Page 135 of The Way Back Home

“It does have protein.”

I shake my head, reaching down as Yuro trots over from where he was napping in the shade, his tail sweeping wide as he pushes his nose into my palm. I scratch behind his ears, his fur warm from the sun.

“Don’t know if their parents will appreciate your blunt storytelling approach,” I say, still petting the dog.

Ryowoon grunts, leaning back on his palms. “Better they see the ugly truth. Maybe it’ll scare them straight before they get to high school.”

I chuckle at that. Maybe he’s not wrong. We sit for a minute watching the neighborhood go by. An older couple shuffling toward the market, a woman hanging laundry on her balcony two houses up, a cat picking its way along the top of a wall. The sounds of the harbor drift up faintly, boat engines and gulls. Ryowoon reaches over, his fingers finding the back of my neck, rubbing slow circles into the muscle there. I let him, tipping my head forward to give him better access.

“You look flushed,” he says, tilting my chin with his other hand, peering at my face.

“Just hot. The climb up the hill is getting worse in this weather.”

He shrugs. “So stay in. We can order food delivery now. Imagine that.”

I grin, leaning slightly into the press of his thumb working a knot at the base of my skull. No one passing by bats an eye. Mrs. Kang from across the street waves as she hauls her recycling to the curb and Ryowoon lifts a hand in return without taking the other off my neck. To the people here, this is just what Seyeon and Ryowoon look like. It’s what we’ve always looked like, since we were six years old and inseparable. Two men who came into the world in the same room on the same day, who grew up tangled together on the same streets, who live now in the room behind the convenience store with their dog. The same way no one thought twice about us stumbling out of the same apartment every morning when we were twenty-three. In a town this small, people see what they’ve always seen. Those who know, know. Those who don’t, don’t look any closer.

Only my mom, Sihyung, and Yoohan know what’s behind it. Sihyung made a face when we told him, screwed up his mouth and said, “Is that what you two were up to in that apartment? Fuck’s sake.” And that was it. Yoohan bought us beer to celebrate, which Ryowoon refused and I drank for both of us.

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.