Romancing on Jeju

YOU COULD LOSE YOUR WAY

The man couldn’t believe his eyes at first. In a neighborhood so many people passed through, including tourists from all over the world, this one person’s resemblance to the woman on his mind was so uncanny, he had to rub his eyes and do a double take. But once he did, he was certain it was Do Romi. She had dyed her hair blond, so he hadn’t recognized her right away. His heart was racing. In a daze, as if he’d been struck in the head, he almost went up and spoke to her before he stopped himself.

Romi was dressed comfortably in a long, flowing skirt and T-shirt, like someone who had stepped out for a walk. Was it really her? It couldn’t be. He hadn’t looked too deeply into her social media in a while, but there was no way she’d moved to Jeju—right? Romi wandered among people walking down the street, stopping to peer inside the storefront window at a new bakery. It didn’t look like she had any particular destination in mind.

The man switched directions, keeping a good thirty feet between himself and Romi as he trailed her. She walked in a zigzag pattern, stopping here and there at different storefronts before moving on, like a bee alighting on flowers. He didn’t need to worry about getting caught. There were tourists everywhere in that neighborhood, and if she had the same habit he remembered from so long ago, she would walk on without once looking back.

After she’d been walking for a while, she ended up at a quick-meal spot. It was famous on the internet for its fish cake soup made from Jeju seafood, and the man himself had even heard other people talking it up before. He’d never been there, though.

He waited patiently until Romi came out and started walking again. He was nervous, but not overly so. He’d waited for her before—in the rain, on cold and windy days, while she was meeting up with another man. Now, he followed her back to her hotel. So she was traveling.

When he got home, the man sat down in his swivel chair and stared for a while at the photos of Romi on his wall. Even he didn’t know why he hadn’t torn them down when he’d come back. He was certain he had predicted this sort of encounter. So this was how they’d been destined to meet again. He opened up Romi’s Instagram page for the first time in a while. Her handle hadn’t changed. None of her photos featured any recognizably “Jeju” things. The only trace of Jeju he could see was a single photo of the tteokbokki and fried snacks she’d just eaten, and there was no mention of Jeju itself anywhere, only comments saying, “Looks delicious!”

Early the next morning, the man went to the Rent-a-Car center and took out a long-term rental. He didn’t know how long he would need it. He parked near the entrance to the hotel parking lot and went in. His guess was that she would be coming out soon. He opened up a newspaper and sat on a sofa in the lobby, watching the front desk.

Determined to wait all day if he had to, he was surprised when Romi appeared in the lobby shortly after. She was with someone else. It might have just been due to shock, but he almost bolted up from the couch before he managed to calm himself down—he couldn’t get caught. The two women checked out of the hotel and left. He carefully observed them as they got farther and farther away. He didn’t get up; instead, he just sat there thinking for a while. He had confirmed everything he needed to confirm for that day, so there was no need to follow after her right away.

He couldn’t have predicted any of this in advance. Running into Romi here after three years had passed, following after her again the same way he had before. Even he couldn’t have known it would come to this. Without noticing, he’d been rubbing traces of the past onto his left hand with his right. He couldn’t sort out his feelings at all. Things were riskier, since Romi wasn’t alone this time. But that could also be more advantageous. Now, he had a string he could grab ahold of that could help him find her wherever she went. He finally had the upper hand. Rather than pursuing her as if this were a hunt, he could lie in wait like someone casting a net. He could follow her without losing his way.

This would be his reward for what happened three years ago, the man thought. A chance to make things right again. The winds of fate were carrying him to Romi.

The man stood up from the sofa and left the lobby. The sunlight on Jeju that morning was strong and bright as was his mood. The sun felt inescapable, even, as it relentlessly bore down on him.

The most important thing—Romi still didn’t know of his existence. For now, this was good. It couldn’t be helped. But soon she would become aware of him. And once she did, she would never forget.

Project: Searching for Honeyman

Day Two, Jeju

The man must have been in his midfifties. His suntanned skin was a sign that he spent a lot of time working outdoors, but he had an intellectual air about him too. From his gentle eyes and the way he carried himself with such an upright posture, Hadam guessed that he’d been quite the charmer in his prime.

“Nice to meet you.” The man politely handed Hadam his business card. She accepted it and politely looked it over.

“The Jeju Beekeeping Research Association. You must be the vice president, Kim Manseop. It’s nice to meet you too.”

Hadam and Romi stood in front of the car they had parked in the middle of the road, bowing deeply. All around them was wilderness, no houses in sight.

“I would give you my business card as well, but my job title changed recently, so ...”

Still in the habit of exchanging business cards, Hadam was clearly flustered, but the man replied graciously, “I heard a lot about you from Jaewoong, of course. He said you’re a film director.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Hadam seemed relieved not to have to explain in further detail. “And this is Romi. She’s an artist.”

“Hello. I’m Romi, an illustrator.”

“Now, what brings two artists all the way out here? What led to such a deep interest in beekeeping?”

Hadam and Romi exchanged a look. Jaewoong had put them in touch with this man, Kim Manseop, who was going to give them an overview of beekeeping on Jeju Island, starting by taking them to the first bee farm on the list. He hadn’t given them the full rundown on the bee farm but had mentioned it was hard to get to. It was in the heart of the mountains and had a name different from what was listed on the sign, so it was difficult to find using GPS.

“We’re interested in the regional agriculture. We’ve heard beekeeping draws lots of folks back here to rural Jeju from the big cities, so we thought we’d research some of them.”

“That’s true. There are quite a few returnees from the city.”

The conversation picked up after that. Could Kim Manseop possibly know Honeyman? There was a good chance.

“The bee farm we’re going to see today is run by a returnee, actually.”

Before Hadam and Romi could ask any other questions, the vice president got back inside his own car, which looked like a white box. “Follow me. Let’s head there first, then talk. It’s best to go early, since it’s in the mountains.”

Before they could even ask where they were headed, he was in the car with the doors shut. Hadam reached for the door on the driver’s side of their car too. “Let’s go. We’ll find out where we’re headed if we follow him.”

But Romi came over to the driver’s side and said, “I’ll drive. You were at the wheel all day yesterday too. And you’ll need to film what’s happening.”

“But it’s not easy to follow someone in a car—”

“Let’s see how it goes, and if need be, you can take over. Now hurry. He’s already pulling off.”

Indeed, the vice president was just about to start up his car and leave. It would have been nice if he’d at least given them the address in advance. Hadam was a bit nervous not knowing their destination, but there was no time to waver now. Kim Manseop was probably not one for talking at length. Romi hadn’t had her license for very long, but she approached the driver’s seat confidently like someone who got behind the wheel on a regular basis. Hadam got into the passenger’s seat, and Romi hurried to start the car.

The morning sky on Jeju was as blue as a picture in a travel guide. Hadam took out her camera and aimed at the sky, wanting to capture its color for the film. They drove for a while along the mountain road nearly empty of other people. As the end of summer drew near, sunlight shone on the mountain and illuminated all the lush greenery at the peak of its bloom. In a little while, all the colors would completely change. Hadam loved to capture the many signs of the shifting seasons on camera.

The car slowly turned onto an isolated road.

“The view is gorgeous,” Romi said. “I’ve been to Jeju so many times, but I had no idea there were views this stunning.”

Hadam agreed. “Seriously. When people think of an island, they might picture only the ocean, but the mountains here are so beautiful.”

They drove underneath a sign that announced they were entering Seogwipo. So the bee farm we’re going to see is in Seogwipo, Hadam thought. I could have sworn he said it was in Jeju City proper. Doubt wormed its way into her mind, but maybe they were taking a shortcut. Or else he might have been referring to the whole of Jeju earlier. As she filmed, Hadam committed the direction they were traveling—east to west—to memory, for when she needed to do reshoots later.

They had been driving for a while when Romi asked, not taking her eyes off the car ahead of them, “How did your meeting go yesterday?”

Figuring she was asking about Jaewoong, Hadam was careful as she answered. “Oh. I just got the information from him and ... we had dinner. Our old sunbae lives in the area, so the three of us had planned to grab a bite together, but something came up last minute, and our sunbae couldn’t make it.”

“Hmm, so it was just the two of you.” Romi hummed meaningfully on that “hmm,” but Hadam pretended not to hear.

The evening before, after Romi had turned down her dinner invitation, Hadam messaged Pilhyun, hoping to avoid being alone with Jaewoong. Pilhyun said he would come but canceled when something suddenly came up on his end. Hadam and Jaewoong ended up alone at a nearby restaurant that served local Jeju fare, and they’d ordered abalone and rice in hot stone pots. The lingering awkwardness between them slowly melted down like yellow margarine sitting atop warm rice.

Things had been quite natural until that moment—when Jaewoong reached over to brush away a grain of rice stuck at the corner of Hadam’s mouth. He’d gestured that something was there, but Hadam kept missing it when she tried to remove it herself, and before he knew it, like a habit, he reached out and brushed it away. Hadam realized what had happened and quickly dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a tissue. When he reached for her cheek, Hadam had seen the faint burn scar that remained on his finger. She thought again about the night the fire had broken out. At the time, she hadn’t realized he’d gotten burned. Even though he’d just come out of the fire, she remembered, his hands had felt so cold.

As the events of that evening nine years ago and those of the night before ran together in her head now, Hadam shuddered, trying to shake off the memories that clung to her. Romi studied her out of the corner of her eye as she drove.

“Are you cold? Should I turn off the AC?”

The late-summer sun was glaring down on the two of them through the window. “No, thanks,” Hadam answered quickly. “I’m fine.” She wanted to change the subject, but Romi didn’t give up.

“So, what did you and your friend talk about yesterday? You couldn’t have only been chatting about beekeeping the whole time.”

Hadam didn’t want to replay the entirety of the evening, so she shifted to a different topic, one that had to do with Romi.

“You know—this and that, stuff about the past. By the way, he said he knows you.”

Romi’s eyes went round. “Me?”

“Yeah. He asked me who I came to Jeju with, and when I mentioned your name and told him you were an illustrator, he said he’s a big fan of yours from your blogging days. He even left you some comments.”

“Oh, really? I wonder what his username was. Did he say when he did?”

“About four or five, or maybe three or four years ago? He said you probably wouldn’t remember.”

“Yeah. About four years ago, huh? A ton of people were reading my blog around then.”

Romi suddenly went quiet, and Hadam realized this might not have been a safe topic after all. Romi had been quite active on social media, but Hadam knew it had caused her plenty of headaches as well. A few years back, she’d even been harassed by people nearly stalking her. A few days earlier, too, she’d mentioned feeling uneasy when a stranger on Instagram had recognized her but wouldn’t reveal their identity. She was fascinated by strangers and wanted them to find her, but at the same time, they had her living in a state of constant fear. To make acquaintances, she had to overcome that hurdle. And not everyone was worth leaping eagerly over that hurdle to meet. Wondering why she’d even brought up the topic, Romi calmly turned the steering wheel to follow the car ahead of them.

“Let me know his username later, so I can figure out who he was.”

Before Hadam could reply, Romi changed the subject.

“Oh, could you hand me the sunglasses in my bag?”

Now, as the morning passed and midday drew near, the sun was beating down with even more intensity. Hadam reached behind her for Romi’s canvas bag on the back seat, but because of her seat belt, she couldn’t grasp it easily. She held out her hand as far as she could, unfastening her seat belt when she realized she wouldn’t be able to get it that way. The no-seat-belt signal went off.

Studying the dashboard, Romi noted, “So this is one of those cars with a no-seat-belt signal for the passenger seat.” The warning sound continued to ring throughout the car.

“Where in your bag—”

“Oh, there’s a pouch inside that inner pocket.”

“Aha, here it is. One sec—”

Romi glanced back briefly. Just then at the intersection, a huge truck appeared on their left, coming toward them at full speed. Hadam screamed.

“Romi, watch out.”

Romi slammed on the brakes. The rental car came to a precarious stop, the truck recklessly screeching past them and spewing black smoke.

Hadam let out a deep breath, clutching Romi’s sunglasses in her hand. “Whew, that was almost a disaster.”

Surprisingly unfazed, Romi replied, “There was still a little space between us there.”

She started driving again, taking the sunglasses Hadam handed to her. As she put them on, she asked, “Where did his car go?”

“He must be waiting for us somewhere. Should I try calling him?”

Just as Hadam took out her phone, Romi pointed at the car up ahead. “There he is.”

Sure enough, on that nearly empty road, there was a white box car speeding in front of them. Romi tried to get behind it. But she couldn’t close the distance by much. The car was headed down a road that wasn’t showing up on the GPS system. Then it made a sudden turn up a mountain trail where the road itself was hard to see.

“Are we really supposed to go up this road? It feels like we’re getting farther and farther out.” Hadam sounded somewhat nervous.

“Well, he did say the bee farm was in the mountains. This seems right.”

He had said that, hadn’t he? Hadam blamed her own anxiousness for how quick she was to jump to conclusions. She was the type who got flustered when something happened that threw off her plans and who was nervous facing a road she hadn’t traveled before. Looking over at Romi, she felt like she could count on her friend’s calm. Even though it was her first time there, Romi didn’t hesitate to follow the other car up the mountain road. It made sense—when you put your trust in other people, you could move forward. With Romi at her side, Hadam felt like she could breathe a little easier.

But the car in front of them didn’t seem like it was planning to come to a stop any time soon. Did it really take this long to get there? A quick look at the clock showed they had already been driving for almost fifty minutes. Was Jeju really so huge? As they went up the mountain, Hadam thought they were headed toward the bee farm, but then the car in front of them went downhill again and came back to the main road. Now they found themselves headed down a narrow road with stone walls and fields on either side.

Hadam’s anxiety once again reared its head. “Why does it feel like we’re going in circles?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe he’s giving us a sightseeing tour of Jeju?”

But the vice president didn’t seem so easygoing. Either way, Hadam figured it was time to give him a call. She found the number she had called to reach him earlier and dialed it again. But there must not have been any cell service in the area, or else something was wrong with Hadam’s phone, because it rang several times before automatically cutting off.

“What’s going on?” she wondered aloud.

“It’s all right. I’m following right behind him. If you’re really worried, do you want me to try going ahead of him?”

Before Hadam could stop her, Romi began speeding up. But the car ahead of them wasn’t easy to catch up to. It sped up the mountain road that cut through the middle of the island. Romi floored it and tried to keep up. Once she had started to close the distance, she eased back, then rinsed and repeated. At first, it was like they were being lured along, but now it looked more like an unwanted chase. Just then, the car came to a road densely lined with trees. The shadows they cast were even darker now. The road was unpaved too. Hadam wondered why she hadn’t stopped Romi from coming this way. She thought of those Stephen King novels, the terrible things that happened to people in them when they went following after strangers. If she and Romi turned back now, they could still save themselves—but Romi kept driving, without an ounce of hesitation.

Once she had plowed through the trees, an enormous house came into view on the other side. It was a grand modern home built from concrete that seemed out of place in its surroundings. Each floor was divided into several sections. Hadam was baffled. What’s this? Some kind of hospital? An elegant gray sign with English and Korean words stood in front of the building. The car had stopped in front of it.

“Is this really a bee farm?” she asked.

Hadam looked around. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t see any hives.”

The moment they slowed down, the driver’s-side door on the car in front of them flew open, and someone jumped out. Dumbfounded, Romi and Hadam rolled down the windows.

The other person ran toward their car, screaming, “Who the hell are you two? And why are you tailing me?”

Like one of those old American comedy show duos, Romi’s and Hadam’s mouths dropped open in unison, the two women speechless. Just then, Hadam’s phone pinged with a message.

Where are you?

—Jeju Beekeeping Research Association VP Kim Manseop

Hadam got out, came around the front of the car, and took a good look at the other person. She was a young, petite woman in a gray linen shirt, her short hair tied up and held back with a headband.

“What are you doing following someone?”

“We weren’t—”

The woman sank to the ground in front of their car and burst into tears. Hadam looked to Romi, at a total loss for what to do. Romi looked panicked for the first time that day. Right then, Hadam’s eyes went to the sign out front.

H ONEYCOMB G UESTHOUSE

“How odd. I know they say it doesn’t matter how you go as long as you get there, but ...,” Kim Manseop tutted as he came into the living room, where Romi and Hadam sat cooling off and casually sipping mandarin juice. They stood up as he entered.

“We got your car mixed up with someone else’s,” Hadam said. “We’re so sorry.”

The vice president waved his hands. “No, no. It was my fault for not checking on you more carefully. I took the scenic route on purpose to give you two a glimpse of the views around here.”

“Oh, so that’s why it took a while. It was very beautiful, though.” Hadam suddenly remembered what Romi had said in the car, about how the VP was probably going out of his way to show them the scenery. So he really was the warm, considerate type. Not considerate enough to have told them that ahead of time, but still. Maybe that was the Jeju way to show friendliness.

“Halfway here, I realized you weren’t behind me anymore. I tried to call, but I couldn’t reach you,” the vice president explained awkwardly.

“I see. So you were calling us. That must have been why our calls didn’t go through.” Hadam felt like she should apologize, the connection issue being at least partly her fault.

“It couldn’t be helped,” said the VP graciously. “It all worked out, since you ended up following someone who was headed here anyway.”

“We were also shocked by how that turned out,” Romi said. But for someone who was supposedly in shock, she looked incredibly calm. She had soothed the crying woman and cleared up the misunderstanding that they’d been trailing her on purpose. Hadam felt deeply sorry and could understand the woman’s fear, seeing as she herself had been so anxious about simply following behind a stranger. But the woman said she’d been at least slightly relieved when she saw it was two women pursuing her. As they chatted, they learned that the woman was the owner of the Honeycomb Guesthouse, which she ran with her husband. Once they were inside, Romi and Hadam called the VP and were surprised to find out they had unknowingly ended up at the guesthouse attached to the first bee farm they were set to visit.

The woman, who was around Romi and Hadam’s age, introduced herself as Kim Sumi. She brought out new drinks and honey toast for them on a tray. With the horror brought about by the earlier mix-up now behind them, she seemed much more at ease. Sumi set down the refreshments on the table, then crossed the living room to carefully brush the dust off the back of a yellow sheet of paper hanging in the corner. It looked very old and worn, and she handled it with tremendous care.

After dusting it off, Sumi turned to them and said quietly, “I was really shocked myself. I thought I was being followed. I couldn’t shake you off on the road either. Even when I changed directions, when I went up that mountain pass and came down again, you were still there. Following me.”

“We thought the car in front of us was just going to the bee farm. We’re really sorry,” Hadam apologized again. Romi smiled in awkward agreement.

Sumi shook her head. “No, I’m sorry for startling you. Something similar happened to me in the past. I overreacted.”

The VP seemed uninterested in all the chatter about the car chase. Taking a sip of juice, he asked, “Have you had a look around the bee farm?”

“Yes, the owner gave me a tour. I was really grateful,” Hadam added, watching the man enter the room now after his wife. He was slim, in his early forties. His name was Seo Jungmoon, a former construction company worker who had moved to Jeju four years ago to set up a guesthouse and start a bee farm there. When she first saw him, Hadam looked over at Romi, who shook her head. It was a relief on all fronts that he was not the man she was looking for.

It was September, and the bee farms on Jeju were preparing for winter. The season of scorching summer heat on the island had already passed, and honey-gathering season was coming to an end. All the hives had been moved to Seogwipo, where the weather was slightly warmer. They had to prepare and store food for the winter. There was a lot to do and then some. Do you know how taxing it is? the owner had asked. But the work seemed to be equally as rewarding. Watching the bees, one could learn so much about the fundamentals of society and the profound laws of nature. The owner described all this as he opened the hives and lifted out slivers of honeycomb. Still, he didn’t fail to mention how much profit he brought in from harvesting and commercializing Jeju pollen in the summers. He beat a flyswatter at the wasps racing toward the hives, which gave his story an added sense of triumph. The bee farm certainly seemed huge and well run. It must have been a ton of work to operate such a big farm and the guesthouse at the same time, Hadam thought.

“Come on. Quit laughing.”

“I’m sorry, but seriously, what kind of Robert Altman comedy were you starring in? I can see if the driver got mixed up while she was focused on the road, but how could you not even realize what had happened?”

Jaewoong couldn’t stop laughing, even wiping tears from his eyes.

“Romi’s always been the type who can’t tell similar things apart, but as the person in the passenger seat, I definitely should have been able to see that. I’m such an idiot.” Now that Jaewoong was laughing about what had happened, Hadam felt like she could too. The night breeze gently intermingled with the sounds of their laughter.

I have some info to give you, Jaewoong had said when he called her earlier in the day, and he asked if it would be all right to come by that night. We’re a bit far out from you, Hadam told him. At the recommendation of the owner, Hadam and Romi had decided to stay the night at the guesthouse, far from the city center. The owner seemed exceptionally pleased to have Hadam as an eager audience for everything he had to say. Sumi added that it seemed fated now for them to stay the night. And not just for the sake of business.

Hadam told Jaewoong all this, worried it would be too far for him to drive, but he said it didn’t matter. It was deep into the night when he got there. There weren’t many places nearby for them to go, so Hadam brewed some coffee herself and brought it out for them to have in the yard. They sat on a bench shaped like a beehive—a cluster of little hexagons.

“And look at this building here. The owner really loves bees, so he had the guesthouse built to look like a hive. You can’t even imagine how much he loves them, seriously. His wife said he basically sees the bees as his own children.”

“Is that so? I didn’t even know a place like this existed.”

The two of them looked up at the building, its hexagonal windows glowing in the night. Even though peak season was over, there were a few windows lit up. It was like a beehive full of empty cells that only a handful of bees remained to guard. Quiet bossa nova music flowed from the speakers in the yard. This time, the vocal version of “The Girl from Ipanema” was playing.

“It’s huge and gorgeous—it must be really hard to manage.”

“Yeah. The husband handles most of the business for the farm, while his wife, Sumi, mostly manages the guesthouse. I think she worked at a bank when they lived in Seoul. Must be why she comes across as so calm and collected. And she seems to run this place well too.”

“Someone that calm who’s used to a peaceful environment must have been really shocked, then, with a strange car following her and all.”

“I felt so bad. I almost got on my knees and begged for forgiveness.”

Jaewoong threw his head back again and laughed at the sight of Hadam clasping her hands together, pleading.

“You used to be really good at that. Quicker to apologize than anyone.”

“Of course. I’m still that way.”

Their laughter drifted up to the sky like musical notes hung from the stars. After the echoes of that sound faded away, as if suddenly remembering that there was business to attend to, Jaewoong handed the file folder he was holding to Hadam.

“These are the monthly schedules for Jeju’s bee farms, plus the stats on all the returnees who have set up bee farms on the island. You probably won’t need to include all this technical stuff in your film, but it could be good to know. I’m sure your documentary wouldn’t just cover beekeeping in general. You’d want to include information on this trend of Jeju natives returning to their hometowns to settle down. Plus the impact of that trend on the housing and environmental conditions on the island.”

Hadam was quietly surprised to hear him lay out everything she had been planning. “How did you know all that?”

“That’s how I would film it. Plus,” Jaewoong said, turning to her, “I know that’s what Director Park Hadam would do too.”

Hadam felt something like a lump rising in her throat and turned to look up at the sky. For so long, she had worked on films that weren’t her own—to hear these words from him was so warmly encouraging. She counted the several stars she saw above her, as if trying to drown out this weird feeling.

Hadam looked down again just as Jaewoong slapped his own arm.

“Damn it, so many mosquitoes.” Already, a spot on his elbow was swollen and red.

Hadam touched his arm and studied the bites on his skin. “Oh no. It’s not just one or two of them either. Why didn’t you say anything? I didn’t get bitten at all—I had no idea there were mosquitoes out.”

“Really? I guess the swarm decided to focus its attack on me.”

“It’s always been that way. When we were together, you were the only one who ever got bitten in the summer.”

As they recalled those summers, they both smiled. Hadam liked going for evening walks in the summertime. After dinner, the two of them would walk along the river or in the parks. Even in the sweltering heat on tropical nights, they walked together, arm in arm.

“Yeah. You used to say mosquitoes only liked me, to the point where you never needed anything else to keep them away from you.”

“Exactly. You were my human mosquito repellent.”

They realized they had said too much, touched on too meaningful a memory. Hadam’s hand was still on Jaewoong’s arm. When she pulled it away, their eyes met. She couldn’t remember having looked someone else in the eyes in so long. But she felt like she had spent too much time doing it in the last two days. She had forgotten what it was like to have been so used to it at one point, only for it to feel so strange to her now. Jaewoong looked around suddenly, as though searching for mosquitoes that weren’t there. To the open air, he said, “Jeju’s mosquitoes are seriously something else.”

They fell silent. Hadam thought of something she had learned in school. She had heard it from her instructor in a filmmaking course. In French, there was a well-known saying, un ange passe . “An angel is passing.” But in English, instead of an angel, you might say a tumbleweed was going by. That was because in old Westerns, whenever silence fell, there went a tumbleweed rolling across the screen. Right now, in this moment, Hadam felt as if all the grass on Jeju would roll itself into a ball and go tumbling past. The premonition of trouble that had loomed in her mind the day before rose up again.

“I should go.”

The bench was clean, but Jaewoong brushed his pants off as he stood.

“Oh, okay.” Hadam stood up in a hurry. The guesthouse café was closed, and there was nowhere else to go around here, no roads bright enough for a walk. Besides, for some people, the two of them hanging out at this hour of the night would have other implications. Implications were like honeybees. They could be sweet, but they could also be dangerous.

“Probably a busy day tomorrow too,” Jaewoong murmured to himself.

For her or for him? “Yeah,” Hadam said.

“I didn’t get to meet Romi today either.”

Hadam looked up at the guesthouse windows. The second-floor lights were still on.

“That’s true. Come by a little earlier next time.”

Would there be a next time? Hadam wondered vaguely. “Next time” wasn’t just some moment that came after the present one. It was a situation you had to intentionally create. It was something that came only to those who took the first step and didn’t stop until they reached whomever they were headed toward. In the past, when they were dating, “next time” had always been a given. But it dawned on Hadam now that at some point, “next time” had stopped coming for them.

Before Jaewoong got into his car, he said, “I’ll call you.” He didn’t say when.

Hadam just nodded and waved.

As soon as Hadam returned to the room, Romi looked up from where she lay on her stomach in bed, tapping away at her laptop. “Did Jaewoong leave?”

“He did. He wanted to say hi to you, but it was already so late.”

“I wouldn’t want to say hi to him like this after I’ve already washed up for the night anyway.” Romi sat up. “Why’d he come by?”

Hadam tossed the file folder onto the table. “To give me this.”

“He could’ve sent that in an email.”

Hadam could hear the underlying implications in that comment. “Maybe,” she said. “I guess he didn’t have electronic copies of the files?”

“Did he say he was coming by again tomorrow?”

“No, he didn’t. He has no other business out here anyway.”

“Hmm.” Romi shut her laptop and slid it into its pouch. Hadam found her toiletries in her bag and headed for the bathroom.

Romi tossed another comment over her shoulder like a dart. “You don’t have to worry about our evening plans tomorrow, Hadam,” she said. “I’ll be perfectly fine on my own.”

“Romi, I told you. It isn’t like that.”

Romi wasn’t someone who made an especially strong impression right off the bat. But the more time you spent studying her, the easier it was to see what made her stand out. Something about her made people who met her once keep thinking about her after they went their separate ways, if only for that night. It was probably her smile, which Chakyung had described at some point as a Cheshire cat grin. People had trouble remembering her face without it, but they always remembered that smile. It tended to linger on her lips for a long time because no one could ever find the words to say in response to it. Just like now.

“Right, I believe you,” Romi said. “One hundred percent. I mean it.”

Chakyung mostly trusted her own judgment. She used the word “mostly,” humble but nondescript, as a way to entertain the possibility of exceptions without actually accounting for them. But as the situation at hand clearly showed, exceptions happened. Chakyung had made the wrong judgment call in flying straight to Jeju.

She was completely exhausted by the time she arrived at Incheon Airport. The landing had also been rougher than usual. When she remembered that she had to find the golf bag now, she heaved a deep sigh. After that, she had to get to Gimpo and catch her transfer flight to Jeju. She wanted to just listen to her heart and go straight to her home in Seoul, but she couldn’t bring herself to change her flight plans now.

Once the plane had come to a complete stop and the seat belt sign went off, she turned on her phone, and a number of notifications began to appear one after the other at the top of the screen. The notification bell kept sounding like a warning signal: Caution. Caution. You are now entering South Korea. Chakyung tapped all the messages to mark them as read. When people began to disembark, Chakyung stood up too. She took down her suitcase from the overhead compartment. As she did, a bag fell and struck her on the hand.

“Ow!”

The man who’d sat across from her now stood in the aisle, pulling down his wife’s bag from the bins. He turned to her. “Are you all right?”

“Just fine.” Chakyung realized her answer was more blunt than usual, but it was hard for her to feign friendliness at the moment. The pain in her hand combined with her headache was making her feel nearly disoriented. Right now, she just wanted to get off the plane—fast. She started pushing her suitcase forward. The man’s wife was coming out into the aisle just then, and Chakyung’s suitcase rammed her foot. The woman shouted something in Chinese.

“Oh my goodness, I’m so—”

Chakyung tried to apologize, but someone behind her pushed her forward again. In a panic, Chakyung grabbed on to the woman’s husband to stop her fall. Now, she was close enough to see the wrinkles in his T-shirt that stretched over his muscles. She became exceedingly aware of him in that moment.

“Jeez.”

Chakyung pressed her palm against him to open up some space. But what she ended up doing was more akin to shoving him. The man looked down at her, flustered. “Sorry,” he said.

Chakyung knew it hadn’t been his fault, but she didn’t have the time to apologize. As the people ahead of them filed out, the man and his wife continued down the aisle too. Chakyung sighed, firmly grabbed ahold of her suitcase again, and got off.

Even though there was an airport line on the subway, the airport bus to Gimpo was crowded today. Chakyung’s luggage had been late coming out (that damned golf bag!), so she had already missed the train. As she boarded the bus, a steady stream of other people headed to catch their flights got on after her. She had a long layover until her next flight, but she figured it was better to get to Gimpo early and wait at the airport. She took a seat by the window and looked outside.

It was a rainy evening in Seoul. The rain drew dotted lines on the glass. It took so long to catch a plane. You had to traverse not only distance but time. The rain seemed to be making incision lines through time. Now, a new hour had begun.

The last person to board the bus looked around for an empty seat. Seeing no others, he plopped down in the seat beside Chakyung. She scooted a bit closer to the window to make room for him and caught a glimpse of her new seatmate. A one-time coincidence was a matter of chance, like a stone falling into a pond. But even a stone that fell in by chance still made ripples on the water’s surface.

“Oh, it’s you! From earlier!” said the man.

But Chakyung acknowledged him with only a brief glance and turned around again. The meaning of the gesture was clear: I have no plans to pretend a coincidence is a reason to befriend someone.

Luckily, her phone rang again at that moment. As she hurried to answer it, she caught the man’s eye. He had AirPods in his ears. Warily, Chakyung answered the call.

“Yes, ma’am. No, I arrived in Seoul, but I have to go on another business trip to Jeju. I’m on my way to the airport again. Yes, it’s for work. Sorry, ma’am, but I’m on the bus right now—it’ll be nighttime when I land, so I’ll call you later.”

It seemed like Chakyung could only ever apologize to her. She sighed. Why did they have to buy the furniture now, anyway? Why couldn’t she wait just a little while?

After she ended the call and sent a few hastily typed messages in reply, she put her phone away. The man next to her didn’t seem to have been eavesdropping or to really care at all what was happening with her. Chakyung felt even more uncomfortable now, being the one of them who was so overly aware of the other’s presence. She closed her eyes. Soon, she was asleep.

When she woke up, her head felt warm. Do I have a fever? Her skin stung as if she’d been passed out with her face in the sand, the inside of her mouth rough and dry. She didn’t know what had happened. She thought she had felt somebody gently shaking her, but the seat beside her was already empty.

She got out to look for her luggage, picked up the golf bag, and swayed a bit. Once again, she silently cursed Director Kim—no, she couldn’t even bring herself to address him by his title in her mind. Just then, the bag was hoisted from her. She felt a sense of déjà vu. Just like he had on the plane, the man picked up the golf bag and loaded it onto his own cart, on top of an enormous bag.

“Hey!” Chakyung shouted, surprising herself.

The man didn’t seem startled in the least. “Let me carry it to the airport counter for you,” he said, loading her suitcase onto his cart as well. The cart was overloaded with her stuff and his huge bags.

“Do you even know where I’m going? And who are you to do this for me, anyway?”

“Even without knowing where you’re headed, I can tell the check-in counter will be the same. We flew in on the same airline. Let me at least help you carry this stuff up to that point. It’s not even that far.” He pushed the cart forward, his expression never changing. “Besides, I know you’re going to Jeju. On the same flight as me. Just think of us as flight buddies.”

Chakyung was briefly suspicious, wondering how he’d found that out, but then she remembered her phone call earlier.

“Why were you listening in on someone else’s conversation?” she asked. “Isn’t that rude?”

The man breezily continued to push the cart along. Chakyung followed hurriedly behind him.

“I wasn’t listening in. I just happened to hear you. Anyway, all this is clearly hard on you. You’ve already passed out three times that I’ve witnessed today alone. You were even groaning in pain. I thought you were going to slip into a coma, and I almost flagged down the flight attendant to tell her. And just now, you almost didn’t make it off the bus.”

So he was the one who had woken her up. It was always jarring to hear about your own condition from someone else. And there were people you would be especially mortified to hear this sort of thing from. Chakyung now considered this guy one such person.

Before long, they reached the check-in counter. He gestured for her to cut in front of him. “You go first.”

It seemed he was doing her a kindness, since they might be seen as a couple otherwise. Chakyung didn’t say so much as a thank-you as she stepped forward. She was worried he might be patronizing her, but that didn’t seem to be the case. When her turn came, Chakyung went ahead. She meant to say something to him once she had checked her bag, but when she turned back, he was in the middle of checking in himself and didn’t look her way. The back of his head, his close-cropped hair, and long, wide neck were all she could see.

She didn’t see him again—not at the boarding gate, not even on the plane to Jeju. Soon enough, the sky outside the tiny plane window had gone dark. As she took her seat, she thought she should at least text Chanmin. But when she pulled out her phone, she saw that her battery was dead. She’d forgotten to charge it at the airport earlier. She wouldn’t be able to do it now before the plane took off, so she put it away.

Of course, it wouldn’t be easy to bring a trip that had gotten off to such a rough start to a smooth end. Bad luck was exactly that—bad luck. When she arrived at Jeju Airport, Chakyung stood in front of the carousel waiting for her luggage to come around. But while all the other bags came out, she saw no sign of the golf bag. She waited patiently for a half hour, then flagged down an employee who was coming toward the carousel.

“Excuse me. Is that all the luggage for flight 1265?”

The employee wore a grim expression, as though already bracing himself for her complaints. “I’m sorry. But some of the luggage has been delayed. The announcement about it just came on. With different international connecting flights, we get an overload of checked bags. I’m deeply sorry.”

It was like a heavy gong had been struck inside Chakyung’s head.

“Then when will the luggage arrive?”

“In an hour or two? I’m not really sure. I’ll find out for you.”

Could something like this really happen on a Korean airline in this day and age? Chakyung honestly wanted to cry. She wavered, trying to decide whether she should leave the airport and come back, but if the bag got lost, she would no doubt get an earful from Director Kim. She couldn’t imagine what would happen if he showed up at the airport. She had to charge her phone, and her whole body was weak with exhaustion—she didn’t want to take another step. Chakyung sat down on the airport’s hard plastic seat and rested her head against a column. If she stayed here any longer, she would fall asleep on the spot. Just then, something soft covered her body. Something that smelled like sunlight. Running her hands over it, she imagined it was a huge towel, a beach towel, maybe.

“Use this. I washed it, so it’s clean.”

She heard an unnecessarily gentle, low voice. Chakyung squinted her eyes open.

“My luggage isn’t here yet either. We may have to wait it out together. You look really pale. You’re sweating and shaking too.”

Chakyung strained to speak, her voice dry. “I don’t need help from a stranger I didn’t ask.”

“You’re right; you didn’t ask—and it’s rude to approach you like this, I know. I’m being very rude.” His voice was surprisingly deep and full, contrary to the playfulness of his words. He sounded like a boy past puberty. There was something familiar about his voice, something she felt she could put a face on. “But still,” he said, “I’m only rude to strangers who need help.”

Chakyung looked at him. It was that weird guy she had met while traveling. Now her guard was definitely up. Maybe he really was this friendly. But when aimed at a woman, unwanted or unexpected friendliness from a stranger could be a trap. It was sad but true. Just then, Chakyung remembered the man passing that note to the flight attendant. At least it didn’t seem like he had that sort of interest in Chakyung. Not when she looked so rough from the exhaustion of traveling and working.

At some point, Chakyung must have fallen asleep again. How long had she been out? Someone was calling her name.

“Yoon Chakyung?”

She woke up, startled. The beach towel slipped to the ground. Eyes open, she could see the owner of that voice kneeling before her. He was looking up at her with concern.

“Your luggage came out. I was rude again and got it for you.” He stood and pointed to the bags on his cart. “I had to check your name to make sure it was yours, but I didn’t look at anything aside from that. Don’t worry. That’s the end of my rudeness for today.”

With that, he loaded the suitcase next to her onto the cart too. Chakyung pressed a hand against a column as she stood on shaky legs.

“But then I may as well extend the favor out to your car.”

It was already after midnight. As they left the airport, the island air cloaked Chakyung like a blanket that wasn’t completely dry. The guy loaded her bags into the trunk of a cab that sat waiting outside and opened the back door for her.

Only then did she muster up the words to address him. “Thank you for everything today. Even though I was kind of rude. Ever since we were on the plane—”

“You were rude, yes.” The smile never once left his face. Chakyung felt like she alone had suffered the long flight. This guy was like that beach towel that still held the warmth of the Honolulu sun. “But there are times I can empathize with a person, however rude they may be.”

A sense of anticipation seeped into the space between each word. Chakyung could feel it coursing through her as he chose what he was going to say next. But when he spoke again, his comment was so simple, even friendly.

“As long as it’s someone who can smile brighter than anything when she’s not exhausted.”

He bowed his head, still smiling. She bowed hers, too, not really understanding.

When the cab pulled off, she looked back one more time. He was still standing there in the taxi pickup spot with his huge bag and the luggage tag that had been attached to it. Han Sooeon. She wasn’t exactly sure how to read his name—it had so many vowels. Vowels were soft, but they glided by on the sound of the wind, never landing anywhere. His name was like that. She knew it now, but it would soon glide away. It wouldn’t stick or last.

Chakyung modified her earlier thought. The odds of a trip that had gotten off to such a rough start ending well were slim, but there were times when such a trip could still be meaningful. This man she’d met in passing had made her trip like a graduation album full of bad pictures. The memory was precious enough not to throw away, but she didn’t dare take it out and open it again either.