10. Chapter Ten #3
The street bends. I pass Mr. Goh’s house with its blue gate, the old pine tree leaning over the wall that I used to climb as a kid.
The Kim’s place two doors up, their motion light clicking on and flooding the alley with white as we pass.
Everything smaller than I remember it. Tighter.
The walls closer together, the hill steeper, the gaps between houses narrower.
But the smell is the same. Salt and damp concrete and the faint sweetness of someone’s jasmine bush growing wild over a wall above us.
I reach the crest and stop.
Mrs. Nam’s store sits at the corner where the street levels out, wedged between the Yoon’s old house on one side and the wall of the alley that runs behind it on the other.
The roll down metal doors are shut, the corrugated panels streaked with rust at the seams. The glass doors behind them are dark.
The hand-painted sign above the entrance has faded badly, the characters barely legible.
Someone left a small potted plant by the entrance, wilted and brown.
Yuro sits at my feet, panting lightly, looking up at me.
I feel Ryowoon stop beside me. His breathing is a little rougher than mine from the climb. I don’t turn my head but I can feel him looking at the store.
I breathe out through my nose. Reach into my pocket. The key was folded inside a square of tissue paper tucked into the envelope with the will.
I walk Yuro up to the doors. The padlock on the metal gate is stiff, resistant when I fit the key in and twist. It takes a second try, a firm yank, before the mechanism pops free.
I pull the gate up, the metal rattling loudly.
The glass doors behind it are unlocked. I push them inward and get a lungful of stale air.
Dust and old cardboard and the memory of something pickled or fermented.
I find the light switch on the wall just inside the door. The lights stutter, blink, catch on the third try with a faint buzzing hum.
I let go of Yuro’s leash and he pads forward, nails clicking on the linoleum, nose sweeping the floor in wide arcs.
The shop looks mostly the same. The layout hasn’t changed, the shelves are in the same positions they’ve always been, the counter with the register still sits at the back left where Mrs. Nam liked to perch on her stool and watch her dramas.
But everything is covered in a fine grey film.
Dust on the shelves, dust on the counter, dust on the old TV mounted high on the wall behind the register with its cord dangling loose.
The cooler at the front is dark and silent, unplugged.
Half the shelving is bare, the remaining products faded and expired, packaging sun-bleached where light from the front windows hit during the day.
A calendar on the wall near the register is still turned to a month five months ago.
I hear Ryowoon push through the glass door behind me, his footsteps on the linoleum. He stops just inside.
I walk the perimeter slowly, my eyes moving from the ceiling to the walls to the floor.
There’s a crack running through the plaster above the far window.
Water damage, old, the plaster swollen and discolored around it.
Two of the fluorescent tubes in the back section are dead.
The linoleum near the cooler is curling up at the edges, yellowed and brittle.
I spot tape over one of the side windows, meant to be temporary that became permanent, the tape itself cracked and peeling.
A section of ceiling near the back hall has a hole punched through it, the edges gnawed, tufts of insulation poking through.
Mice. I can see where they’ve been at the baseboards too, droppings in the corners.
Behind me Ryowoon sets his bag on the counter with a thud. I hear him shove his hands into his pockets and start walking, his steps slowly surveying.
“Shit,” he mutters. I turn and watch him crouch near the back wall, running his finger along a section of exposed wiring where the plastic casing has cracked and split.
He straightens, moves to the hallway entrance, peers up at the water-stained ceiling tiles.
Comes back, stops near the center of the room and turns in a circle, his mouth a grim line.
“This is going to take more work than I thought.”
I let out a quiet breath through my nose.
I knew the shop had been closed for a while.
My mother told me Mrs. Nam’s shopgirl ran it for her the last few years as Mrs. Nam got older and her joints got worse, but she had the shopgirl stop coming in too once Mrs. Nam got to the point where she couldn’t manage the ordering and bookkeeping anymore.
The last few months the store just sat. Mrs. Nam didn’t have the money to hire anyone for repairs, and from the looks of it she hadn’t had the money for a while before that either.
I move through the hallway toward the back of the store.
Hit the light switch in the narrow corridor that connects the shop to the living quarters.
The bulb here is a single bare one hanging from a cord, and it takes a few flickers before it holds, illuminating the hall in weak light.
The kitchen doorway to the left leading down to the sunken floor and the back courtyard beyond. Straight ahead, the bedroom.
I push the bedroom door open with a creak of hinges.
Inside, the room is small and spare. The floor is clean, swept recently by someone, probably my mother or one of the neighbors who helped clear out Mrs. Nam’s things after the funeral.
The bedding has been stripped and the sleeping mats are folded in a pile in the corner, the old wooden dresser pushed against the wall.
The shelf above it is bare where Mrs. Nam’s pictures and her ceramic figurine of the Buddha used to sit.
The window on the far wall looks out into the courtyard, the glass smudged but intact.
Through it I can see the low wooden platform where she used to sit with us and shell beans, the stone tiles of the courtyard overgrown with weeds pushing through the cracks.
I turn as Ryowoon appears behind me in the hall, his frame filling the doorway. I gesture into the room.
“Your lodgings.”
He gives me a sidelong look, one brow lifting just slightly, as he steps past me. He drops his bag on the floor beside the dresser and stands there for a second, taking in the bare room. Then he turns and looks out the window into the courtyard and lets out a breath.
“Yeah, and the bathroom’s outside.”
I back into the hall, leaning my shoulder against the door frame. “Well, there’s no use assessing the rest tonight.” I tip my head toward the front of the store. “I’m going to head to my mom’s.”
Ryowoon nods. He opens the dresser, pulls out the folded sleeping mats and shakes one out.
I linger in the doorway. Watch him spread the mat on the floor, moving stiffly, favoring that left side. The room looks lonely with just him in it, missing all of the warmth and clutter Mrs. Nam filled it with.
“You sure you’re going to be alright by yourself here?”
Ryowoon pauses. His hands still on the mat and he looks at me over his shoulder.
“That’s the first time you’ve spoken to me without sounding like you wanted to hit me yet.”
I feel my face close off like a door slamming shut. I shove my hands into my pockets and say, “We need to work together to get this place back into shape either way. Wouldn’t be very productive to start swinging at each other every ten minutes.”
Ryowoon turns a little more, watching me with those dark eyes. “I’m not taking any swings at you, Seyeon.”
My teeth clench. “I wouldn’t expect you to,” I say. “Given you’ve delivered enough low blows to last a lifetime.”
He stares at me. A look passes behind his eyes.
“I thought that was coming at some point,” he says quietly. “Did you get it out of your system yet?”
“No I fucking didn’t,” I snap. “Not even close.”
I turn on my heel, scoop Yuro’s leash off the counter where I left it as I pass through the store, the dog scrambling up from where he’d been sniffing at the base of the cooler. I push through the glass doors and out into the night air, the salt breeze hitting my flushed face, and I keep walking.