5. Chapter Five #3
He crosses the space between us faster than his body should be able to manage, given the state he’s in, suddenly he’s on his knees in front of me, arms wrapping around my leg, his weight nearly knocking me off balance. The room seems to hold its breath around us, murmurs rising, someone gasping.
I don’t move.
He sobs against my knee, his shoulders shaking, his hands fisted into the fabric of my pants. “Forgive me,” he chokes out, over and over, the words slurring. “Please, Seyeon, please, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
I stare down at the top of his head, at the thinning patch near his crown I never noticed before, and I feel nothing but a cold revulsion settle in my stomach.
This is the man my father died for. The man who was standing beside my father when the machine malfunctioned, who my father shoved out of the way a second before the metal came down.
He’s crying like a child, snot and tears running down into the collar of his crooked shirt, gripping my leg like I’m the one who can absolve him.
I want to kick him off me. I want to scream at him, ask him why it wasn’t him instead, why he gets to stand here breathing and sobbing while my father is a picture on an altar and a box of ash on a table.
My mother drops to her knees beside him, her hands hovering, not quite touching him, her eyes glassy with tears. Her voice wobbles when she speaks, but it stays gentle, offering him the same kindness she’s shown every stranger who’s walked through those doors today.
“Come now, Sungkyu,” she says softly. “You shouldn’t act like this here.”
He shakes his head against my leg. “It should have been me,” he sobs. “It should have been me, not him, not Sebeom, why wasn’t it me—”
I look away from him then, my face carefully blank, staring at the far wall where a paper lantern hangs still in the stagnant air. Because part of me agrees with him. It should have been him.
But I know I’m not supposed to say it, not here, not in front of everyone, not when my mother has spent all day telling anyone who’ll listen that my father died saving the person he loved most outside his own family, that this is the story she wants people to carry away from this room.
I ignore it. The wailing, the choking sobs against my leg, the hands clutching at my pant fabric.
I look past all of it, past Ryowoon’s father and my mother kneeling beside him, past the neighbors shifting uncomfortably in their seats, past Jinwon and Haeil watching from the wall with round eyes.
My gaze sweeps the room, face by face, corner by corner.
He’s not here.
I frown. My eyes go back over the rows of seated guests, the clusters of people standing near the entrance, the aunties refilling side dishes near the back wall.
I look at the row of shoes by the door, scan for the beat-up sneakers with the split sole, the only pair that still fit him. They’re not there.
He’s not here, and he hasn’t been here.
I haven’t seen him in days. Not since the accident.
Not since Mrs. Park from two houses up came running down the hill screaming for my mother, not since the neighbors gathered in the street and someone drove my mother to the hospital while I sat on the front step and waited for hours until my aunt came and told me in a shaky voice that my father was gone.
Through all of that, through the days after, the funeral preparations, the stream of visitors bringing food and flowers and hushed condolences, Ryowoon hasn’t shown his face. Not once.
A spark of hot irritation slices through the numbness I’ve been wading through for days. I pull my leg free of his father’s grip, not exactly gently, and step over him. My aunt calls my name but I keep walking, moving toward the doorway with a sudden, burning sense of purpose.
I don’t want to be in this room anymore. I don’t want to stand in front of my father’s photograph and feel nothing while grown men cry at my feet. I want to find Ryowoon and I want to know why the hell he thinks he can disappear on me right now.
The air outside washes over me and I suck in the salt and exhaust taste of it with relief.
The street is quiet, most of the neighborhood either inside the hall or keeping to their homes out of respect.
I loosen the top button of the borrowed suit, the fabric already damp with sweat and sticking to my back in the midday heat. I start walking.
I head up the hill past the corner store where the ajumma sells bungeoppang in winter, past the low wall where we usually sit and watch the boats come in.
I check the playground. The tunnel under the slide is empty, just candy wrappers and a crumpled juice box.
I check the lot behind the fish market where we hide when we’re skipping errands, and the concrete ledge near the docks where Haeil dared Ryowoon to do a backflip last summer and he almost cracked his head open. Nothing.
The longer I walk, the hotter and angrier I get. Sweat trickles down my temples, soaks the collar of the suit shirt. My dress shoes aren’t made for climbing hills and they’re rubbing blisters into my heels but I keep going, keep moving.
I pass Mrs. Nam’s convenience store. The roll-up doors are shut, a handwritten sign taped to the front that reads Closed for the day.
She’s at the funeral with my mom. The courtyard behind the store is still, no voices drifting over the wall, no clatter of dishes.
I stand there for a second, staring at the locked doors, then turn and keep walking.
I weave up toward the higher streets where the houses thin out and the asphalt gives way to packed dirt, the hill steepening beneath my feet.
The trees start to thicken ahead of me, pines and scrubby oaks crowding the slope above town.
By the time I reach the edge of the treeline I’m breathing hard, my shirt plastered to my chest, my face flushed.
The borrowed suit jacket is balled up in my fist, dragging in the dirt.
I’m hot and I’m grouchy and I’m so fed up with all of it that my teeth ache from clenching.
I look at the path disappearing into the shade of the woods and I almost turn around.
But the thought of going back down to that hall, of smiling at people while they tell me how brave I am, of watching Ryowoon’s father weep on the floor for a death he caused, makes my stomach turn.
I start up the path. At least there’s shade.
At least there’s quiet. At least up here nobody’s going to pat my shoulder and tell me my father’s in a better place.
The sounds of dull thuds against bark reach me through the trees, flesh meeting wood. Low, strained grunts and muttering, unmistakably human, unmistakably furious.
I slow my steps, moving off the path toward the sound. Branches scratch at the sleeves of my suit as I push through a gap in the brush, and then a small clearing opens up ahead of me where a crooked pine stands alone, its trunk leaning to one side from years of coastal wind.
Ryowoon is beneath it.
His hair is dark with sweat, plastered flat against his forehead.
He’s in a suit too, or what used to be a suit.
The jacket’s gone, his white shirt untucked and filthy, the sleeves shoved up past his elbows.
His jaw is locked, teeth bared, eyes burning with a fury I’ve only ever seen aimed at his father. Now it’s aimed at the tree.
He punches the trunk with a meaty sound.
He punches it again. Again. Both fists, alternating.
Then he kicks it, his shin connecting with the bark hard enough to make the branches above shiver and drop needles.
He stumbles back a step from the impact, catches himself, and goes right back at it, driving his knuckles into the wood.
I can see his hands from here. They’re a mess. Knuckles cracked and split open, smeared with blood. Bark chips cling to his skin, embedded in the torn flesh. He doesn’t seem to notice or care. His face is flushed deep and blotchy, his eyes hard and glassy and somewhere far away from this clearing.
I watch him and the way his body coils before each hit, the way his back arches when he kicks, the way his teeth clench so tight the muscles in his jaw jump.
I watch the blood on his knuckles smear against the trunk and then I look at the trunk itself and see the stains already there, layers of red painted across the pale wood, meaning he’s been out here a while.
Long enough that the first blood has turned brown.
And with each strike, each grunt out of him, the hot spark in my chest grows. It climbs up through my ribs and into my throat and fills my mouth with a bitter taste. Because he’s angry. He’s out here, hiding from me, hiding from the funeral, hiding from everyone, and he gets to be angry.
“Why are you angry?”
My voice carries through the clearing and Ryowoon stops mid-swing.
His fist hovers near the trunk, his chest heaving.
He turns, surprise flashes across his face when he recognizes me standing there at the edge of the trees in my too-big suit with the sleeves pinned up.
His mouth opens slightly, his brow creasing, and then his gaze drops to his own hands.
“Seyeon,” he says tentatively.
I don’t want the tentative version. I don’t want the gentle tone or the guilty eyes looking at the ground. I want an answer.
“Why do you get to be angry?” I say louder, stepping into the clearing. My voice sounds hard and heated. “What right do you have?”
Ryowoon flinches, the skin around his eyes tightening.
“He was my father!” I shout, I can’t stop myself and I don’t want to. “He was my dad, Ryowoon! Not yours! Mine!”
The words send birds scattering from the branches above us.
My hands are shaking and my eyes burn. Ryowoon winces, his face contracting for a moment before he straightens his shoulders and lifts his chin.
He still doesn’t look at me. His fists ball at his sides, blood dripping from his torn knuckles onto the dirt.