9. Chapter Nine #2
My pencil stops. I look up, blinking. The study hall is empty. Every other desk sits vacant, chairs pushed in, lights off on the far side of the room. I glance at the clock on the wall and my stomach drops.
“Shit.”
“Yeah.” Ryowoon is slumped back in his chair, one arm draped over his face, the other hanging limp at his side. His notebook is closed. There’s a corn chip stuck to his sleeve. “Shit.”
I start shoving my books into my bag, cursing under my breath. Ryowoon peels himself up with a drawn-out groan, stretches his arms over his head until something in his back pops, and follows me out.
The air outside is cold. Late November cold. Our breath clouds between us as we start the walk uphill. The streets are dead at this hour, just the distant hum of the factory running its night shift and the occasional flicker of a TV through someone’s window.
Ryowoon starts arguing with me before we’ve made it two blocks.
“I’m just saying, one Saturday. One game. You can study Sunday.”
“I can’t. There’s a book I need, it’s a prep guide for the CSAT. I saw it listed in the paper and the only bookstore that has it is in Pohang.”
“Pohang,” he says flatly. “You want to take a three-hour bus ride for a book.”
“It’s the best prep guide available and the library doesn’t carry it.”
“Seyeon. It’s a soccer game. Against the seniors. They’ve been talking shit for weeks. We need you.”
“You don’t need me, you’ve got Jinwon.”
“Jinwon can’t shoot for shit and you know it. Plus Haeil bet two packs of cigarettes on us winning and if we lose I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Not my problem.”
“It is your problem because I’m making it your problem.” He jogs a few steps to get in front of me, walking backward up the hill, his hands shoved in his jacket pockets, eyes glinting with stubborn light. “Come on. You’ve been killing yourself. Take one day off.”
“I took a day off last week.”
“You’re insane.” He turns back around and falls into step beside me, shaking his head.
“You know that right? You’re actually insane.
When you get into whatever fancy college you’re gunning for they should study you.
Put you in a glass box. ‘Here we have the Heo Seyeon, a specimen so obsessed with studying he forgot how to be a human person.’”
I snort. “Nice. Did you come up with that one while you were drawing carburetors instead of studying?”
“You—” He shoves me sideways and I stumble, laughing, catching myself on a wall. “Stay out of my notebook, you nosy bastard.”
I’m still laughing as I start to smell smoke in the air, acrid and sharp in the back of my throat. I stop walking and Ryowoon stops a half step later, turning to look at me.
“What?”
I sniff again, frowning. “Is that smoke?”
We both turn at the same time, looking up. Above the dark silhouettes of the rooftops, barely visible against the night sky, a thin thread of grey curls upward, lit from beneath by a faint orange glow.
A bad feeling forms in the pit of my stomach. I start walking toward it, then faster, my bag bouncing against my hip.
Ryowoon follows right on my heels.
We reach the top of the street and my legs nearly give out.
Mrs. Nam’s store.
Flames crawl up the side of the building, licking along the wooden frame of the roll-up doors, eating into the awning above the entrance.
Smoke pours from the seams of the storefront in thick dark ropes, billowing upward.
The fire hasn’t consumed the building yet but it’s working on it, the orange glow pulsing inside behind the glass.
“Halme!” Ryowoon shouts, rushing toward it. I’m right behind him, my bag hitting the ground.
I reach the front door first and slam both palms against it. Locked. The metal is warm under my hands.
“Mrs. Nam!” I bang harder, my voice cracking. “Halme, can you hear me?”
Nothing. Just the crackle and pop of the fire eating through the store’s old bones.
“I’m gonna check the back!” Ryowoon yells over his shoulder, sprinting around the side of the building.
I bang on the door again, once, twice, then step back and look at it, at the frame, at the glass panel beside it.
I back up further. Run. Throw my shoulder into the door and pain blazes through my arm, jolting through my teeth. The door doesn’t budge.
Ryowoon reappears, breathing hard. “Back’s blocked. Something fell against the courtyard door.” His eyes sweep the storefront, land on the wooden stool Mrs. Nam keeps outside for the old men who sit and gossip in the mornings.
“Get back,” He warns me, giving me a second to scramble backward clear of the door.
He scoops it up with both hands, pivots, and swings.
The glass panel shatters. Smoke pours through the opening, a wall of it, black and hot. I pull my shirt up over my nose and mouth.
“I’m going in,” I say. “She might be in the bedroom. Go get help.”
Ryowoon grabs my arm. “Seyeon—”
“Go.” I yank free and shove him. “I’m smaller, I can get through. Find something to put it out, I don’t think it’s spread to the back yet. Go, go!”
He hesitates one agonizing second, his face caught in the orange light, jaw clenched. Then he turns and runs.
I climb through the broken window.
The heat wraps around me, presses into my skin, my clothes, finds every gap.
The smoke is worse. It fills the store from ceiling to halfway down the walls and it’s dropping, a churning dark mass that swallows the lights, turns them into dim yellow smears.
I can see the fire now, crawling along the shelves near the east wall, consuming the cardboard displays, the chip bags curling and blackening, flames dancing across the top of the old wooden counter.
I drop low, crouching, one hand on the wall to guide me. The air is marginally better down here but my lungs are already burning, each breath like swallowing sand. I try to take shallow sips. Short inhales through my shirt but it’s not enough.
“Halme!” I shout, my voice rasping. I cough and it sends a searing pain through my chest.
The store isn’t big. I know every inch of it.
From the front counter it’s a straight shot past the shelves to the back wall, where the connecting door leads into Mrs. Nam’s living quarters.
I move along the wall by memory, can barely see two feet in front of me.
My hand finds the door frame and I shove the door open.
More smoke, pouring from the hallway that leads to her bedroom. The fire hasn’t reached this part of the building yet but the smoke has colonized every corner, hanging low. I push through, stumbling, my eyes streaming so bad I can barely keep them open. The heat is pressing in on all sides.
Her bedroom door. I find it with my shoulder, slam into it, and it gives. I tumble into the room.
She’s on the floor beside her sleeping mat, crumpled, her body curled on its side. Not moving. My heart hammers as I drop to my knees beside her, press my fingers to her neck, feel the faint flutter of a pulse.
“Okay,” I gasp, coughing. “Okay. I got you.”
I get her arm over my shoulders. She’s small and light, but my own body isn’t cooperating.
My arms shake. My lungs are screaming for clean air and instead I’m pulling in mouthful after mouthful of poison.
I manage to get her upright, one arm locked around her waist, her weight sagging against my side.
“Come on, Halme. Stay with me.”
She stirs, makes a choked sound. I start moving back through the door, into the hallway, the smoke so dense now I can’t see the walls.
I feel my way with one hand, the other gripping Mrs. Nam.
My palm touches the wall connecting to the store and it’s hot, burning, I jerk my hand back with a hiss and keep going.
Through the connecting door. The store is worse than when I left it, the flames have spread to the second row of shelves, the ceiling tiles are sagging, dripping molten plastic.
I duck low, pulling Mrs. Nam with me, and move for the shattered front window.
Glass crunches under my shoes. I can see the streetlight through the smoke, a pale beacon.
I aim for it, dragging us both through the broken frame, and then we’re out onto the street, the night air rushing over us, cool and startling, and I stagger across the street until my legs decide they’re done and I drop.
We end up on the curb, both of us coughing, heaving.
Mrs. Nam is awake now, her body racked with deep, wet coughs, her small hand gripping my sleeve.
I wheeze, trying to pull in a full breath and can’t, my lungs feel singed from the inside, like someone took a blowtorch to the lining and left it smoldering.
Every inhale burns. Every exhale tastes like ash.
I hear Mrs. Nam’s thin voice, shaking, calling Ryowoon’s name between coughs. I force my head up, my streaming eyes searching.
Ryowoon is at the side of the building, a garden hose in his hands that he must’ve ripped from the neighbor’s yard.
He’s spraying the wall where the flames are trying to climb to the second story, the water hissing and steaming where it hits.
His body is lit up in the firelight, his jaw set, his feet planted.
He doesn’t back up. The flames surge and he braces and aims the stream and holds.
I want to stand. Want to get up and help him, grab another hose, throw water, do something, anything. My legs won’t move. My chest is caving in on itself, each breath a wet rattling sound that doesn’t bring in enough air. I cough and taste metal at the back of my throat.
Mrs. Nam clutches at my arm, her voice cracking as she calls out for Ryowoon to come away, to leave it, that it’s not worth it.
But he doesn’t hear her or doesn’t listen.
He dives at the flames where they’ve crept around the corner toward the front, driving them back with the hose, his shirt soaked through, steam rising off his arms.