I press on. “Please don’t interrupt me,” I say and return to explaining myself to Sol and Eunyong. “I’m going to stay at Jihyun’s place tonight. Please don’t take that the wrong way. I just don’t have anywhere to go right now. Can you imagine me going back to the room at the café after all that? Or me crashing in Sol’s tiny dorm room? No way. I plan to see my dad tomorrow. I’m going to get him to tell me what happened with my mom, who I am to him. I’ve been avoiding all these questions for a long time, but not anymore. I’m going to see him, get the answers, and then announce my independence from him.”

“Don’t worry, no one will or can stop you.” Sol holds me and dishevels my hair with her dirty hand.

“You are one stubborn girl, Yeoul! You’re so close to where your mom is, and you’re not going go see her?” Eunyong speaks up.

“She’s the one who abandoned me. I’m going to wait until she seeks me. That might take a thousand years, but I’m still going to wait.”

Other than occasionally looking over his shoulder to the back seat where we sit, Jihyun drives in silence. There is no music playing in the car. The evening street starts to light up. The Youngdo Bridge is not beautiful. Will I be crossing this bridge again someday? Will I find my mother if I climb down to search under this bridge?

“Yeoul. You unlucky, wretched girl. Stop crying. I found you as a crying newborn under the Youngdo Bridge. I decided to adopt you, because you looked so sad. You were swaddled like an abandoned package. But if you keep on crying like that, I’m going to take you right back to the bridge and leave you there just how I found you.”

My grandmother told me that story when I begged to leave the late-night town party so we could go home. She hit me in the head with her knuckles. Her breath stank, and her teeth were covered in pepper powder and chives. She told me the same story the evening she didn’t feed me. She was busy getting drunk on rice wine. She also told me there’s no point in going to school. A pathetic alcoholic, a shriveled-up crone. The worst liar in the world was Grandma.