“I can feel you frown from here.” His sleep-rough voice scares the shit out of me. I fumble with the phone and nearly drop it. “Bring it over.”

Guiltily, I cross to the bed. He sits up and the sheets fall even farther. God really took his time with Yujun. It’s unfair, really. He wiggles his fingers until I hand over the phone. He presses his thumb against the keyboard and waits expectantly. “What do you need? Hungry?”

“I want to talk to Wansu and my phone is in the river.”

“That’s right.” His finger hovers over the screen and then the phone is back in my hands. “She’s probably home. Give this to the taxi driver and he’ll take you there. Use this button to pay for it.”

• • •

INSTEAD OF TOWARD the high-rises that line the land in front of the river, the taxi moves north along a busy highway. The Namsan Tower gets smaller in the distance. The high-rises give way to tree-lined streets, stone walls, and detached homes. The horizon is no longer buildings and the river, but mountain peaks. Rooflines peek over the top of concrete and stone walls, some with decorative brick on top. Greenery is in profusion, spilling over the walls in some places like a floral necklace. There’s an aging, quiet wealth here. If someone were to ask what money smelled like, I would tell them it was old and green.

After I’ve paid, the taxi deposits me in front of a garage door set into a stone wall. To the right is a door and one of those outdoor intercoms that Kwon Hyeon had next to her entrance. A light turns on above my head as I approach, and before I can engage the comm system, a small buzzing sound is made and the door latch disengages. My shoes make almost no noise as I climb the stone stairs behind the gate. When I turn the corner at the top of the stairs, Wansu waits. Her body is stiff and stick straight. It’s hard to say whether she’s uncomfortable or angry. The urge to turn tail and flee is strong. There’s something imposing about mothers, a sort of ingrained obedience that’s hammered into your bones, and my first instinct is to cower. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly as I approach.

“Good morning.” Little fingerlings of light are breaking through the night’s sky but not enough for me to make out her expression.

“Good morning, Hara. Come inside.”

The entrance is lined with marble and so are the walls. I shed my shoes and then awkwardly hand them to a staff person dressed in all black who gives me a pair of gray felt slippers that match the ones that Wansu is wearing. Silently, I follow my birth mother down the hall. We end up in a living room overlooking a terraced garden. The furniture is tufted white leather with gold accents. Whoever decorated Choi Wansu’s office made their cold, colorless way here. Yujun had this place coded as home in his phone, and he once said his place was white but for the yellow pillows Wansu forced on him, but I can’t envision him here. He’s too warm for this place.