22. Epilogue #2
Everything settled into place after that, piece by piece, like furniture finding its spot in a room.
I got the teaching position at the new school.
Ryowoon runs the store while I’m working, keeps it stocked and organized with a natural instinct for it that Mrs. Nam would’ve been proud of.
Nights we spend tucked together in the single room with Yuro curled in the corner, Ryowoon’s body warm against mine, his breath evening out against the back of my neck as we fall asleep.
He’s got plans, keeps sketching them on spare paper at the counter when business is slow.
A second floor, built on top of the store.
A real apartment, a kitchen with enough room to actually move, a bedroom where we don’t have to sleep on floor mats.
He showed me the drawings one evening, spreading them across the counter with that look he gets when his hands need something to build, with quiet focused energy.
I looked at the plans and saw a home. Ours.
But I’m not complaining about the room. Not about any of it. Things feel settled in a way I don’t think either of us has felt before. Like life was always heading here and we just needed the long, painful, winding push to send us back onto the path.
Ryowoon’s hand drops from my neck. I hear him shift, the rustle of denim, and look over to see him reaching into his back pocket. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, flicking it open with his thumb out of habit before he’s even gotten a cigarette out.
I reach over. Put my hand gently on his arm.
He pauses, brows lifting as he looks at me. The unlit cigarette is pinched between two fingers, halfway to his lips.
“Can you stop?”
He tips his head. Studies my face.
“Don’t feed me some bullshit about how you don’t like the smell or something.”
I smile. “It’s just…” I look at him, at the lines of his face.
The scar beneath his jaw. The tired circles that have started to fade in the months since he stopped sleeping alone.
The piercings in the late sun, silver glinting.
“We came into this world together. And I’d really like it if we left it together too.
At a respectable, healthy age.” I hold his gaze.
“A long time from now. And you owe me an additional ten years on top of it, by the way.”
Ryowoon stares at me. His eyes flicker, emotion shifting behind them. I watch his resistance form and dissolve, his jaw tightens and then loosens, his throat moves as he swallows.
Then he sighs. His shoulders drop, the tension going out of them all at once.
He sets the pack of cigarettes down on the table beside him. Closes the lighter with a quiet click and puts that down too. Looks at them sitting there for a second, his expression put-upon and mournful, like I’ve asked him to give up a kidney.
“If you’re going to take away all of my vices,” he says, turning that wounded look on me, “you’d better be prepared to make up for it.”
I stand, pulling him up with me. My fingers wrap around his wrist, thumb smoothing over the constellation tattoo on the inside.
“I can think of a few distractions.”
He lets me pull him to his feet but makes a show of dragging, hanging back. “I’m warning you. If I can’t smoke, I’m going to be real grouchy for a while.”
I snort. “Doesn’t sound like much of a change.”
“More than usual.”
I look back over my shoulder at him, grinning. Yuro scrambles up from the concrete and falls into step beside us, tail going, and Ryowoon’s eyes drop to the dog for a second, his mouth softening.
“Guess I’ll just have to give you reasons to be in a good mood then.”
He grumbles. Something about how I’m insufferable and always have been.
But he follows. His fingers curl around mine where I’m still holding his wrist, adjusting my grip until our hands are laced together, his palm rough and warm against mine.
He’ll always follow. Always give in to whatever I want, no matter how much he complains about it.
Even when it means coming back to the town that broke both of us open and somehow, against every odd, put us back together.
The store’s lights glow behind us as we walk through the doors.
Yuro’s nails click on the floor as he trots ahead into the back.
The evening is settling in, golden light slanting through the windows, reflecting off the fresh paint and the shelves we stocked together, the counter where Mrs. Nam used to sit and watch her dramas, where she fed two hungry boys their first real meal and told them to stop stealing and just ask.
Ryowoon pauses in the doorway, his hand still in mine. Looks back out at the street, the harbor below, the rooftops and the hills and the sky turning colors the way it does here in a way it never did in any other city I’ve lived in.
“Hey, Seyeon.”
“Hm?”
He doesn’t say anything for a second. Just stands there in the doorway, half in and half out, the warm light on one side and the fading day on the other. Then he squeezes my hand once and turns back in, pulling the doors closed behind him.
“Nothing. Let’s go home.”
I smile. We already are.