Now and for the Last Time

6 장

By the time I got to my mom's office, I'd somewhat calmed down. Gayeon had helped, turning up the radio loud as she drove us through the city, now and then taking looks at me she though I didn't notice. It was beautiful out on the sidewalks and in their cars, windows down - while elsewhere, someone's worst nightmare had only just become real. It seemed wrong, like there should've been a stain on the day or something.

"Are you sure you don't want us to hang out for a few minutes?" Gayeon asked me as she pulled into the lot of my mom's office, where I'd left my car parked earlier. "All I have left to do is to pick up Jae's new glasses and then grabbed from from TaeKwonDo."

"Another pair of glasses?" I questioned.

She glanced at the twins in the rear view, each looking out a separate window, sitting close to each other. "The kid got suspended this time. We'll see if it makes a difference."

Although I found Jae's monotone and awkwardness appealing, it made him a target for the bullies at his school. Martial arts had made him strong, but not much of a difference in the lunch line, at least not yet. In the meantime, the Chois spent a lot on replacement eyewear.

"I'm fine, you should go," I told her. "I'll see you at the ceremony."

"Here's hoping Seunghoo passes out and doesn't make it."

"Fingers crossed."

She laughed, and I did too, if only to convince her I was, in fact, okay. With her Choi and me Bae, we'd spent our lives in this city with Seunghoo Boo between us for every alphabetical occasion, except when he was too stoned to show up for school. We'd long hoped this would happen for graduation, if only for the continuity of us being on the stage at the same time. Making memories, indeed.

As she drove off, already cranking the radio, I started toward my mom's office. Soojung Bae Weddings was located in the center of a modern office building with a dentist's office on one side and a stationary store on the other. Entirely too much of my paycheck had gone to the latter due to my weakness for cards, writing paper, and blank journals. Life seemed so much manageable when you could write it down neatly on papers which was probably exactly why could only do it for a day or two, and hadn't even tried in the last year. When I looked through those barely begun journals now, the events on the pages seemed too small to even fill the lines, that not important. Thinking this, I had a flashback to the salesgirl and her computer, and felt a shiver. I pulled open the door to my mom's office, where the A/C was always blasting and I wouldn't notice my own drop in temperature.

Wooyoung saw me, though, immediately getting up from his seat at the conferences table across from Julee and coming over. "I had a news alert on my phone," he said in a low voice. Distantly, I heard my mom, also at the table, saying something about headcounts. "You okay?"

"Fine," I said automatically. "Go back to your meeting. I just came to drop off the tickets."

He nodded, but still waited a second, as if I might change my mind, before returning to the group. Meanwhile, I slipped into the office, where I reached into my pocket, pulling out two passes I'd picked up for the ceremony. You were allowed up to six, but it wasn't like I needed any more. I slid them into my mom's purse, which was sitting on her side of the big desk they shared, then went back out into the main room.

". . . were supposed to meet me half hour ago," Julee was saying to brother Sehun, who had joined the group in my brief absence. Dressed in jeans, a short-sleeve blue button-down, and tennis shoes, he looked freshly showered, as if just beginning his day at this late hour. Maybe this was why his sister, usually so pleasant, seemed annoyed. "It's no wonder you can't get a job if you're incapable of getting places on time."