14. Chapter Fourten #2
There’s not much to work with. Mrs. Nam’s pantry has been cleared of most things, but there are a few cans of tuna, some dried seaweed, a half-eaten sleeve of crackers.
I tear open the crackers and eat a few standing at the counter, staring at the rain through the small window above the sink.
It shows no sign of letting up. If anything it’s getting worse, the wind picking up, gusts sending spray sideways through the gaps in the roll-up doors.
Monsoon season. I should’ve expected it.
The weather reports have been warning about it for days and I’ve been too buried in bank records and old receipts to pay attention.
I take the crackers back out to the front of the store and sit down on the floor near the entrance, my back against the wall, legs stretched out.
Yuro pads over and drops beside me with a groan, pressing his warm flank against my thigh.
I feed him a cracker. He crunches it and puts his chin on my knee, watching the rain with me.
I scratch behind his ears and settle in to wait.
Five minutes. Ten. The rain keeps coming.
I can hear it above us, a gurgling sound that makes me uneasy.
The ceiling Ryowoon patched earlier today is directly over the center of the store, and even in the low light I can see the panel bowing, the seams around his caulk work glistening wet. Not good.
I’m about to say something just as I hear the low, groaning creak. I whip around just as the patch buckles inward. The tile Ryowoon sealed cracks down the middle and water comes pouring through, a gush of it, splashing onto the floor and spraying across the shelving unit below.
“Shit.” Ryowoon moves fast, dropping what he had in his hand.
I scramble to my feet, Yuro skittering sideways with a startled bark as water fans across the floor.
Ryowoon grabs a bucket from the courtyard and shoves it under the stream, but the flow’s too much, water splashing over the rim almost the second he gets it positioned.
He curses again, louder, and turns for the back.
I hear him banging around in the courtyard and then he’s back, hauling one of the spare roofing tiles he bought in last week, the thing awkward in his arms.
He sets it against the ladder and climbs, bracing himself near the top as he pushes the tile up toward the gap.
Water runs down his arms, soaking his shirt.
I move to the base of the ladder without being asked, gripping the sides to keep it steady as he shoves the tile into place from below.
It catches, holds for a second, and the flow slows to a trickle.
He reaches up and starts pulling the broken pieces of the old patch down, bits of wet plaster and warped caulk coming away in chunks.
He gets a section loose, a jagged slab of the old tile still half-attached. He grips it and pulls, his jaw clenched, arms straining as it resists. It comes free with a wet snap and he holds it out at arm’s length, water dripping off the edge.
“Hand it down to me,” I say, reaching up.
“It’s heavy. And the edge is sharp.”
“I’m not an invalid, just hand it down.”
He looks at me. That look, the one that says he’s measuring whether arguing is worth the effort. His mouth tightens.
“Get a good grip on it if you’re going to help.”
“Just hand it to me, Ryowoon.”
He lowers it. I reach up and grab the edge and instantly feel pain, a clean hot slice across my palm like a razor. I hiss and jerk my hand back, the tile slipping from my grip and crashing to the floor where it cracks in two, pieces scattering.
“Fuck.” I cradle my hand against my chest, teeth gritted. My palm is slick, blood already running down it, a thin red line tracing down my wrist and dripping off the heel of my hand onto the wet floor.
Ryowoon jumps off the ladder, his shoes hitting the puddle with a splash as he comes toward me. “What happened? What is it? Let me see.”
I look at my palm. The cut runs diagonal from below my index finger to the base of my thumb, the skin split clean, blood welling in a bright line. Not deep enough to need stitches, maybe. Hurts like hell.
“Damn it, I told you not to grab it.” Ryowoon reaches for my wrist. “Hold on, let me—”
I yank my arm back. “I’m fine.”
“Stop being stubborn and let me see it.” He reaches again.
I smack his hand away. The sound is sharp. Ryowoon pulls up short, his fingers still hovering in the air between us.
“I said I’m fine, Ryowoon,” I snarl. “Stop acting like you give a damn.”
His jaw sets. His eyes sharpen on me. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
I hold my bleeding hand against my chest, the wet heat of it soaking into my shirt, and stare at him. The words I’ve been swallowing for three days, for ten years, pile up. I can feel every one of them, a jagged edge ready to cut.
“I don’t need your help,” I say in a low tone. “And I don’t need you to act like you care if I’m hurt or not.”
“How am I not supposed to care?”
I laugh sharply. “You didn’t before. What’s changed now?”
Ryowoon’s nostrils flare. He rubs a hand over his face, drags it down his jaw and drops it. The rain hammers the roof above us, water still trickling from the gap in the ceiling, dripping into the bucket with steady plinks. For a long moment there’s nothing between us but that sound.
“Alright,” he says. Flat. Walled off. “Fine. I get it. Whatever. We’ll get this done and you can go back to your life in Seoul and you can forget all about me soon enough, alright?”
I stare at him. My laugh sounds worse than the last one, incredulous.
“You make it sound so easy.” My bleeding hand throbs.
“But I guess it was for you, wasn’t it? To turn your back on everyone and everything and throw us away and run off where no one can find you.
” I can hear myself getting louder. Can feel the thing I’ve been keeping locked inside for three days, for weeks, for the entire drive from his apartment to Haemok, pushing its way out.
“It’s all okay as long as you don’t have to see how your actions affect anyone else, isn’t it? ”
His chin lifts. “You think it was fucking easy for me? To start over from nothing? To have not a damn penny to my name and try to build a life out of the piece of shit hand I was dealt?” His voice climbs to match mine, his shoulders squaring, and there it is, the fire I remember, the same combustible temper that’s been coiled up in him since we were children.
“Not all of us have college funds and a safety net to fall back on if we failed, Seyeon.”
“You chose to do it that way.”
“I had to get out, or I was going to be trapped here forever. No different from you.”
“I didn’t fucking abandon you,” I seethe, flashing back to the inside of that bus back to Seoul when I pressed my face into my hands and sobbed into my palms for four hours. “You didn’t give us the chance to help you. Not me, not Mrs. Nam, not anyone. You just vanished.”
“I didn’t want anyone’s fucking charity.”
“Yeah, that’s why.” I scoff bitterly. “That’s why you covered your tracks and disappeared like a ghost. Because you didn’t want handouts. And not because you’re a fucking coward who ran off to protect his own feelings.”
Ryowoon’s eyes go black with anger, his mouth a thin line.
He shakes his head once in a short violent jerk.
“You can hate me for it all you want, but you turned out better for it, didn’t you?
” He gestures at me, at all of me, a sweep of his hand that takes in everything I am.
“You graduated college. Got the job you always wanted. Got your nice apartment and your dog and your neat, polished big city life. You got exactly what you wanted.”
My chest cracks open.
“All I wanted was you!” I shout, throwing my hands out wide.
The store goes quiet. Just the rain. Just the water dripping into the bucket. Just Yuro’s nails clicking softly on the wet floor as he pads nervously between us, sensing the voltage.
Ryowoon stares at me. His lips part but nothing comes out. The anger on his face splinters, beneath it I see something I wish I couldn’t. A flash of it before he can quickly shutter it. The look of someone who already knew.
I close my eyes. Tip my head back until I feel the rain mist against my face from the gap above. I blink, my eyes stinging, and exhale. Long. Shaking. When I look at him again I’m calmer. The anger drains out of bitter sadness takes its place.
“But that’s stupider of me, I guess,” I say quietly. “You made how you feel perfectly clear, didn’t you?” I swallow. “I wasn’t going to be enough for you.”
Ryowoon’s jaw clenches so tight I can see the muscle jump beneath the scar on his chin. He shakes his head. When he speaks his voice is rough.
“My problems were never about you, Seyeon.”
I look at him for a long time.
“Yeah,” I say. “Whatever.”
I turn and walk past him. My shoulder brushes his as I go and neither of us flinches, but neither of us stops either.
I push through the door into the back hallway, blood still dripping from my closed fist, and start opening cabinets one-handed, looking for the first aid kit I know Mrs. Nam used to keep somewhere in this house.
I find the kit in the cabinet above the sink.
The white plastic box with the faded red cross on the lid, the hinges stiff when I flip it open.
Some of the supplies inside are ancient, the gauze yellowed, a tube of antiseptic cream that’s probably expired twice over.
But there are bandages. Clean ones, still in their wrappers.