Chapter 1 - Trained for Abandonment
The next day Haesoo came into the company with swollen eyes.
Not red from lack of sleep. Red from crying. The particular puffiness of a boy who had spent the night trying not to replay a bedroom in Yongsan and failing every time he closed his eyes.
Luly was already in the conference room. Laptop open. Coffee untouched.
Jin walked in.
Luly looked up immediately.
“How is she?” Luly said.
Jin set his coffee on the table.
“Surprisingly she is fine,” Jin said. “She’s coloring. Eating. Sleeping. Doing livestreams.”
The sentence sat in the room.
Haesoo standing by the door hearing coloring, eating, sleeping, livestreams in the flat tone of a man reporting weather conditions in a city he expected to be on fire and that was apparently sunny instead.
Luly looked at Jin for a second too long. Then at Haesoo. Then back at Jin.
“She’s used to abandonment,” Luly said. Quiet. “It’s probably just another day for her.”
The room went still.
Haesoo’s face changed. Not dramatically. The particular change of a boy hearing a sentence that lands exactly where the wound already is.
Jin did not respond right away.
Because it was cruel.
Because it was true.
Because the truth and cruelty had always lived too close together around girls named Reyes.
“She asked for pancakes this morning,” Jin said at last. “Then she colored for two hours. Then she went live.”
Haesoo looked at the floor.
The particular devastation of a boy who had spent the night breaking apart on a dorm floor while the girl he broke up with woke up and asked for pancakes.
Luly closed her laptop.
“That doesn’t mean she’s fine,” Eunwoo said from the doorway. Gentle.
“No,” Luly said. “It means she knows how to function after people leave. That’s not the same thing.”
Dongmin had gone quiet for once. Sitting in a chair. Looking between Jin and Haesoo.
“She really just…” Dongmin started. “She’s just doing normal stuff?”
Jin picked up his coffee. Cold already.
“She is doing what she always does,” Jin said. “When something hurts and she doesn’t know where to put it.”
“Which is what,” Minjae said.
“Routine,” Jin said. “Structure. Coloring. Food. Screens. Sleep. She makes herself smaller and keeps moving.”
Haesoo’s hands were at his sides. Empty. The particular emptiness of a boy who had expected wreckage and was instead being told she asked for pancakes.
Luly looked at him.
“That’s harder, isn’t it,” she said.
He didn’t answer.
Because yes was too small a word for it.
Because some part of him had wanted proof that it mattered the way it mattered to him, and Lulu’s version of proof had always been harder to read than anyone else’s.
“She’s not okay,” Luly said. Looking at the table now. “She’s just trained.”
Jin drank his coffee.
No one said anything after that.
Because there was nothing to say to a room holding two separate truths.
Haesoo cried on the floor.
Lulu asked for pancakes.
And both of those things meant exactly what they meant.
Haesoo kept preparing for the tour with Sol7 and doing the Friday MC shows.
The tour meetings. The choreography revisions. The vocal runs for his solo stage. The particular machinery of a career that did not pause because a boy’s chest was ruined. He moved through July on schedule. Reliable again on the surface. Hitting counts. Remembering cues. Standing beside Yerin on Fridays and answering when she spoke to him because not answering would have been stranger than answering and strange is the kind of thing cameras notice.
Yerin talked. He responded.
Professional. Measured. The particular distance of a boy who had learned that silence could be interpreted as its own kind of intimacy and whose learning had produced the specific carefulness of a boy giving normal answers in a normal tone on national television.
In the middle of July Jin called Lulu.
She answered on the second ring.
“Where are you,” Jin said. “Where did you go.”
Lulu was standing on a sidewalk in Seongsu with a shopping bag from a stationery store hanging from one wrist.
“I came to Seongsu,” Lulu said. “I took the wrong subway and it did a whole turn around Seoul. It took an hour and there were no seats.”
Jin was quiet for one second. The particular silence of a man processing the sentence I took the wrong subway all the way to Seongsu from a girl who had never been allowed to go anywhere alone and who had apparently gone somewhere alone badly and was reporting it like a weather event.
“You took the subway by yourself,” Jin said.
“Yes,” Lulu said.
“To Seongsu,” Jin said.
“Yes,” Lulu said. “By accident. I was trying to go somewhere else but the line curved and then I was here and then I decided Seongsu was fine.”
“Lulu.”
“I’m at a store buying stationery,” Lulu said. “I might get some squishes or slime.”
The particular sentence of a girl who had gotten lost across Seoul and turned the getting-lost into retail.
“Okay,” Jin said at last. “Send me your location so I know where you’re at.”
“Okay,” Lulu said.
She hung up.
The stationery store had been bright and cold and full of things organized by color. She bought a calendar with cats on it. Slime. Two squishes shaped like bread. Pens. Highlighters. Markers. The particular inventory of a girl who had discovered an entire district full of shops that sold the inside of her brain in physical form and whose discovering was producing the specific recklessness of a person who has money and has never had reasons to use it on joy before.
Then she saw the plushie section.
Shelves full of them. Bears. Rabbits. Cats. Dogs. Desert animals. Sea animals. The particular wall of softness that stores build because softness sells and because people reach for weight when they want comfort they cannot explain.
She stopped in front of a desert leopard.
Sand-colored. Spotted. Round. Weighted. The particular design of a plushie meant to feel heavier than it looked. Present. Like something there.
She picked it up.
Held it in both hands.
The weight pushed back.
She had already thrown the orca away.
Into the trash. Without ceremony. Without crying. The particular disposal of a thing that hurt to look at because the thing had been bought by a boy who was no longer in her life and the no-longer had made the weighted comfort feel like evidence. She had taken Orca from the bed and dropped him into a black trash bag and tied the bag shut and not looked again because not-looking was how she survived everything.
Now there was a desert leopard in her hands.
Not an orca. Not black and white. Not him.
Something else. Something new. The particular logic of a girl who could not replace what was gone and so bought a different animal entirely because different meant it did not have to compete with memory.
She took it to the register with the cat calendar and the slime and the pens and the markers and the squishes and paid.
When she came out Jin was there.
Standing on the sidewalk in his suit with his phone in one hand and his coffee in the other. Cold. Always cold. The particular silhouette of a man who told a girl to send her location and then drove across the city anyway because location sharing was information and information was not the same as seeing with his own eyes.
Lulu stopped.
The shopping bags in both hands. The desert leopard tucked under one arm.
She looked at him.
“Really,” Lulu said.
Jin looked at her. At the bags. At the plushie. At the particular image of an eighteen-year-old girl who had accidentally looped around Seoul on a subway and turned the mistake into a shopping trip.
“Yes,” Jin said.
“You said send my location,” Lulu said.
“And you sent it,” Jin said. “So I came.”
“You didn’t have to come,” Lulu said.
“I know,” Jin said.
She stood there on the Seongsu sidewalk holding a cat calendar and a weighted desert leopard and a bag full of slime and markers, looking at the man who had crossed the city because she took the wrong train.
Jin’s eyes went to the plushie.
“That’s not the orca,” he said.
“No,” Lulu said.
She shifted the leopard higher under her arm.
“It’s a desert leopard,” Lulu said. “It’s weighted.”
Jin nodded once. The particular nod of a man who noticed everything and commented on almost none of it.
“Get in the car,” Jin said.
Lulu looked at him. Then at the car parked at the curb. Then back at him.
“I was going to take the subway back,” Lulu said.
“You got lost on the subway here,” Jin said.
“That was one time,” Lulu said.
“It was literally this time,” Jin said.
She considered that. The particular pause of a girl processing an argument whose data set was unfortunately accurate.
“Fine,” Lulu said.
Jin took two of her bags without asking. The cat calendar and the bag with the markers and pens. She kept the plushie and the slime and the squishes.
They got into the car.
Lulu in the passenger seat. Desert leopard in her lap. Bags at her feet. Jin behind the wheel.
He pulled away from the curb.
“You threw the orca away,” Jin said after a minute.
Not accusing. Not gentle either. The particular flat observation of a man who must have noticed the absence days ago and who had waited until now to say it because now she had a new weighted animal in her lap and the now made the saying possible.
“Yes,” Lulu said.
Jin drove.
“You liked that one,” he said.
“I know,” Lulu said.
The leopard sat in her lap. Heavy. New. The particular weight of a thing chosen to fill the silhouette of something else.
Jin kept his eyes on the road.
Lulu looked out the window.
Seoul moving past the glass in the late afternoon. Seongsu disappearing behind them. The wrong subway line. The stationery store. The cat calendar. The slime. The pens. The new plushie.
She put her hand on the leopard’s head. Pressed her palm there. Feeling the weight.
“It’s not the same,” Lulu said. To the window.
Jin didn’t answer.
Because he knew.
Because that was the point.
Because sometimes a new thing is not meant to be the same. It is just meant to be there when the old thing is gone.
They drove home in silence.
The desert leopard in her lap.
Jin’s coffee in the cup holder.
Cold.
When they got home she put the cat calendar on the wall.
In her bedroom. Beside the desk. Low enough that she could reach it without standing on the bed. The particular placement of a girl who arranged objects around access rather than decoration because decoration implied the object was for looking at and Lulu did not keep things just to look at them. Things had to function.
She opened the calendar. July.
Cats in little squares. Different one every month. The particular harmlessness of a product designed for ordinary people and that was now being handled by a girl who did not do anything in an ordinary way.
She crossed off today.
One clean line through the date. Then she turned the pages forward. August. September.
On September 27 she stopped.
Her finger on the square. The particular pause of a girl whose pauses were usually invisible because they happened inside her head and whose inside had just traveled outward to her hand resting on a date.
She circled it.
Then she opened the bag of stickers. Small ones. Stars. Hearts. Tiny animals. She picked two stars and a silver heart and put them around the square. Then a cat face in the corner. The particular decoration of a date by a girl who did not decorate anything unless the thing mattered and the mattering was visible in the care with which she placed each sticker, straight and evenly spaced, like data points around an event.
Jin saw it from the hallway.
He was passing with his coffee. Cold. Always cold. He looked through the open door. At the calendar. At the stickers around September 27. At Lulu standing in front of it with the sheet of stickers in one hand.
He did not think much of it.
A birthday marked on a calendar. An eighteen-year-old girl decorating a date. The particular normalcy of a sight that was normal enough to keep a guardian from asking questions and whose normalcy was the camouflage.
Lulu closed the sticker sheet. Put it in the drawer.
The next day she crossed off another square.
The day after that, another.
Every day. The particular ritual of a girl making time visible by erasing it one box at a time. July thinning beneath her pen. August coming closer. The calendar on the wall becoming a system. The same way everything became a system once it entered her room.
Jin noticed the pattern eventually.
Not the date. The routine.
She woke up late. Ate something small. Took her medicine. Crossed out the day.
Every afternoon or evening. One line through one square. Deliberate. The particular behavior of a girl who was counting toward something and whose counting she was performing in plain sight because the plain sight made it harder to identify as counting.
At the end of July Jin stood in the hallway with his coat on.
Coffee in hand. Suit on. The particular silhouette of a man about to leave for work and whose work was about to become airports and hotels and arenas.
“I have to go on tour with Sol7,” Jin said. “Are you coming?”
Lulu was on the couch. Desert leopard in her lap this time. Not Orca. Orca gone. The leopard held the same way. Against her stomach. Her phone in one hand.
“No,” Lulu said. “I’ll just stay here.”
Jin watched her for a second.
The house quiet around them. The particular quiet of a question that could have become an argument months ago and that now was just logistics because she was eighteen and because he had learned that some invitations she refused not out of defiance but preference.
“You’ll be here alone,” Jin said.
“Yes,” Lulu said.
“For weeks,” Jin said.
“I know how weeks work,” Lulu said.
He almost smiled. The jaw thing. Small.
“You need to answer my calls and messages,” Jin said.
“Okay,” Lulu said.
Not flat. Not warm either. Just okay. The particular concession of a girl who knew this part mattered to him and whose knowing let the yes come out without resistance because resisting would have cost more energy than giving him the word.
Jin looked past her. To the calendar on the wall.
July nearly gone. Most of the boxes crossed out. September 27 still far enough away to look harmless. Still decorated.
He looked back at her.
“Take your medicine,” Jin said.
“I always take my medicine,” Lulu said.
“Eat what I leave in the fridge.”
“I know how fridges work,” Lulu said.
“Lulu.”
“I said okay,” Lulu said.
Jin nodded once. The particular acceptance of a man who knew that with her, okay was sometimes the best version of love he was going to get before noon.
He left.
The door closed. The lock turned.
The house held her.
Lulu sat on the couch with the desert leopard in her lap and the calendar on the wall with one more day crossed off and the particular understanding settling into the room that soon the house would be hers alone again for a while. Not Salinas-alone. Not storage-room-alone. A different kind.
A house where someone left and came back.
A house with labeled food in the fridge.
A house where the dates on the wall meant something.
She looked at the calendar.
Then at her phone.
Then back at the calendar.
One more box gone.
