Chapter 9
The drive back to the Valley felt like rewinding a tape that had already been melted.
Downtown’s skyline shrank behind us, the air shifting from concrete heat to familiar dryness, and the closer we got to home, the more my chest tightened with that old, trained dread—like my body remembered the rules of this place even when my mind wanted to pretend we’d outgrown them.
Kim sat quietly beside me, his knee still bruised, his fingers stained faintly with graphite like he’d tried to draw the fear out of his hands while we drove. He didn’t look scared exactly. He looked… resolved.
Which, somehow, scared me more.
“Your mom texted you,” he said gently after a long stretch of silence. “What did she say?”
I didn’t tell him the exact words at first, because come home sounded simple, almost kind, and I didn’t trust anything simple anymore.
“She wants to talk,” I said.
Kim nodded slowly. “That could be good.”
“Or it could be a trap,” I muttered before I could stop myself.
Kim’s mouth twitched in a sad little half-smile. “Yeah.”
We parked a block away from the restaurant.
Not because we had to, but because I needed a second to breathe, to pull myself together, to pretend I was someone who could walk into that place without becoming seventeen again, sixteen again, ten again, the boy who chopped scallions and swallowed feelings because feelings weren’t useful.
Kim reached over and took my hand.
I looked at him.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His thumb brushed my knuckles once, slow and grounding, and it hit me—hard—that this was what I’d been missing my whole life, not a boyfriend or a romance or a secret, but simply someone who touched me like I was human instead of an extension of someone else’s expectations.
“I’m with you,” he said quietly.
“I know,” I managed.
We walked the rest of the way together.
The restaurant sign looked the same, faded and stubborn, like it would still be there even if I wasn’t. The windows were fogged from broth and steam even though it wasn’t Sunday. The bell above the door waited like it remembered every moment it had ever announced.
I hesitated, hand on the handle.
Kim stood close enough that his shoulder brushed mine.
“Ready?” he asked.
No.
But I nodded anyway.
The bell rang.
Inside, everything smelled like normal. Garlic, sesame, heat.
My father stood behind the counter with his sleeves rolled up, wiping it down like he was scrubbing the past off the surface. He looked up sharply when we entered, his eyes widening, relief flooding his expression—until he saw Kim.
Then his face settled into something more complicated.
My mother emerged from the kitchen a moment later, hair pinned up, apron tied tight, looking like she’d been preparing for battle.
Her eyes landed on Kim.
They didn’t soften.
They didn’t harden either.
They just… measured.
“Moon,” she said.
Her voice was controlled, which meant danger.
I didn’t let go of Kim’s hand.
“I came,” I said.
“I see that,” she replied, gaze flicking briefly to our joined hands before returning to my face. “Sit.”
She pointed to the corner booth—our booth, the one where I used to do homework while my parents worked and my father would slide me extra dumplings when my mother wasn’t looking.
We sat.
My father didn’t. He stayed near the counter, arms crossed, like he wasn’t sure whether to protect us or protect the restaurant.
My mother sat across from us.
The air felt charged and fragile, like the entire place was balancing on the edge of a knife.
“You embarrassed me,” she said finally.
There it was.
Not you’re okay. Not are you hurt. Not I was scared. Just the first wound she knew how to name.
I swallowed hard. “I didn’t do it to embarrass you.”
“You let strangers film in my restaurant,” she snapped. “You let them post it. Now people come here to stare. They call. They leave reviews. They—” Her voice broke for the first time, barely, like a crack in glass. “They laugh.”
Kim shifted slightly, his grip tightening on my hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, and the gentleness in his voice made my mother’s eyes flash.
“Do not apologize like that,” she said sharply. “Like you did something noble.”
Kim’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t say it to be noble. I said it because I meant it.”
Silence.
My father exhaled, slow.
My mother stared at Kim for a long moment, then turned back to me.
“Are you…” She struggled, like the words tasted unfamiliar. “Are you sure?”
My throat tightened. “Yes.”
Her eyes flickered, something uncertain passing through them—fear, grief, anger, love twisted into something sharp.
“Moon,” she said, voice low. “You are leaving for college. You have a future. You have everything to lose.”
“I’m not losing my future,” I said, the words coming out steady even though my heart was racing. “I’m just not losing myself anymore.”
Kim’s fingers laced tighter through mine, as if he was holding me steady from the inside.
My mother’s mouth trembled, almost imperceptibly.
For a second, I thought—maybe this is it. Maybe she was going to fold. Maybe she was going to say something like I don’t understand but I love you.
Instead, she reached into her apron pocket and pulled out her phone.
“I asked you to come,” she said slowly, “because there is something you need to see.”
My stomach dropped.
She opened a message thread and turned the screen toward me.
A long conversation in Korean and English, time-stamped over the last week.
At the top: a name I didn’t recognize.
Below: screenshots of the gossip account posts.
A demand for money.
A threat.
And then something else—something that made the air leave my lungs.
A photo.
Kim. Younger. Maybe sixteen. Standing beside an older man in a small art studio. Kim’s arm around him, smiling.
The older man’s face was partially blurred, but his posture and the setting looked familiar in the sickening way a nightmare feels familiar.
My mother’s voice was quiet when she spoke again.
“This man,” she said, tapping the photo, “is the reason there is a scandal in our restaurant.”
Kim went completely still.
“What?” I whispered, staring at the screen.
My mother’s gaze sharpened. “He is blackmailing us.”
My heart hammered. “How do you know him?”
Kim’s breath hitched. His eyes stayed fixed on the photo like it had a gravitational pull.
“I—” he started, then stopped.
My father stepped forward, face tight. “Moon,” he said carefully. “Listen.”
My mother turned the phone slightly so I could see the last message.
It was from the man.
“Your son is with the boy from the program. Interesting. If you want this to stop, pay.”
My skin went cold.
Because the twist wasn’t just that someone was blackmailing us.
It was that my mother already knew.
She hadn’t just reacted.
She had been contacted—targeted—before the rooftop, before downtown, before I even understood what was happening.
And the photo wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was Kim’s face.
He looked like someone watching a door close on a life he didn’t know he was still locked into.
“Kim,” I said softly. “Who is that?”
Kim’s voice came out barely audible.
“My uncle,” he whispered.
My brain stalled. “Your—”
“He’s not really my uncle,” Kim said, eyes shining, breathing uneven. “He’s my mom’s cousin. He ran the art program. He—” His voice cracked, and he shook his head like he could physically shake the memory off. “He used kids. He used me. And when I told someone, when I reported him… he didn’t get arrested. He disappeared.”
My stomach twisted violently.
My mother’s expression shifted—something like vindication mixed with fear.
“So you brought him back,” she said sharply. “You brought this to my family.”
Kim flinched like she’d slapped him.
I felt something hot rise in my chest, protective and furious.
“Stop,” I said, voice low.
My mother turned on me. “You think I am the villain?” she demanded. “I am trying to protect you. Do you understand what kind of people—”
“I understand,” I snapped, standing abruptly, hands shaking. “I understand that you got blackmailed and instead of telling me, you tried to scare me away from him.”
My mother’s face tightened. “I was trying to end it before it got worse.”
“And now it’s worse,” I said, voice breaking. “Because you didn’t trust me.”
Kim stood too, slowly, like his body was heavy.
“I didn’t know he was still watching,” he whispered. “I didn’t know he could reach this far.”
My father looked at Kim then, really looked, and his expression softened in a way my mother’s didn’t.
“This isn’t your fault,” my father said quietly.
My mother whirled on him. “Don’t—”
“No,” my father said, voice firm in a way I rarely heard. “Enough.”
Silence slammed down.
Then my father reached into his pocket and pulled out his own phone.
“I didn’t want to do this,” he said, eyes on my mother. “But I already called someone.”
My mother froze.
“Who?” she demanded.
My father swallowed. “The police.”
My pulse spiked. “Dad—”
Kim’s face went white.
My mother’s voice turned sharp and panicked. “Are you insane? Do you know what that will do? Do you know what questions they will ask? Do you know what that will—”
My father stepped closer, voice steady. “I know what blackmail does. I know what fear does. And I know we are not paying anyone to hurt our son.”
My mother’s eyes flashed, wild. “You don’t understand—”
“I do,” my father said softly, and in that softness was something final. “I understand I should have protected him sooner.”
My throat tightened painfully.
Kim looked like he might collapse.
My mother stared at my father like he’d betrayed her.
Then her phone buzzed again.
She glanced down.
And whatever she read wiped all the color from her face.
She turned the screen toward us with shaking hands.
A new message.
“Too late. I already sent them the rest. Check the page.”
My blood ran cold.
I grabbed my phone, opened the gossip account, hands shaking so badly I nearly dropped it.
New post.
A carousel of images.
The first was the rooftop.
The second was the restaurant still.
The third—my stomach lurched—was Kim’s old program ID card.
The fourth was a screenshot of a document.
A report.
A complaint.
With Kim’s full name.
A blurred paragraph where the words “inappropriate conduct” were visible even through the censoring.
And then the final slide:
A photo of my restaurant taken from across the street.
Caption:
“NEXT: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MOM 👀”
I stared at it, horror flooding my body.
Because the twist wasn’t just about Kim’s past.
It wasn’t even about the blackmail.
It was that the account was about to drag my mother into it too—whether she deserved it or not—and I suddenly understood, in a flash of sick clarity, that this wasn’t random gossip anymore.
This was a coordinated attack.
And the person running it wasn’t just doing it for clout.
They were doing it to destroy us.
Kim’s hand found mine again—shaking, desperate.
“We have to stop him,” he whispered.
My father’s jaw tightened. “We will.”
My mother sank back into the booth like her bones gave out, staring at the table as if it had betrayed her.
And in the middle of all that chaos, my phone buzzed again.
A text from an unknown number.
One line.
“Meet me at the LA River. Alone. Or the next post names Moon.”
My heart stopped.
Because they weren’t just threatening my family anymore.
They were threatening me.
