Starry Night

twenty-eight

We spend the weekend at my grandparents' house in Busan. They live in a small house in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. Which may sound nice, but it's so boring, and it doesn't take long for me to feel unmoored and restless. As though my life is going backward instead of forward.

As though we've been fighting a war and lost.

Halmeoni feeds us constantly, and that seems to help eomma. She's not completely falling apart like I worried she might, but she's crying a lot, and that makes me cry. And all the conversations between her and Halabeoji makes me feel ineffectual.

Everything's chaos. I'm homeless. Our family's broken. My entire future is up in the air. And I'm missing Jungkook desperately. Even though he made it home from Aspan Park just fine, and we text constantly and occasionally talk on the phone when I can get away from everyone, it's not the same.

I miss him in a way I never have.

I miss his deep voice and dark sense of humor. I miss his face and the feeling of security I have when he's nearby. I miss the way he holds me, and the thrill of his fingers stroking down my back. I miss him so much, I feel physically ill.

I don't want more food or a nap or to watch a movie. I just want to go home and see Jungkook. Only, I don't know where home is anymore. I think about how Jungkook and I spent the last year avoiding each other, and what a waste that was. We didn't know how good we had it, living so close. We were both stupid. I wish I could erase the entire year and start all over. Stop him from getting that hotel room. Stop my father from cheating and ruining the business and our credit, because now Halmeoni is saying that he's the reason eomma was having trouble with the bank before I left on the camping trip. He secretly spent all my parents' savings and credit on his affairs. Trips. Hotel rooms. Expensive restaurants. Gifts. He was living large while eomma was trying to keep the business afloat.

My grandparents say they're going to sue him for all the money they gave him to invest in the business. Halmeoni is sure the judge will grant eomma full custody if my dad fights it. The good thing is that he won't; the sad thing is that he won't. I can't decide how I feel about him, and I'm tired of trying to figure it out and weary of my life being in limbo. Something has to give.

And on Tuesday morning, it does.

Everything changes.

I'm restless and a little depressed, watching Damon lounge listlessly in a dog bed that's too small for her while Halmeoni's energetic dogs unsuccessfully try to coax  her into playing. Eomma appears in the doorway, and I think it's probably to check my hives again, because she's been monitoring me like a doctor.

But Eomma is not interested in my allergies. She has a strange look on her face. It's like happiness, but a little angrier. Happy angry. Hapry.

"Get your stuff," she says. "We're going home."

"To Dad?"

"Your father has moved in with one of his mistresses in Seoul. You and I are going home, changing the locks, and I"m going to figure out how to keep the clinic running without him."

It sounds too good to be true. "Can you do that?"

"Suzy, I can do anything I damn well want." she says, sounding unexpectedly confident and positive. "And what I want is to go back to Daegu and be Daegu's best acupuncturist while raising my future astrophysicist daughter. So that's what I'm going to do."

"Maybe sound a little surer of yourself, while you're at it," I mumble, smiling.

And for the first time since all of this chaos exploded, she smiles too. Just for a second.