Page 6 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 1-4 (The Residency Boys #6)

“Just because something belongs to you doesn’t mean you know how to use it yet.” She squeezed his hand again. “Your father is going to help you learn about this part of yourself. It’s not something I can do.”

“You taught me Mandarin!”

She smiled again and this time she looked more happy but also that knife-like kind of sad.

“How long do I have to stay with my dad?”

Her eyes shadowed, and then her chin came up. “I don’t know, Jun. The people I’m going to see are not very kind. They had misguided ideas, and they do bad things with those ideas. They can never know about you.”

“I’m a secret.” Jun nodded. He knew this. He wasn’t a very big secret, but there were certain people who sometimes called Mama, and sometimes she had to take two pictures when they went on a trip, one with him and one without him. And sometimes they didn’t go to certain places in big cities.

“You’re my wonderful, beautiful secret.” She flashed him a real smile.

“And when I’m done making this problem be fixed, I’ll come back for you.

” She stopped and knelt down in front of him, holding him by the shoulders.

“It might be a long time, Jun. I might not be able to write you or call you. But know that I’m always with you. ”

She took the jade Buddha on the red string from around her neck and slid it over his head, sliding the jade under his shirt. “This is my lucky necklace. When you need me, hold it in your hand and squeeze, and I’ll be sending you luck.”

“I will, Mama. Mama, how long is a long time?”

“A couple months, at least. Maybe longer than months.” Mama wiped a tear away from the side of her eye.

Mama didn’t cry often, but when she did, she always did it this way, like a princess in a movie, water coming out of her eye and shimmering on her cheek.

He reached up and pushed it away for her, the way she did for him.

“Don’t cry, Mama. I’m strong. And you said Korea belongs to me, too, so I’ll be okay here, just like in Seattle.”

“You will be.” She patted his shoulder and smiled through the water smeared over her cheeks. “And when this big adventure is over, I want you to tell me all about it. I’ve never been to Korea before. So, it will be all new to me. You’ll have something to teach me.”

Jun beamed at her. That would be fun. Not the waiting months and months.

His stomach hurt thinking about it, but he was finally going to see his dad and learn all about this other part that belonged to him, the part his mother said wasn’t hers to teach him.

If Mama believed this was what they had to do, then he trusted her.

She always took care of him, and when people didn’t understand him, she fixed it.

She was good at fixing things. She could fix his pants when he broke them or his head when he got into a fight with a friend from school and his head was hurting his heart.

“And when this is finished, I can see my friends again, right?”

She nodded, and more water was on her cheeks again. “Some of them might be in a new school, but we can visit them or call them on the phone or go on a trip with them.”

Jun nodded. This was good. People moved and changed or went to different schools.

It wasn’t always fun, but then new friends came, and he could talk to old friends and see them on the weekends in the park or at the museum, and then they would all have new stories to tell each other that the other one didn’t know because they had been somewhere else.

“I love you, Mama.” He flung his arms around her. “I’ll study hard and have so many stories, and you’ll have stories.”

She hugged him back. “Yes, so many stories.”

She stood up and took his hand again, and they kept walking.

Eventually, they came up to a desk, and Mama talked to the woman behind it.

She put stamps on his papers. And then someone opened a side door.

There was a man standing in the big airport corridor on the other side.

He wore a rumpled suit and carried a black briefcase. He was looking at his phone.

“Jun,” Mama said, squeezing his hand again, “that’s your dad, Bak Sahyuk.”

“And Bak is the family name, just like in China but not like in American.” Jun repeated what she’d explained before.

“Yes.” Mama nodded.

“So Bak is my name too.”

“Yes. Your surname in Korea is Bak.” She squeezed his hand.

The man holding the door cleared his throat. “Ma’am.”

Mama sighed. She knelt down and handed Jun a large manila envelope.

“This is all your papers, Jun. Keep them with you somewhere safe in your house. Your dad will have your Korean papers, so you won’t need these every day, but someday, you might if you want to use the other parts of yourself again.

You’ll need them when I come back for you. ”

He took the envelope. “Yes, Mama.”

“Put it in your backpack.” She tapped the little personal backpack on his shoulders. It had his video game in it and the books he’d read on the plane but not his bear. That was in his suitcase.

When he was finished putting the envelope inside, she smiled at him, and there were more tears. She kissed him on the forehead and squeezed his shoulders. Then she stood and lifted her chin.

He raised his chin too and squared his shoulder. “I’ll be okay, Mama.”

“I know, Jun. Now go be my beautiful secret. Go be happy. And have adventures.”

“You too, Mama.”

“Love you, Jun.”

“Love you, Mama.” He threw his arms around her waist and squeezed one more time even though it was time to go, and then he grabbed the handle of his suitcase. It was almost too big for him, but he could do it, at least through the gate.

He made himself walk because that was what adventurers did. Or superheroes like Spider-Man. They did hard things even in the middle of the night, and then they found the good thing on the other side of the hard things.

He looked back once. Mama was standing there, one hand raised in farewell. He waved back and then turned and walked toward the man she had said was his dad.

Bak Sahyuk lowered his phone and looked Jun up and down.

He had one of those unhappy faces, like someone who didn’t sleep enough.

He needed to shave, and he smelled strange, like one of the clear bottles Mama used in cooking sometimes.

Maybe he’d been cooking? If so, he’d probably spilled it on himself.

“It’s you.” Bak Sahyuk spoke in English. He glanced down the hall and raised his hand, waving to Jun’s mom. She waved back. Then the man at the gate was summoning her, pointing her away, and she turned, going around the corner. She was gone.

Jun straightened his back and stood up as tall as he could and looked up. “Hi, Dad.”

“Don’t call me that. You can call me Mr. Bak. When you’ve proven yourself, maybe then you can call me dad.”

Jun’s stomach flipped. What did prove himself mean? Was this another part of the adventure? A test? His mama hadn’t told him there was a test. Korea belonged to him.

His father turned and started walking. Jun stared at him. After five steps, the man looked back. “Are you coming? Because if you’re not, I can just leave you here.”

Jun looked at his suitcase and then back at his dad. “Help, please?”

The man snorted. “If you want all that stuff, drag it yourself. I said I’d pick you up. I didn’t say anything about your shit.”

He didn’t have any shit in his suitcase. His clothes were clean. Even his shoes were clean and inside their shoe box, so even if they did have any germs, they wouldn’t touch his other things. And his…

Oh…his dad was using the word shit in the other way. The way that meant trash or not wanted stuff but not actual poop stuff.

Jun clenched his hands together. He needed his clothes. And he wanted his things. He put a hand on the handle of the suitcase and pushed.

By the time they made it onto the subway train, Jun was very tired, and he had bruises on his leg and his arms. There were so many sounds, and he didn’t understand what people were saying, and he kept almost losing his suitcase as the train moved.

The only time his father helped was when there were stairs leaving the station, and then he complained and called Jun names he didn’t understand.

Then they were out on a sidewalk with weird colors and bumps in places and even more noise.

It was like everyone walked here. They went into a lobby, and at least that was quieter, and then they went up an elevator and into a hotel room.

His father shut the door and pulled off his jacket, tossing it at the bed and loosening his tie.

He flopped into one of the chairs by the window and looked Jun up and down, just like he’d done at the airport but longer.

He said something, but it wasn’t in any language Jun understood.

So, he just stood there. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, and his father didn’t seem like the kind of adult who was okay with children doing things around them that they hadn’t been told to do.

Kinda like his principal, the one his mother had fixed.

Not that she’d fixed him all the way, but she’d made him better to Jun, at least.

But she wasn’t here to fix his father, so standing quietly seemed like a good idea.

“Let’s do this, then.” His father stood up and pulled Jun’s backpack off his back and took his suitcase.

He dumped both on the bed, opened and shook everything out of Jun’s backpack, then flipped open his suitcase.

He rifled through Jun’s things, sorting them into piles that made no sense, until he came to the manila envelope.

He opened it and took out Jun’s papers. Mama had always kept those papers so carefully.

Jun knew what they were—his US passport, his birth certificate, and his social security card.

There were even printouts for his schooling and certificates and awards from his dance classes.

Mama had said his Korean school would need them.