Chapter 9: The Parking Garage

Seon-ho got an arm around Tae-hwan's waist before his knees hit the concrete.

The garage was nearly empty.

A single yellow light buzzed over the pillar by the stairwell, and the air smelled of cold oil.

"Don't touch the hand," Tae-hwan said, through his teeth. "Don't let it touch you."

"I'm touching it."

"Seon-ho."

It was the first time he had said the whole name, without Baek in front of it.

Seon-ho stopped with his hand on the wet glove.

The sound of it went through him.

"Say it again," he said.

"Seon-ho, please. Not the hand."

"It's my job. Come on."

He half-carried him across the concrete to the back of the black car, opened the rear door, and pushed him in.

The windows were tinted dark as a night sky.

He climbed in after him and shut the door, and the light of the garage dropped away to nothing.

In the dim, he peeled the left glove back.

It came off wet.

The palm underneath had split again, all of it, from the heel to the fingers.

It was wide and raw, and the black thread poured out of it.

It was worse than the first day.

It looked as though the wound had remembered how it had been.

"It's the slap," Tae-hwan said hoarsely. "Every time I feel too much it opens. It's been like that since..." He stopped.

"Since Gate 9."

"Yes."

Seon-ho laid both hands over it.

The green light came up strong and fast.

The black thread stretched out of the wound toward it and burned away in thin white sparks.

He worked without speaking.

His whole body leaned into it, shoulder to shoulder, and he felt the shaking in Tae-hwan's arm travel up into his own.

It took a long time.

At the end of it the wound was a pink line again, narrower than ever.

Tae-hwan had his head tipped back against the seat and his eyes shut.

Tears ran sideways out of the corners of them, into his hair.

"She's right," he said. "She's allowed. I would hit me too."

"No," said Seon-ho.

"You don't know."

"I don't need to know to know you don't have to be where people put it."

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