5. Chapter Five
My phone buzzes against the motel nightstand abruptly, rattling loudly against the scuffed wood.
I flinch, my eyes snapping open from a doze I’d fallen into form exhuastion.
For a second, I don’t know where I am. The unfamiliar pattern on the curtains, the stale air, the low hum of a mini-fridge in the corner. Paju. Right.
I grab the phone, squinting at the screen. Taesung. My stomach clenches. I slide my thumb across the screen and put it to my ear, my voice raspy from sleep. “Hey.”
“Seyeon! Sorry, am I bothering you?”
“No, it’s fine.” I sit up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and rubbing my face. “Any news?”
“I just got off the phone with my brother-in-law,” he says, and I can hear the faint sounds of a television in the background: the high-pitched jingling tune of a children’s cartoon. “He ran the search you asked for.”
I hold my breath. My fingers tighten on the phone.
“Nothing,” Taesung says. “Not a thing. No criminal record, no incarcerations, not even a misdemeanor for spitting on the sidewalk. The name Cha Ryowoon isn’t in their system, at least for the last fifteen years.”
I let out my breath in a rush of relief.
Followed by a lighter feeling, a loosening in my chest that’s immediately followed by the familiar dead weight of frustration.
He’s not in prison. He’s not in the system.
That’s good. It’s what I wanted to hear.
But it’s also another door slammed shut, another path that leads nowhere.
“That’s … good. I guess,” I say hollowly. “Thanks for checking, Taesung. I really appreciate it.”
“Of course, man. But are you sure you have the right guy? Maybe he changed his name?”
“I’ve been checking for that, too,” I say, glancing at the notepad on the nightstand, filled with crossed-out names and addresses. Jin Ryowoon. Park Ryowoon. Every possible combination I could think of. Nothing.
“Sorry, Seyeon. I wish I could’ve been more help.” He sounds disappointed for me. “So, what’s your next move? When are you thinking of coming back? Saemi was asking about your class outlines.”
I stare at the wall. Back. The thought of my quiet apartment in Seoul, of Yuro waiting for me, of grading papers and dealing with thirteen-year-olds feels like a lifetime away. It feels impossible. I can’t go back. Not yet. Not until I’ve turned over this last, terrible stone.
The thought has been in the back of my mind for days, a cold little knot I’ve refused to even acknowledge might be a possibility. I’ve been looking for any living trace of the man. But what if there is no living trace?
My mouth is dry. I swallow loudly to clear my throat before speaking. “Actually … could you ask your brother-in-law for one more favor?”
“Sure, what is it?”
I close my eyes. I have to say it. I have to ask. “Can he … can he check the unidentifieds?”
Silence on the other end of the line. The cartoons in the background seem to have stopped. I hear Taesung clear his throat. “The … what?”
“Unidentified persons,” I say, my voice dropping, pained. “John Does. Bodies they haven’t been able to identify. From the last ten years.”
“Seyeon…” Taesung says gently, laced with concern. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
“I have to check,” I whisper, my knuckles white where I’m gripping the phone. “I’ve looked everywhere else. I have to know.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. I can almost picture him, rubbing the back of his neck, looking at his baby girl across the room. Living in a world so far removed from this. “Okay,” he says finally. “Okay. I’ll ask. He’ll need a description. Anything that would help.”
A description. How do you describe a person you haven’t seen in a decade, a boy you knew better than you knew yourself? How do you reduce him to a set of words for a coroner’s report?
My mind spools back. “He’s … he’d be thirty-four now. About six-foot-two. Or he was, last I saw him. Wiry build. Black hair.” I pause, my throat tightening. “He has a scar. Just below the right corner of his mouth.”
I don’t have to close my eyes to see it. The way it pulled at the corner of his mouth when he laughed. Can still feel the shape of it beneath my fingertips, tracing the jagged edge.
“Okay, Seyeon,” Taesung says, his voice full of a pity that makes my skin crawl. “I’ll … I’ll pass this along. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.”
“Thank you,” I manage to get out.
“Hey. Try not to think the worst, okay?”
I make a noncommittal sound and we hang up.
The phone drops from my hand onto the bedspread.
The silence of the room rushes in, deafening.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, but the images are already there.
Ryowoon, grinning, with dirt on his face.
Ryowoon, furious, with his fists clenched.
Ryowoon, asleep, his face peaceful for once.
And now, a new image. A cold, sterile room. A sheet. A tag on a toe.
I push myself off the bed and walk to the window, pulling back the musty curtain. The lights are spread out below, a city full of people living their lives, completely unaware of the boy from a forgotten seaside town who might be lying nameless in a morgue drawer somewhere.
I’m not praying for a miracle anymore. I’m not praying to find him in some greasy auto shop, wiping his hands on a rag with that same crooked smirk.
Now, I’m just praying for nothing.
I’m begging every god that might be listening that Taesung’s next call is just like the last one. That his brother-in-law finds no match. That Cha Ryowoon, my Ryowoon, doesn’t exist in that database.
Because if he does, I don’t know what I’ll do. If he’s a ghost, I can keep looking. But if he’s a body, then the search is over.
And I’m not ready for it to be over.
I can’t just sit in a motel room waiting for Taesung to call back. The idea of doing nothing while some detective flips through paperwork on his own time makes my skin crawl, makes my hands itch for anything to do that isn’t staring at the ceiling and imagining the worst.
So I start driving myself the next morning, back the way I came, back down the coast toward Haemok before cutting inland to the county office.
The drive takes longer than I remember, the roads narrower, twisting through hills green with early summer growth.
I park in front of a squat concrete building that hasn’t changed in twenty years, the same faded government seal bolted above the door, the same dusty ficus plant wilting in the corner of the lobby.
The clerk behind the counter can’t be more than twenty-five, her nails painted a soft coral color that seems out of place against the beige walls and fluorescent lighting. I tell her what I need. Death certificates. Unidentified remains. Anything filed in the last ten years.
She blinks at me like I’ve asked her something out of a crime drama. “Sir, that’s … that’s not really something we keep on hand for public request. You’d need to go through the police department for something like that.”
“I already have someone looking through police records,” I say, keeping my voice level even though my pulse is hammering. “I want to check the civil registry too. Death certificates filed without a name. John Does, if you have that here.”
She frowns, chewing on her bottom lip, then disappears into the back to find someone more senior.
I wait, standing at the counter, tapping my knuckles against the laminate top until an older man comes out, reading glasses pushed up into thinning hair, and asks me the same question in a more patient tone.
I explain again. I’m looking for a friend. He might be a name in a file marked with a blank space. I don’t know how else to put it that doesn’t sound insane.
The older man’s face softens and he tells me to have a seat while he checks what they have on file for unidentified deceased persons in the county over the past decade.
I sit in one of the plastic chairs against the wall, my knee bouncing, until he brings back a thin folder with maybe six or seven entries.
I go through it page by page, reading each entry, checking ages, dates, any physical description listed.
None of them are him. Wrong age. Wrong height.
One entry describes a woman. I hand the folder back and thank him, my throat tight, and drive to the next county office.
I do it over and over.
I dot between every coastal county from Haemok up through Yeosu and back down toward Tongyeong, marking them off one by one.
Some days I get through two offices before the buildings close for lunch and don’t reopen until I’m already three towns away.
Some clerks are helpful, sympathetic even, once I explain I’m looking for someone from my hometown who’s been missing for years.
Others look at me like I’m wasting their time, tell me this isn’t information they hand out to the public, that I need a police report number or a family relation on record.
I don’t have either. I’m not family. I’m nothing, legally speaking, just a man from a town an hour away with a scar burned into his memory and no paper trail to prove why it matters.