3. Chapter Three #2
The boss comes out from a back office, an older man in his fifties, with a face like sun-roughened leather and reading glasses pushed up into thinning hair. He looks me over once, sizing me up, trying to place whether I’m trouble or a customer or not.
“You’re looking for someone?” he asks in a gravelly voice.
“Cha Ryowoon,” I say again. I see a flicker of recognition in his eyes that makes my pulse jump.
“Ryowoon,” he repeats, thoughtful, scratching at his jaw.
“Yeah, I think I remember that name. Used to deal in parts, way back. Bought and traded with me a few times when I was still running things out of the old lot before we moved here. Sharp kid, good eye for what a car actually needed instead of what people thought it needed.”
My chest tightens, hope catching the smallest spark. “Do you know where he is now? Have you heard from him recently?”
The boss shakes his head, and the hope drops snuffs right out. “Nah. Haven’t heard that name in years, honestly. He never worked here, if that’s what you’re asking. Just did business with me a handful of times, a long while back.”
“Do you know anything else? Anywhere he might’ve gone, anyone else he worked with?”
He thinks about it, but I can already see the answer in the way his mouth purses, the way he shakes his head slowly. “Sorry. Wish I could help more.”
I thank him anyway, thank the man in the coveralls too, and step back out into the sun feeling that same flat disappointment I’ve felt at every stop today. It’s not devastating anymore by the fourth or fifth time. It’s just tiring, a lump in my stomach.
I cross another name off Sihyung’s napkin and check the map on my phone, walking to the next address a few blocks down.
The heat’s picked up since this morning, humidity thick enough to make my shirt stick to my back by the time I reach the next shop, a squat building with a corrugated awning and three cars parked out front in various states of disassembly.
It’s all the same. I step inside, call out, wait for someone to come find me, ask for Ryowoon by name, explain I’m looking for an old friend, watch their face for any flicker of recognition.
This time it’s a woman running the front counter, and she frowns and says the name doesn’t ring a bell, that she’s only been here two years, but she can ask around if I want to leave a number.
I just thank her and leave, walking back out into the glare.
By the third stop I’ve got my explanation memorized well enough to recite it smoothly without thinking, the words losing their stiffness the more times I repeat them.
I’m looking for someone. Cha Ryowoon. Might’ve done business with this shop, years back.
Same careful scan of every face in the room while I wait for an answer, sweeping over shoulders and jawlines and the way men carry themselves when they’ve spent a lifetime doing hard labor with their hands.
None of them are him. I don’t know why I keep expecting they might be.
By the fourth stop, an old man with liver spots dotting his hands and forearms squints at me for a long moment after I say the name, long enough that my heart trips over itself, thinking maybe, finally.
But then he just shakes his head and says sorry, doesn’t know him, thought maybe I meant someone else, a different family with a similar name that used to run a shop up near Gimhae.
Not the same person. I thank him and leave anyway, because there’s nothing else to do.
The fifth address turns out to be closed down entirely, the building gutted, windows boarded, a faded for-lease sign taped inside the glass door with a phone number that’s probably disconnected by now.
I stand in front of it for a minute, staring at the dark interior through a gap in the boards, feeling the flavor of hopelessness that comes with dead ends, useless information, months old NUL when it reaches you.
By the time the sun starts sinking toward the water, I’ve walked into so many shops I’ve covered half the metro area.
My feet ache in my dress shoes, wrong choice for a day like this, but I hadn’t planned on spending hours crossing Busan on foot when I packed this morning.
My shirt’s stuck to my back with sweat and dried again twice over, and there’s a dull throb behind my eyes that’s been building since noon from too much sun and too much disappointment stacked on top of each other.
I give up around six, when the last shop on Sihyung’s list turns out to belong to a man who took over the business from his father-in-law and has never heard the name Cha Ryowoon in his life.
I thank him anyway, out of habit more than hope at that point, and step back out onto the street feeling hollow.
I don’t want to go back to the motel yet.
Some part of me isn’t ready to sit alone in that small room with nothing but my own thoughts and the muffled sound of traffic outside the window, so instead I wander toward the market that’s just starting to light up for the evening crowd, strings of bulbs flickering on above the stalls, the smell of frying oil and grilled meat thick in the air.
My stomach growls, reminding me I haven’t eaten anything since the convenience store coffee this morning.
I buy hotteok from a vendor with flour dusted up to her elbows, watching her flatten the dough on the griddle and press the brown sugar filling inside before she flips it into a paper cup for me.
I burn my tongue on the first bite anyway, too impatient to wait for it to cool, and buy a bag of fishcakes on a stick from the stall next to hers, the broth steaming when she ladles it into a cup for me to sip alongside them.
I carry it all down toward Haeundae, my feet just going that way automatically.
The beach is quieter this time of evening, the crowds from earlier thinning out, a few stragglers still lingering near the water with their shoes in hand.
I find a spot away from most of them and sit down in the sand, not caring that it’ll cling to my slacks, and unwrap the fishcakes across my knee.
The ocean stretches out flat and grey-blue in front of me, reflecting the last color of the sky as the sun drops lower.
I remember this color from another evening years ago, remember sitting almost in this same spot beside a boy who’d convinced me skipping school for one day wouldn’t ruin either of our futures.
When we were fifteen and took the bus, bought hotteok from a stall that might’ve stood in the same spot as the one I just left, and sat on this beach eating until our stomachs hurt, watching the tide roll in.
I remember him lying back in the sand with his arms behind his head, squinting up at the sky, telling me he wanted to see the whole coast someday, every port from here to Incheon, that he wasn’t going to spend his whole life stuck in Haemok fixing the same three cars over and over.
I remember laughing at him, telling him he’d probably get seasick the first time he stepped on a boat, and him kicking sand at me for it.
I wonder now if he ever did it. If he made it any further than Busan, or if this is as far as his restlessness ever carried him too.
The tightness in my chest that’s been sitting there all day presses harder, spreading up into my throat until I have to set the fishcakes down and breathe for a minute, staring at the water until my eyes sting.
The country feels too big all of a sudden.
An entire coastline, an entire world of ports and cities and roads he could have taken, any one of which might have swallowed him whole and left no trace behind.
He could be anywhere. He could be nowhere, could be gone the same way Haeil went, the same way Jinwon went, could already be past the point where any amount of searching does any good.
I don’t let myself finish that thought. I push it down hard the second it surfaces. He’s alive. He has to be. Some things you just know without being able to explain why, and this is one of them, a certainty sitting under my ribs that refuses to budge no matter how many dead ends I hit today.
I finish the fishcakes slowly, watching the last of the light drain out of the sky, the water turning the color of ink.
Tomorrow I’ll try again. There are other cities, other shops and other old men who might recognize a name I haven’t said out loud in years but still carry like a stone in my chest every day.
I’m going to find him. However long it takes, wherever the trail leads, I’m not going back to Seoul until I do.
8 Years Old
We’re running so hard my lungs burn. Ryowoon runs ahead of me, his slippers slapping against the pavement, laughing even though we’re both about to get caught and probably beaten into next week.
“Faster, Seyeonnie!” he shouts back at me, grinning like this is the best day of his whole life instead of the day we might die.
“I am going fast, you jerk!” I yell. I’m out of breath and scared and laughing too, even though nothing about this should be funny.
We round the corner past the fish shop and I see the convenience store up ahead, the roll-up door pushed open, the light from inside spilling out onto the street.
Mrs. Nam’s counter sits just past the doorway, and behind it, further back, is the aisle of chips and crackers where we’ve hidden a hundred times before when we broke something or ate something we weren’t supposed to.
Ryowoon shoves through the doorway first and I stumble in right behind him, my chest heaving so hard it hurts.
We duck low, scrambling behind the shelf, knocking a bag of shrimp crackers to the floor in our hurry.
I press my back against the cool metal of the shelf and Ryowoon crouches beside me, both of us gulping in air like fish pulled out of water.
“You think they saw us come in here?” I whisper, my heart pounding in my ears.