12. Chapter Twelve #3
My eyes travel further. Near the crease of his elbow, a fishing boat, its hull low in the water, nets draped over the side.
Along his forearm, a dragonfly in relief, wings spread, hovering.
And scattered between all of it, traditional goblin masks, their expressions wild and laughing, filling the negative space, tying the images together into a single unbroken piece.
My stomach twists. Each image drags something out of me. Each one is a specific memory, and every one of them belongs to this place. To us.
I tear my gaze away. Tune back in. Sihyung is telling a story about his neighbor’s goat getting loose and ending up in someone’s kitchen. Yoohan is wheezing. Ryowoon smirks. I laugh when I’m supposed to laugh and nod when I’m supposed to nod and force myself not to look at his arm again.
Sihyung and Yoohan leave late in the afternoon, finally, after making us promise we won’t disappear without meeting them for dinner.
They’ll be back, Yoohan says, pointing at both of us in turn, a warning and a promise.
Sihyung hugs me at the door, claps Ryowoon on the shoulder with a loud slap, and then they’re walking down the hill, their voices carrying back up the street in snatches until they fade.
The store drops into silence.
I go back behind the counter. Put my head down over the ledger.
My pen moves across the page but I’m not seeing what I’m writing, because my eyes keep lifting.
Going to where Ryowoon is working. Watching his arm as he reaches for a tool, as he braces against a shelf, as he wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist. The Rose of Sharon.
The Jindo. The dragonfly. The fishing boat.
All of it inked into his skin, permanent. Chosen intentionally.
It doesn’t make sense.
None of it matches the person he’s been showing me since I found him.
The indifference. The clipped, irritated responses, the locked apartment door, the way he talks about this town and his past like they’re things he’d rather be rid of.
You’re acting like you didn’t care, I think, staring at the page without reading a single word. You’re acting like none of it mattered.
But you put it on your body.
I go through the motions, marking columns, adding figures. The pen shakes a little in my grip. Ryowoon moves around the store behind me and I follow his movements by sound alone, refusing to look up again, refusing to let myself get pulled back into the spiral.
Just before evening, Ryowoon’s voice carries from across the store. “Seyeon. Come hold this for me a second?”
I push off the stool, my expression carefully blank. He’s bent over one of the old chest freezers, its lid propped open, a piece of refrigeration equipment dangling by wires from the interior. He nods at it.
“Just hold that steady while I get the connector loose.”
I take the piece, grip it where he points. Ryowoon ducks down into the freezer, his upper body disappearing inside. I hear him grunt as he reaches up, fiddling with something deeper in the housing. I hold the piece and wait, looking at nothing. Looking at the wall. Looking at the floor.
He shifts, lifting his right arm to reach higher, and his wrist turns toward me.
My breath stops as I stare at his right arm.
The one I’ve assumed this whole time was bare.
The one that’s always angled away, always turned inward, wrist down against his side or shoved into a pocket.
But now it’s turned, the soft inside of his forearm exposed, and there on the inside of his wrist, small enough to miss unless you’re looking, is a single tattoo.
Black pinpricks connected by fine parallel lines. A cluster of dots, joined together to form a shape.
A constellation.
The floor tilts beneath me. I hear his voice in my head, tracing dots in the dirt with his finger.
See? Looks like a constellation. The ghost of his fingertip poking the spot on my lower back, the place where my skin is scattered with freckles I’ve never been able to see myself. Trust me, it’s very cute.
The spot tingles now.
I’m staring. I know I’m staring. The piece of equipment in my hands forgotten, my fingers white around it. The blood roars in my ears.
Ryowoon surfaces, wiping his hands. He looks at me. He frowns, a question forming. Then his eyes follow mine. Down to his own wrist.
The frown dies.
I watch the recognition cross his face. Watch the flicker in his eyes, the split second of unguarded emotion before the shutters come slamming down. His jaw tightens. He pulls his arm back, angles the wrist away from me, shoves his hand into his back pocket in one smooth motion. Doesn’t say a word.
Neither do I.
But I’m staring at him. Can’t stop. He takes the piece of equipment from my hands without meeting my eyes, turns back to the freezer and bends over it again.
His shoulders are set, the line of his back rigid, and I can see the effort it takes him not to look at me.
He knows I saw it. He knows I know what it is.
His voice comes back to me again. Not seventeen this time. Different. Older, harsher.
I don’t care about anyone.
You’re not special.
I stare at the back of his head. At the constellation on his wrist that he turned away from me.
At the Rose of Sharon on his shoulder, the Jindo on his bicep, the dragonfly, the boat, every single piece of shared history he chose to carry on his body forever, and the word repeats in my skull until it’s deafening.
Liar.
Liar, liar, liar.
You’re a fucking liar, Cha Ryowoon.
He keeps his back to me. Keeps working. His hands are steady but the tension in the set of his neck tells me he feels me standing here, my stare boring into him. He doesn’t turn around.
I go back behind the counter. Sit on the stool. Put my hands flat on the ledger. I’m not seeing anything but those constellations, those small black dots on the inside of his wrist.
My hands ball into fists on the counter. My teeth grind.
I push off the stool. Grab Yuro’s leash from the hook by the door, crouch and clip it to his collar. He wags his tail, oblivious.
“I’m leaving.”
I don’t look back or check to see if Ryowoon heard me, don’t wait for a response. I push through the glass doors and out onto the street.
My legs carry me up the hill. Yuro trots ahead, happy, nosing at the weeds growing between cracks in the pavement.
I walk fast, my jaw clenched, my fists shoved deep into my pockets.
I want to hit something. I want to run. I want to turn around, go back into that store, grab Ryowoon by the front of his shirt and shake him until the truth falls out of him.
But I keep walking, feeling as though I’ve just torn open a wound that was only half-healed.