Page 157

The weak organ inside my chest delivers one hard, painful beat.

Then several more.

I swallow hard.

“And that’s my parasite playing?”

Mrs. Han frowns. “Your what?”

Damn it.

I look away.

“I mean…” I hesitate before correcting myself. “That’s Stephen?”

“Yes.”

Crack.

Something inside me shifts.

It doesn’t break. Not exactly.

Something moves, something that has been sitting quietly beneath all my narration, all my sarcasm, and all the carefully constructed reasons I’ve given myself for why Stephen Choi is nothing more than a winter inconvenience.

I don’t know what this story has to do with him.

But suddenly, I’m listening differently.

Because I understand it.

I know what it means to carry something no one else is allowed to see.

Do I hide it?

Yes.

Do I pretend it isn’t there because acknowledging it would give it power over me?

Absolutely.

But that doesn’t make it disappear.

It simply makes it private.

And maybe Stephen is the same.

Maybe there are parts of him he keeps buried because the world has never given him a reason to believe they deserve to be seen.

The world knows Stephen Choi as Khaos. The black sheep of South Korea’s rap scene. The tattooed rapper with the mysterious upbringing, the scandals, the sharp tongue, and the carefully cultivated image of a man who doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks.

That’s what they see beyond his music.

But I know something they don’t.

I’ve seen the way he looks when he thinks nobody is watching. I’ve heard the agony in his voice when his nightmares refuse to let him go. I’ve seen the books he annotates, the words he circles, the passages he underlines so forcefully that the ink nearly cuts through the page.

Things that make him angry.