“I’m not too foolish to live without you,” I said, staring at the smoky ghost of my father with new eyes. “You're the one who can’t live without me.”
The look of anger on his face then was the one I used to fear above all others. He’d never struck or hurt me, but it was impossible to be around a dragon that mad without being terrified. Looking at him now, though, I couldn’t be afraid. He was just smoke. Without my magic holding him together, he could have been taken out by a stiff breeze. It was pathetic, really, and from the way his furious expression began to collapse, my dad knew it.
All at once, he sat down hard on the street. Just dropped straight down to the pavement as if someone had cut his legs out from under him. All his draconic dignity and presence went with them, leaving him nothing but what he was: a sad, old shadow, crumpled in the dark.
“Dad?” I said nervously, worried I’d gone too far. “Did I—”
“What did you say that wasn’t true?” Yong asked, looking down at his transparent hands as if he didn’t know whom they belonged to. “But you can’t understand what it’s like. When you’re as old as I am, time goes by so quickly. A moment ago, you were this adorable, bumbling, helpless creature who needed me for everything. Then I blinked, and suddenly you were a stranger who wanted nothing to do with me. I tried my best to bring you back. How could I not? You were my Opal. But the harder I reached for you, the more you slipped from my grasp, and I…”
He trailed off with a sigh, slumping even farther. “I never sought to control you for my own sake, but this world is dangerous. Every time I turned my back, you ran headfirst into trouble, and I didn’t know how to make you stop.” He looked at me pleadingly. “Do you know what it’s like to watch your greatest treasure throw herself into danger over and over and over again while refusing to accept your help?”
“No,” I said, sitting down beside him. “But do you know what it’s like to build a life from scratch—a life you love, something you’re proud of—only to lose it to your own father, the one who should be helping you the most, because he’s afraid?”
Yong gave me a scathing look. “Don’t try to make it sound so noble. You were a garbage picker.”
“That’s wrong and you know it,” I said sharply. Then I sighed. “But it doesn’t matter. There’s no shame in being a garbage picker. There’s no shame in doing anything you enjoy that doesn’t hurt others and earns you a living. Being a Cleaner isn’t so different from what we did today, and you saw me in there. I love this stuff! I loved my old life too. I was successful, I was happy, I was even safe. Until you started making a fuss, no dragons ever bothered me. My life here already had everything you just said you wanted to give me, and you were the one who ruined it. Do you see why I’m so mad?”
“No,” Yong said, pressing his hands over his face, which didn’t work nearly as well as he wanted since his hands were transparent. “How could you possibly be happy here? How could you prefer this”—he waved at the empty buildings—“to living in a palace in Korea? It makes no sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense to you,” I said. “My happiness isn’t something that requires your understanding or permission. But I still hope you’d be happy for me. Isn’t that what parents are supposed to do?”
“You were wasting your mortality,” he snapped.
“How so?” I asked, refusing to rise to his bait. Now that I’d realized I had the upper hand, it wasn’t even a struggle to stay calm anymore. I was no longer afraid, no longer panicked. I could do this.
“How was a happy, stable life doing work I enjoyed ‘wasting my mortality’? You knew exactly how successful I was as a Cleaner because that was why you cursed me in the first place. You keep trying to make this about saving me, but I was doing fine. You were the one who couldn’t handle me being gone, which is ironic because if you’d just let me live my own life, you wouldn’t have needed to control me. I would have happily taken your calls and come home at holidays like a normal adult child. You talk about me when I was young like I’m a completely different person, but I never stopped being your daughter. You were the one who pushed me away by refusing to accept anything in my life that wasn’t you.”
To my father’s credit, he thought about that for a long, long time. “If I stopped…pushing you,” he said at last, “would you come home?”
“I can’t be a Cleaner in Korea,” I told him honestly. “But if you stop trying to run my life and I feel like I can trust you not to trap me there, I’ll promise to visit.”
He lifted his nose like an offended cat. “I wouldn’t trap you.”
“You locked me in a shooting closet in Canada two months ago,” I reminded him.
The offended look vanished. “I was in a highly stressed state. It was a poor choice.”
I rolled my eyes. “I think the words you’re looking for are ‘I’m sorry.’”
“I will never be sorry for trying to help you,” he said stubbornly. Then his face fell. “But I can admit that, in hindsight, I did not make the right decision. I was afraid for you. Afraid for both of us. My fire was nearly gone at that point, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought I was going to lose you, and I allowed fear to cloud my judgment.”
“Everyone screws up,” I said with a shrug. “But it
