4. Chapter For #4
“You’re going to get us all killed,” I say, but nobody’s listening to me, Ryowoon’s already climbing.
He goes up and over that wall, one hand braced on the top stone, swinging his leg over in a single fluid motion that makes it look easy even though I know it’s not, I’ve tried it myself and scraped both my palms raw.
Haeil follows right after him, less gracefully, catching his shirt on a loose bit of stone and cursing under his breath as he yanks it free.
I stay exactly where I am, arms crossed, glaring at both of them over the top of the wall.
“This is a terrible idea,” I hiss.
“You said that already,” Ryowoon hisses back, grinning at me like an idiot, creeping low across the yard toward the row of pots, Haeil trailing behind him with the firecrackers clutched to his chest.
I should leave. I know I should leave, walk myself right back down the hill and let them deal with the consequences on their own, but instead I stay crouched behind the wall, peering over the top, because if something goes wrong I want to at least see it coming.
Ryowoon reaches the first pot and pries the lid up just enough to slide a couple of the firecrackers down inside, motioning Haeil to hurry with the rest. Haeil’s wheezing a laugh already, and it doesn’t help either of their concentration, both of them fumbling with the lighter Haeil produces from his pocket.
“You don’t even know if that’s going to work,” I call over, quiet as I can.
“Shut up, Seyeon,” Ryowoon says without turning around.
They get the fuse lit. I watch it catch, a tiny hiss of orange sparking to life, and then Ryowoon and Haeil are running, the two of them tearing back across the yard toward the wall, both laughing so hard they can barely move in a straight line, Haeil trips over his own feet and goes down hard on one knee before scrambling back up.
The firecrackers go off in a series of sharp cracks, way louder than I expected, I flinch behind the wall even though I’m not the one who’s about to get caught.
A pot lid clatters off somewhere. The smell of gunpowder drifts over the wall, and underneath the cracks I can hear the wet slosh of fermenting paste getting displaced inside the pot.
And then Mr. Han roars up from near the house, more furious than I’ve ever heard from him before, not even the time Ryowoon accidentally put a soccer ball through his window.
“YAH! WHO’S OUT THERE! I’LL SKIN THE LOT OF YOU!”
Ryowoon and Haeil come flying over the wall nearly on top of each other, Ryowoon landing hard on his side in the dirt and immediately scrambling up, grabbing Haeil by the back of his shirt to haul him along, both of them wheezing with laughter as we hear Mr. Han’s front door slam open behind us.
“Run run run run run,” Haeil chants, all three of us sprinting down the alley, my own legs moving as self preservation takes over.
We don’t stop until we’re four streets down, ducked behind the dumpsters outside the noodle shop, chests heaving, Haeil laughing so hard he has to brace both hands on his knees, and Ryowoon grinning at me with dirt smeared down one side of his face from the landing.
“You’re both going to end up in prison,” I tell them, still trying to catch my breath. “In handcuffs. Before you’re even old enough to drive.”
“Worth it,” Ryowoon says, still grinning, wiping at the dirt on his cheek and only smearing it worse. “Did you hear him? He sounded like a dying goat.”
“He sounded like he wanted to murder you,” I correct.
“Same thing,” Haeil says, straightening up, still hiccupping with leftover laughter.
I glare at both of them, but it’s hard to hold onto it, watching them buzzing with the thrill of having gotten away with it, both of them looking so pleased with themselves that I want to laugh too, even though I know full well Mr. Han’s going to be telling this story to every single person in the neighborhood by tomorrow morning, and probably half of them are going to end up looking at me like I had something to do with it, guilty by association just for being the kid who’s always standing next to Cha Ryowoon.
My dad gets off early from the factory, I’m sitting on the floor of our living room trying to talk him into letting me stay up later on the strength of nothing but my own thin will as the gate bangs open outside and Ryowoon comes stumbling in without knocking, like he’s started to do most days now.
He doesn’t say much, just hovers near the doorway, shoulders drawn in, a fresh scrape along one knuckle that he’s trying to hide behind his other hand.
My dad doesn’t ask him what happened. He never does anymore, not after the first few times when Ryowoon just shrugged and mumbled something about tripping, both of them knowing it wasn’t true.
He looks up from where he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, pats the spot beside him like he’s been expecting Ryowoon the whole time, and says, “Come here, I’ll teach you something. ”
That’s the first night of seotda. My dad pulls the deck of hwatu cards out from the drawer where he keeps the important papers, the electric bill and my school forms, and spreads them out across the low table with care, like even a deck of cards deserves some respect.
He teaches us the suits first, the months, the way the flowers and birds and moons all mean something if you know how to read them.
Ryowoon picks it up fast, faster than me even, and I complain about it, and my dad laughs and tells me some people are born lucky and some people are born loud, and I should stop whining and play my hand.
We play until my mom calls us out for dinner. My dad doesn’t tell Ryowoon to go home. He says, “Set another bowl,” and my mom does.
Ryowoon staying for dinner isn’t strange to me by then, it’s already become most of my evenings, the two of us running back from the creek or the schoolyard with our shoes soaked through, my mom scolding us both equally for the mud we track in, my dad clearing a space at the table for one more bowl of rice.
It’s only slowly, over weeks, that I start to notice the way my dad times things.
He always finds a reason to keep us both there past dark.
Some nights it’s the cards, seotda, or later go-stop once he decides we’re old enough for the higher stakes version, teaching us to read each other’s faces, to bluff, laughing his low laugh when Ryowoon tries to hide a good hand and fails every single time because his ears go red.
Other nights it’s a job he’s invented on the spot, come help me move these boxes, come help me fix this drawer that’s been stuck for months, tasks that never seem all that urgent but that somehow always take until well past when the streetlights come on.
He keeps us moving. Keeps us loud, keeps the radio on low in the background so the house never gets quiet, and it isn’t until I’m walking Ryowoon out one night, both of us yawning, that I understand what he’s doing.
It’s later than usual, my dad having drawn a card game out into a second round and then a third, ignoring my mom’s gentle reminders that the boys have school in the morning.
When he finally lets us go, he walks us both to the gate himself, something he doesn’t always bother with.
I watch him look up at the sky, at the dark settling heavier over the hill, before he looks back down at Ryowoon.
“Your dad home yet, you think?” he asks casually.
Ryowoon shrugs, doesn’t meet his eyes. “Maybe.”
My dad nods slowly, and I see a thought pass behind his face that doesn’t show up when he talks to me.
“Well,” he says, and he reaches out and ruffles Ryowoon’s hair. “You know the door’s open if you need it.”
Ryowoon nods, ducks his head, mutters a thank you too quiet to really hear, my dad pats his shoulder once and turns him loose.
I understand then, the reason dinner always seems to stretch a little longer on the nights Ryowoon’s mother mentioned his father was drinking, the reason my dad always finds one more task, one more round of cards, right when Ryowoon starts glancing at the door like he’s bracing himself to leave.
My dad never says a thing. He never sits Ryowoon down and tells him he doesn’t have to go home if he doesn’t want to, never says a word against Ryowoon’s father where either of us can hear it.
He just keeps the table full and the lights on and the games going, filling Ryowoon’s bowl, refilling it again before either of us can get up from the table, small quiet ways of saying stay, stay a little longer, stay as long as you can.
I never say a word either, some instinct in me understanding that pointing it out might make Ryowoon feel like the charity case Deukho always calls him, so I let my dad keep dealing out cards long after either of us actually wants to keep playing, let dinner stretch into long, easy evenings that Ryowoon never seems to get at his own house.
The morning’s still cool when I get to Ryowoon’s gate, dew clinging to the grass along the fence line. I almost don’t see him at first, sitting on the low step with his knees pulled up, head down, waiting.
Then he lifts his face and I stop walking.
The bruise along his jaw has already started to purple, swollen and pulling his mouth a little out of shape on one side. There are marks down both his forearms too, fingers-shaped, one long welt across his collarbone that peeks out from the collar of his shirt when he shifts.
I don’t say anything. I want to, my mouth opens, but I stop when I see the way he’s looking at me, flat and closed off, daring me to bring it up. He gets up off the step instead, wipes his palms on his shorts, and starts walking toward the harbor road like nothing’s wrong at all.
I fall in beside him our shoulders bumping.