Ryu looked at them for a long moment without saying anything, the dust still settling around his boots.
Then he smiled. It wasn't a big smile. Ryu had never been a man for big smiles. But it reached his eyes, and it made him look a few years younger.
"You came," he said.
"You asked," Jin said.
Ryu crossed the cracked pavement and pulled Jin into a hug, one heavy arm across his back, brief and solid, the way a man hugs someone he'd thought about more than once and never said so. Then he did the same to Seul, and to Echo, who made a show of wheezing like his ribs had cracked.
"Still dramatic," Ryu said.
"Still strong," Echo said. "What are you eating out here?"
Ryu ignored that and looked past them at the others. His gaze moved from Haneul, to Areum, to Sujin, taking each of them in with the same quiet, measuring look Jin remembered from the very first day, when he'd stood in the station lobby and decided whether a group of frightened strangers were worth letting in.
