BEFORE.

The week before I left my family and Chuncheon and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Seoul, my mother insisted on throwing me a gowing-away party. To say that I have low expectations would be to underestimate the matter dramatically. Although I was more or less forced to invite all my "school friends," i.e., the ragtag bunch of drama people and English geeks I sat with by social necessity in the carniverous cafeteria of my public school, I knew they wouldn't come. Still, my mother preserved, awashed in the delusion that I had kept my popularity secret from her all these years. She cooked a small mountain of artichoke dip. She festooned our living room in green and yellow steamers, the colors of my new school. She bought two dozen champagne poppers and placed them around the edge of our coffee table.

And when that final Friday came, when my packing was mostly done, she sat with my dad and me on the living room couch at 4:56 pm and patiently waited the arrival of the good-bye to me. Said good-bye consisted of exactly two people: Jung Misun, a tiny short haired with rectangular glasses and her chunky (to put it charitably) boyfriend, Lee Yooshin. 

"Hey, Minseok." Misun said as she sat down.

"Hey," I said.

"How was your summer?" Yooshin asked.

"Okay. Yours?"

"Good. We did Jesus Christ Superstar. I helped with the sets. Misun did the lights." said Yooshin.

"That's cool." I nodded knowingly, and that about how exhausted our conversational topics are. I might have asked a question about Jesus ​Christ Superstar, except that 1. I didn't know what it was and 2. I didn't care to learn, and 3. I never really excelled at small talk. My mom, however, can talk small for hours, so she extended the awkwardness by asking them about their rehersal schedule, and how the show had gone, and whether it was success.

"I guess it was," Misun said. "A lot of people came, I guess." Misun was the sort of person to guess a lot.

Finally, Yooshin said, "Well, we just dropped by to say good-bye. I've got to get Misun home by six. Have fun at boarding school, Minseok." 

"Thanks," I answered, relieved. The only thing worse than having a party that no one attends is having a party attended only by the two vastly, deeply uninteresting people. They left, and so I sat with my parents and stared at the blank TV and wanted to turn it on but knew I shouldn't. I could feel them both looking at me, waiting for me to burst in to tears or something, as if I hadn't known all along that it would go precisely like this. But I had known. I could feel their pity as they scooped artichoke dip with chips intended for my imaginary friends, but they needed pity more than I did: I wasn't disappointed. My expectations had been met.

"Is this why you wanted to leave, Minseok?" Mom asked. I mulled over for a moment, careful not to look at her. "Uh, no," I said. 

"Well why then?" she asked. This was not the first time she had posed the question. Mom was not particularly keen on letting mebgo to boarding school and had made no secret of it. "Because of me?" my dad asked. He attended Han River, the same boarding school to which I was headed, as both of his brother and all of their kids. I think he liked the idea of my following in his footsteps. My uncles had told me stories about how famous my das had been in campus fir having simultaneously raised hell and aced all his classes. That sounded like a better life than the one I have here at Chuncheon. But no, it wasn't because of Dad. Not exactly.

"Hold on," I said. I went into Dad's study and found his biography of François Rabelais. I like reading biographies of writers, even if (as the case with Monsieur Rabelais) I'd never read any of their actual writing. I flipped to the back and found the highlighted qoute ("NEVER USE A HIGHLIGHTER IN MY BOOKS" my dad had told me a thousand times. But how else are you supposed to find what you're looking for?)

"So this guy," I said, standing in the doorway of the living room. "François Rabelais. He was this poet. And his last words were 'I go to seek a Great Perhaps.' That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait till I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps." 

And that qieted them. I was after a Great Perhaps, and they knew as well as I did that I wasn't going to find it with the likes of Misun and Yooshin. I sat back down on the couch, between my mom and dad, and my dad put his arm around me, and we stayed there like that, quiet on the couch together, for a long time, until it seemed okay to turn on the TV, and then we ate artichoke dip for dinner and watched the History Channel, and as going-away parties go, it certainly could have been worst.