Chapter 12: Which Road

I dressed in three minutes and ran.

Tae-seong drove his gray van through Mapo with one hand on the wheel and the other closed around mine on the gearshift.

Neither of us said her name.

My father's flat was on the fourth floor of an old brick building with a bad elevator.

I took the stairs.

The door stood open.

Da-eun sat at the little kitchen table with a cup of barley tea, in her cream coat, her braid over one shoulder.

My father sat across from her in his cardigan, and he was laughing.

I had not heard him laugh in a year.

"Yu-ri-ya!" he said. "Look who came. This young lady has been telling me about her father's hotels."

"She speaks Japanese, did you know? Very good Japanese."

"Appa," I said. "Would you let Tae-seong take you downstairs for a coffee?"

He looked from my face to Tae-seong's.

He was not a stupid man.

"Ah," he said. "Yes. Of course."

He got up, patted Da-eun's hand, and went out with Tae-seong at his elbow.

Tae-seong looked back once from the door.

I nodded.

He went.

The flat was suddenly small and silent.

Da-eun lifted her cup, drank, and set it down with a tiny click.

"He is a lovely man, your father," she said. "I'm sorry for the early visit."

"What do you want?"

"A walk." She smiled, and it was the same smile. "Will you take one with me? The river is nice at this hour."

I wanted to refuse.

But the thing I had been afraid of since the song was in my kitchen, in a pretty coat.

I needed to see its face.

"Fine," I said.

We walked down to the Mapo riverbank without speaking.

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