And then I come here and I still have to explain where I’m from, only this time for other reasons.

“And finding your dad or mom is going to make you what? Feel like you belong?”

“I don’t know.” I start walking again.

Jules hurries to catch up and peppers me with a few more questions, which I refuse to answer because I don’t know. I just don’t know. Finally, Jules runs out of steam and I send a thank-you to the universe because I was very close to throttling the blonde in the middle of a Seoul alleyway, and given the prevalence of CCTV cameras in this city, I would be caught and thrown in prison and then never, ever get the chance to find my mother or eat gimbap with Yujun again.

“That’s an odd look on your face,” Jules notes.

“I was thinking about whether I was strong enough to choke someone to death.”

“Nah. You’re pretty puny. You’re better off with a knife. Or poison. I think poison is the easiest way to murder a person. You can buy herbal cures at any pharmacy, plus there’s a lot of off-market, unregulated supplements made out of faux-Eastern medicine available.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“Flying is boring.”

“You have had the same three roommates since arriving in Seoul until I subleased the room, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Just checking.” Because you don’t come off as someone easy to live with. I knock on the door before Jules can expound on the myriad ways to kill someone. After a few moments, there’s some shuffling inside and a familiar face pokes out.

I pull out the photos and shove them toward the landlady. “Ask her if she knows these women.”

Jules asks the question in Korean and the landlady shakes her head. “She says—”

“I can read the body language,” I interrupt. “Ask her if my father was from here. No. Ask her how long he lived here.”

“She says he moved here two years ago. Before that he lived in another district.”

“Do you know where that is?”

Jules sighs. “It’s southwest of the city. Kind of far away.”

“Good thing we’re cabbing it.”

I ask Jules to translate a few more questions such as if his landlady knew where Lee Jonghyung was born or whether he had any friends or coworkers.

“She doesn’t know anything. We’re better off going to the other district and showing his picture around there,” Jules informs me. We start to leave but the landlady lets out a spew of Korean, which I can’t follow. Jules replies and the two have a long conversation during which my anxiety starts ratcheting up. Finally, the conversation is over and the landlady retreats inside.

“What was that all about?”

“She says that there’s a woman at the sauna down the street that knows, or knew, your dad and that we should talk to her.”

“What else did she say?” Because the conversation had gone on for longer than that.