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Yuri checks her face over in the car mirror. She can do this. It's just a parent teacher meeting. Out of the blue. Because of an incident?
She doesn't know enough, and the only way she'll get through it is putting on her big girl pants.
Yuri misses her mom. Dad, too.
She lightly touches up her makeup. Game face. She can adult. She can. She swings her purse over a shoulder and steps out.
Emergency vehicles are still out front. She takes relief in that she doesn't see an ambulance, and the school called her here, not the hospital.
It's between classes. The moment Yuri opens the door, she finds herself in the middle of a swarm of teenagers-- off in their own worlds and caught up with gossip.
"--You hear? That quiet boy totally snapped."
"Surprised it took so long."
Yuri shoulders into the office.
"Yuri Gwon?" A woman at the desk asks.
She doesn't see him. "Yes. Where is he? What happened?"
The office lady is supposed to have a professional response, a reassuring list of things that are already being taken care of. The uncertain shadow in her eyes is anything but reassuring. She slides a slip of paper across the desk. "This is Gangu Gwon's incident report. About half an hour ago, there was an altercation on the roof and two boys have been sent to the hospital. And before that, something may or may not have happened in the boys' restroom, but we've only just found out about it."
Yuri stares down without seeing a thing. "Gangu?"
"We... did not send him to the hospital," the woman says, slowly.
"Should he have been?" Yuri demands.
"An emergency response worker is looking him over."
Yuri is not impressed. Nonetheless, she picks up the report.
She pauses. "You said Gangu wrote this?"
"Is something wrong?"
Yuri stares between the woman and the handwriting. "Clearly." She sits down in the corner and stews in her own immaturity. But his writing. She might not be the one grading his schoolwork, but... Did he write this with the wrong hand?
Troubled, she starts reading.
She finishes. Reads it again.
When Yuri reaches the end again, she looks long and hard at the last sentence.
I didn't care how much I hurt them, until I did.
Yuri still feels like she doesn't know what happened and suddenly understands why no one else seems to either.
She folds the report and reapproaches the desk. "I'm here to see my brother."
This time, she gets somewhere.
"Gangu? It's me."
He's holding an ice pack like he has no idea what to do with it. The medical response man said he probably hit his head, but no one could find anything, and Gangu was too rattled to be reliable.
She squishes the impulse to move the pack to his head. Instead, she sits near him, quietly, gently. "Gangu?"
He's shaking.
She reaches out for him.
His shirt is wet, like he'd stepped into a shower fully clothed. It's also unmistakably blotched with blood.
Gangu flinches.
For a terrible second, their eyes meet. Yuri... struggles to remember last he's looked her in the eye. And isn't that the worst thing to say? But he's such a skittish boy. Always has been, and it only got worse after their parents vanished.
But, when did her brother become a stranger?
He hastily looks away. “Sorry,” he says, sounding so lost, so guilty.
But the wild animal haze sticks in her memory.
“Gangu…”
He looks back at her again, wavering, awkward. Rattling.
She makes up her mind. “We need to talk, but… Let’s get you out of here first.”
Suspended.
She’s kind of mad. Disappointed. At herself, at the world… at her brother, too. But mostly herself.
It’s not hard to get him out. They manage to get him a clean shirt, too. Someone will have to collect his afternoon schoolwork later. And the next few days, too. But it can wait. It’ll keep.
Yuri considers the hospital. ("Why?" Gangu asks. "It's not like the blood's even mine.")
She decides her brother’s mind is a more immediate problem.
They buckle in her car and she focuses on the road.
Well, she has one eye on Gangu the whole time and she’s not ashamed to admit it. He’s not actively shaking anymore, but every here and there, a little tremor runs through him. And his eyes…
She pats his knee.
Gangu looks at her arm like it's an alien tentacle. And she remembers suddenly and terribly that he’d flinched back at the school. But he didn’t this time, so it’s a good thing?
"Gangu. I'm really mad. I don't understand, but... we've done everything together since," she swallows and takes a steadying breath.
"It's just us," he fills in for her, but the tone is off.
A thousand thoughts shuffle along, like the cars in Seoul. A busy city for a busy mind.
What should she say? Somewhere in between, her anger and disappointment reflect back at her.
How long have things been wrong?
"I'm sorry," she says.
“It’s not your fault.”
"Maybe not. But I could have noticed something sooner..."
"I should just disappear."
A cold, wrenching agony spills from Yuri's soul. "Gangu?"
He says nothing, but something sad and forged from mulish stubbornness settles over him.
Yuri pulls into the first mostly empty parking lot she sees and gives him all of her attention. "I wanted to talk at home. But, maybe we haven't been saying anything for too long."
She dithers between reaching for him and giving him space.
He slips off his seat belt. “I’m not your brother anymore.”
And becomes a villain.
The denial dies on her lips, taken by shock.
He bolts.
“Gangu!” Yuri reaches after him, hand grasping nothing. She calls again, again.
But Gangu is gone.
It's a sunny day, the asphalt smelling strongly of tar in the heat. Yuri is alone in a parking lot.