Suicide Buddies

The Careful Art of Cake, Chiffon, and Chivalry

(Ty for reading yall r great, ilysm, and vote if u r so inclined)
(And I know this chapter is late I'm rly behind on the chapters of this book😭 but bear with me pls)

I think my father left me behind because he was left behind, too.

My father was born in Seoul of South Korea, and he knew his parents for a grand total of twelve years before they left him to his aunt—his mother's sister—and traveled all the way to America. His father had wanted to become a dentist and therefore decided America provided a much better route of opportunity for such a career than Korea could.

His mother spoke no English, so she was relegated to a sewing factory, hunched over and puttering clothes through the machines all day long, where she could speak a universal language with her hands rather than a foreign one she could not understand. All the while my father remained with his aunt and cousins in Korea.

"Was it fun?" I asked once, while he told me all of this on a particularly long drive with my mother to the airport for my very first trip to Korea. Incheon, because Seoul is so crowded, as my mother said.

My father grinned a rare smile and laughed. "It was great," he said. "My aunt loved me."

"He means his aunt favored him," my mom translated, shaking her head. "She used to buy one banana every week and let him have a whole half of it for himself."

"My two other cousins had to share their half," he had boasted. "I think she knew I was a joy to have even from the start."

"She knew you were spoiled from the start," she argued.

"Smart and spoiled then." He pointed at me. "Bananas were very coveted in Korea, Seohyun. Hard to get. Very expensive."

I said, "Didn't you miss your parents?"

My father said, "A little."

Which later turned out to be a lie, as one night my appa came into my room, sitting down at the foot of my bed while my mother was fast asleep, indulging me in my further questions with fuller honesty. Looking back, it was his way of introducing his hopes for me, in the only way he ever gave me anything: saying what he meant in a way he had to understand it.

"My parents were gone for a while," he explained to me, half-lit by the moon. "You could not have kids in the dorms, only husband or wife. They had to leave me with my aunt for a long time. And they could only come back once a year."

"How long?"

He considered that. "Years," he decided on. "Until I was twenty one." I'd made an 'O' at that and he nodded. "They left me when I was twelve. They had no money."

"What happened after?"

"My mom told me she couldn't even recognize me, I looked so different," he said. "Those years are important to children. Without my parents, I only had my aunt."

"What happened to your aunt?" I asked.

His face stiffened. "She died a few years ago," he told me solemnly. "A stroke."

I scooted forward, patting my dad's hand because he did that to me whenever I was sad then. He had ruffled my hair, giving me a nod.