“Being adopted is when everyone is wearing a striped dress but all I own are polka-dotted dresses,” I find myself saying. “My mom wore a striped dress and when we went out together people would ask her why she was holding hands with a child in a polka-dotted dress. Shouldn’t the polka-dotted dress be with the other polka dots? But there aren’t any polka dots around—only stripes. You spend so much time looking at people with stripes that you start thinking you’re wearing stripes, too, until you catch a glimpse of your polka-dotted self in a store window and realize that you are not a striped person. Then you learn that there’s a place that only wears polka dots. You come to that place and you’re very excited because for once you don’t stand out. For once, you feel like you belong.

“But then you open your mouth and the polka-dot people know instantly you’re a fraud. They know you’re a stripe on the inside or, at least, not one of them. And the place where you once thought you belonged, you don’t. You’re still on the outside.” Beside me Yujun takes a breath, but I’m not finished. “Don’t tell me that’s where you can see the best. No one likes being on the outside. People say that they do because they’re trying to convince themselves that their half-full bowl fills them up. Everyone wants to belong—to someone. Somewhere.”

Yujun waits for me to finish my outburst and then says, “Do you know the meaning of han, Hara?”

“Like the Han River?”

“The word han itself has meaning. This small peninsula has been the object of envy for all the neighboring countries and they have fought for it, pushing us out, hurting the people, and yet, we always survive. The cost is high. Our land is divided. Our most precious relics taken from us. Our palaces burned and rebuilt and burned and rebuilt. And that is the meaning of han. You may think that you don’t belong here because you don’t speak the language or you think you do not belong in America because your polka-dotted dress is so different than all the striped dresses, but inside you have the same blood that I have. It’s the blood of everyone that came from here. There’s han in you. No matter where your journey takes you, you are filled with it.”

I let his words seep beneath my skin, sink into my blood. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about what I was made of—what my heritage was—because I was left on the street in some foreign country. My breath slows and deepens.

“Eomma gives money to the education and support of adoptees. Helps them find jobs. It’s a cause very important to her. She also hires many single mothers. She would want to help you. Will you allow this, Hara?”

It’s so gently asked, as if I’m doing him such a great favor. Jules’s comment that meeting someone’s parents is the same as a marriage proposal gallops through my mind, but I know it’s different in this circumstance. This is like if I broke my leg and his mom was a doctor. Would I refuse that? No, it’d be stupid to say no. It still feels off, as if I’ve moved past a line I shouldn’t, and I don’t know if I’ve done right or not, but when I open my mouth to speak, I say, “Yes.”