Romancing on Jeju

YOU’LL WANT SOMETHING NEAR AND SWEET

Three Years Earlier

(Phone ringing.)

(Quietly.) Hello?

It’s me. Can you talk now?

Yes. No one else is here.

Good. The talks are going well. Looks like the advance will be wired over soon.

(Brief silence.) I see. Things are shaping up, then. In that case—

(At the same time.) So that’s why—go ahead.

No, you first.

We have to make a plan on our end. If you lure him out, I’ll bring the car around and be on standby.

(Silence.)

What’s wrong? Don’t think you can do it?

It’s just—it’s a lot to handle.

Are you starting to panic? It’s not too late to back out if you want.

I’m not backing out, but—

But?

I just—I don’t know what’d happen if he were to have something so precious taken from him.

Why are you only now telling me this? You think I don’t have any emotions? And are you even considering what we’ve been through? You don’t think it’ll hurt us if we just keep on the way we’ve been doing?

I hear you, but this isn’t easy, you know? It’s—

No, it’s not easy. Emotionally or physically. That’s why so much money is involved.

(Silence.)

Hello?

I’m listening.

You’ve got to make up your mind. If you don’t, nothing will ever change.

I know.

I’ll let you know when everything’s all set. Until then, let’s be in touch by phone. We shouldn’t be too obvious.

Will do. But—

What?

That guy, the one who’s paying me. Can we really trust him?

He’s putting his own name on the line—do you really think he’d try to con us?

This is a crime we’re talking about. If he’s willing to do this, what’s stopping him from—

Listen to me. If we plan this out in detail, we’re not going to get caught. And more importantly, no one will get hurt.

I really hope you’re right.

(Emphatic.) Everything will be fine. Are you listening?

I’m listening. I was just thinking it through.

Well, think of everything we’re doing as being for us.

(Silence.)

This is all so we can be together.

I know.

Do you?

It’s all for us.

Exactly. Which is why we can do whatever we have to do.

Project: Searching for Honeyman

Day Three, Northeastern Jeju

“Here at Dolmiyong Jeju, we’re not only producing the highest-quality honey in the nation—we’re currently developing a royal jelly ampoule, honey-infused green juice, and a convenient honey meal replacement powder that contains propolis. We also put out a call for recipes that incorporate honey and are good for skin care, so we have a cookbook in the works as well. Moreover, we’re developing more fragrant products made by combining honey with different fruit flavors, such as mandarin honey and grape honey. We have plans to expand into the food industry by 2022 with canned products like honey-pickled fruit, honey snacks, honey vinegar, honey salad dressing, and so on. We’re even in the middle of designing a makeup line. This is all what it means to live in the era of the sixth industry.”

As the woman—in her fifties at least, as diligent as a worker bee and as brightly dressed as a sunflower—rattled off her spiel as if running lines in a play, they all entered the showroom packed with rows of bottles, large and small.

“Just hearing the description alone, it seems like quite a big project,” Hadam noted, her camera bobbing up and down as she nodded along with what the woman was saying. “And you said this is a sixth industry?”

“That’s right. We’re making our way into every aspect of human life!”

Startled by the woman’s sudden, impassioned outburst, Romi nearly dropped the sample of royal jelly ampoule she was holding.

“In making use of the tremendous productivity of the honeybee, we’ve become a clear front-runner in the sixth-industry sector.”

Hadam thought she must have heard that phrase some sixty-six times that day. Just what was a sixth industry? It seemed like just yesterday she’d first heard the term “fourth industrial revolution,” so when had people started talking about the sixth wave?

Romi carefully set her ampoule down on the display stand. “In other words, this seems like a honeybee empire.”

The woman showing them around was Kang Hyunbok, the director of Dolmiyong Jeju, a bee farm and food company located in northern Jeju. “Dolmiyong” was a word in the Jeju language that meant “sweet.” Already, it seemed like she had shown them more than fifty of the company’s products. And if they counted all the products the company was in the process of developing, the scale was staggering. Since Vice President Kim Manseop had called ahead and introduced Hadam and Romi as filmmakers, the two of them had a relatively easy time getting to observe the bee farm’s many products and production lines. Of course, they also had a chance of finding Honeyman here.

“That’s right!” Director Kang seemed to love the expression Romi had used—“a honeybee empire.” “Dolmiyong Jeju is a representative company in the sixth-industry sector, which combines the primary-industry element of agricultural products, the secondary industry of manufacturing, and the tertiary industry of tourism. You see, in addition to creating our bee-derived products, we hold workshops where people can experience beekeeping or use beeswax to make candles and soap. On top of that, we offer introductory classes for people who want to run urban bee farms or return to the countryside to become beekeepers.”

Finally, the riddle of the sixth industry had been solved: 1 + 2 + 3 = 6. By adding the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, you got the sixth industry. Or wait, was it actually multiplication? 1 x 2 x 3 = 6. Whatever the case, the most important thing for Hadam was the latter part of what the director had said. Hadam studied Romi’s face. She wore no particular expression. She was still peering closely at the label on a bottle of grape-flavored honey powder. Before Director Kang could launch into another explanation, Hadam quickly cut in with a question.

“So I heard that here at Dolmiyong Jeju, there are a lot of young beekeepers as well. You even have staff overseeing the product planning and marketing. Have you come up with some sort of product mascot?”

The person behind that mascot was one of the candidates Jaewoong had told her about. Hadam thought she should include not only young beekeepers in her search, but also people who did not directly work on the bee farm, like those in product development or those who attended classes. The place that best suited her hunch was the Honeybee School, the workshop and classroom run by Dolmiyong Jeju. Honeyman had told Romi he was developing a character related to beekeeping, so Hadam figured a company like this might be the right place to find it.

“It looks like you already have one,” Romi said, pointing to the label on the bottle of grape-flavored honey powder in her hand. “Someone must have illustrated this.”

Director Kang squinted at the label.

“Ah, that—Department Head Boo designed it for us. He’s quite good with his hands.”

“Yes, it’s a nice illustration. The image is clear too.” Romi set the bottle down and picked up the bottle next to it, a sample of canola honey.

“Actually, Mr. Boo is good at all sorts of things. I think he said he majored in business administration in college. Young guy. He’s running one of our beekeeping classes at the Honeybee School too. Oh, careful. The stopper on that one doesn’t quite fit, so if you hold it like that, it may spill ...”

“I see,” said Romi, licking at the honey smeared on her left hand. At some point, the front of her black sundress had been stained sticky.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry. I saw it wasn’t sealed this morning and meant to switch it out, but things got busy with customers, and it completely slipped my mind. Do you have something you can use to wipe it off?”

Still holding her camera in one hand, Hadam dug out some wet wipes from her bag and handed one to Romi, then used one to wipe the honey off her own hand.

“Would we be able to interview this Mr. Boo today? It would be great to hear about beekeeping on Jeju from a young person’s perspective as well. Including the prospects for the future of Jeju beekeeping as, um ... a sixth industry.”

“Oh, that sounds excellent. Let’s head to the annex, then. Right now, we have a group visiting from Seoul—they’re doing some business related to urban bee farms, so they’re probably in the middle of a tour. Wouldn’t it be nice to include that too?”

Director Kang led the two of them around to the back of the three-story building next door. Behind the building was a huge vacant lot, where ten beehives were placed close together. The hives were humming with the sound of bees, a kind of background music, and there were ten or so people in protective suits huddled in front of the hives. One man was standing in the middle in a comfortable polo shirt and khakis, no protective gear on except for a beekeeping veil hat. He was a strapping, tall guy, a little on the skinnier side. Was he in his early or midthirties? With the veil covering his face, it was hard to tell.

“Each swarm shares a hive, and there’s a chance the swarm will divide into two colonies. Simply put, if they think their home is too crowded, the one group of bees will split into two.” The man brought his fists together, then pulled them apart. “One of the new groups will leave the hive and move to another one. New swarms naturally spring up around May or June, but they can emerge at any time, so you have to be careful. If you crowd them too much, you can induce a split, so you should make sure to give each hive its own space. On the other hand, though, the population could decrease around the fall, so in September, you should take a look at each colony, and the bees that don’t seem like they’ll survive the winter should be consolidated. Meaning you should put them together in the same hive.”

The man brought his fists together again. Thinking about how even bees moved out and merged households, and how all animals that had homes were bound to leave them eventually, Hadam suddenly remembered that she didn’t have much longer on her lease. She wondered how much the security deposit would increase and whether she would have to move back in with her parents now that she no longer had a job. Hadam hated the mere thought of merging hives—er, households.

The man’s voice coming through the veil of his beekeeping hat was calm, a far cry from Hadam’s anxious jumble of thoughts. Director Kang pointed him out.

“That man there is Department Head Boo Hwachul. You can watch for now, and after the class is over, you should chat with him.”

Hadam gave Romi a look. Romi studied the man closely, but she merely shrugged her shoulders as if to say she wasn’t sure. The man had certainly seen the director and the two of them even from this distance, but he didn’t react to them in any particular way. Was it just because he was in the middle of teaching?

“We should get a bit closer and take another look,” Romi whispered to Hadam. The two of them slowly moved behind the group of students. Mr. Boo carried on with his explanation.

“And then from July to October, wasps will be springing up constantly, with the peak being in September, so you always need to be on the lookout—ah, I see we have some here too. Oh boy.”

A pair of wasps circled the man’s body and tried to land on his shoulders.

“This is why you should never approach a beehive without wearing your protective gear, everyone. I took mine off earlier when it got caught and torn on one of the hives, but ...”

The wasps were moving around him menacingly, and Mr. Boo grabbed the bee brush next to him and gently swept them off. The moment he turned his head, Romi moved closer to get a better look at his face. He had just brushed the wasps away when one suddenly darted right toward the huddled crowd.

“Oh my god!”

“It’s huge!”

As the wasp flew toward them with a terrible noise, people leaped out of the way. The once-orderly group dispersed. Still holding the bee brush in one hand, Mr. Boo tried to settle the crowd.

“It’s all right. You’re wearing your protective gear, and as long as you don’t excite the wasps—”

At that moment, the man locked eyes with Romi. Well, she couldn’t really see much of his face, but it seemed like he did. Before she could form another thought, the crowd that had been shielding her before parted down the middle like the Red Sea, and the wasp headed straight toward her.

“Oh no, it’s probably because of the spilled honey from earlier. Aren’t they drawn to the smell?” Director Kang leaned against a pine tree, speaking lightly as if nothing out of the ordinary were going on. At first, Hadam had stepped back under the tree in shock, but as soon as the wasp set its sights on Romi, she leaped toward her friend.

“Romi!”

“Everyone out of the way; it’s dangerous!” Mr. Boo shouted, approaching Romi as more wasps and honeybees alike appeared. They all began to gather around Romi. The people in the crowd were screaming. In an instant, the bees had Romi fully surrounded.

“Shoo! Get away from me!”

“Romi!”

Because of the bees circling her friend, Hadam couldn’t get any closer, could only stamp her feet in front of Romi. Meanwhile, Romi shut her eyes and waved her hands wildly. Hadam looked around, unsure what to do. She spotted a beehive beside the pine tree closest to her, the spare lumber from its construction propped up against the tree. Hadam set down her camera, grabbed a piece of wood, and swung it from where she stood about ten steps away from Romi. She thought maybe if she did that, she could take some of the attention off her friend.

“Please don’t do that! You shouldn’t agitate the bees!”

Holding a spray bottle in one hand, Mr. Boo slowly approached, gesturing for Hadam to stand down. With her wooden beam high in the air, Hadam moved back. Mr. Boo searched all over, measuring the angles, seemingly trying to avoid causing any harm to Romi with the insecticide. The people standing behind her all looked on, not knowing what to do.

“Ma’am, please hold still and try not to move your hands or your head. All right, I’m going to spray ...”

The bottle made a spritz sound, and Romi shouted, “Ack!” before dropping to the ground. The moment they were sprayed, the bees flew off in all directions. Everyone in the crowd leaned to one side, screaming again.

“Are you all right?” Mr. Boo went closer to Romi and bent down to look at her. “I think the wasps saw your black clothing and mistook you for a bear or some sort of predator, which got them all riled up. If you could leave ...”

Romi grabbed ahold of Mr. Boo’s arms and looked him right in the face. Afraid she was going to pass out, Mr. Boo grabbed on to her arms too. Romi’s lips parted.

“Not you.”

His smooth, round face sort of reminded her of the tapioca pearls in a milk tea. Harmless. He looked puzzled.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said it’s not you.”

Just then, Hadam—who was standing under the tree behind Mr. Boo—spoke up. “Romi ...”

Still gripping Mr. Boo’s arms for support, Romi got to her feet.

“Hadam,” she said, “he’s not our guy.”

But Hadam didn’t hear her, instead lifting her hands. “Romi, I think I got stung. My neck burns ...”

Hadam’s hands were hovering in the air, halfway to her throat, when she suddenly fainted. Like a choir, the tour group from Seoul shouted out cries of “oh my” and “oh no.” Director Kang, who had been lounging beneath the tree until then, suddenly rushed forward and caught Hadam’s head before it hit the ground. Romi ran toward her, too, and took Hadam’s face in her hands.

“Hadam, Hadam, wake up. Oh my god. I think she got stung by a wasp! Bad enough that she passed out!”

Mr. Boo came over and knelt beside them. He examined Hadam’s face, then turned to Director Kang, who was kneeling beside her, and said urgently, “First things first. I’m going to run and grab some ice and medicine. While I do that, call 119. She needs an injection, fast—”

“Sure, we could call 119, but she’s going to be fine.”

“What?”

Director Kang spoke calmly, like someone who dealt with this sort of dangerous situation daily. Romi felt a twinge of suspicion, wondering whether such emergencies actually did happen all the time here.

“I think she’ll be fine. She didn’t get stung by a wasp.”

“And how would you know?” Romi snapped. “She’s passed out! And even if she wasn’t stung by a wasp, a beesting is dangerous too!”

“She wasn’t stung by a bee either.”

Crouched on the ground, Director Kang gathered up her skirt and slowly brought Hadam’s head into her lap, turning it from side to side. “No stings on the back of her neck.”

There were no signs of swelling or redness. No signs of any kind.

“But the symptoms of a sting could show up later!”

The moment the words left Romi’s mouth, a pine cone fell out from behind Hadam’s head and rolled onto the ground.

“I was watching from over there. She was holding up the wood beam when it got caught on the tree, and a pine cone fell on her neck. It must have pricked her, so she mistook it for a beesting and jumped out of the way.”

Confused, Romi and Mr. Boo turned to look at Hadam’s face. There were no traces of swelling or redness on her face or around her eyes, but ...

Director Kang plucked out two sharp pine needles from inside Hadam’s collar.

“She passed out simply from the shock.”

When Chakyung arrived at the Honeycomb Guesthouse parking lot, it was early evening, and the sunlight was coming down at a slant. Several cars, including rental cars, were lined up in the lot. Chakyung quickly parked next to a huge SUV and got out. The moment her hand closed around the handle on the door to the guesthouse, she flinched. The handle was colder than she had anticipated, but even more surprising, there was a man coming out at the same time. He had short hair, like he’d just come back from the military, and a prominent bone structure. He gave off the vibe of a statue you would have sketched for practice in a high school art class. Normally, when someone was said to resemble a statue, that meant they were good-looking, but in this case, the observation felt somehow different. The statue man lowered his head and moved to the side so that Chakyung could pass. She stepped back too.

“You can go.”

“No, you first.”

Just then, Romi appeared behind the man.

“Oh, Chakyung!”

“Romi.”

Romi looked at the man and bowed her head with a little smile. “Goodbye, then.”

The man gave a slight bow, also smiling awkwardly at her. “Right, well. See you.” His eyes returned to Chakyung and lingered for a moment, subtly taking note of her. In a momentary daze, Chakyung gave him a look of acknowledgment as well.

The man slowly walked over to the SUV next to Chakyung’s car. Romi stood in the doorway, gripping the handle. Chakyung watched him all the way to his car, and as he got in, she asked, “Who is that?”

“Oh, one of Hadam’s sunbaes,” Romi said. She lowered her voice suddenly. “He came by along with Hadam’s ex-boyfriend from way back. Hadam passed out earlier.”

Though there was no need to whisper, Chakyung also lowered her voice to match. “Is she all right? Did she go to the hospital?”

“She says she’s fine. She got a little scratched up from the fall and was in a bit of shock, but she got checked out and was given some allergy medicine just in case.”

“Why did her ex come? Better yet, how’d he know about what happened?”

“Honestly, I thought that was kind of strange too. How did he know to come?” Romi tilted her head. Just then, the two of them heard Hadam’s voice coming from inside.

“What are you two doing over there? It’s hot. Come back in.”

Chakyung and Romi exchanged a look before they headed in. The guesthouse was larger than Chakyung had expected, large enough to be considered more of a small hotel. The area Romi was showing her now was like a parlor, and there were hexagonal bookcases on the walls with assorted decorations on each shelf, as well as a foosball table set up in one corner. A yellow paper lantern hung off to the side, adding a slightly different element to the otherwise modern vibe. Hadam was sitting on the sofa with her legs up and a blanket draped over them like a sickly young girl in a children’s book. A clean-cut man with a sharp nose and creaseless eyelids was sitting upright in one of the high-backed chairs at the table across from her. Hadam reached her hands out toward Chakyung as she entered.

“Chakyung, you made it.”

The man stood up. For some reason, Chakyung thought he—mainly because of his jawline—resembled someone printed on paper money. Not the face on a thousand-won bill, but maybe the five-thousand-won face? Less hale and hearty, more fraught and concerned?

Hadam looked up at the two of them standing and offered introductions.

“Jaewoong, this is my friend Yoon Chakyung. She works at a cosmetics company. And Chakyung, this is an old college classmate of mine, Gu Jaewoong.”

Chakyung held out her hand. “Hello.” She didn’t add any unnecessary remarks like how it was a pleasure to meet him or that she’d heard so much about him.

Jaewoong gave her hand a light, awkward shake. “Yes, hello.”

When they were all seated again, Chakyung took a good look at Hadam’s face. “Do you have a headache or fever at all?” she asked. “Do you feel like you’re going to be sick?”

Putting a hand to her head, Hadam said, “I don’t think so. More than sick, I just feel stupid.” She’d tried to lighten the mood with her joke, but no one seemed to know how to react, and the atmosphere only grew more somber. Then Jaewoong chuckled. Chakyung thought of something funny she had seen on the internet once. If you folded paper money a certain way, you could change the serious face on the bill into a smiling one. With his laugh, Jaewoong’s face transformed in the same way. As laugh lines creased the skin around his eyes, his worried five-thousand-won expression softened. He seems like a nice guy, Chakyung thought. You had to be nice to laugh at someone else’s corny jokes. Either that or you liked them.

“Still, the doctor said if any unusual symptoms appear, you should go to the hospital,” said Romi, looking serious, hands on her knees.

“I suppose I should, shouldn’t I?” Hadam mused, and Chakyung, Romi, and Jaewoong all nodded their heads like doting parents. Then, as often happens in a group of people meeting for the first time, the conversation died out. Chakyung suddenly spoke.

“Jaewoong, how did you know Hadam had passed out?”

She worried her tone may have come across as accusatory, but Jaewoong answered openly.

“I found out from Pilhyun, our sunbae who came by earlier. He said Hadam had collapsed and suggested we go and see her. Figured she might need help from people she knew, being taken to the emergency room so far away from home. Pilhyun said he heard what happened from someone he knows at the Honeybee School.”

“I see. And you went straight to the hospital?”

“At first, we thought she’d been stung by a wasp, so we were really worried. When we couldn’t reach her by phone, we checked with the folks at the Honeybee School and found out she’d been taken to the emergency room at the provincial hospital.”

“Ah, my phone was on silent in my bag. I must have missed your calls,” said Hadam, sounding embarrassed.

“Of course. You were probably out of it at that point.”

Chakyung was surprised by how gentle he sounded. It was hard to insert herself into their conversation. Soon enough, silence fell over them all again.

Then, as if a thought had suddenly occurred to her, Romi spoke up. “Jaewoong, you said you visited my blog before, right?”

“Yes, I browsed around from time to time. Someone told me about your site and how great your illustrations were, but I can’t remember who it might have been. Anyway, I visited your blog to see the illustrations you posted.”

“Did you ever leave any comments? What was your username?”

“I did comment a few times. I doubt you’d know my username, though. I’m not the type to update my own blog a lot.”

“Ah, I see. Still, I was curious.”

At the end of the conversation, Jaewoong glanced at his watch. It looked like a TAG Heuer, brand-new. The latest model. So he’s the type to spend good money on a watch, Chakyung thought. She caught herself sizing up all sorts of things about him and felt a bit embarrassed. Jaewoong calmly reached over and picked up the bag next to him—it was unclear whether or not he had noticed Chakyung’s appraising eyes.

“I’ll get going, then,” he said. As he stood up, so did Romi and Chakyung.

“You’re leaving already?” said Romi. “Won’t you at least join us for dinner before you go?”

“Sorry. I have dinner plans tonight.”

“Sure, of course. Thanks for coming today—I know you must have been busy.”

When Hadam tried to stand as well, Jaewoong waved his hand to stop her. “Be careful,” he said. “And if you need anything, give me a call.”

“I will.”

Chakyung and Romi saw him to the door. Sumi, the landlady, was coming in from the garden out back with a heap of laundry in her arms when she ran into them.

“Oh, he’s leaving early today,” she said. “I was just going to ask you all how many people to expect for dinner.”

“I know,” said Romi slowly. “So early today.”

Sitting at the table after dinner, Chakyung said to Sumi, “It must be so much work, serving dinner in a guesthouse this big.”

Sumi had just finished doing the dishes and was untying her apron as she came in from the kitchen. She smiled.

“We don’t usually serve dinner, but I heard our guest passed out today and figured it would be a hassle for her to go out and eat, so I just prepared something simple.”

“Simple? It was delicious, really. I heard you used to work at a bank, but judging by this meal, I would have thought you were a professional chef.”

“Since we have guests to entertain, I did end up taking cooking classes for a bit. My husband loves to go all out when it comes to our work here.”

That same husband had disappeared somewhere right after dinner. Throughout the meal, he didn’t speak much at all if the topic wasn’t related to beekeeping, but he had a lot to say about apiculture. His wife had asked the three women all sorts of questions and come across as a sociable host. Sumi had even shown some interest when Chakyung was talking about the cosmetics company where she worked.

While Sumi brewed tea, Chakyung took a brief stroll, looking around the guesthouse kitchen and dining area. She could tell that everything from the salt and pepper shakers to the cushions had been meticulously chosen to match the mood.

“How pretty,” said Chakyung, examining a vase on the dining table. “You can really feel the affection in every corner of this place. It must be nice to see your lifelong dream realized like this.”

Without looking up, Sumi said, “This was indeed my husband’s lifelong dream.”

Sensing some emphasis on the words “my husband’s,” Chakyung studied Sumi’s face. Not seeming to notice Chakyung’s eyes on her, Sumi went on, her hands busy working. “I think you three are the ones living your dreams. You can go anywhere you want.”

Chakyung waved her hands. “I’m just a regular old company worker. If someone at the top tells me to go, I go, and if they tell me to come, I come.”

“Still, your job takes you on business trips to all sorts of places. So does Hadam’s work, making films around the world.” Sumi stood on tiptoe to grab the teacups from where they sat on the shelves and set them down on the island in the kitchen. “And is Romi traveling to Jeju for pleasure? I heard her talking earlier, and it seemed like she was here looking for someone.”

Chakyung was surprised. Had they been talking about their true intentions behind Romi and Hadam’s Searching for Honeyman project? Of course, there was a good chance Sumi would know some suitable candidates. But even if Romi had mentioned her intentions, it seemed like it wasn’t Chakyung’s story to tell. She still personally hadn’t heard anything more about it.

“Romi’s tagging along and helping out with Hadam’s investigation,” she said.

Sumi nodded, then pointed at the tray on which the teacups and the teakettle sat. “Take this and head on up,” she said. “I’m sure you three have a lot to talk about.”

Holding the tray Sumi had given her, Chakyung carefully climbed the stairs. The door was open, and Romi and Hadam were sitting on the edge of a twin bed. The room was furnished with another bed, a small vanity, a round table, and a single chair, and the walls were covered with light yellow wallpaper.

Chakyung set the tray on the table and sat down on the chair. “So how’s the Searching for Honeyman project coming along?” she asked.

“We found two of our three contenders, but as you know, neither one was our guy.” Hadam briefly recapped the events of that day and the day before. Chakyung listened calmly and took mental notes.

“So now there’s only one man left to find,” she said.

“Right. We’re planning to track him down tomorrow. We heard he runs a bee farm in Seogwipo.”

“Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but what are you planning to do if he’s not the guy either? Hadam, your ex—I mean, your old college friend—might have missed something when narrowing down the options.” Chakyung looked back and forth between her friends. Compared to Hadam, who appeared to be deep in thought, Romi didn’t seem particularly concerned.

“I’ll continue filming the documentary regardless, so it doesn’t matter to me, but Romi ...”

Hadam glanced over at her. Romi was blowing gently on her tea and taking a sip.

“I’ll just stay and help Hadam as much as I can, then head back to Seoul,” she said.

“Won’t you feel like it was a waste?” Chakyung asked, but Romi’s expression remained calm.

“Maybe, but honestly, I’ve already been through not being able to find this guy. Going home without having found him yet again would be nothing new.”

Chakyung brought up the question she had been holding in since earlier. It might have been too late to ask, but the thought had been making her uneasy all this time.

“Romi, did you even want to find him in the first place? I’m worried you’ve only come all this way because we pushed you.”

Romi’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Why would you think that? If I didn’t want to come, I wouldn’t have tagged along. If there was a way to find him, I wanted to try.”

Hadam chimed in. “I’d also been wondering whether everything would turn out okay if you did manage to meet up with him again.”

Romi peeled the wrapper off a snack on the tray and said, “I’ll just have to see. I didn’t agree to look for him just because I had some wild idea of our getting together.”

“So why did you want to find him?” Chakyung asked.

“I just wanted to know.” Romi bit into the biscuit with a crunch. “Years ago, there was that saying that was all the rage, remember? ‘He’s just not that into you,’ meaning he didn’t fall as hard for you as you did for him.”

Chakyung remembered that saying coming to mind the first time she’d heard Romi’s story. It had been the title of a relationship advice book that was a massive hit and had even been made into a movie.

“As the saying goes,” Romi continued, “one reason a guy would have failed to reach out to you is because he just wasn’t that into you—I wanted to know how much that was. What it would take for him to be that interested. I wanted to ask him.”

All sorts of reasons weighed on her mind. These were questions anyone would find difficult to answer. How much did you really have to like someone to try reaching out to them again? Was there any other reason not to, aside from the fact that you simply weren’t into them? Until she found him again, she would never know.

“And if I had to name another reason I wanted to join the search,” said Romi as she finished the biscuit and picked up the crumbs that had fallen on the floor one by one with her finger, “then I would say because I thought it might be fun.”

At that, Chakyung and Hadam were briefly stunned speechless. But when it came to the most important motivating factor in life, what else could it have been if not fun? If something was fun to do, people did it. There was no simpler or clearer motivation than that.

Romi placed all the crumbs inside the snack wrapper and brushed her finger clean. “What about you, Hadam?” she asked.

Hadam, flustered at having the focus return to her, asked, “Huh? What about me?”

“What are you going to do about your boyfriend, Mr. Gu?”

Romi had thrown her a fastball straight down the middle. Her frankness felt like an ambush.

“Well, I—I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Come on. Spill what happened when I wasn’t here.” Chakyung had only guessed at what had gone on based on the mood earlier.

Hadam waved her hands. “No, please don’t mention that. We just grabbed dinner together the first day while he was sharing information. That’s all.”

“But when he heard you’d passed out, he came running to the hospital. Like there had been some kind of major accident or something,” Romi said meaningfully, but Hadam waved her remarks away again.

“He just came along with our sunbae, Pilhyun. He probably wanted to see if there was anything he could do to help me as someone he happens to know.”

Chakyung piped up. “Is he really the type to be so concerned about others?”

“Yes,” said Hadam immediately, “he absolutely is. That’s actually one of the reasons we broke up.” She briefly recounted the story about the fire at the filming site. That cold feeling she’d had as the fire raged on, and the growing sense of estrangement between them even after.

“It was nice that he was considerate of others, but I guess I felt disappointed that he didn’t seem to understand what a big deal the whole thing had been for me too. And then I was so busy dealing with the aftermath of the fire and picking up where I had left off with the film while he was busy with his own things and not reaching out anymore. Even if I had wanted to vent my frustrations to him, there was never any chance to, and I felt like we were constantly out of sync. We didn’t have a huge fight or anything—we just naturally drifted apart. And even now, we might be hanging out again, but ...”

“Since he came to see you at the hospital today, it seems like he still really cares about you. What would happen if he made amends for the things he regrets from the past and said he wanted you to take him back?”

Right away, Chakyung jumped in to say, “I’m thinking about it differently. Usually when you’re regretting a breakup, you tend to remember only one part as bad and everything else as having been mostly good. And you think that if only the other person could fix that one essential flaw, the two of you could be together again. But if that one flaw was so crucial that it led you to break up, and if it’s part of the other person’s nature or an issue of fundamental incompatibility, it’ll be hard to fix. Most people who get back together in those cases end up breaking up again.”

Hadam nodded. If he had a change of heart, maybe they could get together again. If they decided to make an effort with each other, maybe their relationship could pick back up. It wasn’t as though she had never thought about it before. She had, for the three years following their breakup. And even after that, she had mulled over the idea. On the days she didn’t want to eat alone, when she read articles about rerun screenings of old films the two of them had loved, when she realized the guy she had dated after him had been secretly meeting up with his old flame, Jaewoong sometimes came to mind. And yet ...

“The way he sees it, he would have no reason to change himself. He’d see no need to go that far just to be with me again.”

Chakyung took a sip of her tea. “Right. Besides, you two live in such different places now. You’d definitely have to be much closer if you were to continue the relationship ...”

“Oh, wow, do you really think so?” Romi asked, tilting her head in surprise.

“Of course. People usually end up choosing partners from among the people nearest to them.”

“You said you met Chanmin through your university’s student union, right?” Hadam asked.

Chakyung wasn’t the type to divulge much about herself, but Hadam had happened to catch some of the details of her and Chanmin’s history before.

“Right, but we weren’t dating at that time. He was just someone I saw around. I think there was another girl he liked. And I didn’t have the best impression of the friends he hung out with. But when I joined my company, because of our work in developing cosmetics, we had projects where we consulted with the research team so we could draw up plans, and that was where we started seeing each other. As we interacted more often at work, I came to realize he was much more hardworking than I’d thought. Plus he lived in the apartment complex next to mine, so we started commuting together after work and often had the chance to talk on the way home.”

Proximity was clearly important. Trying to date someone who wasn’t in the immediate vicinity and with a schedule so packed there wasn’t even time to eat lunch was bound to be tough. Chakyung sometimes thought the reason they had quietly grown more distant lately was because their current homes were far apart.

“You have a point, Chakyung, but I don’t think people hit it off just because they happen to be near each other,” Hadam said. “I make films, so there are tons of people I’ve stayed up all night with, traveled around foreign countries for several days with when we’re filming overseas, and never once had those kinds of feelings for. If all it took for people to develop affection was being near someone, I probably wouldn’t be single right now.”

Hadam shuddered, remembering her former coworkers. They weren’t entirely bad people, but they could be insensitive, and they wouldn’t hesitate to make offensive jokes using the fact that they were close as an excuse. Of course, they weren’t all like that. Not always ...

“Isn’t the most important thing a sense of tenderness? Of sweetness? People with those qualities you can grow to like.”

Just hearing the word “sweetness,” Romi and Chakyung gave Hadam a look that implied they could relate to that as well. And yet ...

“What does it even mean to be ‘sweet’?” Chakyung sighed. As Romi and Hadam listened to her talk, they had guessed her fiancé didn’t quite fit the “sweet” standard. But Chakyung had never spoken so bluntly about such things before.

“Hmm, maybe it means taking note of the other person’s comforts and discomforts ahead of time? And then doing things beforehand to help make that person feel at ease?” Hadam wondered.

She thought again about the conversation she’d had with the Honeycomb Guesthouse owner earlier at dinner. Worker bees store honey inside their bodies and regurgitate it several times, the powerful fanning of their wings blowing away the honey’s moisture. The honey becomes sweeter as it undergoes this natural ripening process. Showing affection toward others was like that. It was possible only when you gave your all, drawing out what you had kept inside of you for so long. Becoming sweet required the effort of endlessly fanning your wings.

“But no matter how close or how sweet someone is, it doesn’t mean everything will turn out fine,” Romi declared, grabbing two more snacks. “More than anything, you need to feel a spark. Without that, all the other stuff is useless. It’s only when the magnetic field envelops two people,” she said, loudly tearing the wrapper off one of the biscuits, “that those two people fall in love.”

Hoping to get back to the hotel before it was too late, Chakyung left the Honeycomb Guesthouse around nine o’clock, but darkness had already fallen over the island like a blackout curtain. There were no streetlights along the mountain road to Jungmun and not a single other car to be seen. Chakyung drove cautiously, worried that a wild animal would leap out in front of her. A few raindrops began to fall. The windshield wipers, equipped with a rain-detection system, activated automatically. It wasn’t her first time driving around Jeju in a rental car, but she always felt nervous taking mountain roads on overcast nights.

Rounding the curve in the steadily increasing rain, she saw a truck approaching from behind. The truck sped up, and Chakyung yielded, allowing it to pass as she felt uncomfortable racing ahead. The moment the truck slipped past, Chakyung glanced over at the driver, but it was so dark, she couldn’t make out much aside from the fact that it was a man. What a relief that she had let him go first.

The truck moved into the next lane over for a moment, then went ahead, racing with reckless abandon compared to the speed it had been going at first. The driver seemed to be rushing ahead to keep a certain distance from Chakyung’s car. The rain had grown steadier, so he might have been taking precautions.

Through the waving windshield wipers, Chakyung could see the rear of the truck ahead. There was something in the trunk. In the dark, the taillights resembled a pair of glaring red eyes. The driver could simply be speeding. Or could he have other intentions? Chakyung grew nervous, tried not to get too close. She figured she should maintain a safe-enough distance to avoid rear-ending the truck if the driver made a sudden stop. But she wasn’t as afraid of the dark now as she had been earlier, so consumed was she with following after those taillights.

The truck gained speed once it came to the main road. Those red eyes soon grew distant before they disappeared entirely. Just then, Chakyung realized that from this point on, the way ahead was well lit by the streetlamps lining the road. Had the driver in the car ahead of her purposely put on his taillights so she could follow behind in the rain? It was impossible to know, however much she wanted to believe in the kindness of a stranger she’d met by chance on the road. But perhaps there were times when dark roads were illuminated by the unnoticed kindnesses of others. Thinking of the people who had been kind to her despite not knowing her, Chakyung wanted to believe this world she lived in was still such a place.