Romancing on Jeju

YOU HAVE TO SEEK TO FIND

Nine Years Earlier, Summer

The flames were getting stronger. The shouts, too, grew louder as the fire swelled. Hadam thought she would lose her mind from all the noise. Her hands were shaking, her heart pounding, yet all she could think about was somehow putting out the fire. The extinguisher she’d grabbed, though, was rusty and not working properly.

“Hadam, stay back! It’s dangerous!” Yoojin shouted from behind her, but Hadam couldn’t hear much of anything. Someone tried jumping into the fire from the side but leaped back as the flames lunged like a wild beast.

“Ugh!”

Hadam recognized Pilhyun even with his face coated in soot and dirt. He rolled around on the ground, trying to snuff out the flames that had caught on the hem of his pants.

“Pilhyun sunbae, no!” Hadam cried.

Yoojin, Hyunsuk, and Jungmin came running toward Pilhyun, stripping off their own clothes to cover him and smother the flames. Yoojin sat him up and asked, “Sunbae, are you all right?”

Pilhyun grabbed Yoojin’s wrist, his face twisted in pain.

“Hadam, get back!” shouted Hyunsuk, shaking his head and gesturing for her to move.

When would the fire trucks arrive? The area was remote, and it would take even longer than usual for cars to navigate the narrow mountain road that led out here. The smoke was growing thicker, making it hard for Hadam to see what was right in front of her. People were coughing nonstop, and she heard shouts and noise coming from every direction, but it was impossible to make out any one sound in all the chaos.

She had to do something.

Hadam peeled off her blouse and tied her hair up with it, then took off, running back inside the building.

“No!”

She heard several voices shouting at her back, but all she could think about was saving the end product of the crew’s hard work. What would happen to the camera? The film?

As her hand gripped the doorknob, someone grabbed her and pulled her back.

“Let go! I have to get the camera!”

As she shook off whoever it was and turned back to face the building, a gust of wind swept through and sent the blaze soaring even higher. Before the flames could pounce on her, the person who’d grabbed her whipped around to block them. Next thing she knew, Hadam was being hoisted up into the air, flung over the guy’s shoulder, and carried off. She struggled and squirmed in his grip, but the guy kept walking right ahead, taking long, determined strides.

“Hey, Gu Jaewoong! Put me down! I said, put me down!”

He did—on the field about fifty yards in front of the building, and not at all gently. Hadam rolled over on the grass. Jaewoong grabbed a hose and sprayed her down. Only when the water hit her skin did she realize she had burns that made her entire body sting.

“Pull yourself together! You almost died just now!”

Hadam held her hands up against the rush of water. When the stream subsided, she lifted her head to look at her boyfriend’s face.

“I have to get the camera and film! What did you do with them?” Water dripped off Hadam as she stood. She pushed her wet hair out of her face to get a better look at the house. The fire raged on, more violent than before. Jaewoong didn’t offer her so much as a hand.

“I can go back for them—”

“Hwayoung got hurt!” he shouted. It was the first time Hadam had ever heard him raise his voice like that.

“What?”

“She jumped from the second floor and broke her leg! Are you hearing me? She could have died!”

Hadam hadn’t known Hwayoung was still inside. It dawned on her then that she didn’t know who had gotten out and who hadn’t. She hadn’t seen Jaewoong or Hwayoung after the fire first broke out and she herself had jumped down to escape.

“Shouldn’t you worry about people first? Is the film that important? You’re supposed to be the director!”

The flames shot up from the house, and someone let out a piercing scream. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Hadam heard a familiar sound—the wail of a fire truck’s siren approaching.

“Is—is everybody okay?”

She looked up at Jaewoong, standing in the shadow of that massive blaze. His face, too, was smeared with soot, the skin under his temple peeling. Hadam reached for his hand. In that moment, she wanted to hold someone’s—anyone’s—hand. But Jaewoong flinched, refusing to take it.

In a voice as hard as the look on his face, he said, “Go see for yourself.”

For a long time after, Hadam remembered that scene better than even the most unforgettable scenes in her favorite films. The building, scarlet and blazing under the shadows of the mountains, Jaewoong’s dark face standing out against that cruel light. His face, full of anger directed at her. And lastly, the feeling of warmth that lingered on her hands, a warmth that also felt colder than anything she had ever experienced. It was a feeling that clung to her long after that sweltering air was carried away on the wind.

Project: Searching for Honeyman

Day One, Jeju

It had been a long time since she’d been to Jeju. Through the plane’s window, Hadam took in the landscape, which evoked a strange feeling in her—“strange” being another way to describe the feeling of fear, or anticipation. People feel afraid when they don’t know what sorts of things will happen, but they feel anticipation when things might happen that they don’t expect. It was an unusual feeling for Hadam—that sense of anticipation taking shape inside her.

They got on the Rent-a-Car shuttle bus right as it was about to depart from the airport bus stop. The driver checked their names against his list—Park Hadam and Do Romi—and stowed their suitcases. Since this first visit would be more of a preliminary research trip, they hadn’t yet arranged for accommodations beyond the first night.

Without plans, there was always a chance for things to go wrong. Earlier at the Rent-a-Car center, Hadam learned that the car she’d requested had been in an accident the day before, so she would have to switch to a different model.

Despite peak season being over, there weren’t many other cars left to rent. The employee at the desk said, “Most of the domestic compact class vehicles are already rented out, and none of the remaining models have a rearview camera or a parking system. Besides those, a couple of electric cars are available for a slightly lower price.”

Hadam thought it over for a moment, then turned to Romi. “What do you think? I’ll be doing most of the driving, but there’s the off chance you’ll have to get behind the wheel.”

“Well, wouldn’t the compact class car be the best choice?”

Hadam was slightly surprised by Romi’s quick reply. “Oh, do you think so? I mean, the insurance for an electric one would be cheaper—”

“But wouldn’t the classiest cars already be in top condition?”

“I’m sorry?” Hadam seemed confused, the conversation having taken a left turn.

“She said the cars are compact class, right? Like first class or prestige class. In that case, wouldn’t those be the cars the rental center considers the best?”

“Ah, it’s not that kind of class. They mean class as in size—subcompact class, midsize class ...”

The employee listening to their conversation pressed her mouth shut tight, trying to hold in her laughter. She seemed like a nice person, seeing as how she tried not to laugh right in their faces.

In the end, they went with an electric car. A new car would probably be better if Romi ever had to drive. And, of course, they couldn’t discount the cheaper price tag.

The ride was surprisingly smooth sailing all the way downtown. So far, the tourist traffic hadn’t been too bad, and they hadn’t seen too many of the big tour buses either. Everyone else was probably headed to some tourist attraction away from the city center. Hadam and Romi’s first destination was a hotel not far from the airport. They had to check in, set down their luggage, and take care of the next thing on the agenda. Which was ...

“So it’s been a while since you’ve seen him, then? Your ex. Gu Jaewoong.”

Romi’s question came out of nowhere. As they were getting off the plane earlier, Hadam had told Romi the simplest version of events. It wasn’t like she could avoid mentioning him or that particular item on the schedule.

Hadam gripped the steering wheel. “I haven’t seen him since before I graduated, so it’s been, what? Eight or nine years?”

“Did you break up right after what happened with the fire at the film shoot?”

“No, it didn’t happen all at once. There were some hard feelings on my end, and on his too. I had to go to the police after the fire, and I was having a hard time dealing with everything. Lots of people came out of it with injuries, big and small. I got into a heated argument with the owner of the house over who was at fault. In the end, they found out an old, worn electrical line had short-circuited, so I wasn’t to blame, at least not entirely, but ...” Hadam sorted through her memories. “We fought a lot. I was exhausted and struggling. He was busy with his own stuff and probably just got tired of me in the end.”

More than a little while had passed between the fire and their breakup, but looking back on their last days together now, Hadam found it hard to distinguish any one day from the mass of them. Repeated arguments, short-lived reconciliations, resurfaced conflicts. They couldn’t continue to see each other, not because they hated each other, but because they each hated the way they were carrying on.

No one could know who had been the first to say, “Let’s end this.” Whoever it was had probably meant, Let’s end this fight , but soon enough, it came to mean, Let’s end this relationship . They finished school and slowly, steadily grew apart, without ever saying so much as a proper goodbye.

I was upset and wanted him to coddle me, but because he wouldn’t, I gave him a hard time. Hadam hadn’t been able to tell Romi much more than that earlier. Now, she kept her tone intentionally even. “It was nine years ago. That’s all in the past. We have no relationship now, either, so—”

“Just because you have no relationship now doesn’t mean the one you had doesn’t matter,” said Romi thoughtfully. “In fact, because you don’t have one, doesn’t it matter that much more that you’re meeting up again now?”

Hadam struggled to think of a reply. But she couldn’t quite hide her excitement. “I guess you’re right,” she said.

“Thank you, Hadam.”

“Hmm? For what?”

“You’ve had to do all sorts of things you didn’t want to, all because I wanted to find Honeyman. And I know it must have been a hassle for Chakyung too.”

“Not at all!” Hadam couldn’t explain it exactly. It may have been possible to film the documentary even without Jaewoong’s assistance. But having it would certainly make the process much easier. Besides, if they wanted to find Romi’s beekeeper, a local’s cooperation was a must. This was the logic Hadam had used to convince herself as she studied the email address Yoojin sent her, typing and erasing several drafts to Jaewoong asking for his help.

Maybe this was all because of Romi, or maybe Hadam was using Romi as an excuse. She didn’t think she had any lingering feelings. She just didn’t want to avoid him on purpose and risk looking like she did.

Still, when he replied, saying he wanted to meet up with her to go over the details, she was struck by two different feelings. This emotional cocktail was 90 percent relief that they had moved on from the past, and 10 percent emptiness because they really seemed to have no relationship at all with each other now.

Jaewoong offered to come by the hotel after he got off work, but Hadam declined, carefully scouring online maps and blogs until she found a quiet café near city hall and replied that they should meet there. She already felt like she owed him big-time and didn’t want to ask anything more of him, not even something so small.

Hadam left the hotel with a plan to get to the café ten minutes early. Most times when she made plans with someone, she felt uncomfortable when the other person beat her there. She was the one who waited for others—every time. If she got tired of waiting, she could walk away first.

But as it turned out, Jaewoong had gotten there before her. Hadam opened the door to the café and stepped inside. When she spotted him sitting at a table, his posture perfect as he pored over a book, her heart leaped. All this time had passed, but when she entered that café, she realized how familiar a sight he was. Romi was right. Whether they had a relationship now or not, she couldn’t say their old one didn’t matter. Hadam couldn’t bring herself to look at him as she approached. The distance from the entrance to the table felt impossible to bridge.

“Hi,” said Hadam.

Jaewoong shut his book and set it aside. “Hey.” His voice was a little hoarse. “It’s been a while.”

Only then did Hadam look him in the eye.

“You look exactly the same,” he said. “I recognized you right away.”

She smiled awkwardly at that. “You too.” But she knew neither of them looked exactly the same as they had back then. He hadn’t changed so much that she wouldn’t have been able to recognize him if their paths crossed on the street—his hair wasn’t thinning to the point of baldness, and he hadn’t put on a ton of weight or anything. But he was prematurely graying in places, and he must have laughed so often that even his resting face held traces of laugh lines, crow’s-feet creasing the skin around his eyes. No matter how much someone’s appearance changed, though, they remained the same at their core.

Back in school, Jaewoong hadn’t majored in acting, but oddly enough he’d been asked to act in different projects every now and then. On-screen, he managed to blend well into the background. He could make ordinary moments look a little more polished without ruining the illusion of the everyday. Even now, in a white shirt and jeans, he looked a little older but still gave off that impression. Jaewoong didn’t stick out, not even in this Jeju Island café. Rather, he was like a natural part of the scenery.

Once their iced coffees came out, they had trouble finding things to say. All the topics of conversation that should have been used to break through the awkward tension had already been discussed over email, so they would simply be repeating things the other knew.

Jaewoong spoke first. “I heard about what happened to Hyunsuk.”

“Yeah. He looked so ill in his last documentary. It was hard to see him like that.”

“I’m sure it was. I couldn’t make it out there for the memorial film screening, so I sent some money and my condolences.” The words sounded strangely aloof coming from Jaewoong, who usually made it a point to look after his seniors and juniors, but everyone had been busy living their own lives, it seemed. Hadam awkwardly went on.

“I ran into a lot of our old schoolmates there. They told me you were working here on Jeju.”

“Yeah. I haven’t been here long.”

The conversation came to a brief pause. A piano cover of “The Girl from Ipanema” flowed through the café. The music suited the island well.

“So,” Jaewoong said, “I looked into what you told me.”

Hadam had mentioned in her emails that she was making a movie about beekeeping and searching for a certain person at the same time. She hadn’t gone into detail about the parts of the story that had to do with Romi. All she’d said was that the person she was looking for was an acquaintance of her friend.

Jaewoong took a yellow memo pad out of his bag.

It’ll be more comfortable if we just talk business, Hadam thought. Nothing more. “Sorry to ask so much of you,” she said.

He brushed off her apology, flipping through the notes he’d written and rereading them.

“There are about two hundred bee farms on Jeju in all. And around one hundred sixty of those own more than ten beehives. You can think of those as commercial businesses of sorts.”

“I see. There aren’t as many as I thought there would be,” said Hadam. Her voice rose, excited and determined. The job would be easier than she’d expected. “We should be able to track him down soon, then.”

Jaewoong looked at her across the table. The corners of his mouth turned up in a little smile. “You think one hundred sixty bee farms aren’t a lot?” he said. “I figure it’d take you a few months to go around to them all. Just the fact that you’re considering it shows you’ve still got that same tireless passion.”

Hadam winced. Sure, there were times she could be overly eager. There had been a point in her life when she couldn’t distinguish between passion, sincerity, and ambition. “I guess so,” she said.

Jaewoong set his memo pad down on the table and folded his hands, looking serious. What he said next made the temperature, which had been mild until then, as cold as the cubes in their iced coffees.

“I can’t give you detailed profiles on each and every beekeeper.”

Hadam’s hand stopped mid-stir of her coffee. The ice cubes rattled in protest. “What?”

“I’m a civil servant. It’d be one thing if this were public information, but I can’t give out those details without the consent of all parties involved.”

Hadam’s face burned red, seeing the situation from Jaewoong’s perspective. She couldn’t ask this sort of favor of him as if they still had the same relationship they used to. “Right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s my official position, though. Not my personal view. It’s not like I can stop you from going to these beekeepers and scoping them out for yourself as a director.”

Hadam hid her reddening disappointment. Calmly, Jaewoong began to explain.

“A man in his thirties—there are very few people who fit the profile you gave me. Most of the beekeepers are in their fifties at least. Plus, if you consider the ones who came from other regions to farm, the scope narrows even more.” He unfolded his hands and picked up his memo pad. Flipping another page, he tore off a sheet and slid it onto the table. “This is the most information about animal husbandry on the island that I, civil servant Gu Jaewoong, can share with you, film director Park Hadam. To aid in the production of a film that will help revitalize the local beekeeping industry, there are three bee farms I would recommend looking into.”

Hadam took the paper. It listed exactly three apiaries. Despite the search not even being for her sake, her heart leaped at the idea of finding Honeyman at one of them. She scanned the list of names.

“Much more doable than one hundred sixty farms, right?” Jaewoong’s cheeriness was enough to ease the awkward tension between them.

Hadam found herself smiling. She clapped her hands and nodded firmly. “Right!”

Jaewoong pointed at her. “That hasn’t changed either.”

Hadam looked confused.

“Your habit of clapping when you’re happy. You still do it, even now.”

Jaewoong’s voice also sounded unchanged when he said things like that. Even when he was being mischievous, his voice was so gentle that it seemed like his mood would never sour. When he suddenly brought up the past, his voice was like a wave lapping at the island shore. It was the voice he once used to tease her when she was going on and on about her plans. She used to share these fantasies, like the milkmaid counting her chickens before they’d hatched. Even when he made fun of her for it, he listened to every word. The two of them used to share their dreams about their distant futures. Movies they would watch and make together. Countries they would visit. Countless things they would do. All those dreams forming in her mind like sea-foam on the ocean’s waves had been swallowed up, bubbling into nothing, but it felt like they hadn’t been completely swept away. Like they might still rise to the surface.

For the first time that evening, Hadam looked at Jaewoong in a real and meaningful way. He looked right back at her. When their eyes met, he grinned.

The first word that came to Hadam’s mind was “trouble.”

Imagine, just when you think your heart has settled, a wave rips through you, tossing and turning inside you at the mere sight of your ex-boyfriend’s smile—there were no other words for such a situation aside from that one: “trouble.”

No matter how many channels Romi flipped through, the only thing on at this hour was the Jeju Island local news. Rolling over on the crisp, clean hotel bedsheets, she watched news stories about local industries and what was going on in town. A festival celebrating Jeju’s haenyeo was set to start soon, and preparations were underway at one of the divers’ homes. The women divers had rescued a swimmer who’d gotten swept away by the rough ocean waves. Upkeep on the facilities along the harbor had begun in preparation for a typhoon that could strike at any moment. Last summer, the number of tourists during peak season had dropped compared to other years. A local commercial came on then, cutting off the news story at the interesting part. It seemed even minor, everyday life events got their own commercials here.

Information on local weddings and funerals appeared on the TV. Lines of announcements ran down the screen—a Jeju City trading company CEO’s third son had gotten married at some wedding hall; a distribution center employee had gotten married at another.

“No matter how low everyone says the marriage rate is these days, plenty of people are still getting hitched. Look at that,” Romi muttered to herself, reading the list. “There were that many weddings on Jeju this past month alone.” Just whom were they targeting with these announcements? Right as the list finally came to an end, Romi’s phone rang. It was Hadam.

“Hello? Hi, Hadam. No, no. You two can have dinner on your own. Oh, if another friend is joining you, you three can dine together, then. I already ate.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. She hadn’t had dinner yet, but she’d had a snack earlier and wasn’t all that hungry. It wasn’t that she was hoping to give the two of them some space to rekindle those old feelings now that they were seeing each other again. It would be nice if they did, but they were adults who could make that choice for themselves. It was more that another friend of theirs from their college days might be joining them. Romi would have to spend the next few days traveling with other people—she wanted to be on her own, however briefly. It wasn’t bad, having the hotel room to herself and being alone for a little while in an unfamiliar place.

Romi ended the call and studied the screen for a moment before grabbing the remote and shutting off the TV. She’d seen something just then that she’d meant to tell Hadam, but she couldn’t remember what it was.

Looking out the window, she noticed the sun beginning to set. Could she find somewhere within walking distance to have dinner with a view of the sea? Could she find a scene like that in real life—the sun dipping below the horizon like something in a painting? If she wanted to try, she’d have to head to a beach on the west coast. The evening air on Jeju would be so refreshing, unlike in Seoul. It was decided—Romi would hit the town. This was a tourist city. There would probably be lots of places she could go alone.

As she took the key card from the slot next to the door and stepped out, the feeling Romi had earlier, that she’d discovered something important, completely disappeared from her mind.

Many business trips overseas had taught Chakyung the ultimate survival secret—pack light. No matter how little luggage she brought with her, the amount of stuff she had to carry always seemed to multiply on the return trip, so she’d learned to pack things she could simply throw away. She was able to pack all the necessities while keeping things to a minimum. This was a point of pride for her—being the business-trip guru. But it was all too common for her personal principles to fall apart when it was time to be Chakyung, the employee.

As soon as she arrived at the airport in Honolulu, Chakyung grabbed the huge golf bag from the car with the cab driver’s help.

“Hey, Manager Yoon. I heard you decided to go straight from Hawaii to Jeju on business. That’s perfect. I’m going golfing there this weekend. Bring my golf bag with you to Jeju, would you?” Director Kim had handed this headache of a task off to Chakyung. He’d bragged about the new golf bag he had bought on the trip, but he must have realized how heavy it would be to carry back to Korea and had sneakily given Chakyung the honor instead.

“Wouldn’t it be better if you took it home with you and brought it to Jeju yourself? Since it’s so valuable,” Chakyung had asked through gritted teeth, but Director Kim hadn’t seemed the least bit apologetic.

“Ah, well, I bought some stuff here and there while we’ve been in Hawaii, so I’ve got too much luggage to take back as it is. They told me I was over the excess baggage limit. But you only brought along your one carry-on, so ...”

So he’d asked this huge favor of her to save himself a few coins. All because he’d spent so much already just to fly business class. If she’d known he would pull a stunt like this, she would have gone on a shopping spree herself. But she’d had back-to-back meetings all day and had another one in the evening—there’d been no time. Director Kim had suddenly requested revisions on her materials, so she’d stayed up all night in her hotel room working on them. Her pitch to the executive board for a documentary ad campaign centered on local, naturally sourced ingredients had been a success, perfectly timed with the company’s plans to launch a new honey-based skin-care line the following year. Still, Chakyung was starting to regret having mentioned that after the business trip in Hawaii, she was planning to head straight to Jeju to get started on the project with the resource extraction team. Knowing Senior Director Kim Jaejin, though, he would have somehow found someone headed to Jeju and shoved this responsibility off on them anyway. Chakyung prayed he would never get promoted—the pairing of his current title and name made it so that she could call him Director Dim to her heart’s content.

He’d even lied and said the golf bag would be light. Dragging the bag along on a cart, Chakyung headed toward the check-in counter. She sighed at the thought of having to track the golf bag down again when she landed at Incheon to bring it with her on the next leg of the trip.

Standing in the check-in line, she noticed the person in front of her had a cart with a sports bag as big as he was. He was a young guy, tall, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. The sun had browned some of his hair, but from behind, it was hard to tell what country he was from based on his build. People from all over the globe came to Hawaii. One thing Chakyung could say for sure, though, was that he had an eye-catching physique. People’s eyes kept seeking him out, even after they had checked in and were headed elsewhere, their stares lingering a bit longer than usual.

The man put his luggage on the conveyor belt. One glance at his side profile showed that he was smiling. The person at the counter was a Hawaiian local in her early thirties. The man said something to her that made her burst out laughing. He set all his luggage on the belt and made some sort of hand gesture, and the woman held up a loose fist with two fingers raised in return, mirroring him. As the man left the check-in area, he turned his head and locked eyes with Chakyung. He looked East Asian—Korean or Japanese, she couldn’t be sure. They’d never met before, but the man nodded at her, still wearing that earlier smile.

He seems friendly, Chakyung thought, but she was wary of him. Regardless of their intentions, good-looking people who laughed a lot always made her feel cautious. If their intentions were bad, she had to be careful not to get hurt, and if they were good, she had to be careful not to hurt them. It was when someone like that had no intentions at all that it was easiest for someone to get hurt. Her wariness stemmed from lots of experience. There were exceptions, of course. Chanmin had given off that sort of vibe when they’d first met—had he laughed a lot, though? Now that she thought of him, Chakyung remembered that she’d only seen him briefly the day before her trip, and he hadn’t called her yesterday. She hadn’t told him she was going straight to Jeju either, so she made a mental note to call him after she checked in at the hotel.

Chakyung maneuvered her carry-on suitcase through the narrow aisle between the airplane seats. Her seat was toward the middle of the plane. Since she’d been a bit late to change her itinerary, she hadn’t had a ton of seating options. She was usually fine with traveling over long distances, but today, she already felt exhausted, and the plane hadn’t even taken off yet. Was this some sort of delayed jet lag? A sudden wave of dizziness made the suitcase she usually wheeled along with ease feel incredibly heavy. She strained, even grunting a few times, but she couldn’t pull it any farther.

She had to do something quick—she was blocking the aisle. With a sigh, she hunched over to lift up her suitcase and, like a miracle, it rose up into the air. She looked up in surprise, only to see a pair of strong brown arms lifting her suitcase into the overhead bin. A bit dazed, Chakyung bowed slightly, a smile spreading across her face.

“Thank you,” she said in English.

“No problem,” came his breezy reply.

It was the guy from the counter at the airport earlier, the one who’d set off her suspicions. He studied her for a moment. Then he smiled, hoisted his own backpack into the overhead compartment across the aisle from hers, and took his seat. As soon as Chakyung had sat down and fastened her seat belt, a petite woman—also East Asian—came down the aisle, grumbling and lugging a huge bag with all her strength. The man seemed to realize she must have been assigned to the window seat next to him and stood up again, moving aside so she could sit. He was standing right next to Chakyung now, and when he moved to lift the other woman’s bag into the overhead bin, too, he leaned back a little, giving Chakyung a clear view of the broad expanse of his back. She scooted to the side, careful not to touch him. Just then, her phone started ringing—she’d forgotten to turn it off. She hurriedly fished it out of her handbag, swearing internally when she saw the name that appeared on the screen.

“Yes, Director Kim. Yes, yes, I brought your bag with me. Oh, the part that’s missing from the materials I gave you yesterday—sure, when I get back to Korea ... Well, I’m on the plane right now. We’re about to take off.”

Even after that, Director Kim kept on talking. Chakyung held the phone away from her ear, made a face at it, then spoke into it again.

“Yes, sir. The plane is taking off now. I’ll look it over and call you later.”

He started to say something else, but Chakyung ended the call. Still, the phone began to ring a second time. The man from earlier sneaked a glance over at her. She sighed. The name on the screen read “Mokdong Mom.” Chanmin’s mother. Chakyung hesitated for a moment, then slid her finger across the screen to accept the call.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, Chakyung. You’re busy, aren’t you? Still in America?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m on the plane right now.”

“Oh, it must be a bad time.” Still, she didn’t end the call. “I’ll be brief. It’s about the furniture we’re getting for your newlywed home. You know, there’s that imported furniture dealer I’ve been looking into.”

“Yes, ma’am. But there’s still six months to go before the wedding ...”

“Sure, of course, but the stuff there is really expensive, and they’re having a sale next week. So I was looking into it a bit ahead of time—”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I think the plane is about to take off. I can’t talk for much longer.”

“All right. But how come you hardly ever call? We should talk about these things more often—”

“Ma’am, I’m really sorry, but the takeoff announcement just came on.”

“All right, all right. Give me a call when you get to Seoul.”

Chakyung ended the call and pressed a hand to her forehead. Chanmin’s mother wasn’t the kind of mother-in-law who went around sticking her nose in all sorts of business, but she seemed determined to live out her own nuptial fantasies through her son’s wedding. Her behavior wasn’t unheard of.

More and more people steadily made their way to the back of the plane. Chakyung’s migraine began to worsen a little. It felt like a little canary was living inside her head and pecking at the walls of her skull. Chakyung closed her eyes. She heard the scattered sounds of people’s conversations, all their words forming one constant hum. Several languages ran together, one impossible to distinguish from another. The next thing she knew, the safety announcements had ended, and she could feel the plane gradually lifting off.

At the sound of the seat belt sign turning off, Chakyung opened her eyes. She felt as if her head and the plane both were suspended in midair, the canary’s beak growing sharper and stronger, but first things first, she had to make those revisions Director Kim had requested. She pulled her laptop out of the bag at her feet and set it on the narrow tray table on the seat in front of her. The revisions weren’t something she could do in a day or two, even if she worked on them now. The shifts in air pressure were unusually strong, though, and her computer nearly fell twice. Figuring it was just one of those days, she shut the laptop and put it back in her bag, then leaned her head against the window. She couldn’t keep her eyes open for long this time.

The sleep she managed to get on the flight wasn’t that great. When she woke up, the canary’s pecking had intensified. Chakyung looked around, holding her neck as if to keep her head from falling off her shoulders. The flight attendants were bustling around, getting ready to serve the scheduled meal. Chakyung decided to skip it. She raised her hand. A flight attendant hurriedly approached her. She had a baby face but masked her youth with an impeccably friendly smile. It was clear, though, that she still didn’t have much experience as a working adult.

“I’ll skip the meal,” Chakyung said.

As if a switch had flipped inside her, the flight attendant’s perfectly gentle smile shifted into a flawless look of concern. “Is everything all right, ma’am? Would you like some fruit or a different meal option?”

“No, I just have a bit of a headache. Could you bring me an aspirin?”

Once the flight attendant left to get it, Chakyung closed her eyes again. To the little bird in her head, she thought, Please go back to sleep.

The woman soon returned with water and the pills, cautiously offering them to her. Chakyung took them once she managed to open her heavy eyelids. As the flight attendant moved to leave again, the man sitting on the other side of the aisle called to her in a low voice.

“Jeogiyo.”

So he was Korean. Chakyung swallowed the pills and glanced over at him. With a brazen sense of overfamiliarity, the man slipped the flight attendant a folded-up note. And the woman, with that same friendly smile on that same baby face, accepted the note and hurried off.

What had Chakyung just seen? She looked right at the man, but he was chatting calmly now with his wife sitting next to him. Even Chakyung couldn’t explain the source of the disappointment welling up inside her. Was she really going to look at all of humanity in a harsher light now because this polite, friendly man had turned out to be the type to chat up a flight attendant? Wasn’t this sort of thing common anyway? Lying to your aging wife with a straight face after having slipped a note to a young flight attendant while she was on the clock—where did people find the nerve?

Maybe I’m being too old-fashioned. This sort of thing is probably no big deal; it’s so embedded in our society. I guess if you like someone, you don’t think too hard about the time or place and just go for it.

The bird inside her head roused itself again, pecking especially hard at her current thoughts. Chakyung furrowed her brow.

As if he could feel her watching him, the man turned to her. She squeezed her eyes shut. Awkward, yes, but she didn’t care. Once they got off this plane, she would never see him again. Besides, it could end up being a good thing that he knew someone was watching him. He might not do something as rude as trying to hit on an on-duty flight attendant again.

Counting the feathery shapes floating behind her eyelids, Chakyung once again dove into a dreamy pool of thoughts. Maybe she just wasn’t up-to-date on the current methods of approaching someone and getting the green light when it came to dating. It had been three years since she and Chanmin officially started going out, and their relationship had followed the standard path laid out by society to a T. He’d asked her out; they’d gone on run-of-the-mill dates on a regular basis; and they’d introduced each other to their families at an appropriate time. It had been ages since Chakyung bid farewell to the old method of meeting people by chance. Maybe her database was flawed.

It was the same when it came to Romi’s beekeeper guy. Even though he’d approached her with what seemed like harmless interest, there must have been some other signal she’d missed if he hadn’t contacted her again. But what could that signal have been? Chakyung’s curiosity was piqued. Here was a riddle even she couldn’t solve—why someone would muster up the courage to approach a stranger and just stop there.

Hadam and Romi were already on Jeju by now. Had they started scoping the place out? If they’d already somehow managed to find the beekeeper guy, this mystery would have been as good as solved. But no. Chakyung didn’t think they’d be able to track him down that easily. Wait for me, ladies, she thought.

Several thoughts rolled around her mind like a ball of string that had unraveled, its threads tangled in places. A dream formed from the hazy fog of her feelings. She thought she could hear the sound of so many bees’ wings beating in her ears.