It’s time to go back to the apartment.

When I arrive, it’s still empty. I drag myself up the stairs and lie down. My body is tired and even as my feet ache and my head hurts, I still can’t sleep.

The hamster in my head is running again. One of these women is my mother, which means there’s someone in this city, in this country, who gave birth to me. Or she could be dead, my brain unhelpfully supplies.

Yes, or she could be alive. Ellen always theorized that my bio mom had been poor, and that’s the conclusion that I had come to as well. It’s the story that made the abandonment hurt the least. She was poor and couldn’t afford to raise a family. Abortions aren’t legal—not then or now. It fits with the state of my father’s place—small and bare. An ache blooms in my chest, and when I press the heel of my hand against my heart, it doesn’t go away. I don’t know if it’s an ache of sadness or hope. Sometimes they feel the same way inside your soul.

I finally drift off into some stage of restless sleep until a buzzing of soft laughter, excited chatter, pulls me out of my semiconscious state. I creep downstairs to find my flatmates in various stages of dress. The smells of hair spray, curling irons, and perfume tell the story. They’re going out for the night.

Anna stops on her way to the bedroom, a mélange of hair products clutched against her sizable chest, and looks up at me on the stairs. “You woke up at the perfect time. We’re going to Club Dance. It’s this swanky club over in Incheon, and normally I wouldn’t go all the way to the airport but rappers from a famous group are supposed to be there and they never perform alone like this. I know you just had the thing”—she waves her hand as if to brush aside the unpleasant thought of my dad dying—“but if you need a distraction, this would be it. I don’t want your time in Korea to be a bummer.”

Stay home and mope or go out and distract myself? It takes me a split second to decide. “What should I wear?”

Anna beams. “Something sexy, of course!”

“Not too sexy,” Jules chides unseen from another room.

Some Korean men think Westerners are easy, I remember her saying. I trot back to my room and dig through my suitcase. Despite overpacking, I don’t find any club clothes. They didn’t seem appropriate attire for a meeting with my biological father. I have leggings, sweatpants, skinny jeans, and a denim skirt that stops somewhere in the vicinity of my knees. Also a frock. With its thin white stripes against the black background, the elastic waist, and small bow ties at the side, it is a dress you wear to Sunday brunch or a meeting with your dad, but not one you’d wear to grind out on the dance floor.