Romancing on Jeju

BEES DON’T GET CAUGHT IN THE RAIN, BUT . . .

BEES DON’T GET CAUGHT IN THE RAIN, BUT ...

“The interaction between the twenty-second tropical storm of the season, Learon, and the once-northbound twenty-third tropical storm, Cham-mae, has caused a Fujiwhara effect, strengthening the storm and rerouting its course so that it will now pass over Jeju Island ...”

A man in his thirties in a Hawaiian-print shirt sat in the front row, watching the TV and hugging his enormous backpack to his chest. His eyes and ears were trained on the weather forecaster, but he couldn’t fully concentrate due to the middle-aged man talking loudly on the phone beside him.

“That’s what I’m saying! All the flights are canceled! They don’t know when the planes will take off again! Are these assholes at the airline telling me to just lie on the floor at Gimpo Airport? That’s what I thought!”

It seemed like the older man was fighting with someone on the other end of the line. Right in front of him were a couple in their forties and their elementary school–aged children who had spread their clothes out like mats on which they sat eating cup noodles. Beside them, a college-aged couple stood leaning against a column, noses scrunched at the smell of the ramen, but they didn’t take their eyes off their phones. And beside them was a group of tourists in their fifties wearing hiking gear, who were glancing at the man in the Hawaiian shirt, dropping hints like, “Oh, my legs hurt. Looks like there are no seats . ” But the man had no desire to move from his spot. Then he would have to stand there until whenever they could depart with no promise of being able to find a seat again. He looked up at the board of departures. Each row for the flights to Jeju had “Delayed” blinking at the end. He let out a deep sigh.

The other passengers were griping loudly and endlessly at the counter.

“So when is the flight leaving now?”

“Don’t you have to tell us what measures are being taken? What are the measures?”

The man in the Hawaiian shirt knew from years of travel experience that there was nothing the airport employees could say. What could they say when the destination airports were all closed down due to natural disasters or sudden inclement weather? Lots of people who lived in Seoul went back home, and those who had been trying to make a connecting flight and groups of tourists had no choice but to simply wait there. The Korea Meteorological Administration had to be the most-cursed organization of the day, but all the forecasters in the Korea-China-Japan region had been wrong. No one had predicted that the midsized tropical storm forecast to pass over the Korean peninsula would suddenly cross paths with another storm, sharply changing its course and becoming a supersized storm.

The man sighed again and glanced at his KakaoTalk messages. The number “1” hadn’t disappeared from beside the message he had sent earlier, indicating that it was still unread. He didn’t know whether it was because the recipient had been too busy to check or whether there had been some problem with their phone. He dialed the number for the landline at the Nol Community House. Just when he was about to hang up after the phone rang about ten times, a breathless voice answered.

“Hi, is this Ayoung?” he asked.

The voice on the other end of the line sounded extremely hurried.

“All the flights got canceled. I thought you might be worried. Is everybody holding up all right over there? How’s Kyungwoon hyung? He went out? In this storm? And the roof blew off? People are missing?”

Ayoung shouted something, but it was hard to hear her properly. The call was breaking up.

“All right, I’ll let you go now. Be careful.”

Having heard her sounding much more serious than he’d expected, he started to feel nervous. But there was nothing he could do for her when she was so far away. Until the typhoon passed, he had nowhere to go. He was trapped inside the airport.

Still, luckily for him, he would have to wait a little longer to find out what had happened on Jeju and what would happen next.

Project: Searching for Honeyman

Day Six, Seogwipo

Hadam rarely went to bed late. She had an internal sundial, so she didn’t sleep long when there was sunlight coming in through the window. Still, on cloudy or rainy days, there were times she couldn’t help it and failed to wake up on time. In her dream that day, there had been people running around screaming. Hadam didn’t know why, but she had cut into the crowd and begun running desperately too. Why was she running? The fire wavered in front of her eyes. Was she being chased by the fire? Her entire body burned with heat. Just then, a stranger’s cool hand took hold of Hadam’s.

“Hadam, please wake up. Hadam.”

At first, her vision was blurry. She couldn’t tell who had been the one to wake her up just now. Am I still a student? Who is this person—Yoojin? Hwayoung?

“Hadam, come have breakfast.”

Chakyung’s face came into focus. Now fully awake, Hadam sat up in bed. She had been dreaming about what happened nine years ago and couldn’t quite grasp the reality she had woken up into now. It was like she was still a university student, like she was stuck at that tender, vulnerable age.

Hadam asked blearily, “Is it morning right now? Not night?”

Chakyung pointed out the window. The sky was faintly gray. Hadam couldn’t believe she had been sleeping even as the window rattled so hard in the wind.

“Yes, it’s morning,” said Chakyung. “It’s already almost noon.”

Right around when they finished eating, the glass door to the courtyard garden shuddered violently. The tremors ran out as if the wind were shaking the entire house at once. The guests gathered in the cafeteria exchanged nervous looks.

“You don’t think the typhoon will strike directly here, right?”

As if Hadam’s words had been a sign, the kitchen suddenly lit up and a thunderous noise resounded throughout the area. People cowered, gasping in surprise.

“It’s all right; it’s all right. This sort of thing happens. I heard on the weather forecast that the typhoon is heading north and is supposed to stop over Japan and miss the Korean peninsula entirely, so it should peter out somewhere along the west coast.” The bookstore couple husband feigned calmness as he spoke.

“Why are you talking as if you weren’t the first one to jump up in surprise? Besides, that news is over an hour old. Stop telling us what we already know and check the updates on your phone.”

His wife had poured some coffee and was chiding her husband, jutting her chin at his cell phone. The young guy with the goatee held up his phone, already in his hand, and studied the screen.

“I’m looking at the updates constantly. They’re saying it’s possible the typhoon changed its course. Something about a Fujiwhara effect. It collided with another typhoon and created a bigger storm. But they’re saying we’re still in a safe zone.”

Kyungwoon stood at the window, watching the powerful winds with concern.

“Still, I’d better go out and secure the beehives. They’re covered in tarp right now, but if the wind keeps raging like this, the hives could fly off. Usually after mid-September, I transfer them from Seogwipo to Jeju City, but ... I can’t move them now. I’d better hurry.”

Ayoung, who had been clearing away the bowls, turned to him. “Right now? Alone? Shouldn’t you call up someone who can help you?”

“I have to go now. Before the rain starts coming down hard. Everyone’s probably busy, so I don’t have anyone I can call. And you should put up newspaper on all the windows here just in case. This building has so much glass.”

Ayoung looked around, her face slightly pale. “Right—I said from the beginning all the glass in the design was a bad idea. Sangwoo, could you give me a hand?”

The goateed young man nodded.

“I’ll help too,” Chakyung offered. “It seems like way too much work for two people.”

The women staying at Nol said they would paper the windows in their own rooms. The bookstore couple said they had to head to the construction site for their store. There were things they needed to take care of before the rain started up.

“I’ll help with the beekeeping tasks,” Romi said, raising her hand as the others’ eyes found her. “Since I went yesterday. Plus, I like bees.” Looking at all the people around her, she added, “We can’t just leave the bees to die.”

No one seemed to care all that much what Romi’s excuse or reasoning was. There was a lot to do ahead of the sudden shift in the weather forecast. It was simply a relief that the guests could help one another.

“I’ll go with you,” said Hadam. “Hopefully, I can get some footage and help out as well.”

It might have sounded a bit insensitive to mention that she was hoping to film, but one did not get many chances like this. She wanted to see how the bees prepared ahead of typhoons. Kyungwoon seemed to understand.

“I have some things in the car, so it’ll be hard for the three of us to ride together. How about you both follow me in a separate car?”

“No, you and Romi should head out first. I have to pack my film equipment, and I might have to stop to film one or two scenes on the way. But I’ll follow right behind you.”

Kyungwoon turned to Romi somewhat shyly. Contrary to the weather outside, she wore a bright smile as she met his eyes. He nodded.

“Then let’s get ready and head out together,” he said. “Make sure to bundle up. It’s cold out there.”

People immediately began to file out of the shared kitchen, and only Ayoung, Chakyung, and the goateed young man, Sangwoo, remained like the debris left behind after the wind had swept through.

“Well, where should we start?”

Chakyung rolled up her sleeves and turned to Ayoung, who was thinking, one hand holding her elbow and the other on her cheek.

“First, we should close up the café and take down anything that might break easily from the cupboards, then cover the windows in newspaper and tape them up, and then put away everything that might blow away or become a hazard out in the yard. We can also check whether the water is draining with no issue.”

Sangwoo stared at the door that led from the kitchen into the courtyard. “But where’s Soo-eon? Is he still not back from going to the beach this morning?”

Just hearing his name, Chakyung felt her heart drop to the pit of her stomach. She asked before she could stop herself. “He went out in this weather?”

But the others didn’t seem to notice how her face had paled, and went on chatting.

“Surfers love going out in this sort of windy weather,” Ayoung explained. “The waves around here usually don’t get that big, and you can ride the tall waves that come in before the typhoon touches down. You can even catch barrels, the waves that look like tubes.”

“Soo-eon is the best surfer on this side of the island, so of course he’s out there. Taylor hyung would have wanted to see the waves today too.”

“Taylor’s still a rookie—no way he could ride these waves.”

Chakyung was hardly paying attention now that the conversation had shifted to Taylor, whom she had never met. The groaning outside the window had heightened to a roar. The three of them quickly tidied up the kitchen and left the café. They stood outside in the wind and saw people off as they all headed their own way. Romi, dressed in white rain gear, climbed into Kyungwoon’s SUV with him, and Hadam got inside the rental car. Chakyung suddenly felt a spike of worry and wondered whether she should follow after Hadam, but she decided she would be more help at Nol than at the bee farm.

When they had first arrived, the ocean as she could see it from the café had resembled a long, blue band, but now it was thrashing about like a living thing. The wind steadily grew stronger, and the rain grew heavier. Chakyung went back inside to help Ayoung, but she couldn’t stop her eyes from shifting toward the sea from time to time.

Despite wearing protective gear, Romi felt like her face was being pummeled the second she stepped out of the SUV. The rain that had been falling thinly like small-appliance cords until they’d left the guesthouse was now falling in ropes as thick as construction cables. Kyungwoon leaped out of the car as soon as he cut the engine. Romi staggered about, struggling to find her balance in the raging rain and wind, and Kyungwoon quickly grabbed hold of her arm to help her stay upright.

“I knew it. We should have turned back earlier.”

“What?”

She couldn’t hear him over her rain gear and the storm. Romi held her hands to her ears, and Kyungwoon shouted louder, “I said we should have turned back!”

Romi grabbed his hands and shook them. “Right, let’s do our best! Good luck!”

Kyungwoon looked dumbstruck, but Romi didn’t seem to notice as she took off, racing through the rain. Kyungwoon could only watch her go with a smile on his face.

But there was no time for smiling. He had to find a cart so he could bring in the beehives in danger of mountainside trees falling on them. After that, he had to secure the hives in place and make sure to stack tires on the ends of the tarp so it wouldn’t fly off. The ever-changing weather had become even more dangerous. Romi’s clothes were damp from the sweat and rain soaking through them at the same time. Kyungwoon shouted to Romi as he moved about, knotting ropes.

“Romi, get inside! The weather’s really bad! I’ll finish up here!”

Romi nodded and pumped her fists. “Yes, we’re finishing up fast!”

Kyungwoon gave up and simply worked faster. As clumsy as she was, Romi focused hard on the task at hand. She almost slipped and fell as she was rolling tires out from a pile and grabbed on to Kyungwoon’s back to stop her fall.

“Careful,” he said.

Romi nodded, then leaped back to her feet and hoisted up the heavy tire she had been holding. She obviously couldn’t carry it on her own, so Kyungwoon had to lend her a hand.

The rain and wind erased the passing of time. They couldn’t take out their cell phones in the storm, so they had no way of checking what time it was either. After however long it had been, they finally completed the necessary tasks. The ends of the tarp were flapping wildly in the wind, but the tires were holding them down, and it didn’t seem like the tarp would fly off. Now, there was nothing more to do but pray that the bee farm made it through the storm intact. Kyungwoon pointed to the SUV again, signaling to Romi. She nodded and took off, bounding toward the car.

As she climbed into the passenger seat, she removed her hat and said, “The car’s going to get drenched. What should we do?”

Kyungwoon quickly started the engine. “It’s fine. It’s more important that we get out of here before the typhoon gets worse.”

The car struggled to move over the wet ground when he tried to reverse it. At some point, the sky around them had gone dark enough that it seemed like night had fallen.

The branches of the trees in front of them were snapping off in the rain. The car rolled forward a few yards, then stopped. Romi turned to Kyungwoon in surprise. He spoke calmly as he looked out ahead, but there was a flash of distress in his eyes.

“I don’t think we can go any farther like this. The road could give out. It might be better to wait inside the workroom until the wind and rain let up.”

Kyungwoon parked the car on the road, and the two of them quickly opened their doors and leaped out.

“Run!”

Romi nearly slipped again as she was running and holding up the hood of her raincoat. Kyungwoon reached out his hand.

“The wind is getting stronger. Hurry.”

Romi took his hand. In the rain, his hand felt warm. She could hardly see in front of her, but holding his hand in that moment, she thought she would have been happy even if the distance the wind was chasing them across to get to the container building was even bigger.

But Romi was the first one to let go of his hand. As if she were lost in the cold rain, she suddenly stopped. She turned to Kyungwoon.

“What’s wrong, Romi?”

She shouted urgently, “I thought of something I’d forgotten. Until just now.”

Rain beating against him, Kyungwoon shouted back, “What is it?”

Romi looked around. “Why are we the only ones here? It’s been a long time. When we left the café ...”

Behind her, they heard the sound of a branch snapping. Kyungwoon quickly took Romi by the shoulders and pulled her close to him as the branch fell. The leaves and rain falling together obscured the view ahead.

The café door opened and the bells overhead chimed, everyone’s head turning toward the entrance. Ayoung, Chakyung, and Sangwoo were inside, sitting at a table. The dog that had been sleeping at Chakyung’s feet suddenly looked up and let out a single bark, but seeing as the newcomer wasn’t a stranger, the bark seemed more like a greeting than a threat.

Rain dripping off him, the man asked worriedly, “Is everyone all right?”

Chakyung stood up. “We’re fine here, but as for the people who went out—has anyone heard from Hadam?”

As he shook the rain from his hair, a look of doubt arose in the man’s—Jaewoong’s—eyes. “No, she wasn’t picking up her phone. That’s why I came. Where is she?”

It had been more than two hours since Hadam, Romi, and Kyungwoon had left, and the wind had grown downright ferocious in the meantime. The clearer it had become that the people who’d gone out had no intention of turning back around, the more the anxiety had swelled for the people waiting in the café.

Chakyung handed Jaewoong a towel. “Hadam, Romi, and Kyungwoon went to the bee farm, but we haven’t heard from them. We thought they would be back soon.”

“They went to the bee farm?”

“To help Kyungwoon round up the hives in preparation for the typhoon, and to film some more. Just a little while ago, they had no idea the weather would get this bad. And now, the Wi-Fi here is out and our cell phones aren’t working, so we can’t get in touch with them.”

There was no way to get any news about the current weather conditions except through the TV. The two women guests who were on sabbatical at Nol had been watching the news and racing downstairs to let the others know each time the weather forecast changed. The remaining three in the café were on standby. It was Ayoung’s opinion that they shouldn’t be too hasty to move out with the weather in its current state. But seeing as the people who had gone out still hadn’t returned, their patient waiting soon turned to fretful anxiety.

“The situation with the typhoon isn’t looking so good. It suddenly got way stronger, and the reports are saying it might hit Jeju full-on. If this isn’t the full-on storm now, what’ll happen when the typhoon strikes in earnest?” Jaewoong’s voice seemed lost in thought as he held the towel he’d been handed, forgetting to do so much as blot the rain from his hair.

Chakyung clasped her hands together, wringing them nervously. “What can we do? The bee farm is in the mountains on the way to the Jungmun area of Seogwipo—but as for whether they can get back from there safely or not ... Should someone go out there to check on them?”

The sound of the phone behind the counter ringing broke through the anxious silence that had weighed on the café. The piercing sound was like the wail of an emergency siren. Ayoung jumped up and raced to pick up the call.

“Hello?”

Their cell phones weren’t working, but it seemed the landline was still functional.

“Sorry? You want me to put Chakyung on the phone?”

At the sound of her own name, Chakyung looked up. Ayoung held the phone with one hand and gestured to her with the other. Chakyung approached the counter and took the call.

“Hello? Oh, Romi. Right, she’s still not back. We’re all waiting here. Wait, what did you say? All right. We’ll look for her.”

She hung up and turned around, her face even paler now. She looked right at Jaewoong.

“Romi and Kyungwoon are at the bee farm, but Romi says Hadam never made it there. She said she would meet up with them, but they have no idea where she went. While they were handling things at the farm, they forgot Hadam was supposed to be there too. Romi just called when she realized Hadam hadn’t shown up.”

Jaewoong gripped the towel in his hand even tighter. “After she left, something might have ...” He swallowed his own words. “If she couldn’t find the bee farm, she would have turned around and come back.”

Just then, the goateed guy, Sangwoo, slammed his hands on the table and shot up. “What are we going to do?”

“God, you scared me. What’s the matter with you!” Ayoung snapped, loosening her crossed arms, the somber expression on her face smoothing out in surprise.

“That lady came here in an electric car,” Sangwoo went on. “There’s nowhere around here where she could charge it if she needed to!”

Ayoung’s mouth fell open. “What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t there be?”

“I heard from a customer here at the café that the chargers here haven’t been working for a day or two. So I told them where the next closest charging station was. I wonder if they made it there okay.”

Chakyung tried to think. It was possible that on her way to follow after Kyungwoon and Romi, Hadam had taken her car to the charging station. Then from there, what if she had gotten lost because the navigation system wasn’t working properly? And what if, to make matters worse, her cell phone wasn’t getting service in the storm and she ended up stranded in an unfamiliar area as the typhoon struck?

Chakyung picked up her jacket from where it was slung over the back of her chair. Her voice was strained with worry. “I should head out there. I’ll be able to take shelter at the charging station or somewhere else nearby.”

Jaewoong held out a hand to stop her. “I’ll go,” he said. “It’ll be hard for someone from out of town to get around in this wind without a working navigation system. And anyway, I know the area better, so I should be able to find her wherever she is.”

Chakyung studied his face. The first time she had seen him, she had gotten the impression that he was someone who hated to show others how he was feeling inside. She’d thought his tendency not to reveal his emotions, and the fact that his defining trait was the sense of indifference he gave off instead, made up the underside of his overall spotless first impression. She’d thought he was the sort of man who might appear as a character in a foreign indie film, one whose inner life no one knew. Now, she could see genuine worry and anxiety in his face. Chakyung briefly wondered about the nature of his feelings for Hadam, but now was not the time to dwell on that. His concern itself was one of those feelings. The feeling that when the rain was pouring and the wind was blowing, someone else’s well-being became his own problem. That in itself was meaningful.

“All right. Then I’m entrusting Hadam to you.”

Jaewoong hurried out the door, and then there were three again. As Chakyung moved to sit down, the puppy started to hop around like he wanted to climb into her lap. Chakyung held the puppy for a short while. He looked up at Chakyung with his black eyes. The puppy felt warm, and his fur was soft—somehow, this made Chakyung want to cry. But she pushed the feeling aside. After gently setting the puppy down with a pat on the head, she stood up again and put on her jacket. She turned to the other two.

“I’m going to head to the beach and look for Soo-eon. It’s strange that he’s still not back either.”

Ayoung shook her head. “No, Chakyung. If anything, Sangwoo should go instead—”

When he made a move to stand up, Chakyung shook her head. “No, no, I’ll go.” She was already heading out the door.

She knew the others were watching her leave with odd expressions on their faces. But she didn’t care. The typhoon had already drawn too near for her to just sit around and worry.

When Hadam turned her phone back on, she still had only one signal bar. She tried to make a call again, but all she heard was the message that announced, “Your call could not be connected ...” Letting out a heavy sigh, she tossed her phone aside. She tried to push the button to start the car, but it didn’t come on. She didn’t know how far she was from the charging station. Setting out despite not having enough of the battery left on the car. Not following after Romi and Kyungwoon right away, but instead wasting her time stopping to film the black clouds that were gathering overhead. Her navigation system shutting off before she could get to the charging station and not being able to find her way there. The bad judgment that always came along with her bad luck. If only she had made good judgment calls. But she’d thought it would be wise to wait for the typhoon to pass here in the highlands, since she might end up stranded in a flood zone if she went any farther. Hadam sighed again. The rain was falling harder and heavier, slowly muddying the windshield. The water and the noise made her feel as if her car were submerged in a lake. A subtle fear permeated the air inside the car like steam.

This wasn’t the first time Hadam had encountered bad weather. She’d gotten caught up in a sandstorm in the Namib Desert back when she’d been filming a nature program in Africa. When she’d been subcontracted to go to the Philippines and work on the making-of film for an entertainment program, she’d been trapped in the country during a super typhoon. Compared to those times, the powerful lashing out of nature that she was facing now seemed relatively tame. But she’d never been alone like this before. She’d always had a team with whom to share the adversity. Perhaps what people feared was not so much the tremendous force they were up against and could do nothing about, but rather having to summon the strength to face that force on their own. She felt somewhat sad to be experiencing such a crisis on her own, but now she had to manage even that sadness alone.

Watching the water surge around her, she racked her brain, wondering what she ought to do. Should she abandon the car and get out? She wished she could look it up, but her phone wasn’t working, so that wasn’t even a possibility. Her ability to research things was the one asset she had been confident about, and being without internet access was also enough to make her anxious. Just as she felt certain that all she could do was trust her gut decision, the car shuddered violently.

“Ack!”

She was embarrassed by how loudly she’d shrieked, but there was no one else around to hear. She put her hand on her chest and sighed in relief. She would be all right. She had been in worse situations over the course of her life. Plus, most pressingly, the typhoon was passing through. Hadam combed through her mind for steps she could take. Either way, it would be safer to stay in the car—though if she didn’t, she could grab her camera, get out, and find a place where she might be able to get a cell phone signal. She regretted having left her rain cover for the camera in Seoul. Maybe she could wrap her camera in her clothes ...

“Ack!”

Hadam cowered over the steering wheel. The wind pounded the windshield like the devil coming to steal someone away. The car rocked violently. If it was swaying like this, what if it slipped and rolled downhill? The car would end up somewhere else. As the fear materialized, it began to accumulate. Hadam became aware once again that she was on her own. That meant she had to be the one to make the decision about what to do. She shut her eyes.

The sound of the rain scratching against the windshield and her own anxiety grew in concert. No. If I stop here ... Hadam bent down and picked up the camera from the seat beside her. Then she made up her mind once and for all. Sure, she had no idea what would happen, but she needed to try to film at least a little of it. She lowered the windows. Just then, something came flying at the window on her side.

“Ack!”

Someone’s hand and face appeared behind the glass. The sound of someone shouting reached her through the open window.

“Hey! What took you so long to open the window? Do you know how scared I was, not knowing what was going on with you in here?”

What she had mistaken for the sound of the rain pummeling the car had been the sound of Jaewoong banging on it. As soon as Hadam opened the door, his hand reached in and grabbed ahold of her. Hadam felt herself being pulled out and into the rain.

“How did you get here?”

Jaewoong was standing before her with no umbrella, already drenched from head to toe. Hadam remembered that his hair tended to sag into a half-curly, half-straight mess when it was wet.

“You’re already soaked ...,” Hadam started, but before she could finish what she was saying, Jaewoong pulled her closer. One hand came around her back, and the other around her head. He held on to her tight.

“You had everyone worried sick about you!” he said.

The first thing that came to mind was the feeling of being so taken aback, she couldn’t breathe, but she quickly pushed him away and soon felt a sense of relief come over her. The danger hadn’t vanished, and the wind was still slamming into them. But now, she didn’t have to make the decision alone.

Chakyung couldn’t remember having ever seen an ocean that looked like this one—she mostly remembered having seen the sea glittering calmly as it lay beneath the sun. But the waves Chakyung was driving by as she sped along the coast were rearing up and roaring. She headed west. She’d heard there was a surfing hot spot along the road that ran from Hwasun Port to Moseulpo Port through both Sanbang and Songak Mountains. The waves she was passing lunged fiercely at the shore, just narrowly coming up short of the road before being dragged out to sea again.

There among the waves churning white foam, she caught a faint glimpse of a familiar sight from the shoulder of the road—the two stone islets, “sibling” stones, known as Hyeongjeseom. Chakyung had nearly driven right past them when she slammed hard on the brakes. The tires skidded as the car hydroplaned, but the road was otherwise empty, so she slid forward a few yards before coming to a stop. The familiar sight she had spotted on the road was none other than Soo-eon’s truck. Chakyung turned her car around and pulled up beside the truck, opening her umbrella over her head as she stepped out. She leaned out over the railing that separated the ocean from the land.

She saw a black speck inside the mouth of a curled-up wave. Someone was riding on a surfboard. The fierce winds had sent the wave soaring up such that it formed a tunnel twice the height of the person surfing, and it looked like that person was being pulled inside the wave as if by a magnet. Chakyung gripped the railing hard. It took no more than a few seconds for the board to be swallowed up again by the wave, but it felt like much longer. Chakyung didn’t even notice that her umbrella had been turned inside out by the wind.

The person on the board that was swallowed up by the tunnel fell backward into the ocean and disappeared under the surface. Chakyung’s heart sank along with him. But a few minutes later, his head resurfaced above the water, and he climbed back on top of his board and lay down flat on his stomach. When another wave came surging in, he leaped to his feet on the board and bowed over at the waist, riding along the wide face of the wave as it stood up in the water. As the wind grew fiercer, the wave soared up even higher than the previous one. As it curled into a barrel once again, white foam spraying like an avalanche, the board channeled the wind and raced along the wave, leaving a white trail in its wake as if it had an engine.

Chakyung had never seen anything so dangerous and, at the same time, so marvelous in her life. Her heart was hammering so hard, it hurt and felt like it was going to burst out of her chest, but she couldn’t be sure that she hated the pain. After that pain came rage. A rage brought about by seeing someone do something so dangerous as ride that board as though it were no big deal. She watched Soo-eon plummet into the ocean like that and then climb back onto his board and lie down on it, then start swimming back to the shore. Chakyung whipped around and started bounding down the stairs that led to the shoreline overlaid with black rocks.

Right when Chakyung made it down the staircase and was about to step onto a slippery stone, she ran into Soo-eon, carrying his surfboard under his arm. He gestured to her not to step down onto the rock. “It’s dangerous,” he said. “What are you doing ...”

Before he could even finish his question, Chakyung shouted, “Did you not hear that there’s a typhoon warning? It’s dangerous for you to be out here! What are you doing?”

Even the pouring rain and winds couldn’t wipe the laugh lines from the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t know how bad the winds would get, but opportunities like this don’t come around often, so I came out to try my luck at catching these waves. I didn’t check the storm warnings. Earlier, I’d heard the typhoon was headed somewhere else. I guess I was this close to getting fined for being out here, huh?”

Even his nonchalant tone wasn’t enough to quell Chakyung’s anger. She shouted back at him even louder. “Regardless, do you know how scary it is to go out into the ocean in this weather? You could die!”

A wave extended its evil reach toward the spot where the two of them stood, then drew back as if in anger. The wind blew fiercely, whipping Chakyung’s hair across her face to the point where she couldn’t see in front of her. Soo-eon set down his board and reached toward her, tucking back the strands of hair that had been blown into her face.

“Anyone could die at any time,” he said.

With the rain coming down as hard as it was, Chakyung couldn’t tell whether it was a smile or a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth. He dropped his fingers from her hair.

“But I’m not dead right now,” he continued. “In this moment, I’m truly, undoubtedly alive.”

With the hand that was not holding her umbrella, Chakyung grabbed Soo-eon’s hand and stepped down. The sound of the waves loud enough in her ears to split her drums, Chakyung let her voice drop.

“I was engaged,” she said.

The gleam in Soo-eon’s eyes briefly clouded over like the sky. “I know.”

Chakyung swallowed hard. She spoke louder so the words would not be drowned out by the waves swelling in the wind. “But I broke it off. I’m not going to marry him. It’s not only because of you. But it’s also not like you had nothing to do with it.”

Soo-eon took another step toward her. Chakyung imagined the heat emanating from his rain-drenched body was wrapping itself around her like a hug. Soo-eon bent slightly at the waist and brought his face too close to hers. He was close enough that their noses were nearly touching. He whispered, “Does that mean I can kiss you?”

The umbrella fell from Chakyung’s hand and tumbled away in the wind. Like an offering made to the Dragon King in the olden days, it was devoured by the sea, never to be seen again.

“No,” she said.

Their eyes met. Chakyung took his face in her hands.

“It means I want to be the one to kiss you.”

Soo-eon flashed her a brilliant smile and closed his eyes again. Still holding his face, Chakyung stood on tiptoe and brought her lips to his, still smiling. Their noses, cheeks, and mouths were already drenched in rain, but in that moment, there was not a sliver of space between them for the rain or the wind to break through.

The ocean surged toward them again. For that moment, though, they heard nothing, not even the roar of the waves, as if the entire world had been swallowed whole.