After a fast, hot shower I feel marginally better. I know Boyoung is waiting so I hurry back to my room and drop the dress over my head. It falls perfectly around my shoulders and settles at my waist as if it was made for me. The neck is a simple crew but there are pleats down the front and small polished black buttons for details. The skirt is a perfectly cut A-line that swishes around my legs as I walk. I briefly wonder where Boyoung got this dress. It’s too big for the smaller Korean and it seems too early for stores to be open. The garment also feels expensive—more than I would’ve spent on a dress I’d wear once.

What does it matter, though?

I close my eyes and inhale and exhale until my breath steadies. I guess now I’ll find out what a Korean funeral is like. It’s ironic in that sort of horrible what-if-you-met-your-soul-mate-only-to-discover-he-was-in-love-with-someone-else way.

CHAPTER NINE

“Here. I got this for you.” Boyoung hands me a small plastic card as we clamber down the steep hill. “It’s a T-money card. You can use it on the bus and subway. You can even buy some stuff with it at convenience stores.”

“Okay.” I tuck it into the black purse that I found in the bottom of the shopping bag. Boyoung had thought of it all—black dress, black purse, black hose, black flats.

“Was the ride okay? From the airport,” Boyoung clarifies when I don’t answer right away.

“Yeah.” I don’t explain the airport mix-up because all of that feels as if it happened in another life, maybe to another person—one who didn’t have two fathers die within the space of weeks. “How did you find out about this?”

“When I returned to Seoul, I went to your father’s address. He wasn’t home but I gave my phone number to his landlady. She called me when he died.”

“I see.” I don’t really, though. I suppose Boyoung went to check out if my dad was a grifter, and that sends a minor ping of irritation down my spine. She should’ve told me or asked me if that was okay, but at this point, complaining would be silly. If she hadn’t gone to visit, I wouldn’t have known he’d died.

She grabs my hand and pulls me down into the subway station. After a twenty-minute ride, we transfer onto a crowded bus. No one speaks. I want to ask where we’re going, but the bus is eerily quiet. No one is talking. Thinking back, I realize the subway car was similarly silent except for the sound of the train moving on the tracks. Everyone’s head is buried in their phones except for Boyoung’s. She’s looking worried and distracted.

I’d say the scenery was interesting, but unlike yesterday, when I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the window because I was drinking in the sights, today I don’t see anything but a blur of one building after another. Nothing is registering. I see things, but they’re only shapes, not things. My brain has stopped working.