Page 59 of Tell Me Where It Ends

“I will,” I answer, voice steady, though my chest feels tight.

He nods once, slowly, then walks out. The door clicks shut behind him.

I stand in the middle of my living room, completely, utterly alone for the first time in what feels like a lifetime.

The silence that follows isn’t heavy. It’s empty. It’s chosen. It’s mine.

And I have absolutely no idea what to do next.

6c

Hondongi

For the first four days after Shin leaves, the silence in my apartment is an aggressive, physical presence.

It’s not peaceful. It’s the dead, humming quiet of a server room after the power has been cut. I’m not used to this stillness—since I was thirteen, I’ve been dancing, singing, acting, always moving from before sunrise until long past midnight. Without anything to do, the apartment feels too large, too empty, and I feel… restless.

I try to act like a normal person. I make coffee, but it goes cold on the counter, a forgotten prop. I turn on the TV, but the cheerful inanity of a variety show feels like a personal attack, so I turn it off.

I stand by the window and watch people on the street below—laughing, talking on theirphones, walking with purpose—and the glass feels less like a window and more like the wall of an aquarium. I am the strange, exotic fish on display, trapped in a world of my own making.

Freedom is a strange thing. My body craves motion, my hands crave work, my mind craves a rhythm it hasn’t known in weeks. Being still, being left to my own devices, is almost unbearable.

On the fifth day, I can’t take it anymore. The pacing has worn a track in my expensive rug. The silence is screaming. I need a task. A purpose. Anything other than the sound of my own thoughts, which have started to loop like a corrupted audio file.

I pull out my phone and scroll to Bora’s contact—my endlessly resourceful stylist who knows every corner of Seoul. I hit call before I can overthink it.

“A… dog?” Bora sounds dumfounded, her voice tinny through the speaker. It’s not the first time she’s fielded one of my wild ideas—this one perhaps a little clichéd but absolutely necessary—but this sudden request still manages to throw her off balance.

“Yes! A dog!You know, a thing that won’t make me tea, doesn’t care if I’m a successful or disgraced celebrity, can be trusted completely, and will give me unconditional love? Yes, I want one of those, please.”

There’s a pause on the line. Then a sharp inhale and a faint, incredulous chuckle. “Min-hee… are you serious? Shouldn’t we call Shin for backup?”

I can practically see her in my head, judging me silently, thinking this ranks a solid nine on the ‘classic-Min-hee’ scale—something that would normally demand Shin’s immediate intervention.

“I am deadly serious,” I say. “And no, please, no Shin. Now, can we go? Just us?”

“Fine,” she sighs, but there’s laughter in her voice. “But only because I can’t imagine letting you wander a city animal shelter alone, terrifying all the poor dogs. And also because I really want to see the disaster you’re about to adopt.”

Within the hour, Bora and I are driving through Seoul. She mutters commentary under her breath—half wondering, half teasing—as we approach the animal shelter.

The city animal shelter smells exactly like you’d expect: bleach and a low-grade, furry sadness,undercut by the surprisingly cheerful yapping of a dozen dogs who haven’t yet realized they’re in dog-jail.

A kind-faced woman with a name tag that reads ‘Mi-young’ gives me a warm, tired smile. “Here to look?”

“Just looking,” I nod—because that’s what everyone who’s absolutely, definitely about to adopt an animal says.

She leads me down a hallway of enclosures. There are big, goofy retrievers who press their wet noses against the chain-link, their tails thumping a hopeful rhythm. There are tiny, fluffy Pomeranians who look like sentient clouds. They are all, in their own way, perfect. Adoptable. And I walk past every single one of them.

And then, in the very last kennel, tucked away in the corner, I see him.

He’s a scrawny, trembling thing, a patchwork of matted fur and bones. He’s curled into the tightest possible ball in the back of his cage, his oversized ears flat against his head. His eyes, when they briefly flick up to meet mine, are too big for his face, and they are filled with a deep, profound terror that I recognize on a cellular level.

“Oh, that’s Hondongi,” Mi-young says, her voice soft with a familiar pity. “He’s a special case. A little… difficult.”

“What’s his story?” I ask quietly, careful not to spook him.

“He was found on a construction site. Malnourished, terrified of everything. We’ve had him for three months. He was adopted once, but they brought him back a week later. Said he was ‘too much work.’ He just… doesn’t trust people.”