3. Chapter Three #4
He has a paper wrapped bundle in his pocket most days, scraps he’s saved from lunch or bits of meat a neighbor tossed out that he salvaged from behind the butcher’s, he unwraps it, feeding it to her piece by piece, letting her lick his fingers clean after.
Nuri adores him, follows him everywhere the second she’s off that chain, bounding around the yard at his heels like she thinks she’s still a puppy even though she’s not.
I like watching him with her. He’s different with her, gentle and patient and not spiky and mean like he is to other kids. He talks to her about things I don’t think he’d ever say out loud to me, murmuring under his breath while he pets her, and I pretend not to listen even though I always do.
We spend the rest of the afternoon running around the yard with her, throwing a stick for her to fetch, letting her chase us in circles until we’re all breathless and collapsed in the dirt together, Nuri sprawled between us panting happily.
It’s not all easy though. We fight almost as much as we play, the two of us tangled up in each other so much that it’s bound to happen.
We argue over who gets to be the hero when we’re playing pretend on the playground, both of us wanting the same role every single time, shoving each other off the top of the slide when neither one gives in.
“I called it first!” I shout at him one afternoon, hands balled into fists.
“You always call it first! It’s my turn!” he yells back, shoving my shoulder hard enough to make me stumble.
We wrestle over the remote in his living room some days, both grabbing for it at the same time, yelling over each other about whose show it is, kicking and scratching until one of us wins and the other sulks in the corner for ten minutes before we’re back to normal like nothing happened.
Mrs. Nam gets the worst of it most days, since we always end up back at her courtyard eventually. She’s had to come out more than once to smack us both about the head with whatever’s closest at hand, usually the broom, breaking up whatever argument’s gotten too loud for her liking.
“You two are going to be the death of me,” she mutters more than once, shaking her head as she goes back inside, leaving us glaring at each other in silence.
It gets worse one afternoon, though, worse than any of the shoving matches before.
We’re sharing a comic book Ryowoon found tossed out behind the bookstore, both of us wanting to read the same page at the same time, and it turns into a fight over who gets to hold it, who gets to turn the page next.
He yanks it out of my hands and I lunge for it back, and it turns into something bigger, both of us grabbing at shirts, rolling around on the ground in the courtyard, yelling things neither of us really mean.
“Give it back, you jerk!” I shout, my fingers tangled in his collar.
“It’s mine, I found it!” he yells back, shoving me hard enough to send us both tumbling, knocking over one of Mrs. Nam’s flower pots in the process.
Neither of us hears her coming until the broom cracks against my back, then his. We both yelp and scramble apart, sitting there stunned and red-faced in the dirt.
“Enough!” Mrs. Nam shouts, standing over us with the broom raised like she’s ready to swing it again if either of us so much as breathes wrong. “What in the world is wrong with you two? Fighting like a couple of alley cats over a comic book!”
“He started it,” I mumble, refusing to look at Ryowoon, my chest still heaving.
“I did not,” Ryowoon snaps, glaring at the ground, his hair sticking up in every direction from the scuffle.
Mrs. Nam makes us pick the comic book up off the ground, smooths the crumpled pages between her hands before handing it back, and tells us both to sit on opposite ends of the courtyard until we can act like civilized human beings again instead of wild animals.
We sit there in silence for a long while, neither of us willing to look over at the other, both still simmering.
But by the time she brings out dinner, setting the tray down between us without a word, we’ve already scooted closer together, close enough to bump our knees when we reach for the same side dish, and neither one of us moves away.
The good days outnumber the bad ones, even if the bad ones stick harder in memory.
Most afternoons after we finish our chores at Mrs. Nam’s, the whole pack of us, our friends from school who all live on nearby streets, tears loose into the neighborhood like a litter of unleashed puppies, Nuri included, since Ryowoon almost never keeps her chained anymore once his father leaves for his shift.
She runs circles around us as we go, tongue out, ears flapping, barking at nothing and everything, at gulls overhead, at the delivery trucks that rumble past too close for comfort, at Haeil whenever he tries to race ahead of the group just to prove he’s faster than the rest of us.
“Slow down, you’ll trip and split your head open,” Jinwon calls after him, always the one worrying about somebody cracking their skull on the pavement, even though nobody ever listens.
“Then I’ll die a legend!” Haeil shouts back, laughing, and Ryowoon whoops in agreement, the two of them tearing off ahead while the rest of us groan and chase after.
Sihyung and Yoohan trail at the back most days, the two of them slower, content to walk instead of sprint, always the last ones to catch up whenever we stop to wait.
Yoohan’s got asthma that flares up if he pushes too hard, so Sihyung sticks with him out of habit, the two of them muttering to each other about the cartoon that aired the night before while the rest of us race ahead without waiting.
We climb the bent pine at the edge of the hill almost every week, the one that grows sideways out of the rock.
Ryowoon’s always first up, scaling the trunk without hesitation even though the bark’s rough enough to leave red marks on his palms. I follow after, slowly and more careful about where I put my hands, while Haeil shoves past both of us trying to claim the highest branch before anyone else gets there.
From the top you can see the whole harbor spread out below, the boats bobbing at their moorings, the water flashing in the sunlight that hurts to look at directly.
Jinwon never climbs past the first few branches, says he doesn’t trust the thing not to snap under all our weight at once, but he sits below anyway, keeping watch, ready to yell if any of us slip.
“You’re gonna fall one of these days,” he tells Ryowoon, who’s balanced on a branch that’s definitely too thin for a boy his size already.
“Nah,” Ryowoon says, grinning down at him. “I never fall. Falling’s for cowards.”
“Falling’s for people who don’t understand gravity,” Jinwon mutters, and Haeil cackles from above us, nearly losing his own grip in the process.
The marketplace is worse for our reputations, honestly.
We descend on it most Saturdays like a small storm, weaving between stalls, snatching up free samples the vendors put out before they can stop us, Haeil always the boldest about it, grabbing double what everyone else manages and running before the ahjumma behind the counter can swat at him with her tongs.
“You’re going to get us all banned,” Sihyung says one afternoon, breathless from running after him.
“Worth it,” Haeil says around a mouthful of stolen tteokbokki, grinning wide enough to show the gap where he lost a tooth last month.
Ryowoon’s usually right there beside him, egging him on, the two of them a matched pair of trouble that Jinwon and Sihyung try, mostly without success, to rein in.
I trail somewhere in the middle, not brave enough to steal outright but happy enough to eat whatever gets handed off to me afterward, splitting the spoils like it’s some kind of fair trade for staying just far enough away to avoid getting caught myself.
Some days we make it down to the harbor and sneak onto the fishing boats when the old men have wandered off for their own lunch, climbing over the sides, pretending we’re captains sailing off to fight sea monsters or pirates, whatever story Haeil decides on that day, since he’s always the one directing our games.
“I’m captain,” he announces, standing at the front of somebody’s boat with his chest puffed out.
“Why do you always get to be captain?” I complain, though I already know the answer’s going to be some version of because he said so first.
“Because I called it,” he says, exactly as expected, and Ryowoon backs him up as I roll my eyes, the two of them a wall I know better than to argue against for long.
We jump off the pier, stripping down to our shorts and leaping into the water below, shrieking the whole way down before the cold water knocks the air out of our lungs.
Nuri waits up top every time, barking down at us like she’s scolding us for leaving her behind, pacing the edge of the dock until Ryowoon climbs back out soaked and shivering to scratch behind her ears and reassure her he’s not actually drowning.
The old woman who sells mackerel from her cart nearby yells at us every time without fail, waving her rag in our direction, telling us we’re going to split our heads open on the rocks below one of these days if we don’t quit it.
We ignore her, mostly, until one of the fishermen mending his nets a few boats down finally hollers something sharper, threatening to tell all our mothers, and that gets us climbing out fast enough, dripping onto the wood planks, laughing so hard none of us can catch our breath.
“You’re all going to end up at the bottom of the harbor,” the fish ahjumma mutters, shaking her head at us as we scramble past her cart, dripping a trail behind us. “Worse than a litter of stray cats, the lot of you.”
“We’re good swimmers,” Haeil calls back over his shoulder, unbothered as always.
“Good swimmers with no sense,” she snaps, but by the time we’re halfway up the road she’s already gone back to arranging her fish on ice, muttering to herself about kids these days.