When she left, off to see the world and live a life apart from them, her absence yielded a new lesson to be learned: how to be Jiyeon, without Janie. Sitting with Eunjae, she understood that a similar lesson awaited him, too. He'd have to learn how to be Eunjae, without eight brothers.
If he was worried, if he was afraid, it didn't show just then. He put the parcel in Jiyeon's lap and said, “Look what I got.”
Carefully, she peeled the brown paper away. She went so slow that Eunjae had to laugh through his own impatience. “I’m trying not to rip it,” said Jiyeon, uncovering the beveled edge of a picture frame.
“Just rip it.”
“No way. What if it gets scratched? I still need to bring it home.”
“I need to borrow it first. They want it back when I'm done, but it's okay. I'll make two copies.”
And that was where Jiyeon stopped. “What is this? What did you do?”
“Offered to buy it. Golden Grove wouldn't sell, though.” He shrugged. “Thought that was fair. Can't expect them to break up their collection for some guy.”
“Eunjae, you didn't.”
But he did. Under the wrap, just a little bit faded by sunlight and the passage of time, Jiyeon saw the house she'd drawn in eighth grade. It had an orange door.
She looked up at him, speechless. Eunjae brushed a tear from her cheek. “When I find an apartment,” he said, “it's going on the wall. And when you open your own place, whatever that place might be, we'll hang it up again.”
Jiyeon hooked an arm around his neck and kissed him. “I love it. I love it more than I can say. Thank you.” But then she was sobbing in earnest, because she had no idea where this picture would go. That certainty was lost to her. “I wish I knew,” she whispered. “I thought I knew, and now I don’t.”
“You don’t have to know,” Eunjae whispered back, gently. “You’ve got so much time.”
“I said that to Ezra.”
“You did. He told me. And I don’t know what I’m doing, either. I just know I love you.”
The picture frame almost slid right out of her lap and onto the cracked pavement below. “Eunjae. You’re saying that to me right now?”
“I am.”
“But you’ve never said that to me before,” she stammered.
“I wanted to,” Eunjae said in a hurry. “So many times. I mean, all the time, but I wasn’t sure if it was too soon.” Overcome by belated embarrassment, he added, “Google said I shouldn’t.”
It was so warm. Jiyeon had never been warmer. Why did she borrow this jacket he’d left in her car? Why did she insist on pretending it ever got cold in California? She would get nothingdone today. She would sit on this bench and freak out. And for the rest of this day, for the rest of her life, she would obsess over the look on Eunjae’s face when he heard her say, “I love you, too.”
This felt like her last love, but it was also the first.
There was still work to be done. Eunjae helped her up so they could walk back. Volunteers were arriving in cars and vans and more than one bus. They came bearing food, ladders, power tools. They fussed over Denny when he emerged from the shop to greet them.
Jiyeon forgot to breathe. She hadn’t hoped for such a turnout, what with the short notice and how rough things had been in recent weeks. “But there’s so many," she said. "I can’t believe it.”
Eunjae waited for her, smiling. “Yeah. Kindness comes back to you.”
She felt the shift when it happened, like the light changing at daybreak, like every cell in her body wide awake and singing. The dream, the dream. It hadn’t changed at all.
It grew.
A video recorded by Eunjae in July 2023, two weeks before Apollo’s departure from Los Angeles
To be clear, this is a video of a video. Eunjae has his phone pointed at the TV screen. He rewinds to the beginning, then presses play again.
On the day of this recording, we’re at the apartment on Ivy Lane. The living room is steeped in gray. Midsummer rain drums against the window panes. But on the TV, it's 2005. The timestamp reads January 10, 9:16am, and this is an apartment we've never seen. The Han family lived here until Denny started kindergarten the following year.
Mr. Han narrates the scene. “Here we go,” he says, zooming in on a little girl who pads out of the hallway, yawning. Wavy hair falls down to her shoulders, rumpled from sleep. Her yellow t-shirt is several sizes too large, an obvious hand-me-down. She wears this over polka dot pajama pants that are at least an inch too short. Joey clears his throat. Then he sings the birthday song in a rich, booming voice, dragging out the notes for added drama.
