Chapter 10
The Hollow Victory
The wind in Paarden Eiland was not the romantic, howling gale Ran had once described to Emi over a crackling phone line.
It was a gritty, industrial gust that smelled of diesel, salt, and rotting kelp.
It rattled the corrugated iron sheets of the logistics warehouse where Ran Coetzee had spent the last five years of his life.
He stood in the foreman’s office, a small glass cube overlooking the floor where forklifts buzzed like angry yellow hornets. He held a slip of paper in his grease-stained hand. It was a transaction receipt.
He had done it. It had taken five years of graveyard shifts, lifting crates until his back screamed, eating instant noodles, and living in a room the size of a closet in a boarding house. But he had paid back CarbonBlack Energy. He had paid back the tuition. He was free.
Ran looked at his reflection in the dark window.
The "Golden Boy" of the U17 National Team was gone.
In his place was a man of thirty who looked thirty five.
His jaw-length hair was chopped short now, practical and messy.
The stubble on his jaw was thicker, hiding the tension that never seemed to leave his face.
His bright blue eyes, once full of the sun, were harder, like chips of ice found in deep water.
He should have felt triumphant. He should have felt like shouting. Instead, he felt a cavernous, echoing silence inside his chest.
He had cleared the ledger with the company, but the ledger of his soul was still deep in the red. He had sacrificed everything to pay this debt—his degree, his reputation, and, most painfully, Emi.
He walked out of the warehouse for the last time, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He didn't say goodbye to the other workers. He had kept to himself for five years, a ghost haunting the loading docks, terrified that if he made a friend, someone might ask him who he used to be.
He walked to the nearest payphone booth on the corner of the main road. The sun was setting over Table Mountain, painting the sky in bruises of purple and orange.
He had a plane ticket in his pocket. One way. Cape Town to JFK.
But before he could leave the continent, the guilt that had been gnawing at his gut for five years finally demanded to be fed.
He needed to hear her voice. Or, at least, he needed to know she was okay.
He needed to know that his cowardice—his decision to cut her loose so she wouldn't be dragged down by his failure—had worked.
His fingers trembled as he dialed the number. He didn't need to look it up. It was burned into his memory, the only sequence of numbers that mattered.
Ring... Ring…
His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic rhythm that brought back the stutter he had fought so hard to suppress.
"Hello?"
It wasn't Emi. The voice was sharper, older, weary but strong.
"T-Tracey?" Ran asked, his grip on the handset tightening until his knuckles turned white. There was a silence on the other end. A long, heavy silence that stretched across the kilometers between Cape Town and Pietermaritzburg.
"Who is this?" Tracey asked, though her tone suggested she already knew.
"It's Ran," he whispered.
He heard a sharp intake of breath, followed by a sound that might have been a plate being set down hard on a table.
"You have a lot of nerve," Tracey said. Her voice was low, trembling with a cold, suppressed fury. "Five years, Ran. Five years of silence. And you call on a Tuesday evening?"
"I know," Ran stammered, the lisp slipping out. "I know, Tracey. I... I messed up. I failed. I lost the scholarship. I couldn't... I couldn't let Emi see me like that."
"So you killed yourself?" Tracey snapped. "Because that’s what it felt like to her. You didn't just break up with her, Ran. You vanished. Do you have any idea what that did to her? She stopped eating. She stopped sleeping. She thought you were dead or in jail."
"I did it for her!" Ran argued, tears pricking his eyes. "I had nothing! I was in debt! I was working in a warehouse! If she had come down here... she would have ruined her life trying to fix mine. I had to let her go so she could fly."
"You don't get to decide that!" Tracey shouted, the anger finally exploding. "You don't get to decide what she can handle! She was your partner, you coward. She was ready to walk through fire for you, and you shut the door in her face because you were too proud to admit you failed a few exams."
Ran leaned his forehead against the dirty glass of the phone booth. "Is she there? Please, Tracey. Let me talk to her. I just... I'm leaving. I'm going to New York. finally. I just want to tell her—"
"She's not here," Tracey cut him off.
"Where is she?" Ran asked, desperate. "Is she at the bakery? Is she... is she married?" The thought made him nauseous.
Tracey paused. In that pause, a thousand calculations ran through her mind.
She knew where Emi was. She knew Emi was in New York, lonely and struggling and still haunted by this man.
If she told him, he would go find her. He would crash into her life again with his baggage and his guilt, and he might ruin the fragile stability Emi was building. Tracey made a choice.
"It doesn't matter where she is," Tracey said coldly. "She moved on, Ran. She grew up. She stopped waiting for the phone to ring."
"Please," Ran choked out. "Just tell her... tell her I loved her. Tell her I’m sorry."
"I won't tell her anything," Tracey said. "Because as far as this family is concerned, you died five years ago. Don't call here again. Let her live."
Click.
The dial tone hummed in Ran’s ear. It was the sound of a coffin lid closing.
He hung up the phone slowly. He stood there for a long time, watching the cars drive past, feeling the finality of it. Tracey was right. He was dead to them. He had made his choice in his shame, and now he had to live with the consequences.
He wiped his face with his sleeve and walked away from the phone booth. He had one more call to make, but this one was purely business. Or survival.
He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. It had a number with a New York area code.
"Michael?" Ran asked when the line connected.
"Ran! My man!" Michael’s voice was loud, cheerful, and sounded like it was coming from a busy street. "You finally out of the hole?"
"Yeah," Ran said, his voice flat. "I'm clear. I'm at the airport."
Michael had been a friend from the basketball circuit years ago, a drifter who had ended up in the States. He was the only lifeline Ran had left.
"That's awesome, bro. Listen, the offer is still solid," Michael said. "I talked to the landlord. He’s this old Korean guy, Mr. Kim. Tough as nails, owns the whole building. He runs a Taekwondo dojang upstairs, but he owns the auto repair shop on the ground floor where I work."
"And he needs a mechanic?" Ran asked.
"He needs a wizard," Michael laughed. "I told him about you. Told him you could strip a Harley blindfolded and rebuild an engine with a toothpick. He’s skeptical, but he said if you can work, you can stay. There’s a small room in the back of the shop.
It ain't the Ritz, but it's rent-free if you pull your weight. "
"Rent-free is good," Ran said. He had exactly three hundred dollars to his name.
"It’s in Koreatown," Michael continued. "Busy spot. Good food. And Mr. Kim... he’s a good guy. Strict. Traditional. But he respects hard work. You’ll fit in."
"Thanks, Mike," Ran said. "I owe you."
"Just get your ass here. I’m tired of being the only guy who knows how to fix a transmission."
Ran hung up.
New York.
It wasn't the New York he had promised Emi. He wasn't going as a Business Science graduate. He wasn't going to work in a glass tower on Wall Street. He wasn't going to live in a loft with big windows.
He was going to live in a back room of a mechanic shop in Koreatown, fixing vehicles for a Taekwondo master.
It was a humbled dream. A broken version of the fantasy. But it was still New York.
Ran sat in the departure lounge of Cape Town International. He watched the planes taxiing on the runway, their lights blinking against the darkening sky.
He reached into his duffel bag and pulled out a small, worn object. It was a photograph of Emi, taken under the oak tree at their high school. She was laughing, her head thrown back, the curtain bangs falling away from her face.
He traced her face with his thumb.
"I'm going, Em," he whispered to the photo. "I'm going to the city. I know you're not there. I know you're probably happy somewhere in Pietermaritzburg with a guy who didn't run away."
He felt a tear slide down his cheek, hot and stinging.
"But I have to go. I have to see it. For both of us. Even if I'm seeing it alone."
He tucked the photo back into his wallet, behind his ID.
"Flight SA203 to New York JFK is now boarding," the intercom announced.
Ran Coetzee stood up. He picked up his bag. He walked toward the gate, leaving Africa behind. He was walking toward the same skyline that Liam looked at every morning, the same skyline Emi looked at every night.
He didn't know that the threads of fate were pulling tight. He didn't know that Mr. Kim, his future landlord, was the master who taught Liam how to fight. He didn't know that the city of millions was actually a very small town.
All he knew was that he was a mechanic with a broken heart, heading into the belly of the beast, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the noise of New York would be loud enough to drown out the silence of his regrets.
He boarded the plane, and for the first time in five years, Ran didn't look back. He looked forward, into the dark, toward the lights of the city that was waiting to eat him alive—or perhaps, finally, to bring him home.