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“Jihoon-samchon,” the little girl said again, but slightly quieter after a stern look from Min Soomi.

My mind snagged on the word for ‘uncle’, and my brain frantically slipped through the cartoonish illustrated photo cards I’d memorised for Korean family names, hierarchy, gendered titles, generational terms…

“Samchon?” I asked weakly, catching Jihoon’s eye.

He must have seen the confusion on my face. He leaned across the table after settling the little girl more securely on his knee, and explained in hushed English, for which I was embarrassingly grateful.

“She is my cousin’s daughter. Soojin.”

He turned back to the little girl, currently reaching for a rice ball on his discarded plate.

“Annyeong, Soojin-ah. Did you miss me?” he cooed, and for the first time in two days I saw him smile.

Jihoon tried to introduce me to Soojin, but she lost interest in me almost immediately, which was understandable. I was more interested in Jihoon, as well. I leaned back in my chair, content to watch him talk to the little girl.

Soojin was a chatty little thing, playing with Jihoon’s lapels as she chewed the rice ball and jabbered away while I struggled to understand her. She spoke in half-words and inflections I wasn’t familiar with, to say nothing about the mouth full of rice, but I got the general gist of it. She had missed Jihoon, and she was furious he hadn’t come to see her in so long. And something about a boat ride?

He looked at her with the kind of indulgent smile I’d only ever seen on parents. He nodded along with everything she said, taking it all very seriously, and despite where we were, and why we were here, I had to hide a smile as I watched them interact. I’d never seen him with kids before. Or rather, not in real life. I’d seen videos of GVibes where they’d gone into schools to play with the kids and teach them music, but those had been carefully choreographed outings. There was nothing choreographed about this. She’d climbed into his lap and stolen his food as though it was the most normal thing in the world for her to do, and perhaps it was. I looked at her a little more closely, and though I knew absolutely nothing about kids, she looked young enough that she might have been born after our breakup. I didn’t know what it was about that realisation that hit me so hard, except that maybe it explained why I had no idea she existed. That there was a little kid in Jihoon’s life that knew him well enough to crawl into his lap and steal his food. That there was this whole part of his life that had happened in my absence. And it was silly, it really was, but it made my chest tighten in a way that made it difficult to breathe for just a moment.

Not about me, I reminded myself. Nothing here was about me.

Hours passed, and while my research had prepared me for this, it still surprised me more than I liked to admit. We’d spent more than half a day travelling and neither of us had slept. When I nodded off for the second time, Jihoon leaned in to tell me I should go back to the hotel to rest.

“What about you?” I asked, hoping he’d offer to come with me.

He met my eyes and the answer was in the shadows I saw there, the resigned set to his mouth.

“You need to stay?” I guessed, and he nodded.

“I can stay,” I offered. “I don’t mind.”

“No.” He shook his head, reaching for my hand, but stopped just shy of touching me. He pulled his hand back and shoved it into his pocket. “I want you to go. I want to know you’re comfortable, and warm.”

I saw the concern in the words, but I also saw something underneath the tiredness, underneath the want for me to be comfortable, and it was grief. Simple, complicated grief, and I thought that maybe, now that the funeral hall was emptying out, that he just wanted some space to mourn in peace.

“Okay,” I said softly. I didn’t ask if I’d see him later. I didn’t say anything else. I let him fuss for a few minutes over ordering me a car and giving me clear instructions about what to do, and what to say to the driver, and texting me the address of the hotel, and a whole load of other, unnecessary details, like he’d forgotten I’d lived in Korea.

I left him in the funeral hall because that’s what he’d needed me to do, but I sent him a text when I got back to the hotel, just letting him know I had arrived. I told him I was so sorry, because I felt like I needed to say something true, even if I felt like a coward for not being able to say the one thing I wanted. I also told him I understood if he couldn’t come back to the hotel tonight, and not to worry.

I didn’t know what would be expected of him. Whether he’d stay at the hall or go back to his parents’ house.

But he did come back. Somewhere around three am I heard the lock click, followed by the quiet shuffle of clothes being shed and dropped to the floor. And when he slid into bed behind me, I could smell the drink on his cold skin, but I said nothing.

He tucked his face into the crook of my shoulder and cried.

He was gone by morning.

Chapter 43

The funeral lasted three days.

Jihoon spent most of his time at the funeral hall, eating there and sometimes sleeping there when he was too exhausted to leave. There was a separate room for people to sleep in, he’d told me, but it hadn’t made me feel any better when each time I saw him, he looked more and more depleted – empty in a way that went past tiredness.

Technically, he was staying at his parents’ house, but he only went there to shower and change.

I didn’t go back to the hall, although I offered to every day. It felt like maybe this was something he needed to do on his own. A vigil that was more for the ones left behind than it ever was for the ones who’d left.

Despite me not being with him, he kept reassuring me that it gave him comfort to know I was here, somewhere close that he could retreat to when he needed to.