Page 68 of Heart and Seoul (Seoul 1)

“My feet hurt so bad,” Jules complains.

“Mine, too.” I feel like we’ve walked the entire length of the city.

“You should carry me.”

I gives Jules’s long frame a once-over. “I’m not carrying you.”

“Fine, but you’re buying me beef and I’m talking hanwoo. I want the Korean beef that gets cooked over charcoal briquettes and not on an electric grill. There’s a place in Myeongdong that my ex took me to. Actually, no, I take that back. You should be renting out the private room at Born and Bred.” She smacks her lips together. “I’ve always wanted to eat there.”

“Fine.” I’m already bleeding money. The stripe on my credit card is worn down and the balance on the ATM receipt made me wince.

“Really? It’s three hundred dollars a person.”

“What?” I stop and glare at Jules. “No. I’m not buying you three-hundred-dollar beef. Geez, what’s it made out of? Gold?” Is that how much dinner was with Yujun at his favorite hanwoo barbecue restaurant? No wonder it was so good.

“No one eats gold.” Jules rolls her eyes. “Why did you even say that?”

I bite my tongue so I won’t yell at Jules. When I have my temper under control, I mutter, “It’s a metaphor.”

“A dumb one.”

“Is there CCTV here?”

“Probably. Why?”

“I might murder you, but since I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a South Korean prison cell, I’ll wait until there aren’t any cameras around.”

“No need to get—” Jules cuts herself off, stopping in front of a gate. “Wait. Is this the address? Hand me your phone,” she demands.

I slap my device onto Jules’s wiggling fingers. As she double-checks the address, I search the gate for something out of the ordinary. Does Jules see signs of a cult house? Is it a celebrity home? The gate is large and wooden with a simple iron design hung in the middle. There is a black box mounted on a cement pillar holding up one side of the gate.

“Oh. My. God.” Jules grabs my arm. “What if this is your grandparents’ house and your mom had to give you away so she wasn’t banished?”

I peel Jules’s fingers away. “Are you a flight attendant or a writer?”

“Maybe both? I told you that being a flight attendant is boring work. Sometimes I make up stories in my head, mostly about how I’d push a passenger out the window.” She rises on her tiptoes as if she can stretch far enough to see over the gate. “This is what my ex’s house looks like.”

“I thought you never met his parents.”

“I didn’t. I found his address by looking through his phone and took a cab to it.”

I stare at my flatmate for a long, silent moment.

“What’s with the judgy stare? Curb stalking is normal.”

“Normal?”

“Yeah, it’s not like I went into his house. And we were dating dating,” she adds with emphasis and wiggled eyebrows. Then her face falls as she remembers how they aren’t together anymore. “Anyway, I went by his house and it made a little more sense. Rich families here in Korea marry their kids off to other rich families. It’s not about love or romance or soul mates. It’s about how to keep your money for the rest of eternity so you don’t end up living in an apartment next to the subway or in the basement or at the top of the highest hill with no elevator access.”

Jules’s tone is matter-of-fact, but there’s hurt and bitterness in her words. If we were friends, if it were Kelly from back home or even Boyoung, I’d squeeze her shoulder, but this is Jules and she’s more likely to bite my hand than appreciate my comfort, so all I say is, “That sucks.” I mean it, though.

“It is what it is. Anyway, let’s see if this is the house of your fairy godmother.” Jules shrugs, pretending like the rejection of her ex doesn’t still sting, but I’m an expert at rejection and know all too well how it lingers like a toothache. Wasn’t that why I flew all the way across the world to track down my sperm donor and bio mom? I wanted an answer, as if hearing the truth—whatever it is—from the mouth of the people who created me would somehow salve that wound that still exists. I’ve papered over that sore—the one that exists because I wasn’t good enough to keep—but it’s always there in the back of my mind. It’s why I cling so quickly and then back away twice as fast, and it’s why I’m here, even if I don’t want to say it out loud.

Jules casts a worried look in my direction. “Don’t get hurt feelings if these people deny your existence. A child showing up out of the blue is going to be a huge embarrassment for them, and these people are all about face—looking good to outsiders.”

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