Forty-two minutes. She remembers the exact amount of time. My eyes grow tight and hot. “Then you were married and gained Yujun.” And no longer missed me.

Wansu sets her cup down and clasps her hands together. One finger rubs along a thin silver band. “What good would it have done if I searched for you and found you? Would you have me take you from your mother? Would you have me disrupt your life? Would anything have changed for you?”

I rub one hand down the side of my face. “I think so.” But I don’t know if I’m right.

“I cannot change the past, but I would like it if we can have a new future. In whatever way you want to go forward, I will follow.”

That’s a strange way of putting it. My brow furrows. “What do you mean by that?”

Her eyes flick to the phone on the table. Yujun’s phone. It’s not in a case but somehow she recognizes that it is his. “It has not escaped my attention that you and Yujun share . . . soft feelings for one another.”

I lift my chin. “So what if we do?”

“Do you remember the young couple who were being mourned the same day your father was?”

“Yes, but . . .” The image of the tall, elegant woman sweeping by in the big hat flashes in front of my eyes. “That was you at the funeral home, wasn’t it?”

She nods tersely. How funny. I’d been upset that I hadn’t experienced an inkling of recognition with any of the women I’d met these past ten days, but there was a spark and I’d missed it. I had known something was different about the woman in black. At the time, I had believed it was because she was a striking figure, but . . . something in her must have spoken to something in me. An unfamiliar, but not unwelcome, feeling spreads through me.

“That couple died because the public disapproval of their union was so strong, they could not bear it. If I acknowledge you, then you will become my daughter and the sister of Choi Yujun.”

My heart bumps against my chest as understanding sets in. In order to be a Choi, I have to give up Yujun. I can keep him as Yujun from Seoul forever, but if I do, I can’t be a part of the family I was born into.

I leave Wansu’s place without any clarity of purpose. I’ve found everything I came to find—Lee Jonghyung, Wansu, why I was abandoned, why she never searched for me—but I don’t feel better. My heart still aches. I don’t suddenly feel like I belong. My stripes and polka dots are all mixed up.

Lee Jonghyung, my birth father, turned out to be a predatory asshole who deserved to die, yet I never got to confront him. Wansu today isn’t the poor mouse she was when she had me. Choi Yujun is the sibling I didn’t know I wanted but the man I’ve always dreamed of. My motherland is beautiful and warm but still so foreign, and my time here is slipping away.