5. Chapter Five #6
I flip back a page to where the chapter starts, running my finger down the text.
“It’s been a symbol of Korea for centuries.
The name means ‘eternal blossom that never fades.’ They bloom all summer and into fall, and they keep coming back.
You cut them down and they grow again. The whole thing is about resilience.
” I tap the passage near the bottom of the page.
“And it’s on the national emblem. See? Right there, surrounding the taeguk on the coat of arms. The flag itself has the trigrams at each corner, and those come from—”
“Is there going to be a quiz?”
I ignore him. “—the Book of Changes, each one stands for a different element. Heaven, earth, water, fire. And the circle in the center is the balance between opposites. The red and blue.”
“I know what the flag looks like, Seyeon.”
“Do you know why it looks like that?”
He doesn’t answer, which means he doesn’t, and I take that as permission to keep going.
I walk him through the history of the taeguk symbol, about how the current flag was adopted and how the design went through revisions, about the old Joseon dynasty banners.
Ryowoon sits beside me, plucking at grass blades, not interrupting anymore.
His eyes are fixed in the middle distance above the creek, but his head is tilted toward me, listening.
When I finish he’s quiet for a second.
“You’re just filled with national pride, aren’t you?” he says, glancing at me sidelong with a smirk.
“It’s interesting.”
“Sure it is.”
“It is.”
He bumps his shoulder against mine and stands, brushing dirt off the back of his shorts. “Come on, patriot. If we don’t get back before dark my dad’s gonna—” He stops. Resets. “Mrs. Nam’s probably wondering where we are.”
I close the textbook and stack the others back into the bag, tuck the unfinished sketch between the pages.
Ryowoon whistles for Nuri and she scrambles up from her rock, shaking water off her coat in a wide arc that gets both of us wet.
Ryowoon laughs and grabs her by the scruff, roughhousing her gently while she licks at his chin.
We head back down the hill single file on the narrow path, Ryowoon in front, Nuri weaving between our legs. The air is still cool in the shade of the trees but I can feel the warmth building as we drop in elevation, the salt smell drifting up from the harbor below. Summer’s not done with us yet.
We hit the paved street at the bottom of the hill and turn toward home, passing the row of houses that sits above the main road, their concrete walls lined with overgrown hedges and tangled vines no one bothers trimming.
Ryowoon’s a few paces ahead of me, his shoulders brown from the sun, Nuri’s leash wrapped loosely around his wrist. He slows near the wall around old Mrs. Gong’s house and stops.
I almost walk into his back. “What?”
He looks at something in the bushes growing over the top of the wall.
A tangle of green with spots of bright pink scattered through it, clusters of flowers blooming in bursts along the branches.
Ryowoon reaches up and snaps one off at the stem, turns it over in his fingers, examining the flared petals, the deep pink fading to a softer shade near the center.
He holds it up to me. “Hey. Isn’t this what you were talking about? The rosa-whatever?”
I blink at it. Mugunghwa. Growing wild and unnoticed over a garden wall.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s it.”
His face splits into a grin and he reaches up and tucks the flower behind his ear. The stem catches in his hair, bright pink against black, petals brushing his temple. He adjusts it once, tipping his head to make sure it stays, then turns and keeps walking with a strut in his step.
Nuri trots along at his heel, matching his energy, her tail swishing. I trail behind them both.
I roll my eyes and follow him home.
School starts with the heat still clinging to September, the classrooms muggy and stifling, fans doing nothing but pushing hot air around in circles. I get to my desk on the first morning, drop my bag, and pull out my stack of books to organize them in the cubby underneath.
There’s a mugunghwa sitting on top.
Its stem is tucked between the pages of my Korean history textbook, the bloom resting against the cover, petals slightly wilted from being out of water but still holding their color.
Pink with that paler blush toward the center.
I pick it up and turn it over in my fingers, glancing across the classroom.
Ryowoon sits at his desk three rows over, slouched in his chair, pretending to be very interested in in the ceiling, his mouth twitching at the corner.
I snort and tuck the flower into my pencil case.
The next morning, there’s another one. Wedged between my math and science textbooks, stem bent to fit.
The morning after that, another.
Every day I get to my desk and there’s a single Rose Of Sharon, the stem slipped between the spines of the books I left in the cubby the day before.
They keep coming until September turns into October, summer turns to fall. And then it gets cold and the plants go dormant for the winter. I still check my books every morning out of habit.
In the spring, when I find the first pink flower of the season sitting on top of my history textbook in the morning when I come back from lunch, a smile curves the corner of my mouth and a warm feeling fills my chest. I grip the flower and carry it in my pocket and keep it between my fingers until it wilts.