I stood and gawked at the huge building in front of me.

"This? Is it?"

Hyung gave a nod, "The whole place."

I stared skeptically, "The whole place?!"

"Yeah," Hyung said with a nod, "His secret family owns it."

I was taken aback by shock. "His secret family? What secret family?"

"He won't ever say, sometimes I doubt they exist."

Then it hit me.

I had known Han was well off. I knew he had to be well off working at such a restaurant. 

 I knew Daleun had given him money...

There was no way this palace could be his right?

Well could it?

"This is as far as I take you," Hyung said with a bow.

 
I gave a nod, thanked him for his services and opened the gate to the large apartment building in front of me.

 For some reason, I was scared to death that it would be Han waiting for me on the other side.

Scared for some reason that him having money would put him off my level. 

Him being unattainable scared me more than being in a foreign country alone by myself. He was, so far the only true friend here I had. The only person in Korea who had in any way showed me that I would find my way out of this darkness, that I could do this on my own.

I crossed the threshold from the Korea I knew to this new one, full of riches an splendor. 

And here I was alone, barely knowing what I was getting myself into.

It was for all those reasons that it was greatly painful for me to see Han waiting for me at the front door, dressed nicely in a suit with a solemn look on his face.

He opened the door and ushered me inside.

"Hey," He whispered with a trembling voice. "Is Daleun alright?"

I gave a solemn nod, "We'll see."

I wanted to give some sort of comfort to him, tell him that the brother he only just found would be walking through the door at any second. But I knew nothing was guaranteed with Daleun. He had managed to get himself momentary asylum, but how long his story would hold up was a mystery.

In fact, I was so blinded by my thoughts and burdens that I didn't stop to think that Daleun had risked it all for me.

The police knew his record, they knew his past his family history, and yet, he still gave up everything for the few seconds in which I could slip away.

Why?

I fact, when I did get around to thinking it over, as we went up the winding staircase past floor after floor, I was mad at Daleun. Mad he had brought the heat on me by labeling me a kidnapper.

Of course, there was nothing he could prove, no way it would stand up in court. 

But Daleun was clever, clever enough to live in the US for a good five years. Good enough to learn how to get what was clearly stolen through airport security.

What if he blamed some other theft on me, some petty one, but enough to clear one suspicion off his record and add a jail sentence to mine.

I wanted so badly to believe in him. This kid who had so many talents, that he could rise above his shortcomings.

But I couldn't.

You can't change who people are, you can only try to change your perception of them, and hope one day, they figure out for themselves what's right.

And the moment I saw Han standing there, worried and fidgeting, I realized that my momentary perception of him as a rich snob was wrong.

He was just as poor and suffering as I was.

"You must be hungry," He said with a gesture to an apartment on his left.

I gave a nod.

One nod, and then my life changed.

I shouldn't say change, I mean shifted, like one of those plates you learn about in Earth science. 

I looked around the vacant room. The place itself wasn't much, there wasn't any furniture. except for a blanket on the ground and a sink etc.

But it was the view that stopped me dead in my tracks.

Every wall was made of glass, leading out into the glimmering lights of Seoul.

I gaped at the landscape, the large figures looming before me as far as the eye could see, lights like stars and people like ants.

The buildings hung out as if they were candles suspended on strings, their illuminance reflecting and refracting across the room like a crystalline disco ball. 

"You live here?" I whispered hoarsely, my eyes gazing at the whole new world in front of me.

I had never seen a city from above, let alone a city. 

And yet the cold nights with sparkling lights on some house roof in the suburbs didn't seem to compete in the least with this.

I felt like I had been launched into outer space, alone on an expedition that would change the future of the world. For once in my life I mattered, the city went around me. I choose which lights were mine, which windows to stare out at. 

I finally knew what Gatsby was looking for at that green light across the bay. 

Maybe he was listening to the music too, the music of a better tomorrow.

I was above, I was flying, I was free looking through the small glass barrier from one life and the last.

"Yeh," Han nodded, "My mom, this building had been in her family for generations, she left it to me. It's all paid, I just can't afford to fix it up. So I live here, alone, my penthouse of isolation."

I couldn't speak.

 I couldn't think.

Neither could Han but for different reasons, he was becoming physically sick with worry, I was just too blind at the time to see it.

Too blind, too forgetful, too full of regret.

Han put on a CD in the small radio player in the back of the large main room.

It was perfect, rising and falling like the landscape, with pops of colors coming right from light itself.

"Daleun, he wrote that standing right there," Han said glumly, gesturing to where I stood.

"He wrote that?!" I exclaimed. 

I couldn't help but express doubt, it was too perfect, too beautiful to be Daleuns, a man of chaos. 

But to talk of potential, of the treachery within the heart was another matter. I think I believed wholeheartedly even then, that deep in his soul there was music twice as pure and awe-inspiring as the notes I heard that night.

Han gave a sad blunt nod, "Yeah."

I gestured towards the radio eagerly, my eyes lit with a flame that not even the worst of life could put out.

"Is there more?!" I exclaimed restlessly, "Han, tell me is there more?"

He nodded. "Tons."

With a deep breath, I nodded eagerly gesturing to him to follow. 

"Show me." I said with a quivering voice, sitting down where I stood. "Show me."