BA3 - Chapter 4

The first rest day came in a blur. The morning training every day that week had been so rigorous, I was always exhausted by dinner. That was fine by me. Eun-bi was ignoring me, wouldn’t even let me apologize. The six of us—which Yuri would not stop calling TK_Spyname—couldn’t discuss our mission anywhere on the grounds, and there was nothing to do but sleep anyway, so I got a lot of it. My muscles thanked me.

The gates to the city opened and we wasted no time leaving. Hana and I walked hand-in-hand as we passed under the huge Bastion gate to the city streets. We swung our arms gently and the fragrant summer breeze ruffled our hair. It smelled of the sweet street foods of rest day morning: Pastries.

We stopped and picked up a ten pack of the delightful, chocolate drizzled donuts, then boarded the train. It felt weird knowing I would see Eun-bi at home, and that she wouldn’t be speaking to me. What if she’d already told Mother about the bullying incident?

Dread pooled in the pit of my stomach and the vision of our mother—an unnatural two meters taller than me—scolding me played on repeat in my head. Would she understand why I’d done nothing? Not nothing. I was ready to jump in if things had turned to physical violence, as I was sure the others had been too.

“What kind of an older brother let’s that happen?” My mother’s roaring voice blared in my head as the oversized version of her kicked me off the fifth-floor patio of our home to comical sound effects.

‘Really, Mae?’ I asked, knowing the vision had been from her imagination.

Her thoughts always came through with a bubbly, fake veneer. It was as if everything was made cuter, and exaggerated. The Eun-bi of this vision had been at least four years younger, her eyes huge, and sparkling with unshed tears as she hid behind our giant mother’s leg.

She chuckled in my head and the images disappeared. “Just predicting possible futures.”

“Hey,” Hana said with a kind smile. I gave her one in return, but then her face darkened, and she said, “You need to work on that. If I can tell, others might, too.”

I nodded. Always control facial expressions. Always placid. I turned my face to stone and felt like an imposter for all the emotion raging under it. Guilt. Disappointment. Irrational fear of being kicked off the apartment patio…

We arrived at the stop and made the short walk to the Rabid Rabbit. Ryni was already in the bar, preparing to open. She always opened early on rest days.

“Did you bring me one?” She asked when she saw the box in my hand.

I grinned and flipped open the lid. “Of course.”

She held the deep-fried goodness up to her nose and breathed deeply. Purple ry munje shimmered just under her skin across her cheeks as she read the story of the donut in great detail.

“Perfection,” she whispered, then took a massive bite that left chocolate smeared on her lips.

“Enjoy,” I said with a laugh.

When we made it to the elevator, the fleeting moment of happiness left me emptier. That same dread returned to fill up the space, intensified twice over. I breathed, reinforced my mental shield_TK, and smoothed my expression. No one would know.

The doors slid back and I looked down the long hallway to our apartment. It felt as if I was walking to my own execution, but I didn’t slow, or falter. I worked the lock to our home and was greeted by Daegon’s excited, sleepy face.

“You’re here!” my littlest brother exclaimed. He hugged me around the chest and squeezed.

“Did you sleep next to the door?” I asked jokingly and ruffled his hear.

Daegon shook his head. “No, I woke up early.”

I laughed and we made our way inside. Mother was cooking away, Minjee was at the table, drawing of course, Do-hwan was nowhere to be seen, and Suyi was on the patio tending the sprawling garden.

I turned back to close the door and was surprised at the resistance it gave me. I pulled it open once more to see Eun-bi, her hand pressed against the frame, glowering at me. I stepped out of the way and let her in without a word.

“Donuts!” Eun-bi exclaimed as she stepped past Hana into the family room. Her voice held the friendly tone I had been denied for the week prior, and it twisted my guts.

“Eun-bi, you’re here!” Mother stepped away from her bubbling pot and gave her a hug. I knew it wasn’t a slight against me, but her treatment of Eun-bi was something I had missed growing up. I was glad Mother was feeling well enough to be a mother now, but it stung nonetheless that she hadn’t been with me.

We came to sit next to Minjee at the table. I glanced over her drawing, though she had it pretty well covered with her opposite arm, and saw another sight I didn’t want to remember. It was Woong-ji’s machina armor, its half mangled leg dripping blood. She was becoming an excellent artist… I just wished she could pick something less horrifying to focus on.

“How was the first week?” Mother asked with bright eyes as she looked between us.

Eun-bi was first to answer. “It was amazing. I met so many new friends, two of them I want to bring next weekend, and my Core Foundations class is the best.” Eun-bi looked to me with a smile that only I knew was forced. “Everything is just like Jiyong said it would be.”

I had also said that Bastion was home to privileged pungbahn who would make her life seem like a dream compared to the gates of Eodun, but she left that out of her recount.

“That’s great. And you two?” Mother looked at me.

I shrugged, then replied in the Kokyu dialect, Japanese. “Train, study, eat, and sleep. We do nothing else.”

Mother beamed. “I’m so proud, but I wish I knew what you were saying.”

“His accent needs work,” Mae blurted through the speaker, “but he’s doing quite well. So is Hana.”

At the boiling over of the pot, Mother jumped to her feet and scurried to the kitchen. Eun-bi avoided my gaze. I opened the box of donuts and offered her one. She took it and gave me an overly exuberant, “Thanks!”

Minjee looked up from her drawing, her brow raised. She seemed to know something was going on with Eun-bi, too. We sat quietly until Mother brought us each a bowl of savory porridge, chock full of meat odds and ends, diced tomatoes and some other cubed green vegetable I couldn’t identify, then topped with a poached egg.

Suyi came in from the garden and Do-hwan seemed to materialized at the smell alone. When the meal was over, and every donut snatched up, everyone returned to their room to wash up and change. Hana stayed at the table, waiting patiently so I could catch Eun-bi before she went into her and Suyi’s shared room.

“Are we okay?” I asked, uncertain of how to broach the topic of her unending silence followed by chipper enthusiasm.

Her expression darkened. “You’ll be gone in five weeks—maybe forever. I just want these last few days to be happy for everyone else.”

My tight gut churned with hot porridge in a nauseating maneuver of guilt. “It’s just a precaution. I want to come home. I’ll do everything in my power to come back—”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she whispered with hatred.

The twisting nausea of guilt quickly turned to hot resentment. “I hope you don’t regret that.”

Her eyes bulged for a brief second, and then she pursed her lips. I could see she had more to say, but she turned away and left me standing in the hall. The doors to all the other rooms were closed, but that didn’t mean no one heard us. Do-hwan and Daegon were banging about, chattering with one another—well, Daegon was chattering at Do-hwan—but Minjee could’ve heard, or Suyi. She would know everything in a minute, anyway. The two co-conspirators would share everything with one another.

“Your sister is not your enemy,” Mae reminded me, and I resented her for it, too. “She’s hurt, Jiyong, and scared, but she loves you.”

‘She has a funny way of showing it by telling me to go die in a foreign land.’

Hana grabbed my arm and pulled me back down the long hall to the table. She sat me down, then knelt beside me and wrapped her arms over my shoulders.

“Everything will be okay,” she whispered. Her breath was warm against my neck and I let her gentle rocking soothe me. I closed my eyes and swayed with her. Slowly, my stomach calmed and the heat in my chest died.

In the end, Eun-bi would come around. I would go to Kokyu, we would be successful, we’d come home, and Eun-bi would be happy to see me. She would forget all about the hatred she harbored for the important life-lesson I let her endure. She would spend the next few months with her friends, growing stronger and more mature, and when I got back, she would apologize.

I faked a jovial attitude for the remainder of the day as we took a pleasant day-tour of the south-end. Mother had planned the whole thing. We visited several antique shops, stopped at the local Historian Guild building, ate some amazing noodles, and returned home by mid-afternoon.

We ate one more meal together, and then parted ways twenty minutes before Bastion closed its gates. Eun-bi made her statement of despise clear by walking ten paces ahead of Hana and I, then situated herself on the other end of the train platform while we waited. The tension gnawed at me, but there was nothing more I could do.

I would get to see her on rest days, and we would pretend everything was okay. I would just have to enjoy those days as much as I could.