American Adventure: My Uncle is Don Quixote

Jin Heon suddenly felt an urge to scoff.

$500. So that was it. All the chaos that had plagued their family since she was a child was all because of $500.

She currently had three credit cards in her wallet, $300,000 in cash sitting in her bank account, and held $10 million worth of private stock.

And here, one of the men who should have been closest to her was asking for $500.

The amount was so small—less than one-thirtieth of her monthly salary, one-twenty-thousandth of the value of her stock.

She desperately wanted to say no.

She wasn’t the eight, eleven, or thirteen-year-old version of Jin Heon anymore. She was a hundred times stronger than this man.

But her mouth wouldn’t obey her, and she could feel her heart racing.

’It’s only $500. If I give it to him, he’ll leave. He’ll be able to go out and fool around for who knows how many days, and once he’s gone, the house will be quiet again.’

She looked at the pathetic man before her. Just as she was about to speak, she saw her mother.

Her mother was standing by the stove, one hand shielding her cheek, the other clutching the countertop for support.

She said nothing, only shaking her head at Jin Heon.

"I don’t have any money," Jin Heon said, snapping back to reality. "I spent it all on graduation expenses."

"You’re lying to me!" her father roared, striding forward and raising his hand.

Jin Heon met his furious gaze without flinching.

Her father held his hand high, ready to strike, and locked eyes with Jin Heon for several seconds.

"This is outrageous! You’re all against me! Nobody respects me!" He raved and roared, stomping back to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him.

’He didn’t hit me?’

’Jin Heon had braced herself for the blow, but her quick-to-anger father had actually backed down this time?’

Her mother emerged silently from behind the stove. She simply bent down and began to pick up the shards of glass and wipe up the spilled red ginseng extract from the floor.

"Such a good thing," she murmured with a soft sigh. "What a shame."

Jin Heon wanted to help, but as she knelt, she realized her hands were shaking too much. When she tried to pick up a shard of glass, she nearly sliced her fingers open.

"Go on, Heon," her mother said without looking up. "It’s all right. I’ll take care of this."

Jin Heon opened her mouth, but in the end, nothing came out.

"I’m going now," she said, bracing her hands on her knees to stand up. "You should get some rest, Mom."

"Be careful on your way home," her mother said. "It’s late. Don’t take the subway, get a cab."

Jin Heon agreed and gently pulled the door shut.

Once she was in the hallway, she finally let out a long breath.

The broken fluorescent light in the hallway was still flickering, casting her elongated, stuttering shadow against the wall.

She looked down at her hands. The shaking was starting to subside, and the rush of adrenaline was fading.

She clenched and unclenched her fists a few times, then hurried down the stairs.

Looking back, she realized the forty-eight steps weren’t that many, yet it felt like it had taken her an eternity to walk down them.

Night was falling, and the streets were growing quiet.

She pulled her coat tighter and walked briskly across two streets to the parking garage.

She pulled open the door to her 911 and slid inside. The moment the door clicked shut, the world seemed to fall silent.

Here, there was only the sound of her own breathing. Inside this small metal box, she felt safe.

She reclined her seat slightly and stared, motionless, at the suede headliner.

Her mind was a mess, but one image floated to the surface—

The moment her father had raised his hand.

His hand had been raised, fingers splayed, in the exact same pose she remembered seeing countless times before.

At age eight, the sound of that hand striking her face had been just as loud as when it struck her mother’s.

At age eleven, that hand had dragged her from her desk because she was doing homework and hadn’t passed him the TV remote quickly enough.

But today, after being raised, that hand had stopped in mid-air.

She carefully replayed their staredown from a few seconds before.

His hand had been shaking. He had hesitated.

He hadn’t hesitated when she was eight. He hadn’t hesitated when she was eleven. Why did he hesitate today?

She remembered that she hadn’t backed away, hadn’t lowered her head. She had stared right at him, unblinking, her gaze unwavering.

Before, she never dared to look. At eight, she would hide under the covers. At eleven, she would lower her head.

Today, she had looked. And in her eyes, he had seen something that made him stop.

’It wasn’t fear. At least, not entirely.’

’Perhaps it was because the person standing before him was no longer eight or eleven. Or perhaps it was because he was old, drunk, and his strength was failing him.’

’Or perhaps he had vaguely sensed that the daughter before him was no longer someone he could push around at will—there was something in her eyes that he didn’t understand.’

’Whatever that something was, the result was the same: he had backed down.’

’She was no longer that helpless little girl.’

Jin Heon closed her eyes, lying in the darkness for a while.

She didn’t want to go back to her dorm and face Jessica, she didn’t want to go back to the office, and she certainly didn’t want to go anywhere that would drain her energy.

She didn’t want to go anywhere.

She just wanted to be alone.

She wasn’t sure how long had passed when her phone buzzed.

It was a message from her mother: [Are you home?]

Jin Heon typed a one-word reply: [Home.]

Then she locked the screen and closed her eyes again.

She decided to sleep in the car tonight. She didn’t want to face anyone.

「A little after 8:00 the next morning」

Jin Heon was woken by her ringing phone.

She groggily fumbled for her phone and saw it was a local New York number, one not in her contacts.

She didn’t answer.