After he leaves Jisung's house, Minho stops at a flower shop and buys a bouquet of big orange daisies, cut and wrapped. Then he goes back to his motel room and kills each of them. All he has to do is think about poison, decay, Death seeping from his skin, and the flower begins to rot and crumble. He gathers the remains in his hands, walks out into the parking lot and scatters them under the bushes.

He thinks it's beautiful.

The last few days, he's been in a haze. He can't stop thinking about Nini, about what she left him with. And about Jisung, how things between them ended. He's been living at the motel for two weeks now. His savings won't last forever if he stays here, the in-between, the safe middle ground. He doesn't want to get an apartment. He doesn't want to get a job. What's the point if he can't share all that with Jisung?

He's dragging his feet to see where it will land him. What he might be forced to do if he chooses 'indecisive.' Maybe this is his "trip to a great doctor in the interior." A midlife crisis at 22.

His mother calls to invite him to another family dinner. He tells her he isn't coming.

"Minho, honestly," she replies. "Stop trifling. It wasn't so bad last time."

"Did you and I go to different dinners?"

"Sarcasm is ugly. You are breaking my heart. Any more of this nonsense and you're cut off!"

"Mother, I'm already cut off."

"Just come to dinner!"

"No."

He thinks he's having a moment. One of the moments where you know what you're doing and what to do next.

He isn't. It feels good to stand up to her, but the aimlessness and confusion haven't vanished once he hangs up the phone.

So he takes another flower and kills it.

Every time he lets himself sleep, he feels Jisung in his dreams. The heartbreak only deepens. It lingers when he wakes. Minho wishes he could see him. He wants to hold him again, the way he did under the flickering lights. Both of them silent, refusing to speak, to break the fragile stillness between them. Jisung was in his arms. Where he's meant to be.

Maybe Jisung would disagree. Maybe he won't be able to forgive Minho for everything he's done, for what he did to Nini. Minho wouldn't blame him if he couldn't understand the miracle that had happened that night. Maybe this is what will keep them apart for good.

There's a knock at the door. He's never gotten a knock before.

He's been reading the classifieds with the TV murmuring in the background. He drops the newspaper and works the padlock.

His father is standing in front of him. Minho feels his lungs slam into his chest.

"What are you doing here?" he says.

His father strides past him into the room, telling him to close the door. He's come without body guards, without any of the family. Christ, this is going to go bad, fast.

His father is looking around the room, appraising every unremarkable detail. The unmade bed, the tossed clothes, the empty cups of soup. His back is ramrod straight, hands tented at his belt buckle.

"My expectations have been met." He turns to Minho, showing him the set of his jaw. "How many hookers walk in and out of these rooms every day?"

"None into mine. Obviously."

They stare at each other.

"How did you find me?" Minho asks.

"I've known where you were all along. Did you think I'd just let you bugger off? Besides, you're squatting in a filthy motel with a Lexus parked out front — my Lexus."

"Why are you here?"

"Well, after you blew off family dinner—"

"Mother was being dramatic. I didn't want to go, I said I wasn't going, I didn't go."

"After you blew off family dinner... and after the Jungs' banquet yesterday — which I suppose you 'didn't wanna' go to either — I had racked up enough reasons to pay a visit. You do realize you have done irrevocable damage to the family's reputation, right? I was daft to think you would come to your senses on your own."

"What damage have I done?"

His father just waves a hand in the air. "This. Your little exploration. Your little temper tantrum."

"I moved out. I didn't do anything wrong."

"An associate of Mr. Yoo's had been staying at this establishment with a friend when he saw you walk into a room, which you seemed to, quote, live in. Mr. Gan — the retailer, you remember — said a partner had told him he had been contacted by a young Mr. Lee because he was searching for an apartment. On the damned east end. You know the grapevine is vicious. Every important man in the city now knows that the only heir of the Lee family is living in a shithole. The rumours are even worse — disownment, bankruptcy, a drug-fuelled tirade that shattered the entire conservatory."

Minho swallows.

"What do you have to say for yourself?"

He squares his shoulders. His voice comes out flat. "You're wrong."

"About what, exactly?"

"I'm not the only heir of the Lee family. Sooyun, even Haewon could—"

His father scoffs. "For God's sake. Don't be stupid. You will not shirk your duties onto your sisters."

"Why not? Because they're women?"

"Please! Because this is who we are. Even if Sooyun has been helping you behind the scenes, nobody would take a family with a matriarch seriously. We'd lose our power in every realm — social, political, economic."

"Sooyun—"

His father throws his hands up. "Sooyun, always Sooyun! You aren't five, you can stop clinging to her sleeve."

"She's intelligent. She's shrewd. She's efficient and obnoxious and fucking cold-blooded — just like you and Grandfather and his father. Our power would only grow. Even if we did lose our reputation, who gives a shit? We're sitting on a fortune and a hundred-year legacy."

"If our reputation dies, the family goes with it. If our associates and supporters lose faith in us, we are doomed. Why don't you understand? Why do you refuse to understand? Jesus Christ, you've been spending too much time with that damn beggar, eating cup soup in a crack house."

"What the fuck did you call him?"

His father turns his eyes on him. Those hard, angry eyes Minho tries so hard not to fear.

"Believe me, son, you are not the first in our family to prefer 'milk and honey' to whiskey. My brother was obsessed with a man from a dynasty three times richer than the Lees — that, at least, I could understand. But you had to go and associate with some gold digger — giving him work, giving him gifts like a love-struck puppy. Honestly, how could you be so stupid?"

Minho's body has gone cold. His heart is a bleeding wound.

"Well? Cat got your tongue? Good. I'm tired of backtalk." His father sails past him. "I'll send a moving truck."

Minho's voice comes out too quiet, like a child's. "I don't want to go back."

"Crying shame. Be realistic. Your savings won't last you forever."

"I... have enough."

"No, you don't. You'll bear the duties that I did. Someday your son will too."

Minho squeezes his eyes shut. His son. His son will inherit his life. His curse won't be buried with his body. The cycle will keep wasting little girls and boys like him, creating mothers and fathers like his.

"No," Minho blurts.

His father stops on the threshold, sighing. "What now?"

"I won't give you my son."

He turns and pushes toward Minho, getting in his space. Minho tries not to back away.

"Don't be petulant. You will do as I tell you."

"No, never again. I'm never speaking to you again."

"As if you won't come crawling back to our bank account once your call boy wants a new pearl necklace."

"Get the fuck out of my room right now!"

"I'm so very sorry you're too sensitive for this life."

"Better than a shit-eating, worthless excuse for a father!"

He slaps his son hard across the face. It lands a thousand times. Minho's breath comes hard and rough, tears start to well.

His father scoffs. "Can you see yourself? Couldn't take a hit then, can't now. Don't you see, boy? You're a disappointment. Your whole life, a cowering, soft-headed excuse for a son. That's what you are."

His father pushes past his shoulder.

Minho grabs his wrist. Squeezing hard. Heart opening wide.

"You have no idea what I am."

His father's body goes rigid and begins to collapse. His neck and face are stroked with bulging, blackened veins, his mouth open and expression frozen, a look of pain — something greater than pain.

He falls to the floor and doesn't get up.

Minho drops his wrist and wipes his own tears away.