22. Epilogue
Seyeon
The hill is going to kill me.
I swipe at the sweat beading on my forehead, hands dropping to my hips as I stop to catch my breath near the top of the climb.
This is ridiculous. I used to tear up these same hills at a dead sprint, vaulting over walls, cutting through yards, barely winding myself even in the worst of the August heat.
Now I’m huffing and puffing from a walk.
A walk. My back aches low near my spine and my knees are staging a quiet revolt with every step.
Thirty-five. I’m thirty-five years old and I’m winded from groceries.
I shift the bag to my other arm, the plastic handles biting into my fingers.
There’s pork belly in here for tonight, a couple heads of garlic, green onions, the good gochujang from the stall Mrs. Yoo’s daughter-in-law runs now, and enough snacks to keep Ryowoon from complaining for at least forty-eight hours.
Maybe I’ll buy a scooter, I think. One of those little electric ones the delivery guys zip around on.
The image forms suddenly in my head: Ryowoon, all six-foot-two of him with his ripped jeans and his tattoos and his permanent scowl, puttering up the hill on a pastel blue scooter, knees nearly at his chin.
Compared to the way he used to look straddling his motorcycle, helmet under one arm, jacket open, windswept and flushed from the ride.
I grin to myself, still breathing a little too hard. Yeah. I’m buying a scooter.
The hill levels off and the store comes into view.
The front is freshly painted, a warm cream that catches the late afternoon sun, the old signage replaced with a clean new one Ryowoon hung last week.
The roll-up doors are open, lights on inside, and Mrs. Nam’s old short cab truck is parked in the narrow alley to the side, its bumper still a little crooked from where Ryowoon backed it into a post hauling roof tiles a couple months ago.
I lift my brows as I take in the scene out front.
A gaggle of kids, maybe seven or eight of them, elementary schoolers by their size, are clustered around the table and bench we put outside the store for customers.
On one of the benches sits Ryowoon, one leg propped on the opposite knee, ripped jeans and a black tank top, both arms on full display.
His tattoo sleeve stark in the sun, dark lines over tanned skin, and his hair’s pushed back off his forehead with what I think might be one of my hair clips.
He has a box open on the table in front of him and he’s handing out popsicles, looking for all the world like some tattooed, pierced Pied Piper holding court.
Two of the kids are bickering, both of them yanking at the same popsicle wrapper. Ryowoon reaches over and snatches it clean out of both their hands with a look that sends them scattering a step back.
“You get this one,” he says, shoving a different popsicle at the shorter kid. “And you get this one.” He hands the disputed one to the other. The shorter kid scowls down at his consolation prize.
“But I wanted the Melona bar.”
“Too bad. The red bean one is better anyway.”
“No it isn’t, it has a weird texture.”
“It’s protein. It’s good for you.”
The kid gapes at him like Ryowoon just suggested he eat dirt. I’m close enough now to catch the tail end of the outrage on his small face and I have to press my lips together to keep from laughing out loud.
“You kids trying to hustle free popsicles?” I call out as I approach, bag swinging from my arm.
Heads turn. A chorus of voices pipes up, small bodies twisting on the bench and bouncing on their feet.
“Hi, Mr. Heo!”
“Mr. Heo, hello!”
“Mr. Heo, this ahjussi is so old-fashioned,” the Melona kid announces, pointing an accusatory popsicle at Ryowoon.
“He says the red bean popsicle is better than the Melona bar because it has protein.” He says the word protein the way someone might say cockroach, his nose wrinkling with the full dramatic force of a nine-year-old’s disgust.
I recognize most of them from the school. A couple from my class last year, the rest from the grades below. Ryowoon blanches beside me, his head snapping toward the kid.
“Ahjussi?” he repeats, his voice pitching with indignation. “Who are you calling ahjussi, you little punk?”
He lunges for the popsicle and the kid dances backward, giggling, holding it over his head as if Ryowoon can’t simply stand up and tower over him by three feet. I watch, arms folded, smirking, as Ryowoon leans forward on the bench making a grab and the kid dodges again.
One of the other boys, a quiet one with a buzzcut who I remember from the spring semester, has been watching Ryowoon for a minute.
His eyes are fixed on Ryowoon’s hand where it rests against the table’s edge, the way the wrist bends at that slight wrong angle, the stiffness in his grip when he reaches.
“Ahjussi, what’s wrong with your wrist?”
I freeze. My eyes cut to Ryowoon, bracing, watching his profile. The scar beneath his jaw flexes as he turns his head toward the kid.
But Ryowoon just looks at the boy, one brow cocked.
“My drunk old man broke it when he was beating the shit out of me,” he says flatly. “What about it?”
I blow out a long breath through my nose. Roll my eyes toward the sky. Well. What did I expect?
The kids erupt. Gasps, wide eyes, mouths falling open with theatrical horror. The Melona kid forgets his grievance entirely, popsicle dripping onto his fingers as he stares.
“Your father did that?”
“Yep.” Ryowoon nods with grim solemnity.
“That’s why you should stay away from alcohol.
It makes you mean.” He holds up a finger.
“Smoking too. Destroys your lungs. I started when I was fourteen and by the time I was twenty I was hacking so hard I thought my actual lung was going to come up. Picture that.”
The kids are rapt. Horrified and fascinated in the way only children can be, leaning closer instead of pulling away.
“I had to get away from him eventually,” Ryowoon continues, settling into it now, crossing his arms over his chest like he’s a war veteran recounting his campaigns.
“Had to start all over. No money, no job, no nothing. Just me and whatever I could carry. Lived alone for years, worked in a car factory.” He jerks his thumb in my direction.
“Then this one tracked me down and dragged me back to this shithole town.”
“Language,” I mutter.
“Yeah, whatever.”
The quiet kid with the buzzcut is still staring at Ryowoon’s wrist, but his face has shifted from curiosity to soft fascination.
The Melona kid, apparently over his horror and already circling back to his primary concern, perks up. “So Mrs. Nam left you this store? Both of you?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s so cool.” He looks around at the shelves through the open doors, thinking. “Can I inherit the store someday?”
Ryowoon doesn’t miss a beat. “Sure, whatever. Go to business school first.”
I snort, dropping the grocery bag onto the table as I settle beside Ryowoon on the bench. “Alright, you guys should get home before your parents start wondering where you are.”
They groan, protest, drag their feet, but they go, peeling off in twos and threes, waving sticky popsicle hands over their shoulders. Thank yous trail behind them down the hill. The Melona kid turns back once to holler, “Bye, Mr. Heo! Bye, Ahjussi!” and I can feel Ryowoon bristle beside me.
“Ahjussi,” he mutters darkly. “I’m thirty-five, not fifty.”
“You did just tell them a war story and lecture them about protein in red bean popsicles.”
“It does have protein.”
I shake my head, reaching down as Yuro trots over from where he was napping in the shade, his tail sweeping wide as he pushes his nose into my palm. I scratch behind his ears, his fur warm from the sun.
“Don’t know if their parents will appreciate your blunt storytelling approach,” I say, still petting the dog.
Ryowoon grunts, leaning back on his palms. “Better they see the ugly truth. Maybe it’ll scare them straight before they get to high school.”
I chuckle at that. Maybe he’s not wrong.
We sit for a minute watching the neighborhood go by.
An older couple shuffling toward the market, a woman hanging laundry on her balcony two houses up, a cat picking its way along the top of a wall.
The sounds of the harbor drift up faintly, boat engines and gulls.
Ryowoon reaches over, his fingers finding the back of my neck, rubbing slow circles into the muscle there.
I let him, tipping my head forward to give him better access.
“You look flushed,” he says, tilting my chin with his other hand, peering at my face.
“Just hot. The climb up the hill is getting worse in this weather.”
He shrugs. “So stay in. We can order food delivery now. Imagine that.”
I grin, leaning slightly into the press of his thumb working a knot at the base of my skull.
No one passing by bats an eye. Mrs. Kang from across the street waves as she hauls her recycling to the curb and Ryowoon lifts a hand in return without taking the other off my neck.
To the people here, this is just what Seyeon and Ryowoon look like.
It’s what we’ve always looked like, since we were six years old and inseparable.
Two men who came into the world in the same room on the same day, who grew up tangled together on the same streets, who live now in the room behind the convenience store with their dog.
The same way no one thought twice about us stumbling out of the same apartment every morning when we were twenty-three.
In a town this small, people see what they’ve always seen.
Those who know, know. Those who don’t, don’t look any closer.
Only my mom, Sihyung, and Yoohan know what’s behind it. Sihyung made a face when we told him, screwed up his mouth and said, “Is that what you two were up to in that apartment? Fuck’s sake.” And that was it. Yoohan bought us beer to celebrate, which Ryowoon refused and I drank for both of us.