Light streamed through thin floral curtains that probably hadn't always been beige. A bitter chemical fragrance clung to the sheets I was lying in. It was what I imagined embalming ointments smelled like.
Repeatedly shaking my head didn't disperse the shame of the previous night from my mind. Every time I blinked Will's disgusted face loomed at me, like the image had been burned permanently on my retinas. My mind wouldn't stop replaying the vision of him backing away from me like I was an ogre.
Fucking sanctimonious bastard.
Will was not in the apartment. The front door was ajar, and I half-hoped that he'd left it open as a message to get the fuck out of his house at my earliest convenience.
Swinging aside the mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet so I wouldn't have to see my fucking face, I scrubbed my borrowed toothbrush against my teeth with the manic fervor of a murderer erasing bloodstains from tiles.
Packets of pills were stacked neatly on the cabinet shelves. I began to rifle through them. If Will didn't want me to see what pills he was taking, he should have hidden them better.
Aspirin, tramadol, Tryptex.
Aspirin seemed harmless enough. But why was Will taking tramadol? He didn't look like he was in pain. I recognized the Tryptex brand name from summer school; it was citalopram. Severe depression or anxiety. That explained a lot.
Look at the big fucking medical expert.
"Fuck off, Jun-su."
My gray police-victim shoes were halfway on when I heard a shuffling up the stairs to the front door, slow and plodding, like a double bass being tuned pizzicato[1]. Will was coming back into the apartment. His lumbering footsteps were slower than Saint-Saëns's Elephant[2], like he was deliberately taking forever to reach the top of the stairs just to piss me off.
Will staggered into the apartment, wheezing and pale. He flopped heavily onto his haunted-house sofa like he hadn't seen me at all. Or like he was ignoring me. He gulped in short bursts like he couldn't draw breath, then settled back against the sofa cushions with closed eyes.
Out-of-shape asshole.
"I'm walking to Este police precinct. Bye."
Will looked up from the sofa, eyebrows furrowed. "I'll drive you," he wheezed.
So, he was still willing to get into a car with me after what I'd done to him the night before.
His breath seemed to have come back to him, the wheeze replaced by his scratchy bass-baritone. "Are you hungry?"
When I didn't answer, he got up and lifted a blue box next to the sofa. All the other boxes in the living room had disappeared.
"Who really cooked that meal last night?"
Will looked hurt by the question. "What do you mean?"
"And do the owners of this place know that you're hiding out in here?"
It was a plausible explanation to why Will lived in this grand decaying house. Some insane old lady had probably died here, and he was enjoying a few months of illegal occupation of her beloved home before it was sold to developers by her descendants.
"This is my house," he muttered.
"Oh sure, and your Mom really lives here, right?" I sneered, wheeling my arm in a wide arc that took in the flaking paint and rickety furniture of the living room. "I'd never let my Mom live in a place like this."
Will looked down at his blue box, eyebrows knotted. I waited for a retort, but he just opened the front door, cradling the box under his arm.
That was a shitty thing to do, Zeph.
"Shut up Jun-su," I mouthed.
Will looked so forlorn that my stupid anger instantly dissipated away into the musty air of the apartment. I didn't really care if this poor guy was illegally occupying an abandoned house, or if his Mom or neighbors took care of him, or if he was taking citalopram or whatever else. It was none of my business.
Dumbfounded that my latest insult hadn't deterred him from giving me a ride to my police interview, I followed Will to the garage in silence.
The grandma-mobile was almost bursting full of the boxes that had littered the apartment hours earlier. It looked like after taking me to the police, Will was planning on moving out of the poor deceased old lady's house.
Will held out a cereal bar. "Are you hungry?"
On cue, tiny crystals of guilt started solidifying in my muscles.
"I'm fine."
"I'm sorry that my house is-"
I snatched the fucking cereal bar from his outstretched hand. "Your house is just fine."
Will granted me a weak little smile in reply.
We drove in silence, Will concentrating on the road while I turned my crystallized shame over and over in my mind, trying to find new edges to cut myself on.
I didn't know why I felt so shitty about Will rejecting me the night before. I'd judged the situation so badly. Maybe it was wounded pride; however much I hated my jobs with clients, I took pride in being sympathetic to clients' nerves and insecurities. Two of my clients were regularly seeing psychiatrists, and I'd always been attuned to their peculiarities. I knew how to coax and comfort them, and give them whatever they needed to keep paying.
But I'd made a terrible mistake with Will. Knowing nothing about his medical diagnosis, I shouldn't have tried to solicit him in the first place.
You know exactly why you're ashamed, idiot. You thought that you were better than him.
If I was really honest about it, I'd just assumed that Will would want me. That he'd be grateful for any attention from me. That I'd be a brief, bright spot in his dull little life. My clients had always been so pathetically fawning that I'd gotten used to being wanted.
Worse, it had been so long that I'd come across genuinely kind people that I'd totally misjudged Will's motives. He didn't seem to have any motive other than wanting to help. Was I so out of touch with normality that I didn't recognize simple kindness and generosity for what it was?
There weren't any kind people in Sigma, apart from my guys. Wherever they might be now, I hoped that someone was treating Miles, Raheem and Luke as kindly as Will was treating me.
Gone was the eeriness of the night-time Maria Este Police Precinct. By day the steel shutter was hidden into an alcove in the wall, and a bright red desk had been lowered on hinges in its place in the bustling lobby, the glass-fronted meeting rooms and the workstations beyond a friendly hive of activity.
Will was gazing back at the entrance with longing. He looked so utterly desperate to leave that every time the sliding doors opened I half-expected him to dash through them and take cover into the winding maze of Este side-streets.
"Good luck. Zephyr." He offered me a clammy handshake. "Have a safe trip."
"Thanks for everything. You've been so kind to me."
It sounded fucking inadequate. A total stranger who had run into a burning building and pulled me out of a fire. Who, when I'd been paralyzed with cowardice, had literally dragged me away from Sigma. Who had still continued to be kind after I'd sexually harassed him and insulted him.
"No problem. Take care of yourself." He turned to go as Teresa arrived at the bright red desk to wave him off.
"Hey, Zeph." Teresa seemed subdued, at least, as subdued as she could be while wearing an orange neon headband.
Worry was already tying knots in my stomach. "What did my Mom say in her email?"
"We got a bounced email from her work account. Either Eun-mi Lee doesn't work for L.K. Chemical anymore, or there's a huge problem with L.K.'s email servers today, but I seriously doubt that."
There must have been a mistake. There was no way that Eomma would have stopped working for L.K.. That company was her life. It had been Abba's[3] life too. None of this made any sense.
"The Embassy and the Police have a lot of shared documents about you. You were on the International Missing Person's Register for one year. After that there weren't any further attempts to find you by your family. The South Korean Embassy tried to call your Mom this morning, but her cellphone number isn't connected anymore."
Why would Eomma have changed her number? Why hadn't she given her new number to the Embassy in case I needed to find her?
Teresa sounded more dismayed as she went on. "My contact at the Embassy said that your Mom's name isn't listed as the owner of your address anymore. She moved a year ago according to postal records, but they don't know her new address."
"What?" I dragged shaking hands through my hair. "Can they find her new address?"
I sank against the red desk, dangerously close to tearing out the clumps of hair that I was clinging on to. How could Eomma have sold our fucking house?
"They're searching. Your sister and her partner aren't traceable on the Embassy databases either. Do you know your sister's new address?"
"No! She was staying in dorms at S.N.U.[4], but I don't know where she lives now!"
I slid my hands down my face. This couldn't be happening. So much technology, so many communication methods, and I couldn't find my fucking family.
"Zeph, there's more. I'm really sorry." Teresa leaned across the desk and pressed a comforting hand to my arm. "You listed your grandparents' address as your secondary residence last night. And...the Embassy informed me that...your grandmother died just over a year ago. Your grandfather's death was registered four months after your grandmother's. I'm really sorry."
No. This couldn't be real. No. I searched Teresa's face for any hint of doubt. She looked down at the red desk, a gesture that extinguished any hope.
This couldn't be how things would be after almost three years away. I was supposed to have talked to Eomma by now, and in a couple of days Eomma and Nuna would have met me at the airport and we'd have talked over everything during the K.T.X.[5] ride home. And after, I'd have gone to stay with Halmae and Halbae for weeks and weeks. Now, none of that was gonna happen.
"Your grandparents' address is registered as now owned by Choi Hyuk. Do you know any family members with that name?"
"No," I whispered, eyes fixed on my police-victim shoes.
I hadn't even said goodbye to Halmae and Halbae. Did they die from worrying about me? Maybe that was why Eomma changed her address and phone. I'd caused the family so much trouble that Eomma didn't want me to find them again.
"You OK, sweetie?"
Everything was going cloudy. Like there was fog in front of my eyes. And I was getting cold. A sickening chill flowed through my bones and froze my marrow, slowing my movements.
"Zeph?"
Dizziness hit, and black swirls obscured my vision. I scrambled to stay upright, but my muscles were too stiff to react. My legs crumpled beneath me.
"Zeph!"
Someone grabbed me before my head hit the tiles of the lobby.
Author's Notes:
[1] pizzicato: Italian, music terminology "plucked"
[2] "L'Elephant" from "Le Carnaval des Animaux", composed by Camille Saint-Saëns, 1886
[3] Abba: Korean, "Dad/Daddy"
[4] S.N.U.: Seoul National University, Korea's most prestigious university
[5] K.T.X.: Korean rapid transit rail system. South Korea's equivalent to the Japanese Bullet Train, used for fast rail transit between Seoul and Busan.