7. Chapter Seven #2
The street’s quiet and there’s no one around to ask, just the distant hum of traffic from the main road below.
I turn and spot the convenience store on the ground floor of the neighboring building, exactly where the forum user said it would be.
Light spills out through the windows onto the pavement.
I head over, pushing through the door. The clerk behind the counter glances up from her phone, a girl maybe nineteen or twenty with her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail.
“Hi,” I say, trying to sound casual. “I’m looking for someone. A man, maybe mid-thirties, tall, scar at the corner of his mouth. Tattoos. I heard he lives around here.”
She blinks at me, then frowns slightly, thinking. “Oh. Yeah, I think I know who you mean. He comes in sometimes, usually late. After work, I think.”
My pulse jumps. “Do you know where he works?”
She shrugs. “Some car factory maybe? He mentioned it once. I don’t know which one.”
Car factory. Of course. Of course it’d be something like that.
“Does he come in often?” I ask.
“Sometimes. Like I said, usually late. After his shift ends, I guess.”
I nod slowly, my mind racing. “Thanks.”
She goes back to her phone, clearly uninterested now that the conversation’s over. I linger for a minute, then grab a canned coffee from the fridge and a packaged sandwich from the shelf. At the counter I add a bag of honey butter chips on impulse, then pay and take everything outside.
The table out front faces the street. I sit down, crack open the coffee, and unwrap the sandwich. I eat the dry, tasteless sandwich, washing it down with the coffee and chasing it with the chips. The sky darkens as I sit there, the streetlights flickering on one by one.
I watch the building across the way. People come and go, none of them the right height or build. A woman with a stroller. An older man with a cane. A couple of teenagers laughing and shoving each other as they head down the hill.
The air gets colder. I finish the chips and crumple the bag, shoving it in my pocket. My coffee’s long gone but I keep holding the can, turning it over in my hands.
This is ridiculous. Sitting here like some kind of stalker, waiting for a ghost.
But I don’t move.
The lights in the apartments flicker on as night settles in. I lean back against the chair and tip my head back, staring at the sky. Sokcho’s far enough from the bigger cities that I can see a few stars, faint pinpricks against the dark.
I think about Ryowoon at eighteen, the way he used to lean against the wall on the school roof and smoke with his head tipped back just like this. The way he’d grin at me when I showed up to bum a cigarette off him.
You’re such a poser, he’d say, laughing at me.
Shut up, I’d shoot back, trying not to cough.
I close my eyes and let the memory sit there for a minute, then open them again and go back to watching the street.
Someone will come eventually.
And either it’ll be him or it won’t.
But I’m not leaving until I know.
The lights start going out in the neighboring buildings. One by one, windows turn dark as people settle in for the night. I check my phone for the time. It’s nearly eleven.
I’ve been sitting outside this convenience store for hours and no one matching Ryowoon’s description has walked past.
My ass is numb from the plastic chair. My back aches. The clerk inside has changed shifts twice, each new person giving me a curious look when they arrive but never saying anything. I must look pathetic, camped out here like I’m waiting for a bus that never comes.
I stand up finally, stretching my legs. The cold’s seeped into my joints and I wince as I roll my shoulders. My breath comes out in visible puffs now that the temperature’s dropped.
I walk back toward the Haneul Apartments, stopping at the curb in front of the building.
Looking up at the rows of doors, balconies stacked one on top of another.
Somewhere up there, maybe, Ryowoon’s behind one of those doors.
Sitting on a couch, or lying in bed, or smoking on his balcony like the forum user described.
Or maybe this is all wrong. Maybe the guy who helped that stranger at the convenience store just happened to have a scar in the same spot. Maybe I’ve driven four hours north for nothing.
I shove my hands in my pockets and stare at the building, chewing on the inside of my cheek. How much longer should I wait? I could find a hotel, come back tomorrow morning, try knocking on doors. Ask around more. Maybe go looking for car factories nearby, see if anyone recognizes his description.
Or I could stand here like an idiot, freezing my ass off, hoping for a miracle.
I turn to head back toward my car; parked halfway down the hill.
Something makes me stop.
I don’t know what, just a prickling at the back of my neck, an old instinct rising up. I look toward the crest of the hill, toward the top of the street where it curves out of sight past the last streetlamp.
There’s someone there. A shape coming up over the rise, shoulders hunched, walking slow like his legs are tired.
I don’t move or breathe. A part of me already knows, recognizes the shape of him even at this distance, even in the dark, even before I can make out a single feature of his face.
He gets closer. Passes beneath the shadow of a tree, out of the light for a second.
Then he steps into the light of the streetlamp and it spills over him, illuminating the line of his jaw.
The years have carved into him. His face is harder now, the softness of boyhood long gone, cheekbones sharper, the line of his jaw squared with tension worn permanently into the muscle.
There are shadows beneath his eyes, they look bruised even from a distance.
But I’d know that face anywhere, in any light, at any age.
Even with all the years stacked on top of it, even with all the ways time’s remade him, I know it.
The scar sits right where I remember, a pale thin line beneath the corner of his mouth, highlighted in the lamp light for just a second before he tips his head down to drag on the cigarette between his lips.
He’s dressed in some kind of dark work uniform beneath a thin denim jacket, his shoulders look bigger than I remember, filled out, broader than the lean, wiry frame I used to know.
His legs eat up the distance in long strides, a bag slung across one shoulder, and even from here I can see the ink curling along one forearm, dark lines disappearing beneath his sleeve, winding over the wrist that never healed right after his father broke it.
My heart starts and stops several times in quick succession, takes the breath from my lungs and makes my limbs feel frozen in place.
He’s maybe fifteen feet away when he lifts his head.
His eyes land on me. Just a stranger standing on the sidewalk outside his building, probably, someone he doesn’t recognize, someone he has no reason to look at twice.
He stops walking, one foot coming down and staying there, weight caught between steps. His head jerks up all the way, bangs sliding over his forehead.
He freezes.
His eyes flicker, sweeping over me where I stand on the curb, narrowing as they take me in piece by piece.
I hold my breath, frozen, every word I’d planned to say lodged in my throat. All the reasons I came here that felt so logical and necessary hours ago evaporate in the face of actually seeing him again.
Ryowoon, I think. Finally.
He takes the cigarette out of his mouth, lets the smoke curl out with his exhale, and says in a low, growly tone, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
It breaks me out of the spell holding me in place. Rage and indignation wash away the speechlessness.
I scoff. “Yah. Do you really think you have the right to be talking to me that way? Shouldn’t I be the one telling you to fuck off?”
He rolls his eyes. “So why don’t you then?”
I stare at him. “Is that all you have to say to me?”
He looks back at me quietly for a second, his face unreadable. His jaw works, then he says flatly, “I’m not fucking doing this.”
He tries to step around me and my patience snaps.
I lunge, grabbing the front of his jacket and slamming him back against the wall behind him. The impact knocks the breath out of him and he grunts, catching himself with one hand braced against the concrete.
“The fuck do you think you’re going?” I snarl, up in his face, my knuckles white where they’re twisted in the fabric of his jacket.
He hisses, glaring down at me, his eyes flicking to the ground where his cigarette’s landed, crushed beneath my shoe. “You made me drop my cigarette, goddamn it.”
“I should beat your ass on top of it, you bastard.” I shake him, pressing him harder against the wall. “Do you know what I had to go through to find your stupid ass?”
He shoves at me, trying to get leverage, his hands on my forearms. “Then why bother? Goddamn it, I didn’t ask you to.”
We scuffle, grunts and scraping shoes and hands grappling for purchase. He tries to twist out of my grip and I drive my shoulder into his chest, slamming him back again. The wall cracks against his spine and he swears loudly, furious.
“Because we have business,” I bite out, breathing hard, holding him there with all my weight.
His teeth are bared when he shoves at me again, harder. “What fucking business? Whatever we had to talk about was done with a long damned time ago.”
I get right up in his face, close enough to smell the cigarette smoke clinging to him. “I’m sure you thought so, running off like a rat into a hole. Fucking coward.”
He glares at me. Stares down because he’s still taller than me.
Even with me pinning him against the wall, even with the angle working in my favor, he’s got half a head on me and I can feel how solid he is beneath my hands.
Not soft. Not weak. He’s filled out, muscle and stubborn bulk that doesn’t budge no matter how hard I press.
“Did you just come here to pick a fight, Heo Seyeon?”