She could’ve slapped me and it would’ve hurt less. “Nothing. I don’t want anything.” This was a mistake. A huge mistake. While I refused to admit it, I thought that I’d find belonging, not from being in Korea but from finding my mother. I figured my mother would live in a small, barren room like Lee Jonghyung, not sit in a museum’s worth of marble and chrome with a bank account that would likely make millionaires blush.

I don’t belong here with the polka dots, particularly ones that are carved out of platinum and sprinkled with diamonds.

“I’m done here.” I walk to the door.

Wansu follows immediately. “What do you mean you’re done here?”

“I mean, I don’t care that you gave birth to me. I don’t want to know why any longer. The answers no longer interest me.” I stop and hold up a hand. “Don’t follow me. I know how to get home.” Besides, I have Yujun. I wrench open the door to tell him I’m ready to leave only to find the four chairs completely empty.

“His father needed him,” Wansu says quietly, in a tone too soft to be genuine.

I blink rapidly. I haven’t cried since I was ten and I’m not starting because some male left me.

“Hara, I will drive you home. Wait here.”

Not in a million years.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Perhaps it was foolish to run out of the building, away from my mother, but being left behind once again dredged up so many hurt feelings that I felt like I might drown in them.

It was all too much. I couldn’t sit in a car with Wansu, a car that was undoubtedly expensive, a visible sign of her full and happy life here in Seoul with her perfect son. I move toward the stairs because standing and waiting for an elevator would allow Wansu to drag me back into her office, or even worse, she’d get in the car with me and I’d have to stand in her presence, which I can’t do—not for another second. I take the stairs, all fourteen flights of them. By the last one, I’m blinded by spots in my eyes, my breath is choppy and short, my skin is clammy, but I know I have to keep moving. I can still hear her tersely telling me to stop and come back to discuss this—whatever “this” is—with her like an adult, so I plan to never stop. If I do, I’ll collapse and my body will decay here in the stairwell of a foreign country because I won’t get up again. Boyoung is in the lobby, but I pretend I don’t see her. It’s not hard. I can’t really see anything at this point. My anger and hurt and frustration are all I can see and I use all of those emotions to power me forward. If Boyoung and Wansu are behind me, I don’t hear them. But I don’t look back either. Forward, forward, forward. What had Wansu said? Let’s keep yesterday in the past? Good idea. In the subway, I pick the first train that stops and ride it until the third stop, one I don’t even know the name of. I keep moving, past the coffee shops, the restaurants, the Olive Youngs, the small shops selling shoes and socks and T-shirts with English sayings that are sometimes vulgar, sometimes funny, sometimes indecipherable.