular ass last name, same as anyone else’s, belonging to a body moving through a line like any other body.
I could get used to that.
The security check is a nightmare, but not for the reasons you'd think.
The line is super long and winds its way through those barriers that can be moved around.
There are families with babies in strollers, business people with big bags on wheels, and this one guy in a tracksuit who's talking to himself like he's having a big argument.
Announcements cycle through Korean, English, Japanese.
The whole place smells like a mix of perfume, shitty airport coffee, and that specific synthetic carpet smell that exists nowhere else on earth.
I remove my cap and shoes, and then I empty my pockets into a plastic bin. My belt has to go through the scanner, and I also put my phone, wallet, and keys in the bin.
The experience is alien compared to the private jet I would normally travel in.
There is a kid nearby, maybe five or six. He stands in line with his mother two people ahead of me, wearing light-up sneakers and a backpack shaped like a dinosaur, and he turns around and stares at me with the unfiltered intensity that only small children can sustain without apology.
No blinking.
No looking away.
Just a full, frontal assessment conducted with the solemn focus of someone evaluating a suspect.
I stare back.
The child narrows his eyes.
“?? ????” (Do you play basketball?) he asks.
The question is so earnest, so devoid of agenda, that it takes me a second to process.
I shake my head. “???.” (No.)
He thinks about it for a moment, his face showing a mix of emotions. Maybe disappointment, maybe just a change in his thoughts. Then, he shrugs and turns around to watch the security officer checking people with the metal detector.
Just like that. I am unremarkable. I am forgettable. I am a man who does not play basketball and is therefore of no further interest to a five-year-old boy in light-up shoes.
I collect my things, place my hat back on my head, and put my shoes back on before picking up my bags and moving on.
The gate is C27. I found it pretty easily, and now, I'm settled into a chair by the window, watching the planes move around the runway, taking off and landing.
The nervous energy that carried me through the morning—through the goodbyes, through the driveway, through the check-in counter—has dissipated like a misty fog, and what’s left underneath is quiet and certain.
I want this. I want the anonymity. I want the classroom. I want the chance to be wrong about something without it making headlines. I want to sit in a library and read a book that has nothing to do with me. I want to walk down a street where no one knows my face. That’s what I’m flying toward.
My flight gets called on the loudspeaker and people begin to shuffle, preparing to board our flight.
There are fourteen hours of sky.
I sleep in increments, eat something that tastes like cardboard, watch a romantic comedy and then another one and then, god help me, a third.
I keep my headphones in even when there’s nothing playing.
Somewhere over the Pacific, I stop thinking about where I’m coming from and start thinking about nothing at all, which feels, unexpectedly, like progress.
LAX is honey-colored and loud.
The baggage claim carousel grinds in slow circles while suitcases drop onto the belt with the indifferent thud of things that have been handled by many strangers.
Families press together at the barrier, arms already open.
Business travelers drift past them like they’re furniture.
The airport employees work the floor with the calm, unhurried authority of people who have absorbed so many arrivals that one more barely registers.
After grabbing my things, I head outside and the heat hits me like a warm, dirty hand. Exhaust. Concrete heat. The faint salt-sweet note of the ocean thirty miles west.
I actually kind of love it.
I pull out my phone and open the ride-share app and type in my destination—the address of the apartment near Blackthorn’s campus, the one my mother’s connections helped secure. The map loads and a driver about five minutes away accepts my request.
I stand on the curb and wait.
Five minutes later the blue sedan I’ve been waiting for pulls up, the driver inside sporting a beard and a Dodgers cap. “Jae?” he asks through the window.
“That’s me.”
He pops the trunk and I load my luggage. The trunk latch doesn’t catch on the first try—I have to slam it twice before it locks.
“405 or surface streets?” the driver asks once I’m seated.
“I have no idea what that means.” I say with a chuckle, rubbing the back of my neck.
He tips his head, amusement apparent in his eyes. “Okay rookie. We’re taking the freeway. Buckle up.”
We merge onto to freeway where a sea of metal and concrete greet us.
Cars are hurtling in both directions at speeds that would be illegal in Seoul.
Though, still speeds I am quite familiar with.
My best friend and I have loved driving fast since we were on bikes with training wheels.
Speaking of which, I can’t wait to get my own set of wheels back.
It should be arriving within the next day or two by ship.
“You just visiting?” the driver asks, eyes on the rearview.
“Yes and no.” I say. “I’m attending Blackthorn University, so I guess I’m going to be living here for a bit.”
“Well, I hope you enjoy your time in LA,” he grins before his hand reaches to turn up the radio.
Huh…Americans are friendly.
I stare out the window and watch Los Angeles materialize around me in pieces—palm trees and strip malls and billboards for things I don’t recognize. A taco truck on a side street with a line ten people deep.
That looks…kind of good, actually. My stomach rumbles, reminding me that I haven’t really eaten anything outside of the airplane cardboard since the night before I left.
I’ll order some take-out.
Letting myself sink into the seat, I can feel the tension in my shoulders begin to dissipate. This is really real. I am really on my own.
It’s a strange and an absolutely terrifying fucking feeling, but it’s also exhilarating and beautiful.
And everything I asked for.