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Kana didn’t answer right away. Jun’s left side hung heavy with the bleach mixture. More shaking. More pulling.

When she spoke again, the mixture was cold on his right side. “In a way, yes.” Her hands slowed. “We understood each other. I think that’s why it felt like we only had each other during those years.”

She came around to his front and leaned in, parting his fringe. Her eyes moved between the top of his head and his face. “When that only glimmer of hope in your life disappears, you’d do anything to bring them back. You know?”

Her words landed somewhere deep and familiar. Jun blinked hard—the fumes stinging his eyes, nothing more. “I do.”

Kana raised her eyebrows as she pinned the strands back. “You do?” Her eyes crinkled above the mask —effortless and warm, even with her half-dyed hair and no makeup. “You got someone like that?”

Jun’s throat tightened. His fingers curled against his knees. No one had ever asked him that. Not Alex. Not Yoona. Not even Ruki himself had ever turned the question around on him. Jun sat with it for a moment, the weight of it pressing against the inside of his chest.

“Yes,” he breathed. His eyes burned. He told himself it was the fumes.

Kana’s eyes lit up above the mask—like it pushed the garage lights brighter. “What are they like?”

Are. Now she made it sound like he was still alive.

“Very kind,” he started. The words felt insufficient the moment they left his mouth.

“Great at conversations. Selfless.” He smiled at that last one. He wanted to hold onto it. “He was… patient with me. From the very beginning.”

His voice wavered, but he swallowed it back. “I came to America from Taiwan in elementary school.”

Kana nodded and pulled the mask away with her lip jutting out—the mutual understanding of someone who had also arrived somewhere foreign. She pinned another bobby pin into place.

“He was the first friend I ever made. He stuck around even though my English was terrible. He was so patient that I killed myself trying to keep up with him.”

Jun laughed, but it curled into something darker. “He was incredible. Everyone gravitated towards him. He was the smartest and the coolest. And I never understood why someone like that would bother with someone like me.” His voice softened. “A weird, shy kid who couldn’t even speak the same language.”

Kana sucked in her lips, cheeks tight from widening a smile. She shuddered a sigh. “That’s the cutest shit I’ve ever heard.”

Heat burned his cheeks. “What?”

“You know,” said Kana as she threw her gloves and face mask in the trash bin. She kicked it behind her and sat on the stool, feet dangling inches from the ground.

“What?” he asked, trembling.

Kana scoffed another laugh. “Don’t be scared. I’m not going to bite you.” She leaned in until they were eye level. “I think you sell yourself way too short. You are way more capable than you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“You got us out of that car chase back at Norms. I thought I was going to die, and you’re the reason I didn’t.”

Jun closed his eyes, trying not to relive the anxiety-inducing memory. When he opened them, she was smiling.

“Give yourself way more credit. And I’m glad we got to do this.” She nodded at his head. “Not just the hair.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “If I didn’t, we wouldn’t have talked these things out. Just like I never imagined that I got to meet someone like Sunny.”

Jun nodded. He understood completely—how a single person could rearrange your sense of what mattered.

“But as I was saying,” Kana said, leveling a black fingernail at him, “stop selling yourself short. You’ve got this nurturing thing about you.” She crossed her arms and winked. “Probably why that friend wanted to hang with you.”

Jun’s hands stilled in his lap. He had never thought to ask Ruki that. His lips curled into a shy smile. “I would hope so.”

“Why do you say that?”