Page 38 of Perfect Companion
I run through it quickly. Sungyoon left this morning for his school trip, I watched him pack his bag last night and reminded him twice to set his alarm. His bus was supposed to depart at eight. It’s past noon now. The apartment should be empty, nothing in it that can’t be managed as long as I’m careful about what’s visible and what isn’t.
“No,” I say, and shut the car door. “It’s fine. Come on.”
We take the elevator up because the stairs smell like mildew and I’d rather not subject Hongjoong to that particular charm of the building. The elevator isn’t much better, a narrow box with flickering fluorescent lighting and a panel of buttons where the numbers have been worn smooth by years of use, but Hongjoong doesn’t comment. He stands beside me with his hands in his jacket pockets, his shoulder brushing mine in the tight space, and when the doors open on my floor he follows me down the hallway without a word.
I unlock the front door and step inside, toeing off my shoes on the mat and moving aside so Hongjoong can enter behind me. The self-consciousness hits me the second I see the apartment through his eyes, or through what I imagine his eyes must be seeing. The entryway is barely wide enough for two people to stand side by side. The shoe rack is overflowing, Sungyoon’s sneakers and my dress shoes and a pair of old sandals all crammed together on the bottom shelf. The overhead light flickers once before catching, making the narrow hallway slightly yellow.
Hongjoong’s head is on a swivel as he steps past me, his gaze moving across the small living area with its secondhand couch and the coffee table I assembled myself from a flat-pack kit that was missing two screws. The cramped kitchen is visible through the open doorway, clean dishes drying in the rack beside the sink, a row of mismatched mugs on hooks beneath the cabinet. The worn furniture, the thin carpet, the narrow hallway leadingto two bedrooms with their doors standing open. I keep the place clean and tidy because that’s the one thing I can control, but it’s tiny, a fraction of the size of Hongjoong’s apartment, and though Hongjoong doesn’t say a single word about it I can see the displeasure settling into the crease between his brows, the way his mouth tightens at the corners as his eyes catch on the water stain spreading across the ceiling above the kitchen doorway. I’ve called the building manager about that stain four times. Nothing ever gets done.
“I’ll just be a minute,” I say, moving past him toward my bedroom. “Make yourself comfortable. Or don’t, there’s not much to be comfortable on.”
“How long have you lived here?” Hongjoong asks from behind me, his voice carefully neutral enough to tell me he’s working hard to keep his opinions to himself.
“Since just after my son was born,” I answer over my shoulder, pulling my weekend bag from the top shelf of the closet and dropping it onto the bed. “It was what I could afford at the time and it’s been fine since.”
Hongjoong follows me into the bedroom, and I watch him take in the narrow bed pushed against the wall, the single nightstand with its reading lamp, the bookshelves I mounted myself that hold a mix of paperbacks and reference books and a few of Sungyoon’s old picture books I never got around to giving away. He sits on the edge of my bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, and leans back on his hands as his eyes scan the spines on the shelf nearest to him.
My stomach clenches. I move to the side as casually as I can manage, positioning myself between Hongjoong and the shelf where a framed photo of Sungyoon in his soccer uniform from last summer sits propped against a stack of paperbacks. While Hongjoong is occupied reading titles, his head tilted to follow the vertical text on the spines, I reach up and turn the frameface-down, tucking it behind the books with a quick push of my fingers. The soft scrape of the frame against the shelf sounds deafening to me but Hongjoong doesn’t look up.
I step into my small closet and start packing, pulling shirts from hangers and folding them into the bag with shaky hands. Pants, a belt, underwear, toiletries from the shelf inside the closet door. I’m almost done, reaching for a pair of socks from the drawer, when I hear the front door lock beep.
The electronic chirp cuts through the quiet apartment and I straighten so fast my back twinges. I step out of the closet and look down the hall, my blood going cold in my veins, and I see the front door swinging inward.
Hongjoong looks up from the bookshelf too, glancing toward the hallway with mild curiosity. “Is that your son?” he asks calmly.
I swallow. My mouth has gone completely dry. “Hold on,” I say, putting my hands up in a gesture I hope reads as casual and not panicked. “Stay here.”
I step out of the bedroom and into the hallway, my heart hammering so hard I can feel my pulse in my fingertips, and walk toward the front door.
Sungyoon is hurrying inside, dressed for his trip, his backpack slung over one shoulder. He stops when he sees me and his face breaks into an easy grin, the one that shows his dimple, and I have to lock every muscle in my body to keep from visibly flinching at the sight of it.
“Hey,” I say, and I’m grateful that my voice comes out steady. “Why are you still here? I thought you were supposed to be on the bus already.”
Sungyoon kicks his shoes off onto the pile by the door. “I forgot my swim trunks,” he says, already moving past me toward the hallway. “Jihoon’s mom offered to swing by so I could grab them on the way. It’ll only take a second.” He pauses and looksat me, his sharp eyes flicking over my jacket, my bag visible through the open bedroom door. “I thought you were supposed to be out already too.”
“I am,” I say. “Just packing up.”
Sungyoon nods and starts down the narrow hallway toward his room at a quick clip, his backpack bouncing against his shoulder, then he stops dead.
I turn to see what he’s seeing, and the floor drops out from under me.
Hongjoong has stepped out of my bedroom and is standing in the hallway. He and Sungyoon are looking directly at each other.
Hongjoong goes still. His eyes land on Sungyoon and stay there, fixed, his whole body locking into a pose of rigid attention that I’ve never seen from him before. The hallway is narrow enough that they’re only a few feet apart, close enough to touch, and the similarities between them when they’re face to face like this are so painfully, glaringly obvious that I feel like someone has reached into my chest and squeezed. The same cat-like features. The same sharp brown eyes set at the same angle beneath the same strong brow. The same bone structure, the same jawline, the same high cheekbones that catch the light in the same way. And when Sungyoon’s mouth twitches with uncertainty, the dimple appears in his left cheek, exactly where Hongjoong’s sits, in the exact same spot, cutting the exact same depth.
Sungyoon is a younger, softer, unfinished version of the man standing across from him, and neither of them can stop looking at the other.
The apartment goes deadly quiet. I can hear the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the muffled sound of traffic from the street below, and nothing else. I can see the confusion gathering on Sungyoon’s face, the way his brow furrows as his eyes move across Hongjoong’s features with that perceptiveintelligence he got from both of us, clearly noticing something he can’t explain but can’t look away from either. And Hongjoong is staring at the boy with an expression that shifts from curiosity into a sharper, more unsettled analysis, his brow creasing deeper with each passing second, his eyes flickering between Sungyoon’s face and mine as something begins to take shape behind them.
Then Sungyoon moves. He bows slightly to Hongjoong, polite but wary, the way I taught him to greet adults he doesn’t know, and says nothing. He steps carefully around Hongjoong in the narrow hallway, their shoulders nearly brushing, and disappears into his bedroom. I hear him rummaging through a drawer.
Hongjoong’s gaze snaps to me. I feel those eyes like a hand closing around my throat, the fire building in them, the rapid thoughts I can almost hear clicking into place behind his expression. He saw himself in that boy. I watched it happen in real time, watched the recognition, and now the gears are turning and there is nothing I can do to stop them.
Sungyoon reemerges a moment later with his swim trunks stuffed into his backpack, zipping it shut as he steps back into the hallway. He moves around Hongjoong again and the two of them eye each other in another loaded heartbeat of silence, Sungyoon’s gaze lingering on Hongjoong’s face with open curiosity now, like he’s trying to solve a puzzle. Then Sungyoon looks past Hongjoong to me, a question in his expression that I can’t answer right now.
“I’ll be going now,” Sungyoon says.
“Right,” I manage. My voice sounds far away. “Be careful. Have fun.”
