He hadn’t stepped foot in his homeland for years.
     The sky hung heavy with humidity near the wharf, the air dense with smog. Even from here, Eugene Park could hear the squeaking streetcars and crackling rickshaws from the nearby bustling city. A foghorn sounded behind him, signaling the arrival of another ferry. Full of more tourists, no doubt. He wrinkled his nose. He hated it—every part of it. The memories of this place—new, old, and all—were uncomfortable little shards jagged in his heart. 
     Clara, his wife, batted his shoulder and beamed. “It’s so lovely, is it not? I would have never known your hometown was so beautiful from your constant complaining.”
     “It is anything but,” Eugene huffed. “Ugly, grimy, dreary. There is nothing to like.”
     “Now, now. That is no way to speak of home on such an occasion. Your mother would be saddened.”
     “Yes, six feet under by now, I’m sure. Mother must be rolling in her grave.” He scoffed, chuckled even, but       Clara’s face was stoic. She pursed her lips as if to scold him. Suddenly uncomfortable, he adjusted his cravat and cleared his throat before lacing his arms with hers. “We should head into the city. Our guide must be waiting for us.”
     The guide in question was a boy no older than fifteen. His head was clean-shaven, and his simple, gray robes told he belonged to the temple up on the mountain. He stood at the corner of the crowded street, hidden behind a passing aged man leading an ox carrying firewood to the markets. As they approached, the boy kindly smiled, put his two palms together, and bowed. Eugene did not return the gesture, but Clara, ever the gentle soul, tried her best.
     The boy must have been an assistant or servant to the Buddhist monk that Mother was oh-so-fond of. It didn’t matter, and frankly, Eugene didn’t care. He just wanted to get this over with as soon as possible, leave this miserable country, and return to his true home across the sea.
     Once greetings were exchanged—Eugene acting as a shoddy interpreter—the boy beckoned at them to follow before disappearing into the city.
     The entire trip was silent, not a single word uttered between them, the language barrier too much of an inconvenience. Clara amused herself with the merchant goods, gazing at the earthenware and the colorful fabrics not found in America. He envied her wonder. She was here as a tourist—someone who could come and go whenever she pleased with no shadows following her back home. 
     Eugene was here because of his obligation as a son. 
     So shadows abounded, and he hastened his pace to escape them. He only slowed when he glimpsed a crowded sick house with patients lying on bamboo mats. Acupuncturists inserted needles into specified locations—meridians, Mother had called them—while apothecaries brought medicine from within the hanok.
     Primitive, Eugene thought with a sneer. Hanyak, traditional Korean medicine, was beneath him. Father’s death had opened his eyes to Hanyak’s futility, but Mother never lost faith in her herbs, needles, and burning mugwort. He never understood what she saw in Hanyak—why she let her blind belief trap her in this hell. And now, she had followed in Father’s steps, all because of stubbornness.
     Stupidity, these people reeked of it. This country reeked of it.
     They spent the night in a local jumak, a guest house. The boy had told them to rest for tomorrow’s trek up the mountain path. There was no rush. Eugene had already missed the forty-nine-day bardo, so all he could do was pay his respects.
     A horrible son he was, abandoning Mother and barely easing her journey to the afterlife. But Mother wasn’t a perfect parent, either. They balanced each other out in that regard as if it was meant to be, like fate.
     “You should be more forgiving,” Clara said. They were lying beside each other on the silk bedding spread across the floor. Eugene couldn’t sleep—accustomed to beds. But Clara seemed right at home. “Your mother probably meant well.”
     When Eugene didn’t respond, she added, “I’m sure you’ll at least wish her fortune at the shrine, yes?”
     No, he wouldn’t. Hatred was a forked-tongue viper constricting his heart, but he grunted his assent to appease his wife.
     At daybreak, they set out—Clara with her typical optimism, the boy with his reserve, and Eugene with a scowl. They passed fields upon fields of buckwheat that waved as they walked down the dirt road and began their ascent up the mountain’s crumbling stone steps.
     Eugene quickly realized the path would become treacherous as they climbed higher. Already, the ground was unstable, loose pebbles bouncing down the steep incline to their right with every step. The boy was always far ahead, pausing now and then to wait for them to catch up. He patiently watched as they struggled through an area dense with underbrush and stray branches. 
     Eugene held Clara’s arm as she stepped over a thick shrub. Wearing a suit and dress shoes was hard enough for him. He couldn’t imagine what it was like wearing a narrow dress and heeled boots.
     The stone steps were rough and worn down in these parts, and Clara struggled all the more with them. The first warning came when she tripped and almost tumbled down the mountainside. But Eugene held onto her, his grip steady. 
     The second came when the boy asked in Korean, “Do you need assistance?” Eugene didn’t deign to answer. They could handle themselves.
     And the third came when the stone step Clara stood on dislodged.
     By then, there was nothing he could do. His hand on Clara’s arm slipped, and she fell—down the mountainside and through the trees until she smacked against a trunk thick enough to stop her.
     The boy screamed—or maybe that was Eugene. He didn’t care—couldn’t care, too busy sprinting down to Clara, tripping over shrubs and rocks and roots yet still managing to stay upright. Sliding to a stop beside her supine form, he cradled her head. She was unconscious, her breath uneven and frail. There was blood, there were wounds, and there was a pulse. Light and weak, but a pulse nevertheless.
     The boy kneeled beside him. Eugene didn’t know when he had arrived, but he was saying something in Korean that Eugene couldn’t understand. Eugene had been fluent once, but years of not using his mother tongue left him ignorant of words beyond everyday terms. Still, he caught a few phrases.
     “… she’s in danger… help at the temple… need a Hanyak doctor—”
     “An American doctor,” Eugene exclaimed in heavily accented Korean. He cleared his throat. “We need an American doctor from the city.”
     The boy grimly shook his head. “The city is too far. We are closer to the temple.”
Eugene stared at the city, now a tiny dot in the distance, then glanced from the boy and Clara to the trees far above that hid the temple on the mountain’s peak. What choice did he have? He lifted Clara into his arms and carried her the rest of the way, trailing after the boy, wary of loose steps.
     Once they crossed the iljumun gate and entered the temple grounds, the boy rushed to summon the doctor. The doctor was a bald man wearing the same gray robes as the boy. He stood before the temple with his arms tucked into his robes, studying Eugene as if he knew him. And he probably did. That lost little boy hanging off his mother’s arms still lived in him—no matter how much Eugene wanted to burn away that cursed past.
     Only the chirping birds dared to break the silence between them—Eugene staring at the doctor, the doctor staring back—until the doctor stepped to the side and motioned for Eugene to enter.
Inside, Eugene placed Clara on a bamboo mat as the doctor retrieved his acupuncture needle case and herb box. Eugene trembled, hyper-aware of the labeled medicine bags hanging overhead and diagrams plastered to the Hanji-lined walls. Notes were scribbled over them in Chinese, so Eugene couldn’t read them. But he remembered Mother explaining they detailed where the meridians were, where the qi flowed through the body.
     He hadn’t stepped foot in this room since Father’s death. 
     Since then, Mother had probably passed away here, too.
     And now, Clara would be next. He begged the ancestors for that not to come true.
     Before starting treatment, the doctor removed all but Clara’s undergarments and cleaned the blood from the scar on her head with a wet rag. He ran his fingers where the qi flowed, pierced her skin with a long needle, twisted it, and pulled it out. Again and again, with every meridian the doctor located, he repeated the motions with deft hands, ordering the boy to position Clara’s body this way and that, to hand him a different needle, to hold herbs to a specific part of her body.
     All Eugene could do was watch with rapt attention. This was it. This was what Mother must have seen in Hanyak—the beauty of steady hands piercing skin with unerring precision, the beauty of a pale sickness waning, the beauty of death’s unrelenting course easing. Primitive, he had called it, when now it looked anything but.
     Slowly, Clara’s breathing returned to normal, and the doctor checked her pulse, nodding. He and the boy turned Clara over. Molding makeshift cones with handfuls of mugwort, the doctor placed a two-by-three array of mugwort cones on Clara’s exposed back, then lit them with a burning moxa stick.
     Thin strips of smoke swirled in the air, their smell pungent. The doctor whispered something to the boy, and with a low bow, the boy left.
     “She’ll be fine,” the doctor said, looking at Eugene. “Let her rest.”
     Eugene was speechless. He remembered how Father died, remembered this same doctor giving him apologies. Back then, Eugene had screamed and sobbed. Today, on his knees, he bowed until his forehead touched the floor.
     “Thank you,” he said, tears running down his cheeks. “Thank you so, so much.”
     As promised, Clara awoke two days later—alive but too enfeebled to make the trip to the shrine. “You should go without me,” she said, but Eugene didn’t want to. Not because of his decade-old simmering hatred but because he was afraid to face the irrevocable consequence of his actions.
     But Clara’s insistence eventually won him over, and before he knew it, he was wearing gray robes and trailing after the boy, who led him to the shrine at the mouth of a cave. It was small—decorated with a statue of Buddha, some candles, a jade incense pot, and flowers. 
     At the statue’s foot was Mother’s urn.
Eugene stood frozen as the boy began the ritual. The boy handed him a burning incense and motioned to the jade pot, when he noticed Eugene floundering. Eugene was uncertain when he approached the shrine, expecting to feel shame, but placing the incense into the jade pot felt like reconciliation—catharsis.
In the rising smoke, he thought he could see Mother’s face under the shifting light—two meridians of the living world and the dead crossing at this singular moment. If he squinted, he swore he could see her smile. It was an acceptance of an apology as honest as it was late.
     When he kneeled before the shrine once more, he bowed—twice as was expected—before rising to his feet with his head lowered in deference as he prayed.
     It seemed Clara was right.
     Because today, he wished for his mother’s fortune in her seat with the ancestors.