“What are you going to do if you’re suspended?” Minki asks, before taking a sip of his usual, gross, Dr. Pepper.

School's over and we're at McDonald's. I had a craving for some fries after a long day of the same old, same old, I just wanted the same old, same old value meal snacks we’d grown up on.

“I’m not going to be suspended. I’m going to sign this stupid performance sheet and everything will be fine.”

“But let’s say, hypothetically, that’s not enough. And your grades don’t improve.”

“Why must you entertain this thought? To jinx me?” I glare, shoving a couple more fries in my mouth. Lukewarm and salty. This particular McDonald’s was always hit-or-miss when it came to being good. But I still wanted something to chew, something that gave me an excuse not to speak.

“I’m not trying to jinx you. Instill a little fear in you, maybe. , Win. Do you wanna graduate? Do you wanna move out? Do you wanna do anything?” Minki looks exasperated, pushing his drink away and leaning back into his booth seat.

There’s nothing like disappointment from your one and only friend.

I swallow hard. The last question hitting too close.

He sighs before my body has given in. Before the nervous bugs in my skin have eaten me down to show an answer.

“I know what today is.”

Now he’s staring at the table, looking caught and embarrassed.

“Huh?” I shift, leaning forward, unsure of where this is going.

“Three years ago… Today.” Minki looks up to meet my eyes and there’s a mixture of emotions in it that makes me hate eye contact, makes me hate knowing how complicated humans can be. How he can look at me with this love of friendship and pity and sorrow and caution, not sure if he has permission to bring it up. Because we don’t talk about this day.

“Since Jae’s mom died,” I finish for him.

How did I forget? I remembered last year and the year before and the year before. My head really must be messed up with this school .

Minki looks confused.

“I’m not- I meant- your dad… Remember?”

Oh.

Oh. Yeah.

“My dad.”

It comes out foreign and hollow, so unused like the time I’d broken my arm and when the cast came off, I’d found the limb had shrank half its size. The word “dad” was so small and weak, carrying no meaning really.

Maybe it was weird he’d been in my life for 13 years but suddenly the 3 years he hadn’t had won. That mom and I’d been so good at forgetting. That I’d took her side without really knowing the reasons why he’d gone. It hadn’t mattered.

He’d left me and I’d done nothing wrong. We were the victims. 

“Yeah. Your dad,” Minki repeats, now even more uncertain if he should’ve brought him up. Probably thinking maybe he’d made a mistake. I wasn’t being weird because I remembered today was the anniversary of something terrible, I was just being weird because I’m weird.

So naturally, in my weirdness, I stand up and announce “I have to go.”

“What for?”

“To see my mom.”

Even as I say it, I know I'm giving a false reason. For what, I'm not sure.

I feel my feet lead me before my head can catch up.

He hadn’t moved in all our lives. 

His complex had always felt so conveniently near back then but as I stopped visiting him, it was far enough to say the distance was what made me stop visiting. I just didn’t have time to walk. I had to get home, to focus on school. Lies.

I don’t know why I didn’t expect his dad to answer. I guess my head had erased all two-parent households. I guess thinking of Mrs. Shim’s death and how much Mr. Shim had loved her, somewhere I assumed he’d died with her. He was in the heart that had had a heart attack, after all.

“Winona?”

I want to smile, but for the first time in a long time, I feel ashamed to hear my name said with so much surprise and warmth, like I wasn’t some brat that had forgotten them after the funeral. I couldn’t smile. I didn’t deserve to have my name said with love like that, especially from someone outside my family, someone that I’d abandoned.

I meant to say hi, but I'm so shocked from the reaction of myself, it just comes out as “I”.

“You?” Mr. Shim politely waits for me to finish, thinking I meant to start off the sentence like that.

“Uh, sorry, hi. I… I came to see Jae.” 

But this sentence… This sentence felt meant. So meant like I’d been holding it in for years. 

Even if I saw Jae at school, even if he asked me the occasional question like how’d I’d done on a quiz. Like some kind of big brother that really cared, secretly keeping his eye on me to make sure I didn’t fall overboard into all the stuff I never talked about but everyone could always tell was there. Even if our hands brushed sometimes when he’d hand papers back from the front of our seating row. Even if all of that happened, there was always a big part of us that avoided each other. And that part was what had walked here today.

“Sure, come in,” Mr. Shim, smiles. As if just last week I had knocked and said the same. As if I hadn’t grown inches since the last time I kicked my shoes off at this front door.

The apartment… It looks the same.

The same wall color Mrs. Shim had chosen. A pale yellow, like the sun. The same dining room table and chairs, the same decorations. It had always been a little cramped here. But it was a comfortable crampness because she genuinely loved everything in her home. It was a bursting of so much love.

“I was just making some kimchi jjigae, if you wanted to stay over for dinner,” Mr. Shim offers, returning to a boiling pot in the kitchen on the right.

Suddenly, the smell overwhelms me and I remember how good a cook he is, but I shouldn’t get too ahead of myself. I don’t even know what I'm really here for. I just know I have to be here. I have to see Jae today.

“Thank you for the offer, um. I’ll have to check with my mom first,” I say, attempting once again to smile.

Mr. Shim nods in understanding.

And I turn to walk down a familiar short hallway that ends with a particular blue door.

I only knock once before it opens.

“Dad, I said-”

It's dim. The hallway lights are off and his room lights are off, but he seems to register me immediately. 

We used to know each other like that. Even in the dark, I could recognize him.