Running

Seoul's Incheon International Airport is jammed with thousands of travelers, but this time, the frenzy feels friendly, not frightening. There are things I won't miss about Seoul—too many mopeds, body- humidity—but I've grown to love the people, the night market, the street food everywhere. I will the intensity of my Loveboat friendships and am thankful to have going forward. I will miss the anonymity of blending in, but perhaps I was never meant to blend in.

As for Hangul, I have a new appreciation for my parents' bilingual abilities. I still can't read more than a few dozen characters. But the signs, newspapers, magazines are no longer random symbols. They're full of significance: doors, eyes, hands, men, meat, water, hearts, dagger-axes, earth, rain, trees, suns and moons, wood, fire, power, gold, and short-tail birds.

For now, it's enough to know there's meaning there.

I walk beside Appa in his wheelchair, and put my hands on his shoulder, new for the both of us.

He places his hand over mine and smiles up. "Ready to go home?"

"I'm ready."

ʕु-̫͡-ʔुྉ*ᴸᵒᵛᵉᵇᵒᵃᵗ✲ﾟⁱⁿ*。⋆ 서울。⋆ *

I bring Sihyeon a third bo staff so we can practice with Appa, and I surprise Eomma with a small purple dragon fruit I smuggled inside two pair of socks in my suitcase. After years of being harassed by customs agents at the border, I figured she was due one.

Her normally stern face softens. "Suzy, it's my—"

"Favorite. I know." I smile. It's not a pearl necklace, but I can at least show I was thinking of her.

A few weeks after my return home, after my jet-lagged loopiness wears off, a jubilant reunion with Wendy and Nick, and a call from Jihyo—she's back in school thanks to us—I brew a pot of ginseng tea, and three cups on the kitchen counter.

"Eomma? Appa? Can we talk?"

At the dining table, Eomma looks up from her stack of bills. Appa closes his newspaper and removes his glasses, polishes them with the hem of his shirt, then returns them to his face.

In a summer of firsts, this is the first I've approached them with news of my own. I'd let them down in small ways all summer, though they will never know the half of it. I'd let myself down at times, too.

But I'm still standing.

And now, I'm ready to let them in the biggest way of all.

I slip into a seat across from them. "I did a lot of thinking in Korea," I say. "This won't be easy for you to hear, but I'm not going to University of Arizona in September."

Appa's glasses come off again. Eomma sets down her teacup.

"Sooji—"

"Please hear me out. I don't want to be a doctor. I've always known that deep down but was too afraid to acknowledge it." I smile. "I get vertigo at the sight of blood. Not the most auspicious beginning for a medical career."

"That shouldn't stop you—" Appa protests, but I put my hand over his.

"I could overcome that—you raised me that way. The real reason is—" I take a steadying breath. "I want to dance. I want to create dances. And I'm good at it. I'm going to take a gap year and work at Zeigler's as a dance instructor, and apply to dance schools and scholarship programs for next fall. I have a film of the dance I choreographed in Korea that I'll use as part of my applications."

"Dancing isn't practical for a career." Eomma's as brisk as morning air. "Starting over isn't practical. What if you can't a job after dance school? No medical school will want you then. No, you've worked so hard. You finished medical school, and dance on the side."

"Eomma, you didn't hear me," I say. "I'm not going to medical school."

I pull out an envelope that came in the mail today, and push the letter from Arizona toward them. A check is enclosed. "I learned to negotiate this summer from my roommate. I asked them to return our deposit."

Eomma pushes aside her stack of bills and draws the letter closer. She raises her eyes to mine. With a pang, I notice  new wrinkles in their corners, the lines on her forehead. They deepen.

"This is foolish."

Her worn hands land on the table and she rises.

"Dancing doesn't put food on the table! How can you do this to us? To your father? Are you still so ungrateful, after all we've done?"

"Hyunsook—" Appa begins, but she shouts him down.

"This isn't what we raised her for. We gave up everything for her. Everything!"

I stay in my seat, my hands wrapped around my hot mug. At the start of summer, her words would have torn my soul to pieces. In the middle, I might have roared, "Then I'll just starve!"

Now, her glare still makes my stomach dip like I've hit the bottom of a roller coaster.

But then I ride forward over the next hill.

I would die for my family if it came to it. I would emigrate to a foreign country and give up dancing to unwrap blood-soaked bandages every hour of every day if it meant food and shelter for my family. But because of them, I don't have to. I don't have to be Appa pushing a cart, reeking of antiseptic and longing to be somewhere else, the place where my soul lives.

"Eomma, Appa, both of you were brave enough to come to America without your families. Appa gave up medicine so we could grow up here. That took courage, and I learned that from you. You gave up security and took risks so you could have bigger things. I'm doing that, too. I want to use my dancing to bring attention to people no one's paying attention to."

Eomma storms from the room.

Appa still wears a stunned expression. But not of anger. Our precious bit of hard-won trust is still between us.

"She'll come around." He squeezes my hand, then follows her.

ʕु-̫͡-ʔुྉ*ᴸᵒᵛᵉᵇᵒᵃᵗ✲ﾟⁱⁿ*。⋆ 서울。⋆ *

The long, painful conversation stretches over many days, interrupted by meals, work, Sihyeon's recital for her Mozart Sonata in C, which she nails, then her first day of middle school, and a tearful farewell with Wendy. But it's a conversation I'm glad to have. For too long, I've hidden my love for dancing, those larger dreams, from my parents.

No longer.

Eomma stops speaking to me. But I know that even if she's wrong about what I need, she wants the best for me in her own way. Appa says little, as usual, but instead of judgement, I sense support underlying his silence. Maybe it's always been there. Appa understands what it means to give up your dreams. And I understand now that rejecting their wishes is not the same as rejecting them.

I wrestle with another kind of guilt. Am I that girl who shies away from science or traditionally male careers? But the answer is no. I love my parents for never seeing my gender as an obstacle to my career success. That gave me choices Sohee never saw for herself.

Because I do have a choice.

And I'm not making it blindly. I've looked all the way down the road, and I know I will be a thousand times happier dancing on a community theater stage than advising the Oval Office as surgeon general.

Sohee calls from Dartmouth orientation: her roommate, like Subin, wants to run for office one day, and Sohee's already got her eyes on the presidency of the entrepreneur club. Kang, to whom Sohee speaks once a week, turned down a spot at a fancy private high school in Massachusetts that his dad got him through a big donation, and moved to Los Angeles to work on a set for an indie theater, a gig he got from the buyer of Three Old Men.

"And you'll never believe this," Sohee says. "Rosie got into Arizona's medical program."

"No!" I clutch my phone. "She got my spot."

"Dohyun called it, didn't he?" Sohee's exasperated. "One Asian girl's as good as another. But she deferred her acceptance."

"Really?"

"She's taking a gap year to work with a counselor first. She said she's not ready yet."

"I'm glad," I say. "On so many levels, I'm glad."

On August 24, Joohyuk visits on his way to Yale, and Appa makes his own announcement over dinner. He's still using crutches, on light duty at work. "I've decided to retire from the Phoenix Clinic and pursue my consulting business full-time. Dr. Lee has been encouraging me to do this for a while, and he's gotten me another contract in Gwangju."

I rise from my seat to hug him. "Appa, that's great. Congratulations."

"It's risky," Appa admits. "If things go south, I might make less than I did at the hospital. The timing seems wrong, with you not going to med—ur, switching directions. But I've been thinking about doing this for ten years. And you're so happy. Maybe none of us can hide who we are."

"We can't," I agree.

Joohyuk offers to help Appa set up his remote office, and the two of them spend a busy few days in the study setting up a WiFi range extender, power bank, and telepresence screen.

"Thank you." I loop my arm around Joohyuk's waist and he drapes his around my shoulder as we admire the setup.

"Homecoming in October," Joohyuk reminds me as Appa plugs in his desk lamp.

With Appa's back turned, I sneak Joohyuk a silent kiss. "I'll be there."

Eomma celebrates Appa's first contract by splurging on the white interior shutters she's always wanted. "It will help Appa focus when he needs more privacy," she makes excuses. But as I dance by the living room to the rhythm of a song in my head, one my way to teach a class at Zeigler's, I catch her sitting on the couch, smiling at her shutters.

How far we've all come.

Opening the door, I dance down the steps and spin a pirouette toward Joohyuk, who's standing on the last steps, smiling at me. The sun is bright in a cloudless blue sky. I haven't just thrown open the shutters on my burglar's lantern. I've torn them off their hinges.

There's no more containing the dream.

ʕु-̫͡-ʔुྉ*ᴸᵒᵛᵉᵇᵒᵃᵗ✲ﾟⁱⁿ*。⋆ 서울。⋆ *

끝 (Keut)

La Fin.

The End.

Thank you all for reading my story! Hope you all enjoyed it and awaits for more to come—maybe!