It takes him a while to find the house, tucked away in a forgotten part of a city he’s lived in all his life. The paint is peeling, the latch on the gate broken. The lights are on, though. He thinks, for a moment, of how the lights should always be on wherever she is. Then unthinks it, because that’s a ridiculous thing to think.

He knocks on the door with his knuckles, thrice.

When she opens it, he slings his bag over one shoulder. It makes him wince, just a little bit, when the bag grazes the wound- wounds- the skin still scraped raw, broken. He’s only whole in parts these days.

But only children wear both straps. He’s not a child.

“Jo Bang Wool,” he says.

Her eyes stare past him, for a moment, far away, and he’s about to give in with a Jo Kang Ja-ssi, before they appear to focus on his chest, the only thing in her direct line of vision.

She raises her eyes to meet his. He shifts uncomfortably.

“Jo Bang Wool,” he repeats. It’s a question, he thinks. He can’t really tell. Her name is all sorts of things in his head. It’s not even her real name.

She steps aside.

-

Ah Ran looks unsurprised to find him sitting at their table, eighteen years of his life in two bags and him.

“What,” is all she mutters, picking up a half-read book from the table, “are you living with us now?”

He can see the bookmark inside. It’s colorful, too much silver glitter lining the inspirational quote, like she made it herself. Ah Ran doesn’t seem like the glitter-type. But maybe she was, once. Before.

He shrugs, trying to quiet down the uncertainty with bluster. It’s not his question to answer anyway. “I don’t know.”

She nods, like she does, head bent over her book, thumbing the pages. “Okay.”

-

He expects questions, so obviously he doesn’t get them. This is Jo Bang Wool. She never does anything he expects her to.

There’s an odd sort of domesticity in the air when she sets the table. He lounges about, unsure of where to stand.

“Do you need help,” he mumbles. He leans against the table. The edge digs into his side uncomfortably, but it’s too late to change positions now. He crosses his arms.

She turns to him, her gaze sharp, completely focused. His skin feels stretched across his bones. “Are you helpful?”

“Not particularly,” he answers abruptly, unable to tone down the automatic defensiveness in his voice. But he’s honest, at least, if not helpful. Not with things like these. Not with homes in general.

She laughs, it’s sudden, quick, bright, and he thinks he’s been waiting his whole life for this. And he doesn’t even know what this is.

“My unhelpful Bok Dongie,” she says, affectionately, leaning across the table to ruffle his hair.

He closes his eyes. For a moment. Only for a very, very brief moment. Resists the urge to reach out and capture her hand with far too much strength, and trap her against a hard surface- again- and tell her this isn’t how he wants to be defined.

“Don’t you touch me, ahjumma,” he says, instead, gruffly, moving away. Her hand left grasping air.

She picks up another plate with both hands, and only laughs, again.

- 

He sleeps in the spare room. There’s only one, and she tells him it’s his if he wants it.

She makes it sound like she’s the one offering. Like he didn’t just land up at her doorstep and ask to be a part of this. Of them. Like it’s a choice they’re making, to have him.

The house is new-old. One of Gong Joo ahjumma’s properties. They pay full rent, because it’s Bang Wool. Although they probably don’t know what the actual full rent is, because it’s Gong Joo ahjumma.

Halmoni doesn’t want to live with us anymore, he can remember Ah Ran saying in that matter-of-fact tone she’s taken to saying everything these days, so we don’t.

Bang Wool still visits her old house every day. He knows because he follows her once. She makes enough food for four people- five sometimes, when she forgets. Enters with the food and leaves without, like a ghost. Her head bent, shoulders weighed the entire time.

The one time it rains on her way back, he drops the pretense, and moves away from the shade of the tree, to cover her head with his jacket.

She looks unsurprised to see him suddenly appear from nowhere, and he thinks of Ah Ran’s non-surprise at the kitchen table, and thinks that maybe, just maybe, he’s predictable.

“Thank you,” she whispers. She starting to shiver by now, hair glued to her face, but she still leans in closer so he can cover them both.

It takes just two minutes before his cloth jacket is soaked too. It was a stupid idea. But she doesn’t move away, and he doesn’t really care.

- 

The seventh time he enters the classroom the exact same time as Ah Ran, Wang Jung Hee says in her best y princess tone, “are you, like, livingwith her or what?”

Everyone turns, but these days it feels like an automated response. A reflex action brought about by years of conditioning. Nobody really cares, he can tell. Not anymore.

He glances across the room. Sang Tae sits on the third seat from the back now, in this temporary building. Maybe it’s a power shift. Or maybe there’s real power in getting to choose wherever the hell he wants to sit.

“Shut up,” he says quietly, keeping his bag down. Jung Hee’s been spoiling for a fight since weeks. Since that week.

“Do you also sleep together?” she drawls, ignoring him. “It was terrible, wasn’t it, Ah Ran-ah? Not like everyone doesn’t know he’s a . I thought he finally gave it up to Yi Kyung-ih, but guess it was Do Saem after all. So he's probably still a , unless you decided to do something about it.”

In his peripheral vision, he can see Ah Ran flinch, just slightly, looking to her left. Sang Tae’s back is taut. His shoulders stiff. But the other boy continues to stare out the window.

“Shut up,” he says, again, a little louder.

“Oh, I forgot,” Jung Hee dramatically slaps her forehead. He can see her hand shaking. “You’re lusting after Bang Wool unni, not Ah Ran. That must , Ah Ran, to be so undesirable that boys your age would rather do your own mother. That’s just-”

Sang Tae pushes his desk aside, hard, getting up from his seat. The desk skids across the floor. Bok Dong's fingers close around Jung Hee's wrist. She doesn’t protest when he drags her out.

“What are you going to do,” she says, the coquetry fading into dull sullenness, “hit me? Go ahead, hit me. It’s all you’re worth anyway.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets. 

She laughs. An ugly sound. "Come on, loser. Hit me."

He waits, still.

Her fist meets the center of his chest. He can feel the pain blooming like a ripple current. Everything hurts. Having a building collapse on you will do that to a person, he's starting to realise. “Don’t just ing stand there. Hit me.”

She hits him again. Again. Again. And when she finally starts crying, he’s just about to kneel from the pain. He thinks he should maybe comfort her, but he doesn’t know how. So he continues to stand there awkwardly. Doesn’t move.

She doesn’t rest her head on him, when she’s tired, leaning back against the wall instead.

“It’s not fair,” she says, eyes swollen, gasping for breath, “all of them- Do Hee- it’s not fair,” and he thinks something mean like welcome to the world, princess. But he doesn’t say it out loud, and god, maybe that’s growing up.

- 

Park Saem comes over for dinner once, and keeps looking at him, like he wants to say something. So he’s not particularly surprised when Saem steers him to the side afterwards, while Bang Wool pretends like she can’t see them standing ten feet away.

There’s nowhere to go around here, in this house. It’s too small. No secrets. He likes that.

“Come live with me, Bok Dong-ah” Saem says earnestly, “I’m going to file the papers for guardianship. It’ll be your home.”

“I’m eighteen,” he mumbles, by way of an answer. And adds a “who wants to be the foster child of a homeroom teacher anyway,” out of sheer habit, but No Ah Saem is unruffled.

“You still need a guardian.”

There’s just a slight emphasis on need, which he's sure is not an accident, and at one point it would’ve made him furious because he doesn’t need anything.

But now it just makes him feel warm, somewhere deep. Like there’s a light on inside him too.

“It’s not,” Saem lowers his voice when Bang Wool forgets she’s supposed to be pretending she’s not listening in, and glances over at them, “right for a man to be living alone with two women like this.”

But there’s no real judgment, no fight in his voice. Bok Dong knows that with everything they’ve come to understand is wrong with their world, this? Just falls very low on the relativity scale.

“I will,” he says. Thinks of Dong Chil hyungnim in what feels like a very long time. Remembers sleeping with Saem’s arms around him. He doesn’t know how this man exists in this world. It’s an- that word that he was taught in his English class in July last year, when he was actually listening once, when he was still the king’s right hand, and there was a king, and nobody was dead. That word; oxy-something. “Later.”

Saem just nods, ruffling his hair in that way that Bang Wool sometimes does. But this time he doesn’t move away. It feels different when Saem does it.

“What did you say?” Bang Wool asks him, casually, when he’s helping her wash the dishes later. Ah Ran is out for ice-cream with Jung Hee, like they’re friends or something. Maybe they are. Honestly, he doesn’t try to understand how the girl world works. But at least he’s starting to get the hang of this home stuff.

He snorts. “Like you weren’t listening to every single thing we said, Bang Wool Tomato.”

She’s unembarrassed. “Hey, it is my house.”

He flicks soapy water at her, the plate in his hand dripping grease down to his rubber-covered elbows, “you act like a child sometimes, ahjumma.”

Her hand stills for a moment, and he knows he pushes sometimes with the you’re-such-a-child thing, and they both know what he’s doing.

But it’s only a moment, and she resumes wiping the plate dry. “You’re still he