Loveboat in 서울

𝟚𝟠

Tuesday night, I spend a quarter at my desk on Zoom with Eomma, trying to help her navigate a medical bill our insurance is refusing to cover. We're both tense, frustrated by the necessity of this call neither of us want to endure. Appa hasn't spoken to me since the nude-photo call. That he's still angry hurts more than I care to admit, but I try not to dwell on it. At least Eomma hasn't brought the photos up again.

As we wrap up, she says, "Suzy? I found a ticket from Seoul that's almost the right price. I'm watching for it come down."

"Eomma." Just like that, my blood pressure shoots through the ceiling. "I'm behaving. I'm getting all As. I'm even getting tutored. I don't need to come home early, and besides, there's less than three weeks left."

"Your abeoji and I, we made a mistake, sending you away your last summer."

United they stand, as always.

As I sign off, I push to my feet and find my legs trembling. I text Sihyeon:

Are they really still trying to bring me home
Sihyeon: Yes. They talk about your photo every night.

I groan and grab my bo staff, twirl it in a hypnotic whirl until it hums, then spin a full circle myself while keeping it revolving in place, a trick I do for my flag dances. I'd impressed Joohyuk with part of this move. He's been gone over a week, missing the dragon boat race he'd organized himself, from which I was banned. I want to tell him about this dance I'm doing for the talent show. I want to beat him in another duel. I take out my calligraphy inkwell and my thinnest brush, and paint my Korean name onto the staff's tip:

배수지

I blow on the paint until it dries.

All Joohyuk's stuff is still here. He has to come back.

He has to.

ʕु-̫͡-ʔुྉ*ᴸᵒᵛᵉᵇᵒᵃᵗ✲ﾟⁱⁿ*。⋆ 서울。⋆ *

Kang's already on the couch when I enter the fifth-floor lounge, the top three buttons undone on his black shirt, his pencil gliding over the sketchbook in his lap. He's drawing out in the open, new for him. A reader and a box of sweets are stacked at his side.

With a finger, he brushes his hair from his eyes. "You all right?"

I slump down beside him and open the box. "My parents are trying to fly me home after forcing me to come here in the first place. When I've finally gotten a group of dancers together." When I finally feel at home.

"I don't want you leaving either." He massages the back of my neck with cool fingers and I battle a twinge of guilt.

I shift away. "Don't."

He puts his hand into his lap. After a moment, he says, "If it's ticket prices they're waiting on, I doubt they'll come down."

"Let's hope not." But I'm not just fighting the ticket. I'm fighting the anxiousness, the guilt that welled like blood from a bad cut when I saw her tonight. The wrinkles deepening around her eyes. Her cup of herbal medicine she takes for ache that won't leave her back. Her bulldog fight to stretch every dollar.

"I brought some rice." I hold up a plastic-wrapped handful, wheedled from the kitchen staff. "We can make rice-clay letters." Sihyeon's tip. We kneed the rice into gray clay and form letters on the table until the rice starts to harden.

"Cool." Then Kang holds up an ancient-looking DVD. "I brought something different for tonight. Fighter in the Wind. You said you'd try it."

The taekwondo flick. "I said maybe." I smile. "The first day, when I didn't know any better." And he remembered. "I'm game."