But the café is near the university, so there are almost no shady customers. Most of the customers are college students. Occasionally school teachers, bank clerks, or middleaged men from the apartment complex across the street stop by. The owner shows up once every few days to ask halfheartedly, “Everything good? Water the plants, please.” Then she scatters her perfume smell and storms out. According to her nephew and cashier, Sungyun, she also has a huge coffee shop in Gwangan, so she doesn’t really care about this location. Her father owns the building, and she has good alimony from her divorce, so she isn’t really worried about money.

I am just about to brush my teeth after eating dinner in the kitchen when a tall man shambles into the shop. The sign’s light is off and it’s ten minutes before the store opens for the evening.

“Excuse me, we’re not open yet.” I look up, and my heart drops. Oh fuck, it’s Dad. He probably poked around the university student directory office, somehow heard about Jimin, and combed through the map to find her place. I can visualize him huffing and puffing through the university’s gate, the flower shop, the convenience store, the real estate agent’s office, and into the dark alley where Jimin and I live. He might have throttled Jimin to tell him where I was.

“I’m sorry, but can I use the bathroom?”

“What?” My father instantly transformed into a stranger. It wasn’t him. I feel deflated, so deflated that I fall to the floor. Eunyong, another server, tells him that the bathroom is up the stairs halfway to the next floor.

How long has it been since the last time I saw my father face-to-face? It feels like it’s been a million years since we ate at the same table. There is no way he has been thinking of me or looking for me.

The only time my father and I touched skin to skin was when I was in second grade. It was in the small, noisy workshop attached to our home where my father made squishy slippers out of plastic. I kept playing the rubber band game, where you dance along to a song with a specific sequence of moves, jumping over a long rubber band set up high off the ground. When I wore a cumbersome skirt, I would pull up the skirt and tuck it in my panties so I could freely kick my legs as high as the sky.