Day 2

I spend the next day holed up in my bedroom with the blinds closed, eating banana chips and watching forgettable Netflix documentaries on my laptop, hiding out like a wounded fugitive in the last third of a Clint Eastwood movie. Pim, my Mother’s old tabby, wanders in and out as she likes.

Everything up here is the same as I left it: blue-and-white striped wallpaper, the cheerful yellow rug, the fluffy grey duvet thrown across my bed. The Marvel artwork a designer friend of my mother’s did when I was an adolescent hanging above the desk, right next to the bulletin board holding my swimming meet schedule from junior year and a photo of me at the Byul’s house with Solbi, Kyungsoo and
Baekhyun, my mouth wide open mid-length. I vaguely remember Kyungsoo that night telling me that he had been adopted into the family as a baby. I suppose that was what drew us closer, a common string to bond over.

Even my hairbrush is still sitting on the dresser, the one I forgot to take with me in my mad dash out of Noonchi Lake after the Live Life article, like it was just waiting for me to come crawling all the way back here with a head full of knots.

It’s the photo I kept catching myself looking at, though, like there’s some kind of karmic magnet attached to the back of it drawing my attention from clear across the room.

Finally, I haul myself out of bed and pull it down to examine more closely: It’s at their family party