Seulgi doesn’t turn up to see me at all.

When I was staring down my summer-long sentence in Noonchi Lake, the idea of seeing her again was the only thing that made it feel at all bearable, but so far my hey, I’m back and let’s hang out texts have gone resolutely unanswered.

Could be she hates me, too. Seulgi and I have been friends since first grade, and she stuck by me pretty hard at the end of junior year, sitting beside me in the cafeteria at school even as everyone else at our lunch table mysteriously disappeared and the whispers turned into something way, way worse.

Still, the truth is I didn’t exactly give her a heads-up before I left Noonchi Lake to do my senior year at Yongei – an all-girls boarding school plunked like a missile silo in the middle of the desert just outside Busan.

Absconded under the cover of darkness, more like.

By the next day it’s been a full ninety-six hours of minimal human contact, though, so when my mother knocks hard on the bedroom door to let me know her cleaning lady is coming, I pull some clean shorts out of the pile of detritus already accumulated on my floor. My T-shirts and underwear are still in my giant duffel. I’ll have to unpack at some point, probably, although the truth is I’d almost rather live out of a suitcase for three months. My old sneakers are tucked underneath the desk chair, I notice while I’m crouched down there, the laces still tied from the last time I wore them – the day the article came out I remember suddenly, like I thought I could somehow outrun a national publication. I had sprinted as hard and as fast as I could manage.

I’d thrown up on the dusty side of the road.

I do my best to shake off the memory, grabbing the photo of me and the Byuls – still facedown on the desk where I left it the other night – and shoving it into the back of the drawer in my nightstand. Then I lace my boots up and take the old Sonata into Noonchi Lake proper.

It’s cool enough to open the windows, even through the pine trees lining the sides of Route 4 I can smell the slightly mildew scent of the lake as I head for the short stretch of civilization that makes up downtown: Main Street is small and rumpled, all small eateries and dingy grocery stores, a retro roller rink that hasn’t been opened since roughly 1982. That’s about the last time this place was a destination, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell – the lakefront plus the endless stretch of Hanadil Mountains was a big vacation spot in the sixties and seventies. Ever since I can remember, Noonchi Lake has had the air of something that used to be but isn’t anymore, like you fell into your grandparents’ honeymoon by mistake.

I speed up as I bypass the Byul’s pizza shop, slouching low in my seat like a criminal until I pull in front of Midnight Roast, the coffee shop where Seulgi’s worked since we were freshmen. I open the door to the smell of freshly ground beans and the sound of some moody girl singer on the radio. The shop is mostly empty, a late-morning lull. Seulgi’s standing behind the counter, raven-dark hair hanging in her eyes, and when she looks up at the jingle of the bells, guilt, awkward panic flashed across her pretty face in the moment before she can quell it.

“Oh my God,” she says once she’s recovered, coming around the counter and hugging me fast and antiseptic, then holding me back at arms length like a great-aunt having a look at how much I’ve grown. Literally, in my case – I’ve put on fifteen pounds easy since I left for my refuge at boarding school – and even though she’d never say anything about it, I can feel her taking it in. “You’re here!”

“I am,” I agree, my voice sounding weird and false. She’s wearing a gauzy sundress under her Midnight Roast apron, a splotch of deep blue on the side of her hand like she was up late sketching one of the pen-and-ink portraits she’s been doing since we were little kids. Every year on her birthday I buy her a fresh set of markers, the fancy kind from the art supply store. When I was in boarding school, I went online and had them shipped. “Did you get my texts?”

Seulgi does something between a nod and a head shake, noncommittal. “Yeah, my phone’s been really weird lately?” she says, voice coming up at the end like she’s unsure. She shrugs then, always oddly graceful even though she’s been five eight since we were in middle school. Somehow she never got teased. “It eats things; I need a new one. Come on, let me get you coffee.”

She heads black around the counter, past the rack of mugs they give people who plan to hang out on one of the sagging couches, and hands me a paper to-go cup. I’m not sure if it’s a message or not. She waves me off when I try to pay.

“Thanks,” I tell her, smiling a little bit helplessly. I’m not used to making small talk with her. “So, hey, RSD, huh?” I try – I saw on Instagram that that’s where she’s headed in the fall, a selfie of her smiling hugely in a Renon School of Design sweatshirt. As the words come out of my mouth I realize how totally bizarre it is that that’s how I found out. We told each other everything – well, almost everything – once upon a time. “We’ll be neighbors in the fall. You’re RSD while I’m SU.”

“Oh, yeah,” Seulgi says, sounding distracted. “I think it’s like an hour, though, right?”

“Yeah, but an hour’s not tha