Romancing on Jeju

YOU END UP FINDING WHAT YOU WANT

Three Years Earlier

The rain grew heavier. The sound of its drumming on the roof filled the car, drowning out the prolonged silence. The man’s wife made no move to wipe away her falling tears. The man himself didn’t know the reason for them. At the moment, he didn’t feel any particular way about them. The rain falling on the windshield seemed to be pounding against his heart, but he felt no pain.

“Honey . . .”

At the sound of his wife’s trembling voice, he quietly replied, “Let’s go home and talk first.” He didn’t want to distract his wife while she was driving. This was a road they had been on countless times since they had moved to Jeju, but today it seemed suddenly unfamiliar and dangerous.

Soon after, harsh lights appeared behind them, glaring into his eyes. The car in their rearview must have had its high beams on. Probably because there were no streetlights on this road and the weather was terrible, the man figured, but he still found it grating.

His wife stayed on the right side of the road, leaving room for the car behind them to pass. But the car made no move to do so. Its driver only kept the high beams on, closing in on them enough to raise concern.

“Are they crazy? What the hell is wrong with them?”

It was unusual for him to swear, and the man’s wife flinched when she heard it. But she said nothing to scold him as she gripped the steering wheel, knowing it would be hard to respond calmly and with restraint. She picked up speed, but the car behind them immediately followed suit. It stayed right on their tail, evidently with no intention of passing them. They couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t slow down. All the thoughts that had been occupying their minds just a moment earlier had vanished.

A nervous tension spread throughout the car. The man grabbed his wife’s arm.

“Honey, slow down. It’s dangerous.”

They were going more than sixty miles per hour on a narrow road. His wife tried to shake off the car behind them by switching lanes, but she got the feeling the other driver was relentlessly pursuing them. The rain was coming down harder than before, and she couldn’t see well ahead of her. They would probably get into an accident soon if they kept up this speed. The man could feel his wife trembling next to him. A cold sweat ran down his spine.

Suddenly the car behind them swerved into the next lane over and picked up speed. Thinking the other car was finally going to pass them, the two breathed a sigh of relief. The man’s wife slowed down. But the car beside them slowed to match their pace and rammed up against their car. The man’s wife swerved off the road in surprise, but the car in the next lane doggedly followed after. The car streaked past the branches of the trees, rain-soaked leaves sticking to the windshield. The man could see the trees through the passenger-side window, could feel them tugging at the car like the ghost of someone drowned. His wife rolled down the window and shouted toward the car next to theirs.

“Hey, what the hell! Are you crazy?”

The man had said the same thing earlier, but hearing his normally calm and composed wife shouting like that made something in his chest lurch.

“Honey, it’s dangerous!” he said, but his wife kept on shouting.

“What the hell kind of driving are you doing?”

The man leaned forward in the passenger seat to get a good look at the other car. He had never seen this car before. A black SUV. Because of the rain and the dark tint on the windows, he couldn’t quite see who was inside—but he had the feeling their pursuer had suddenly faltered for some reason, hitting the brakes on the wild chase he had been giving.

Seizing the chance, his wife sped up and passed the other driver. The trees beside them became a blur as they swept past. The man could only hold on tight in his seat, feeling his soul leaving his body. Just then, the car behind them came around onto their right. His wife swerved to the left and tried to race ahead so she could give them the slip. The man looked behind them, and the moment he turned back around to face forward, he saw an enormous shadow in front of them.

“Honey, the other way!”

A huge truck blared its horn as it came at them from the opposite direction. Their car had crossed over the median strip, and they were speeding in the wrong direction. It seemed like the car was out of control. His wife’s screams rang in his ears. He tried to hold her, but she yanked the wheel back toward herself.

The car sped on with no traction for a while and only came to a stop after it crashed into a stone wall surrounding a field, rolled twice, and flipped over. The airbags burst open, the pressure crushing into the man’s chest. He lost consciousness for a moment but quickly came to. Some distance ahead, he saw lights. The SUV that had been chasing them had come to a stop. The man opened his eyes and tried to commit the car to memory, but because of the heavy rain and blood in his eyes, he couldn’t see it well, and the lights soon disappeared.

“Honey.”

His wife didn’t answer. Hanging upside down in his seat, he called out for her again.

“Honey . . . are you awake?”

Still no answer. He hardly had to turn his head at all to see that his wife’s neck had snapped.

He unbuckled his seat belt and climbed out. He staggered over to the driver’s side and tried opening the door. It wouldn’t budge. He shook on the handle with both hands.

“Honey, Hyeyoung, wake up! Wake up!”

Sparks jumped from the crumpled hood of the car. White smoke drifted up and vanished into the rain. The man yanked frantically on the door handle, completely out of his mind. The falling rain mixing into the blood running from his head prevented him from seeing clearly. On second thought, the rain had already started to let up—the wetness on his face must have been tears. He kept yanking at the door, calling over and over for his wife.

That was when he heard the first explosion.

Project: Searching for Honeyman

Day Four, Seogwipo

The rain that had been falling since last night had not let up. Chakyung couldn’t have imagined the impact of a typhoon passing through Japan would be felt even here. Outside the hotel window, the horizon was clouded over, blurring the border between sea and sky. It was so early that she hadn’t even had breakfast yet. Hair wrapped in a towel, Chakyung looked over the day’s schedule on her phone.

That morning, she had to visit a green-tea field to prepare for the promotions of her company’s green-tea skin-care line, the main objective of this business trip to Jeju. After lunch, she had decided to have a brief meeting with the documentary team there to film the camellias. It wasn’t yet the season for the flowers to bloom, but because the seeds would start being gleaned around mid-September, the film crew had come early. Later on, when the camellias bloomed in the winter, the grandmothers would gather the flowers again. Chakyung’s heart raced, imagining how beautifully the documentary would turn out with the gorgeous blossoms.

Her phone rang. The name on the screen read “Yang Chanmin.” She’d sent him a message when she landed on Jeju, but this was the first time he’d called. She quickly tapped the screen.

“Hey.”

“What’s kept you so busy that you couldn’t even call?”

“Look who’s talking. I called you so many times.”

“I had my phone off while I was working on my paper and presentation. When I called back, you didn’t pick up.”

“Let’s just say we missed each other’s calls.”

“Fine. How’s Jeju?”

“Hmm. Rainy.”

“It’s a shame that it’s cloudy out. Still, make sure to see the ocean and have a good time. I’ll be there soon.”

“You’re coming to Jeju?”

“I told you this already.”

“Did you?”

When had he mentioned that? Chanmin talked as if they agreed on things well in advance, but in reality, he always made one-sided decisions and just informed her of the outcome after the fact.

“Yeah, next week I’m presenting at a conference.”

“Ah. I think I’ll be back in Seoul by then.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It is. If you’d told me ahead of time, I would have planned it so our dates overlapped.”

“I did tell you ahead of time.”

Both of them could have been telling the truth. Maybe he told me and I didn’t hear him, or maybe he told me in a way that made it impossible for me to get the message —this was how Chakyung tried to make sense of the situation. In turn, she shifted the conversation to a topic that was mutually uncomfortable.

“Your mother has called me several times now.”

“Oh, right. About the furniture.”

“Yeah. The thing is, I told her I couldn’t get to the discount furniture store right away, and she said she would go instead and buy things for us. She’ll send us pictures, and we can pick out things we like, then transfer her the money later.”

Chanmin said nothing for a moment. When his mother and Chakyung butted heads, he usually opted to stay silent. Until now, Chakyung had considered this a good thing. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t convey her thoughts to his mother on her own. She would much rather speak her mind directly than go through Chanmin. But his mother had never been this headstrong and insistent before.

“I told her the two of us would take our time choosing the furniture. We haven’t even found a house yet, so why buy furniture so far in advance? But when I said that, she just offered to store the furniture for us.”

“Yeah.”

She hadn’t been looking for a short-answer essay in response, but maybe his curt answers were a sign to end the conversation there. Still, Chakyung found herself pushing on.

“I told her it was fine, but she kept insisting, and I told her I didn’t want things to happen like this. No matter how big a discount we get on the furniture, it’s not as if buying it all will be cheap ...”

“Right, my mother told me.”

Had she really? Or did he just not want to hear what Chakyung was saying? More and more, Chakyung felt like they were dodging these necessary conversations like potholes, one after another.

“Great, so please explain this to your mother in a way that doesn’t upset her.”

“She’s already upset. But you know that’s just how she is.”

Why exactly was he telling her this? Was he saying they should all be upset together? Chakyung wondered how exactly his mother had spun the story to him. Then she decided there was no reason she needed to know.

“Just text her. Tell her you’re sorry. Right now, I need to get to work.”

Hearing Chanmin speak as if all this had nothing to do with him, Chakyung had to fight herself to keep from shouting Why should I? at the phone, not wanting to upset him when he was on his way to work. She never wanted to be the person who made others feel bad just because she felt bad herself.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll call you later.”

Chanmin hung up without another word. It felt like everything he’d left unsaid was still hanging in the air.

Chakyung looked out at the ocean through the window. Any thoughts of having breakfast were already long gone. The sky and the sea, the rain, everything was the same gray in slightly different shades, all of it bleeding into one.

At that early hour and because of the rain, the beach was quiet. A few cars were parked nearby, but Chakyung didn’t see any people around. She held up her umbrella and went down the road leading to the sand. This was her first time seeing the ocean on this trip. She went to Jeju on business every so often, but rarely did she have the time to relax and take in the views. Her visit to the green-tea fields that morning had been canceled due to the rain, so she found herself with time to spare until the meeting.

She was relieved she had packed flip-flops. Her dress shoes would have easily been ruined trekking across the wet sand. She walked slowly, feeling the sand shift beneath her sandals. Once she reached the shoreline, she began to walk the length of the beach, parallel to the horizon. Waves surged over the sand, tickling her ankles before retreating. The water was swelling higher than she’d expected in the wind. Chakyung passed the middle of the beach and kept walking toward the steep rock cliffs.

At first, she thought no one was there, but suddenly several colorful dots appeared in the water—people. They had suddenly emerged from behind the tall waves and were whirling around in the crests. They must be surfers, Chakyung thought. She had seen surf shops in passing, but this was her first time seeing the surfing itself. She hadn’t known waves could be ridden in the rain. These surfers had climbed onto their boards even in the downpour and were riding the broad faces of the waves, sliding down and twisting into turns at the bottom before plunging into the water. Chakyung stood on the sand as the waves came in and rushed out, her eyes following the surfers’ silhouettes, which was all she could see of them from this distance.

They lay atop the boards on their stomachs, paddling forward with their hands before standing on their feet. They followed the waves, rising and falling before disappearing into the water. It filled Chakyung with glee to watch them slip under one moment, only to resurface the next. People using their immense strength to battle it out in the rain. Facing nature head-on and becoming a part of it. For the first time in a while, she was witnessing something that made her heart feel light.

The surfers carried on like that for a while—riding the waves, crashing and falling in time with the sea, rinse and repeat. Once the waves had gotten a little smaller, the surfers rode their boards to the shore again. Realizing she had spent a while watching them, Chakyung made to turn away. She felt like she had trespassed on their time. But as soon as she began walking again, she paused. She’d spotted one of the surfers holding up a hand with his middle three fingers folded down and shaking it from the wrist. The others made the same gesture and burst out laughing. Chakyung could have sworn she’d seen that gesture somewhere before. And the person who had made the gesture too ...

He was coming up the beach at that moment, holding a yellow board. Even in a wet suit, his angular shoulders and long neck were familiar.

He turned and looked right at Chakyung where she was standing on the shore. She returned his gaze, red umbrella in hand. She couldn’t tell whether or not he recognized her. He turned away nonchalantly, running a hand through his hair. Then he laughed and grimaced at the same time and shouted something to his friends. She couldn’t hear, but reading his lips, she thought he might have said, Ugh, it’s freezing! His two fellow surfers laughed also.

They continued walking up the beach with their boards. Chakyung lowered her umbrella to cover her face and stood watching the distant sea. The sound of waves crashing reverberated inside her body. Time seemed to take slower strides.

Then her umbrella began to bob and tremble. Someone was knocking on it. Chakyung slowly lifted the umbrella to see a smiling face. The man was leaning down slightly, looking at her underneath the cover of the canopy.

“Hello there, Ms. Rude-and-Sleepy.”

Chakyung wondered if she should try feigning more surprise, as if she’d only just now noticed him, but in the end, she greeted him calmly.

“Hello, Mr. Rude-and-Friendly.”

She tipped her umbrella back slightly. Raindrops fell onto the tip of her nose. Some also dripped onto the guy’s already-soaked hair.

“My name’s Han Soo-eon,” he said. It was the first time he’d said his name aloud to her. So that was how it was supposed to sound.

“I’m Yoon Chakyung.”

“I know.” He grinned again.

“So it was a surfboard.” Chakyung pointed at the board he was holding, a yellow swallow-tailed surfboard with red stripes. Soo-eon looked down at it.

“Ah, right. My luggage. I heard this was made by a master shaper, so I bought it in Hawaii and brought it back with me.” He said this with the excitement of a little kid bragging about a new toy. “But what brings you here so early on a rainy morning? It doesn’t look like you came to surf.” He gestured toward the sea with both hands in mock seriousness. “This isn’t exactly a good place for golfing either.”

He had remembered her luggage too. Chakyung saw no need to tell him the golf bag wasn’t hers.

“This isn’t good weather to do much of anything in,” she said.

“I don’t know—seems like decent weather for a conversation, no?”

Chakyung looked at Soo-eon’s face in earnest for the first time. Was her sense that he seemed like a little boy based solely on the fact that he looked younger than her? Was it just because she was more tired than he was?

Chakyung shrugged. “I don’t think the ocean, the rain, and a conversation are the most harmonious match, exactly—”

Soo-eon threw an arm around her shoulders and pulled her toward him. After a moment of confusion, Chakyung realized someone had nearly decked her with a surfboard.

“Oh no, so sorry.”

The person whose huge neon board had nearly hit her was a young guy with a big build. But the guy had just turned away, and the woman with him had apologized instead. Chakyung frowned. Soo-eon let go of her and turned to the shamefaced woman, nodding and warning her, “Be careful. The waves are high right now.”

The guy who had nothing to say earlier when he should have been saying sorry turned around and glared at Soo-eon. “Pfft. Who do you think you are?” he sneered.

As he stalked away, the woman with him cast one more look back before trailing sheepishly after him. Still within earshot, the guy grumbled, “So-called locals think they know everything.”

Soo-eon watched him go, muttering, “Those aren’t waves beginners should be riding, though ...”

“How do you know he’s a beginner?” Chakyung asked.

“His wet suit and board are brand-new. He might have been surfing a couple times, but his stuff doesn’t look rented. He doesn’t have much of a tan for a surfer. Or look like he’s done much paddling. Yet he’s using a shortboard.”

The two of them watched the man lie stomach-down on the board and swim out into the open water. The woman stood on the shore, watching. The wind was blowing, and the waves were a little higher than before.

“The waves are rough today,” said Soo-eon, measuring them with his finger. It was still raining. A few yards out from where they stood, the men Soo-eon had been surfing with earlier stopped walking to watch the other man.

Chakyung wasn’t normally the type to interfere in other people’s business. She would offer help to those who requested it, but she viewed stepping in any sooner as an intrusion. In her eyes, there was nothing she could do for those who ignored the help or warnings they’d been given. Still, she could already tell Soo-eon was a much different person than she was. It was that difference that unnerved her. She couldn’t simply leave the beach now. Not until the rookie surfer made it back out of the water in one piece.

But the waves were high, and the arrogant man’s skills were predictably flimsy. He appeared to catch a small wave once, but after that, he kept wiping out on any other wave he tried. He couldn’t even stand up on his board properly before he was falling off again. When another wave came in, he managed to get on his feet despite wobbling. He somehow succeeded at catching a wave that looked to be about three feet high. But in the blink of an eye, the wave broke. The man fell forward and was swept under, his board flying up and landing on the water again with a thwack. All the surfers on the beach let out a collective “Ouch!” The man did not resurface.

One of Soo-eon’s surfer buddies shouted, “Did the board hit him on the head?”

The beach wasn’t officially open yet. It was raining early in the morning, and they were a bit far from the main area—naturally there were no lifeguards in sight. The woman on the shore looked around nervously. Two minutes. Three. The man still hadn’t come back up. The woman tapped her foot, anxious, before starting toward the water on impulse.

“It’s dangerous!”

Soo-eon ran across the beach. His surfer buddies chased after him.

He pushed past the woman, wading into the water, and threw himself into the churning waves. He was quick to reach the open sea, where that neon surfboard floated, looking like an overturned wreck. The other surfers swam out close behind him.

Then Soo-eon’s head went under and disappeared too. Time seemed to pass at a crawl. Chakyung felt like she could hear her blood rushing in her ears. At last, Soo-eon resurfaced, holding the unconscious man, and the other surfers helped him haul the man back to the shore.

They laid the man out on the sand, and the woman who had been with him dropped to her knees beside him. While one of Soo-eon’s buddies was attempting CPR, sirens wailed nearby. Everyone turned their heads. An ambulance pulled up, and out came the medics, running a stretcher across the sand. The surfers cleared a path for them as they lifted the man onto the stretcher to carry him out. The woman ran after them. Meanwhile, the surfers seemed to take it upon themselves to look after their boards, bringing them back up and onto the beach.

Soo-eon approached Chakyung. “Did you call the ambulance?” he asked, grinning.

She nodded. “I didn’t know what might happen, so I went ahead and called. They got here fast.”

“Thanks to you, he’ll be able to get first aid quickly. He should be fine.”

“If he does pull through, it’ll be thanks to you, not me.”

They began walking toward the sloping path that led up the beach. Chakyung held her umbrella so that it also covered Soo-eon. He was already soaked, but to let him continue getting battered by the rain didn’t sit right with her. She didn’t know why they were walking together. They had nothing much to talk about now, nothing to share.

“I guess surfing is a pretty dangerous sport,” Chakyung said. Still gripping the umbrella with one hand, she bent down and rinsed her feet under the outdoor shower. Golden sand had wedged itself between her toes. Soo-eon took the umbrella from her. She looked up at him looming over her and getting soaked in the rain he was shielding her from.

“It’s not so hard if you follow the rules,” he said, “and if you do it with someone who has professional expertise and can help you when it gets tough.”

Chakyung finished rinsing her feet, then gathered the hem of her skirt and made to crouch down to wash off the sand sticking to her sandals. “You mean someone like you, for example.”

Soo-eon wordlessly returned her umbrella. Without thinking, she accepted it, then watched him get soaked by the rain as he bent down to pick up her shoes. He blasted them with the air hose to get the sand off and rinsed them clean under the running water.

“Yes,” he said. “I mean someone like me, for example.”

He set her sandals down before her feet. She couldn’t see his face as his head was bowed, but she knew he was smiling.

When they reached the parking lot, Soo-eon pointed over his shoulder and said, “The guys I came with are waiting for me, so I’ll head back.”

He turned to go and had only taken a few steps when Chakyung called out, “Wait.”

He turned back around.

“There’s something I wanted to ask you,” she said.

“What is it?”

Chakyung tried to re-create the hand gesture she had seen him make at the airport in Hawaii and again earlier on the beach. She held up her pinky and her thumb, keeping her middle three fingers folded down.

“What does this mean?”

“Aha.” Grinning, Soo-eon folded his fingers into the same gesture, then turned his wrist to show her the back side of his hand as well. “It’s called the shaka sign. It’s a way surfers greet each other.”

“Does it have any meaning?”

“Well, it could mean lots of things. It can mean ‘take it easy.’ It can mean ‘nice job.’ There are times you use it to say ‘thanks,’ or ‘hey, hello.’”

“Can you use it to say ‘take care’?”

“Sure you can.”

“Well then.” Chakyung turned her wrist to show him the back side of her hand like he had done. He smiled again, still holding his hand up too.

“What are you using it to mean?” he asked.

Chakyung shrugged. “Could mean lots of things.”

She watched him take off running, his hair getting soaked in the rain. To her, the hand sign seemed similar to the one for “call me.” This wasn’t a gesture you could make to just anybody—they had to have your phone number. Even people who knew your number couldn’t always call you. Or else, they chose not to. There were times you might tell someone to call you, yet the call never came. It seemed better, then, not to know anyone’s number. That way, there was no reason to ever tell someone, “Call me,” to ever wait for a call. That way, there was nothing you could do.

But what if you still wanted to tell someone to call you? Chakyung held up her folded fingers. Soo-eon was already gone, returned to the beach and the company of his friends.

Outside the car window, the ocean was still a dark gray, though bits of blue sky were peeking out over the mountaintops. The rain had stopped, and the view had cleared up.

“It was always a fantasy of mine to go for a drive along the coast.”

Romi was behind the wheel today. No matter how much Hadam insisted she was fine, Romi refused to put an injured person in charge of operating a motor vehicle.

“The weather today is pretty nice for a drive,” Hadam said. “I’m glad it cleared up.”

She aimed her camera at the distant sky and adjusted the focus. Now that the rain was gone, it also wasn’t a bad day to meet up with someone. Hadam hoped the third Honeyman candidate they were seeing today would be the real deal. If things went amiss again, she wouldn’t know where to start over from at this point. It seemed like Hadam was the only one fretting, though—Romi looked completely calm.

“I like this song,” said Romi, listening closely to the music. “Who’s it by again?”

The clear trills of birds rang out. Hadam looked down at her phone. “Ah, this says it’s by Nohelani Cypriano. The song is called ‘Lihue.’ I think she’s a Hawaiian musician.” The song was on a playlist Yoojin had sent along with some other materials when Hadam mentioned she was going to Jeju. “Yoojin said it was great music for listening to on the beach.”

“Yoojin—she’s one of your old classmates from the film department? Along with Jaewoong and that Pilhyun sunbae of yours?”

“That’s right. Pilhyun actually took some time off to work before starting school, so even though he’s older than me, we were in the same year. It’s kind of weird to call him ‘oppa,’ though, so I just call him ‘sunbae.’”

“What does he do here on Jeju?”

“Oh—well, he was a film major like the rest of us, but he doesn’t make movies anymore. He worked overseas for a few years, but I think he said he came to Jeju to take part in a couple exhibitions of some sort at the biennale.”

“Is he an artist? What medium? Painting?”

“At the moment, he’s leaning toward installation art. A combination of installation and media art. He told me he’s videographing installation art that melds the organic with the mechanic, but I don’t really know what that means. I think the exhibition starts soon, so we could go and check it out together.”

“Sure, I’d like that,” Romi said, but she didn’t seem all that interested. In that same, even tone, she asked, “So what made Jaewoong quit making movies?”

Hadam shook her head. “I don’t know. He ... was really good at it.”

She didn’t say anything more than that. The sound of music filled the car in lieu of a real answer.

“Hmm. Well, I suppose everyone has their reasons.”

“You’re right. We all have our circumstances.”

For a while, the car was silent except for the music playing as they cruised along the coastline. The blue of the sky and the sea slowly spread out across the afternoon.

“I’m sure that man has his reasons too,” Romi said suddenly after a while of seeming lost in her own thoughts.

“That man?”

“The man we’re looking for. The one we’ll probably never find.”

“Oh right. Of course.”

“I was thinking about what I would say to him if I did see him again.” Romi waited for a moment, yielding to the car nosing into their lane from the next one over.

“What would you say?”

“Well, I’m not sure. It could be better not to say anything at all.”

As the car merged, its driver flashed the hazard lights three times, a sign of thanks. Romi stepped on the gas again.

“Because I don’t know his situation,” she went on.

“Of course. You’d need to know that before you’d have anything to say to him.”

“I don’t care about anything else, but I’d really like to know at least that much.”

Hadam mulled over these words. Once you knew a person’s situation, you could no longer claim to be an irrelevant character in their story. So many things became relevant to you then. For the first time since Hadam had started this project, she felt a slight sense of fear. Of what would happen if they couldn’t find Honeyman. Of what would happen if they did.

The third place they visited was at the top of a hill with a view of the distant sea. It was surrounded by grass and gave off an especially invigorating feeling. According to Jaewoong, this place was a shared living space for young farmers returning to their hometowns on Jeju, transplants from the mainland, and long-term travelers. It was more or less a community of various people coming together to live, share information, and help one another with their work. Someone Jaewoong had filmed something for once had given him the address.

“Nol,” the community house, was a white, two-story building in the shape of the Korean letter , a multi-unit home where each household had its own entrance. In the center was a glass-roofed courtyard garden where people hung out and ate together. The surf-themed café out front had all kinds of surfing gear on display, including boards in all different colors, as well as comfy seating like hammocks and beanbag chairs spread around the space. From the café ceiling hung a sign featuring swelling waves and the name “Dilla” in italics. The owner explained that “dilla” was a word for carefree, laid-back people. “Nol,” too, was a reference to the Korean word “nolda,” meaning “to hang out,” but it was also the Korean word for a giant wave.

Romi thought the café owner resembled Moana, the Disney character. Maybe it was because of her long, curly hair and tanned skin. She seemed as cool and refreshing as the blues that decorated her café.

“You won’t find a better place to feature in a documentary about starting a new life on Jeju,” the owner said. Fittingly, the Moana of Jeju was named Mo Ayoung. She had greeted Romi and Hadam and offered them a tour of the house.

“Our Nollers—that’s what we call our residents—work in all different fields and are all different ages. We mostly host lots of singles or families without children, though. We’ve got people who work in agriculture or at companies here, as well as artists and surfers. We even have folks who make things like clothes or books. Our kitchen is a huge common area we all use together. And we share more than just food. Every weekend, we host our Mixing and Buzzing event, where we hang out and socialize, and sometimes we invite guest speakers, so we get to attend lectures and performances too. In the summer, we have a surfing class, and in the winter, we offer yoga classes. We’re kind of like a Northern European co-op.”

Hadam was excited to film all the different areas around the shared house. There was a joy in discovering the perfect shots. The kind of footage she had wanted to include in the documentary from the beginning, back in the planning stages—it was all here. One of Hadam’s goals for the film was to show the new kinds of residences that had emerged where no such places had been, as well as how a more traditional way of life allowed for people to live in harmony.

The white walls in the hallway leading from the surf café to the courtyard garden reminded Hadam of a gallery exhibit, showcasing color and black-and-white photos of people who had stayed at Nol over time.

“I would love to turn this space into an exhibition hall or a museum someday,” Ayoung explained, breezing past the photos on the walls. “A place to show how the history of the people here is interwoven with the history of the island.”

While Hadam captured a shot of the length of the hallway, Romi glanced at the photos, stopping in front of one of the black-and-white images and taking a closer look. She turned to say something to Hadam, but her friend was paying her no mind as she chatted with Ayoung.

“How long has Nol been open?”

“About five years now? Just barely enough time to settle in.”

“Then are there people who’ve been here for a while?”

“We have some who’ve lived here for more than two years, and some who’ve stayed for a month. When we were planning the house, my friend who runs it with me and I made it one of our goals to give people flexibility. So we divided the complex into units that can accommodate different household sizes. Each unit has its own parking too.”

“Are all the units filled at the moment?”

“Not all of them. We usually have a lot of folks from spring through fall, and then people leave in the winter, so sometimes the units are empty. These days, though, we tend to get a lot of long-term folks who stay at least six months, so I think we’ll need to adjust the number of units we have that can accommodate them.”

Hadam carefully broached the subject she had come to discuss. “You know,” she said, “our film is also going to be about beekeeping.”

Ayoung nodded easily. “Of course. I heard all about that from Mr. Kim Manseop. We have a beekeeper staying here as well. I think it would be great for you to meet him. He’s really enthusiastic about what he does. And he’s been living here in our community for a long time. In fact, he’s right outside, so you should be able to meet him soon. But ...”

In the meantime, Romi had made her way to the end of the hall and now stood before the glass door facing the courtyard. All kinds of potted green plants were placed throughout the space to give it a feeling similar to a real garden. Blue light lingered in the air. In the center of the courtyard was a huge white birch table with long benches on either side.

There was only one person out there at that moment—a man with short hair wearing a plaid shirt. He was sitting at the table, reading something that looked like an academic journal in English.

He looked up at Romi when she opened the glass door.

Ayoung tugged on Hadam’s sleeve. “There’s one small problem,” she said quietly.

Hadam lowered her camera and turned to Ayoung. Just as it seemed Ayoung was about to say something, Romi strode toward the table. Now that the clouds had lifted and the weather had cleared up, the glass rooftop itself was the same blue as the sky. That blue was even reflected in the man’s eyes. Romi stood before him, looking down at him where he sat.

“Found you,” she said.

Hadam, who had been listening closely to Ayoung, sensed that the atmosphere had grown serious and looked over.

Romi called out to Hadam, louder. “We found him. He’s the one.”

Hadam watched them—Romi and the man in the plaid shirt, staring at each other in the sunlight that flooded into the yard through the glass.

Quietly but still loud enough to be heard by listening ears, Ayoung whispered, “Three years ago, he lost his memory in an accident.”

Hadam’s eyes went wide. She turned back to Ayoung. “What?”

In the dignified manner of an emissary, Ayoung recounted the tragedy. “Yes. He can’t remember anything that happened prior to his car accident. His wife died that day, and he lost his memory from the shock.”