Romancing on Jeju

“Is your arm . . .

“Is your arm okay?” Romi asked, pointing.

Kyungwoon held up his arm, wrapped in thick bandages, to examine. The bandages were still tight and intact.

“I don’t think it’s broken. You didn’t need to do all this.”

Romi earnestly shook her head. “It’s better to be careful. Besides, you got hurt because of me.”

Earlier, Kyungwoon had shielded Romi from a tree toppled by the strong winds. A dark blue bruise immediately formed on the skin of his arm, but the bigger concern was whether the bone had fractured. Romi had offered to bandage his arm for him. Fortunately, there was a first-aid kit inside the container building.

“You’re good at this,” Kyungwoon noted. The bandage, patterned with dense clusters of barley plants, was securely wound around his arm.

Romi shrugged, smiling. “It’s because I used to make and sell knot artwork. I’m pretty confident with binding things.” She pointed again. “Is your hand okay?”

Kyungwoon clenched and unclenched the hand with the burn scars. “It is. I burned my hand in the accident, but it still works almost just as well as it used to. An injury this minor I can handle.”

Raindrops continued thrumming on the roof of the container building, and the two of them felt like they were inside a drum. From time to time, a gale strong enough to rattle the container blew past.

Romi approached the window with caution and looked outside.

“I think the wind has calmed down a bit. We just have to stick it out a little longer.”

She returned to her seat and checked her phone. “Still not working,” she said. “Do you think Hadam’s all right?”

Kyungwoon spoke calmly as if to put her at ease. “She’ll be fine. When I got through to the landline earlier and talked to Ayoung, she said Hadam’s friend from college would go out to get her. It’s probably an issue with her car. The two of them are likely on their way back to Nol right now. Ayoung said she would call us when they got there.”

“Yes, her friend. She must be with Jaewoong now.” Romi sighed, fidgeting with the glass of water on the table. Right now, listening to the rain, she felt there was nothing she could do but wait. In silence, like a bee inside a drum.

She looked up when Kyungwoon broke that silence.

“Three years ago ...,” he began, resting his injured arm on the table and holding his chin up with the other. “How did we first meet?”

Romi hesitated. Did it mean something that he was bringing up a past he couldn’t remember? He wasn’t responsible for the feelings that had brought her here. She considered lying, saying she didn’t remember.

But for Kyungwoon, that was vanished time. So much of our time lives on in our own memories, while the rest lives on only in the memories of others. For Kyungwoon, those moments from three years ago were preserved only in other people’s minds. Time unaccounted for in one’s own memory, time that exists solely in the memories of others—who was the owner of such time, such memories?

Romi shared a little about those two days from three years earlier. Kyungwoon listened intently.

“What did I tell you about myself?”

“You didn’t say much. You didn’t even tell me your name, just that you were a bee farmer. You mentioned wanting an illustration related to beekeeping, and you said you’d seen me on Instagram—we talked about the illustrations I’d uploaded and even my cat. And you talked about beekeeping. How you’d ended up relocating to Jeju, and even how you wanted to keep building on what you had done. And on the second day, you told me how much you loved Jeju, how you adored the views here, things like that.”

“I’m sure it was all just as boring to hear back then as it is now.” He wore a faint smile. Romi slowly shook her head.

“I thought it was really interesting.”

“Hmm?”

“I liked hearing you talk about beekeeping. I guess back then, I was—how can I say it? It was a time when I was sick of my work and plagued by fear, so meeting and talking with someone who was so passionate about what they were doing for the first time in a while gave me a renewed energy. The next day when we met up, too, and talked about this new place and new life of yours, I think it gave me some hope for my own aimless existence.”

Whether because they were in the eye of the storm or because the storm had passed, the drumming of the rain against the container had quieted. While they listened for a moment to the sounds outside, silence fell between them again. Or perhaps they were only listening so intently so they didn’t have to say as much to each other.

“Are you all right now?” Kyungwoon asked.

“Sorry?”

“You said you were going through a rough time, feeling sick of your work and plagued by fear. So I’m wondering if ... things are better now.”

His eyes were full of sincere worry. Romi felt a sense of unfamiliarity in his gaze. The sense that they were strangers. Even though they had technically met three years ago, he was still a stranger to her. More than that, because of his accident, he’d grown thinner and been left with scars. There was nothing strange about the fact that his face was quite different from the one she remembered. They had met only in passing and were seeing each other again after a long time apart.

But that unfamiliarity was waning now that they were showing concern for each other. Even if she hadn’t known him in the past, Romi could feel that the person here with her was not such a stranger anymore.

“I’m all right now,” she said. “Honestly, my life got surprisingly better after that trip. One of the reasons for that is ...” Romi paused. She hadn’t told this to anyone aside from Hadam and Chakyung. But she wanted to tell him. He watched her with light, unwavering eyes.

“Before that, for a long time, I was being stalked.”

When was the last time Romi had been this serious? She hated bringing this up, so much that she didn’t dare repeat this story even around her friends. Kyungwoon didn’t seem particularly disturbed. He simply nodded.

“It was really so long ago. Maybe five or six years now? At first, I thought it was just a neighbor, someone who’d found my website and blog. I liked that he left me kind comments. And I posted friendly replies. But at some point, things got more intense. Suddenly, his comments got longer, and he was talking to me like he knew me. He knew what I’d been wearing that day, where I’d gone. His comments sounded like things a lover would say. It got to the point where I worried other people reading them might misunderstand. If other men left me comments, he would tell them to back off from his woman.”

“Did you report him to the police?”

“I did. It was such a complicated, exhausting process. I went from this division to that division, tried filing a cyber-crime report and a general police report, but since the guy never revealed himself to me, and since none of what he’d said to me had threatened me with physical harm, I was told I couldn’t report him. They couldn’t give me specific details about him either. They wouldn’t even confirm his real name.”

So Romi shut down her website that allowed anonymous comments. She stopped blogging, but continued to post on Instagram. He sent her DMs there, but she blocked him. Even so, thousands of emails flooded into her Gmail account, but as there was nothing about the emails that she could report, she just ended up sending them all to spam. She never read them, had no idea what they said. Still, she felt anxious that someone was always watching her. She got messages from an unknown number. Saying that he missed her; he read the book she’d mentioned; he remembered walking the same streets she had. None of the messages were threatening, but they were enough to fill her with sheer terror. And yet ...

“I still loved meeting new people,” Romi said. “I loved having people tell me they liked my illustrations, or that they liked me.”

Even though she was afraid of the dark side of strangers, she was drawn to the vague kindnesses she received from others. Even when she was drawing pictures that made her no money, that kindness was what made her feel less anxious. She believed she could carry on that way.

“So three years ago, when you came to see me, I didn’t feel anxious. On the contrary, I felt at ease. I thought, Not all strangers are a threat. And you didn’t act like you knew me excessively well either.”

She hadn’t been certain what this feeling was back then. Many memories were formed after the fact; many emotions were felt for the first time only after they’d been named out loud. Fearfulness, hesitance, a fluttering of the heart, the feeling of liking someone. Romi’s own conviction was the same way, but she was certain now. This person was not scary. She felt at ease with him watching her like this, listening to her speak.

“That was what made me want to work—I got back from Jeju filled with all this energy. But that was also when the stalking suddenly stopped. No more messages, no more emails. So I was able to return to normal. I thought about you from time to time, but I had no way to find you again.”

Kyungwoon nodded. “I’m glad things got better.”

Romi pressed her mouth shut for a moment, thinking. Then quietly, she said, “Actually, I never told my friends this, but after I got to Jeju this time, I got another strange text message.”

Kyungwoon seemed quite surprised compared to how calm Romi was. “What did it say?”

“‘Don’t think that I forgot about you.’ It was from a strange number, too, like the ones you get automated texts from. I don’t know if it was sent by that same stalker, but I had a bad feeling.”

Kyungwoon’s mouth was a hard line. “You should report it to the police.”

Romi shook her head. “The police won’t listen. It could have been sent to a wrong number, and there are no threats made in the text.”

“I guess . . .”

“But I’m not as afraid this time. Whether this message is from my old stalker or from someone new, whoever it is would want me to be scared. That’s how they intend to control me.” Romi’s voice wavered slightly, but her face was firm with resolve. “I promised myself I would never let that person manipulate me or force me to cut myself off from people and hide away again.”

Their eyes met. Romi found encouragement in the look on Kyungwoon’s face.

“I think that’s because when I met you three years ago, I realized that meeting a stranger could lead to meeting a good person. That gave me strength.”

Kyungwoon was quiet for a while. “That’s a relief,” he said at last.

“I just feel bad ... that what was such a lucky day for me turned out to be such an unlucky one for you.”

Romi sincerely meant it. This was time the two of them had shared. But time could always be interpreted differently. For Romi, that day had been so pleasant that she wanted to return to it and live it out again, while for him, the day had been marred by tragedy. Kyungwoon seemed to be deep in thought for a long time before he spoke again.

“Aren’t you upset that I lied to you?”

“It wasn’t a lie.” She wasn’t simply saying this to justify her feelings. She genuinely believed it. “Neither of us mentioned whether we were married. I’d just assumed. You didn’t have on a wedding ring, but lots of people don’t wear theirs. And it’s not like you came on to me. You didn’t promise me anything. All you did was tell me that you liked my illustrations.” She swallowed. “Deluding myself is just one of my specialties.”

She wasn’t expecting him to respond either way. But it didn’t matter what he thought—she had to take responsibility for her own emotions. Even if it had started off as a delusion or an unintentional deceit, all she could do was hold him responsible for his actions. She couldn’t deny that she’d developed feelings for him first.

Kyungwoon had been listening to her quietly when he suddenly stood up. He went over to the window and looked outside. It was raining so hard that he couldn’t see anything, even though he was standing in the same spot Romi had been earlier, where she had noticed the beehive with the black ribbon.

“After my wife died, that was the most painful thing for me,” said Kyungwoon, his back to her. “Not knowing how I was supposed to feel about her death. Of course I was sad, but at the same time, I didn’t know enough to feel anything. Because I couldn’t remember the time I had spent with her much at all.”

Confessions always felt like two-way exchanges. When one person revealed something, the other would reciprocate. Now, it was Romi’s turn to listen.

“But a few months after my wife died, I noticed her laptop screen showed she was still logged into the blog where she poured out all her feelings.”

Romi wondered whether she was the intended audience for his innermost thoughts, or whether he was addressing them to the black ribbon he couldn’t see in the rain.

“My wife was a brilliant person with a kind heart. That’s how I remember her. She was so smart, she even went to university abroad. But she ended up following me here to Jeju. I was grateful to her for that, and I thought she was satisfied with her choice too. In my memories, our life here was wonderful and fulfilling. But that wasn’t the case.” He paused, took a breath, and went on. “I tricked myself into thinking that satisfaction was there. If she was content, that would mean our marriage had no issues. But all the while, she was agonizing over this betrayal she was keeping from me. There was someone else. It seemed like she was deeply in love with this person but didn’t want to hurt me. According to her blog, I had no idea. And in her last post, dated the day before the accident ... my wife wrote that she needed to tell me. She was planning to leave me, but she couldn’t just disappear without a word. She was probably going to confess to everything that day, the last day of her life. After I saw that final post, I just logged out.”

The conversation had shifted course more suddenly than Tropical Storm Learon. Romi was in shock, but she continued to listen.

“I started to think: Was that why I couldn’t bring myself to feel deeply sad about my wife’s death? Had I known about this before my wife died? Was that why I lost my memories, because I didn’t want to think about it? Was that why her death didn’t make me feel sad at all compared to the betrayal?”

Romi couldn’t respond. She didn’t know the answers. She couldn’t even fathom all the time he had lost along with his memories.

“But I’ve realized something from talking with you, Romi. Maybe I didn’t lose my memories to spite my wife, but because I didn’t want to hate her. Maybe I wanted to keep only the good memories I had of her. And another thing ...” He turned to face Romi again. “I realized that if I didn’t cross the line with you that day, it was probably because you were too good a person to allow that—not because I was so innocent. So it’s gotten easier for me to forgive my wife. Because I know there may be things I’ve done that would require forgiveness as well.”

Still seated, Romi looked up at him, staring into his eyes. The wind had quieted, and the beat of the rain had slowed. Kyungwoon turned back to the window.

“Looks like the rain will die down soon. When it does, let’s head out.”

Romi got up and went to stand beside him. Sure enough, the rain was lightening up. She nodded. “It does seem like it’ll die down soon,” she said.

She couldn’t see the black ribbon tied around the beehive. She couldn’t tell whether that was because it was covered by the tarp or because it was whipping around in the wind. It didn’t matter to Romi, either way. For now, it was fine where it was.

“It would be nice if we had a TV or radio,” Kyungwoon mumbled. “We could have checked the news.”

It suddenly occurred to Romi—memories, black ribbons, funerals. What had he said before? You had to tell the bees about funerals and weddings. TV, news, weddings. The local news she had seen that first night in her hotel room. Funerals and weddings ...

“Ah!”

Kyungwoon whipped around, startled by her sudden outburst. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Romi spun toward him, grabbing him by the collar. “Yes, something happened.”

“What is it?”

“I just remembered something I saw on the news.”

“Didn’t you mention that earlier? How there was something else you’d forgotten?”

Romi nodded once, wetting her lips. “I remembered something even more important, though.”

Hadam had heard that even with the battery at 0 percent, an electric car would still be able to get to the nearest charging station. She didn’t know if that was true, but even so, she would have found herself in this same situation, unable to get there because she had no idea where to go. Once the wind and rain had let up a bit, she was able to find the station by following Jaewoong’s car, which had a navigation system. While they were each driving in their respective cars, the storm of emotions that had suddenly enveloped them began to dissipate. But Jaewoong suggested that Hadam wait with him in his car while hers was plugged in to charge—not the most ideal arrangement, but she didn’t want to make things more uncomfortable by refusing his offer. The only place to look was straight ahead, through the windshield. They were crammed too close together to look at each other.

“Should we listen to some music?” Jaewoong asked, trying to shatter the awkward tension.

“It’s up to you.”

Jaewoong used his phone to put some on, the sound of something like city pop coming through his Bluetooth speakers and filling the car. It was the first time Hadam had heard this song, but the singer was famous enough that she recognized his voice right away. A song of his about meeting up with a past lover and asking how they’ve been had even climbed to the number one spot on the music charts. The song playing now sounded less sentimental than his other ballads, though, including that hit song. The opening lines of Yoon Jong-shin’s “Welcome Summer” breezily claimed that the hardships of the moment would not amount to even a grain of sand in the grand scheme of things.

The two of them listened for a moment to the lyrics that conjured memories of beautiful summer nights, of welcoming the summer and being in love.

Would there come a time when this day and this storm became memories too? When the rain stopped and the sun came out again, would their worries melt away like the song said they would?

“I’m sorry about earlier,” said Jaewoong quietly. “For shouting at you.”

“What’s with you?” Hadam had grown tired of this sort of back-and-forth, the way every conversation became a game of twenty questions. Remarking on the awkwardness, apologizing. Of course, things would be awkward, meeting up with someone you had dated for a long time after an even longer time had passed. But it was also bizarre, being this close. She didn’t want the strange burden of this relationship that was neither one of old lovers nor one of current friends.

But Hadam knew that before she could ask him what was with him, she needed to ask herself what was with her . People were always asking others the questions even they hadn’t yet answered.

The inside of the car began to fog up. Jaewoong turned on the air conditioner. When Hadam started to shiver a little, Jaewoong reached behind him and grabbed a jacket from the back seat. As she silently put it on, she felt his gaze lingering on her, persistent.

“As of right now, I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “I was just so worried. About you being out there alone. I didn’t even stop to think, What should I do now? ”

It was as she’d expected, but she still felt disappointed.

When Hadam didn’t answer, Jaewoong spoke to fill the silence again.

“I can’t tell you what’s going on with me now. Once I sort things out—once I get my thoughts in order, I will. But I wanted to help you. That’s the honest truth. Because I couldn’t help you all that time ago. Like you said.”

“There’s always so much you can’t tell me,” Hadam snapped. Even she was surprised by the reproachfulness in her tone. But to be reproachful, she must have had some sort of expectation, right? What could she have expected from him? Did she even have the right to expect anything?

For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of the windshield wipers clearing away the thinning rain. Like those wipers, Jaewoong’s quiet voice pushed away the silence that pooled between them.

“The thing I couldn’t tell you about nine years ago wasn’t my secret to tell. The reason I didn’t have the time to look after you back then was because I thought someone else needed my help more. That was my fault, for making a bad call.”

“What?” Hadam half turned to him. She hadn’t at all expected him to say that.

“It was our hoobae, Jeon Hwayoung.”

“Hwayoung? The same Hwayoung we were talking about yesterday?”

“You know—she got hurt that day. Falling from the second floor. But she didn’t jump because of the fire. It broke out after Hwayoung had already leaped.”

“What are you saying?”

Jaewoong bit the inside of his lip. He spoke slowly. “After I left yesterday, I called to check with her. I asked her if I could tell you the truth, and she gave me the go-ahead.”

“What the hell? I mean, if it wasn’t because of the fire, then why did she jump?”

“That day ... she was being sexually harassed. You know how we’d been drinking a bit. Hwayoung was alone in a room on the second floor, and she said someone came in. To escape them, she jumped out the window.”

“What? Who was it? I had no idea.” Hadam’s face had paled. She hadn’t known something like that had happened in such close proximity to her. On top of that, she’d been the person in charge at the filming site and had failed to look into it properly.

“Hwayoung didn’t want anyone to know. I convinced her to file a report and get an investigation started, but the fire broke out that same day, and she knew you would have a hard enough time with all that.”

The truth she was learning after all this time rattled Hadam even more than the typhoon had. As if he understood exactly what she was feeling, Jaewoong said, “It’s not your fault. And honestly, I don’t think that was the only reason she didn’t say anything. She told me it was dark, so she hadn’t gotten a good look at the person’s face, though she seemed to have an idea about who it was. But because of the fire, there was no evidence.”

In her head, Hadam ran through the conversation they’d had not long ago.

“And you thought it was Hyunsuk sunbae, right? Why?”

His expression hardened. “Because I saw him jump from the second floor that day. And until then, I had trusted him too. I thought that was the reason Hwayoung didn’t want to tell me who it was.”

“No way. If he’d done that to her, she wouldn’t have dated him later on.”

Jaewoong nodded. “You’re right. I misunderstood. When I talked to Hwayoung about it, she said she was sorry for letting me carry on thinking that when it wasn’t true. She also said she had the facts and evidence to share now, so the perpetrator would be revealed soon.”

There was always some confusion mixed in with long-buried truths. But as dizzying as they were, these truths couldn’t be avoided.

The wind that had shaken them as it passed through was growing more and more distant. A new landscape had been left in its wake.

Jaewoong looked at her seriously. “Hadam.”

It had been so long since she’d heard someone say her name with such familiarity.

“I’m sorry. I was so busy thinking there was someone else who really needed my help that I wasn’t able to look after you when you were going through so much. It was a long time ago now, I know, but I truly am sorry.”

A surge of emotion welled up inside her. She knew what had happened in their relationship and how it had ended were no one’s fault in particular, but it meant a lot to receive such a sincere apology.

“I’m sorry too,” she said. “I didn’t know what you were going through either, so all I could do was feel upset. I resented you for so long.”

The feeling that someone close to her had treated her as unimportant, as well as the feeling that she had been misunderstood, had settled at the bottom of her heart like sediment and hardened like stone over time. Nothing could grow from such impenetrable ground. Neither affection nor compassion could sprout. Hadam realized this at last.

Could something bloom inside her heart now, as scratched up as it had been by those shards of stone?

“Hadam, there’s something I want to tell you.”

In that moment, she couldn’t solidly grasp the shape of it, but she felt an anticipation that could shift into anything surging from deep within her heart.

“But I can’t tell you now,” Jaewoong stressed. “Tomorrow. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

Her anticipation folded. All she could do was cover it up so it didn’t wither away completely. “I understand. I’ll wait. Until you’re ready.”

“For now ... for now, let’s just stay like this.” He reached out his hand with hesitation. Hadam grabbed ahold of it firmly. Their fingers intertwined. Their relationship was already so far in the past, and the shape of it had changed. Even the texture of his hands was somewhat different. They seemed rougher. More calloused. But they were still the same size as they had been before, big enough to cover hers. Hadam realized she had never forgotten that detail. She hadn’t completely forgotten any of it. The feelings lingered the same way a body left a faint imprint on even the springiest bed.

Jaewoong squeezed her hand. Electricity slowly began to course through Hadam’s heart as if it were an appliance that had been plugged in again after a long time left sitting dormant. She rested her head on his shoulder.

But in that moment, she was forgetting something she had always kept in mind. The fact that, like the typhoon they hadn’t known was coming even a day before, it was impossible to know today what winds would blow in tomorrow.

“In here.”

Rain pouring down, Soo-eon used his key to open the wooden door that had been painted pink and blue, and Chakyung rushed inside. Before the wind could catch up, Soo-eon hurried in, too, and shut the door behind him.

This small surf shop, run by one of Soo-eon’s hyungs, faced the ocean near Sagye Beach. The shop was temporarily closed. Its owner had entrusted Soo-eon with a key before taking off for Bali. Rather than driving all the way back to Nol, Soo-eon figured it would be quicker to take cover inside.

“But the shop is really small, so we just used it more like a storage space, which is why there’s nothing here.” While Soo-eon, bag slung over his shoulder, went to change out of his wet suit, Chakyung took a look around. Long and short surfboards in a variety of colors hung on the wall to the left of the entrance. On a wooden shelf on the opposite wall were several small cans alongside surfboard fins and ankle leashes. Chakyung picked up one of the cans and read the label: “Sea Wax.” She couldn’t get a clear idea of what was in the can based on that. Several surfing magazines were scattered on the hammock-like net hanging from the ceiling. Beside the net were a wooden table and an old, worn fabric sofa, on which Chakyung took a seat.

Now wearing a T-shirt and shorts and carrying a towel, Soo-eon came back into the shop through the back door. He repeated what he’d told her earlier, almost like an excuse. “The shop is really small, and no one’s been in here for a while, so there’s not much to eat or do.”

“That’s fine.”

Seeing Soo-eon all freshened up, Chakyung became all the more unpleasantly aware of her own appearance, her rain-soaked hair sticking to her face. But she had no clothes to change into, and she didn’t want to shower here. Soo-eon seemed to have picked up on what she was thinking and didn’t suggest it either. Instead, he sat beside her on the sofa and wrapped her hair in the towel he’d grabbed from his truck.

“I look ridiculous, don’t I?” Chakyung reached out clumsily to take the towel from him, but Soo-eon didn’t let go. He continued to towel-dry her hair, one section at a time.

“No,” said Soo-eon, not hesitating for even a moment. “You always look nice.”

Chakyung couldn’t help but laugh. “Liar. You’ve always thought I looked pathetic since the first time we met.”

“Huh. I never once thought that.” He covered her forehead with the towel. While she couldn’t see his expression, he asked, “Why do you say that?”

“Hmm. Because from the start, you always tried to help me. Because you only ever saw me at my most exhausted.” The line between sympathy and interest had always been thin, and perhaps that was why Chakyung had felt so anxious all the time. But the edges of every emotion always ended up touching in that way.

“I never thought you were pathetic. I just wanted to help you. I think that’s a different emotion. One I don’t feel toward everybody.”

The wind outside still hadn’t stopped rattling the surf shop’s window frames. Meanwhile, inside, these passionate emotions had swept through like a storm and left the whole place briefly suspended in a lull. Having dried Chakyung’s hair, Soo-eon laid out the towel to dry on the arm of the sofa, then turned back to her. Chakyung felt like she had been rendered completely awkward, not knowing where to rest her eyes or hands.

“There’s no telling how long the typhoon will go on,” she said.

Soo-eon briefly shifted his gaze from her to the window. “You’re right.”

“We have a lot of time.” Chakyung clasped her hands, pretending to be studying a hangnail as she added unaffectedly, “Want to tell me the long, complicated story you mentioned before?”

“Hmm?”

“When ... when we were in your truck, the night we went to look for the golf clubs.”

“Oh, right.” Soo-eon stood and went over to where he’d set down his bag, took something out, and returned to the sofa. He handed the item he’d gotten to Chakyung. It was a leather frame with a photograph inside.

“This . . .”

“It’s a family photo. My family. Me, my mom, and my dad. Isn’t my mom beautiful?”

Chakyung silently studied the three faces in the photo. Soo-eon’s mother was an Asian woman with a long neck and elegant bone structure. And his father was gray-haired and ethnically hard to pin down. While Chakyung examined the photo, Soo-eon pulled his legs up on the sofa and crossed them, facing her.

“My dad was always like that. Always friendly, always trying to help the strangers he met on the street who seemed to be in a bind. It’s like people say—even if someone isn’t an angel in disguise, they may still be fated for you in ways you haven’t realized yet.”

Chakyung looked up. Soo-eon and his father looked exactly alike when they smiled, their eyes folding and disappearing.

“That was how my dad met my mom,” he said slowly. “That long, complicated story starts here. Do you still want to hear it?”

Chakyung returned the picture to him and answered sincerely, “Yes. I want to.”

Soo-eon’s eyes softened as he regarded the photo. “When you showed up at the airport looking exhausted, I thought of what my mother must have looked like back then. She was all alone in the Boston airport when she collapsed. I was still in her stomach. My mom ...” He traced a finger lovingly over her face. “She was studying abroad. Her boyfriend, my biological dad, was in the same situation. I don’t know all the details. The two of them dated. My mom got pregnant with me. Then she went to Boston, where he was studying, to tell him. But when she rang his doorbell, another woman answered. My mom sussed out the nature of her relationship to him and left. She didn’t even mention her pregnancy, went right back to the airport, and collapsed. She was about four months pregnant at the time, and things were looking bleak. The person who ended up taking care of my mom and escorting her back to San Francisco, where she was living, was the man who became the dad I have today. My mother thought it was a stroke of good luck that the two of them had met and happened to be going to the same place. My father thought it was fate.”

There are people who think of the coincidence of crossing paths in a world of several diverging roads as destiny. Sometimes when you meet such people, even by mere chance, that encounter becomes fate in their eyes.

“But my mom and dad didn’t get married until I was ten,” Soo-eon went on. “My mom said she didn’t want to accept my dad’s feelings for her because she thought he pitied her. And she hated depending on him because she’d grown weaker. She wanted to wait until she loved him too.”

“They seem so strong. Your mother, of course, and your father, who waited ten years,” Chakyung said quietly.

“My mom is a really strong person. She had me, quit school to find a job, and raised me all on her own. My dad also had a really strong heart. He didn’t know my mom well, so he kept circling around her all those years. I guess he was like a father to me ever since I was young, huh?”

Chakyung covered her face with both hands and lowered her head to her knees.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” Soo-eon leaned forward, gripping her shoulder and studying her with concern. “I’ll get you some water.”

But when he moved to stand, Chakyung reached up and grabbed his wrist with one hand.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just stay.”

With his wrist still in her grip, Soo-eon sat back down. Chakyung’s hunched shoulders fell. After a moment, she lifted her head and took a deep breath, then turned to look at him.

“That was so moving, I needed a second to calm down. My head is spinning, trying to figure out what I should do, and I feel ashamed now that I’ve heard your mother’s story.”

He understood. He nudged Chakyung’s fingers around his wrist loose with his free hand and interlocked their hands once again.

“Chakyung,” he said.

Outside, the lurching ocean seemed to suddenly subside. The window frames that had been rattling earlier seemed to have hushed and perked their ears up to listen. Chakyung’s heart began to pound anew at the sound of his gentle voice calling her name.

“You don’t need to do what my mother did. To wait to confirm that my feelings for you aren’t pity. Or to spend a long time waiting around for someone who’s not worth it.”

Chakyung shook her head but kept her hands in his.

“I’m not waiting for either one,” she said, painstakingly choosing her words. “It’s just—I want to sort out my feelings to the point where I don’t need to hesitate, where I’m able to face another person head-on.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that by “another person,” she meant him, not yet. That was her own self-consciousness.

Soo-eon brushed his thumbs over the back of her hands.

“I am my father’s son, so I can wait.” Then his hands fell from hers. Yet she didn’t feel the gesture was cold. “But I can’t guarantee you ten years.”

Chakyung remembered why she had first developed feelings for him. There was always a smile at the end of his sentences like a period, one that couldn’t be erased. Chakyung lowered her head until it came to rest firmly against his chest.

They decided to leave Soo-eon’s truck where it was in the surf shop’s parking lot and go back in Chakyung’s car. They didn’t say anything in particular, seeming to understand each other’s desire for their own space on the ride there. They didn’t know how their relationship would change under the constant gazes of the folks back at Nol. But they both knew it would.

The raindrops falling on the windshield quickly ran off the glass and vanished. The rain seemed to have thinned. The storm was moving farther away from the island.

At the entrance to the road that led up to Nol, someone’s KakaoTalk message-alert sounds began to ping in rapid succession. All the messages that had come in while the internet was out were coming through at once.

“It’s me,” Soo-eon said, taking his phone out of his pocket. He scrolled through with one hand and chuckled at the messages on the screen, using his other hand to scratch at the back of his head. Chakyung worried about what that meant, but she pretended to be focused solely on driving.

“This group chat I’m in is full of messages from people asking everyone if they’re okay. Some people messaged that I’m nuts for staying out so long in this weather—they were cursing me out, saying it must be no skin off my back to pay a fine.”

“Don’t do that again.” Chakyung looked and sounded stern. When she thought about how her heart had been racing as he was surfing those waves earlier, she felt angry that she couldn’t speak any more firmly than that.

“Of course—I really had no idea. That’s why I was out there. If I’d known a typhoon was coming, I wouldn’t have risked it. But it was because of those amazing barrels I rarely get to ride. Still, you’re right. I shouldn’t have done it.”

Soo-eon kept checking his Kakao messages and tapping out replies.

“I got a message from Taylor hyung too. Saying he caught his plane. Seems like he should be landing soon.”

“I feel like I’ve heard this Taylor person’s name several times in the last few days. You said he’s not an American, right? That his name had something to do with his line of work?” Chakyung turned the wheel and rounded a curb. Soo-eon nodded.

“Right. It’s from when he worked as a garment cutter in Seoul.”

“Ah, a tailor. So that’s where Taylor comes from.”

“Right, there’s that, but also—oh, wow.”

With some taps on his phone screen, Soo-eon zoomed in.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“Um, it’s Minsun. You know, my friend who works at that hotel. The one who told us where to find the golf bag.”

“Oh, right.”

“It looks like she’s getting married, and she sent me a message with the invitation. I’m just seeing it now.”

Chakyung vaguely remembered the face she had seen in the shadows of the hotel parking lot. She had been half out of her mind then, so she hadn’t gotten a proper look at Minsun, but she remembered the other woman had seemed cheery and kind.

“She seemed friendly. So she’s getting married. I didn’t even get to really thank her.”

“I know. Her wedding dress looks pretty.”

At the sound of the words “wedding dress,” Chakyung felt as though her heart had tumbled down several flights of stairs. But she was determined not to let that show in front of Soo-eon. “Is it?” she asked.

“You want to see?”

They were already almost at Nol. Chakyung made a wide turn and studied her side mirror as she tried to back the car up to park. Then she sneaked a glance at the screen of the phone Soo-eon was holding up for her to see. She couldn’t read the words in the message, but she could see the image right away. The car screeched to a stop. Chakyung had pressed too hard on the brake. Soo-eon lurched forward in his seat.

“Oof!”

“Oh no, I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

“It’s fine. You were parking and I was bothering you with something else.” Soo-eon made the okay sign, pressing his fingers into a circle.

“Wait a second,” Chakyung said, suddenly reaching out her hand. “Can I see that wedding invitation?”

Soo-eon seemed puzzled as he handed her the phone. Chakyung zoomed in with two fingers and studied the picture closely, a serious look dawning on her face.

“Is something wrong?” asked Soo-eon.

“No, it’s just . . .”

Someone’s car pulled up beside them. The passenger window on the other car rolled down, and Chakyung looked up. It was Romi. She was shouting something. Chakyung rolled down her window as well.

“Chakyung, there’s something important I have to tell you! It was something I forgot and just remembered again, something I need to tell Hadam too—”

Chakyung held up Soo-eon’s phone. “I think I know what it is.”

By the time Hadam arrived at Nol, the rain had stopped, and the clouds had dispersed. Her hair whipped around as she got out of her car and walked over to Jaewoong’s. He opened his car door and stepped out too.

“I’ll get going, then,” he said.

“You’re going to leave, just like that? You should go inside, have some tea, at least. Your clothes haven’t even dried yet.”

“No, it’s fine. I think I should head back first.”

Hadam frowned slightly. “You can’t stop by just for a little while? I’ll feel awful if I send you off like this now.”

“Well ... I guess I could stay for a bit? I’ll go find an actual parking spot and meet you inside.”

Hadam didn’t cross through the café but instead traversed the garden to the shared courtyard with the glass roof. Chakyung and Romi were sitting at the table, looking at something together. Hadam didn’t see the other people there with them.

“Hadam!” Romi stood up. “Are you okay?”

Hadam saw Chakyung furtively lower the phone they had been studying, but she thought nothing of it. She was just embarrassed about having caused such a mess for her friends.

“I’m sorry for worrying you both. I’m fine. Just an idiot—I should have checked that my car had charged properly before I went out,” Hadam said.

“No one knew the weather would take such a sudden turn,” said Chakyung, her face full of concern.

“I know. Everyone else is okay, right? Still, I’m so glad the storm is past us now.”

The other two women hesitated for a moment before Chakyung spoke again.

“Yes, everyone who went out earlier says they’re fine. But did you come back alone? What about ...?”

“Oh, Jaewoong? He’s—”

Right then at the mention of his name, Jaewoong appeared in the courtyard. Hadam turned to him with a brilliant smile.

“There he is,” she said. “I convinced him to have some tea before heading out.”

Romi and Chakyung exchanged a look. Just as Romi opened her mouth, Chakyung grabbed her hand with a subtle shake of her head.

“Right. Let’s have some tea together. I was looking earlier and saw they had a good variety here.” Chakyung stood and headed toward the sink, Hadam following after her.

“Ah, I’ll do it,” Romi said, gesturing to Jaewoong. “Please, sit here.”

Chakyung sneaked a look at Romi over her shoulder, but Romi turned away and focused her attention on Jaewoong. Hadam missed this little pantomime act while she was washing her hands.

“Thank you for going out to get Hadam,” Romi said.

“No problem,” Jaewoong answered curtly.

“Don’t government workers have a lot to do when there’s a typhoon coming?” Chakyung asked, sounding incredibly calm as she flipped on the switch for the electric kettle. “Seeing as you came all the way out here to Seogwipo, you must have been really worried.”

Jaewoong didn’t respond, wearing that trademark look of light concern, like that on the face of Yi I on the five-thousand-won bill.

“What about you, Chakyung? Were you here the whole time?” Hadam asked.

At her question, Chakyung’s hand stopped in midair as she was spooning tea leaves into a mug. “Oh, I went out for a bit,” she said.

“In this wind?”

“Well, I thought someone was in danger—or, I knew they were in danger, so ...”

That someone’s voice now came from the direction of the entrance, leaving no room for any questions as to who it was.

“Oh, you all were in here.” Soo-eon bowed his head a bit and swept his hand through his soaked hair as he came over. Chakyung didn’t turn around, but Hadam saw the pinkness that spread across her cheeks.

Soo-eon’s attention, though, was not on Chakyung. He had been passing in front of the table, but stopped when he spotted Jaewoong and pointed. “Oh! You!”

Jaewoong looked at him in surprise. “Sorry?”

“It’s you, right? With Minsun.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Mug in hand, Hadam turned toward them. Soo-eon was smiling as if he’d run into someone he was happy to see, but Jaewoong had a strange expression on his face. He seemed a bit taken aback, as well as confused. Romi shrugged with both her hands up, eyes widening. From behind Hadam, Chakyung let out a noticeable sigh.

“You’re the one Minsun’s marrying, right? I saw the wedding invitation. Minsun’s a friend of mine. We surf together.” Soo-eon took out his phone and opened the KakaoTalk app, tapped a few things, and held the phone out. “Congratulations.”

Chakyung just barely managed to catch the coffee cup wobbling precariously toward the edge of the table. It was the mug Hadam had set down unconsciously.

Hadam held her hand out to Soo-eon. “Can I see?”

Once Soo-eon handed her the phone, looking perplexed, Hadam zoomed in on the picture on the screen.

The woman beaming in her wedding dress looked seven or eight years younger than Jaewoong. On the e-invitation, the caption “Two people who met on the blue island, now bound to each other” appeared boldly along with the names of the couple: Gu Jaewoong and Go Minsun.

Jaewoong stood up. “Hadam.”

She quietly returned the phone to Soo-eon. “Thank you.”

Soo-eon looked at Chakyung as he accepted his phone, but she was just frowning.

Jaewoong grabbed Hadam’s hand. “Hadam.”

She coldly shook him off. “Forget it. You should get going.”

“Hadam, I was going to tell you.”

Jaewoong grabbed both her shoulders, trying desperately to get her to look at him. She spun around and stared straight into his eyes.

“You.”

Soo-eon took a step back from them, overcome by an unidentifiable feeling. He must have had uncanny intuition, because right then Hadam’s fist struck Jaewoong’s jaw with a sound like a clap of thunder. Jaewoong fell back, dropping to the floor.

“Don’t touch me, you asshole! What is this, the plot of Architecture 101 ?”

Neither Romi nor Chakyung had ever heard such words from Hadam’s mouth. They’d had no idea her voice could even reach such an impressive volume.

Jaewoong’s cheek quickly swelled up. Soo-eon, still baffled, looked to Chakyung and mouthed, What’s going on? But she couldn’t tell him, even though she knew.

Hadam spun around, intending to stalk off, back toward the café. But immediately she bumped into someone in a checkered shirt.

“Hi, everyone—”

Kyungwoon lifted a hand to greet the others but noted the serious tension in the air and stopped himself partway. He looked around the room. There was a man with his head bowed and his cheek swollen bright red. There was Soo-eon, standing behind the other man like a cowering puppy watching a fight from a distance. There was Chakyung, leaning against the sink and fiddling with her hair. There was Romi by the window, hands pressed flat against the table as she stood. And there was Hadam in front of him, rubbing her shoulder.

A moment later, a man in a Hawaiian-print shirt appeared behind Kyungwoon, grabbing his shoulders. “Hyung, how come you’re standing here blocking the doorway?”

The man peeked around Kyungwoon and spotted Soo-eon, eyes going round. The green palm trees on his black shirt looked bright and blissfully unaware.

“Soo-eon, what’s going on in here?”

Soo-eon looked up at him and lifted a hand. “Oh, Taylor hyung.”

Chakyung thought the newcomer somewhat resembled Kyungwoon. Of course he would. They were cousins, after all. More so than in their facial features, they bore a striking resemblance in height and the general impressions they gave off. The man they called Taylor stepped around Kyungwoon, who was still standing there blankly in the doorway, and as he entered the kitchen, he waved in the direction of the window.

“Do Romi? What are you doing here?”

At his cheerful greeting, Romi turned to him, her eyes wide and her lips pursed. “Um. Who are you?”

Kyungwoon gave the two of them a pointed look.

The guy in the Hawaiian shirt wore a broad, friendly smile and strode right up to Romi. “You don’t remember me?” he said. “We met three years ago when you came to Jeju for an exhibit.”

Hadam whipped around. Romi’s mouth had fallen open, but no words or sounds were coming out.

“You? You’re the one who met Romi three years ago?” Kyungwoon asked.

The guy in the Hawaiian shirt turned to his older cousin and smiled. “Yeah, I told you all about it. An illustrator I really liked was coming to Jeju, so I wanted to meet her. I even showed you her art.” He immediately looked contrite, as if he’d completely forgotten about Kyungwoon’s amnesia for a moment.

Kyungwoon made eye contact with Romi. “Right,” he said slowly. “So the person Romi spoke to that day must have been you. A garment cutter. Not a bee farmer.”

Romi didn’t say a word. All she could do was look back and forth between Kyungwoon and the Hawaiian shirt guy, Taylor—no, the tailor.

A piercing sound rang out through the kitchen. The mug Chakyung had caught on the table’s edge earlier had dropped at last, shattering into pieces.