Romancing on Jeju

After dinner, Chakyung . . .

After dinner, Chakyung knocked on the door. Even though she was also staying in the room and had the right to waltz in as she pleased, she felt that now was the time to be considerate. There was no answer, so she quietly entered. The room was dim, not a single light on. Romi lay face down under the blankets on the bed. On the opposite side of the room, Hadam lay wrapped in blankets on the floor. They were two big anguished lumps crammed into one space. Chakyung didn’t know whose situation she ought to address first. She carefully flipped on a light switch and set a tray of food on the table.

“I brought up some curry,” she said. “Ayoung made it, and you both need to eat.”

There was no response from either of the lumps. Chakyung sighed. She knew it would be best to give it a rest and leave them alone at the moment, but at the same time, they couldn’t stay here forever. The wisest thing to do would be to leave their problems on the island. But could they accept leaving with these loose ends untied?

“Romi, it’s all right. No one else knows.”

Romi sharply tossed her blankets aside. “But Kyungwoon knows!”

Chakyung couldn’t grab on to the stream of her own thoughts. She approached the bed and sat down beside Romi.

“I know. But he probably won’t think worse of you because of it.”

“He’ll just think about how stupid I am! I can’t hear the difference between ‘garments’ and ‘farming.’ I can’t tell two people’s faces apart. And I don’t even have amnesia, so why can’t I remember things? He probably thinks I’m crazy.”

“No way.” He wouldn’t think that. Not if he had gotten to know Romi. He would know it wasn’t unusual for her to mix up words and faces. Of course, this was a higher-stakes situation now that she’d mistaken someone for the man she thought she’d fallen for, but this was Romi—it would have been more shocking had she recognized the right person from the start. “There’s no way he would think that.” Chakyung shook her head. “People’s memories aren’t perfect. Especially not memories from three years ago. Also, the two of them are cousins, and Kyungwoon’s appearance changed a bit in the accident. He has no memories either. It’s no wonder you were mistaken.”

“But what kind of person makes that big a mistake? The guy tells me he hems jeans and cuts garments, but somehow I hear that he keeps bees for farming.”

“They’re near rhymes,” said Chakyung, recalling what she’d learned during her college years in a class on Korean semantics. “I can see how someone could mix them up.”

According to Soo-eon, the real Honeyman that Romi had met was embarrassed about his Korean name—Yang Boknam—because of how old-fashioned it was, so he had a habit of mumbling his way through self-introductions. That was why he asked his friends to call him Taylor when he’d started working as a garment cutter. When Chakyung asked why he hadn’t corrected Romi when she’d misheard him, Boknam said he didn’t like correcting others. Chakyung could understand that. Especially if he’d thought he would never see Romi again.

“He’s at fault, too, for not clearing up the misunderstanding. It’s not like you did anything bad—”

“It was bad that I misheard him in the first place. And that I couldn’t tell him apart from his cousin. How humiliating. I mean, dogs have an uncanny ability to recognize people—even a dog wouldn’t have made the same mortifying mistake.” Romi covered her face with her hands again and sniffled.

Chakyung resisted the urge to laugh, knowing that doing so would risk their friendship. No matter how absurd the things she was hearing seemed at the moment, she knew she had to respond in all seriousness.

She took Romi’s hands in hers. “There’s no need to compare yourself to a dog, Romi,” she said. “They’re superior to most humans when it comes to things like sincerity anyway. But that doesn’t mean you’re no better than a dog. It just means you’re like every other human being who makes mistakes.”

The same way I have, she thought bitterly. I made a huge mistake.

“We all have different ways of perceiving the world and remembering things,” she went on. “You have your own way that’s unique to you. And because our ways are different, there will be times when we make mistakes or fool ourselves, but if we never allowed that, we would never fall in love.”

Romi looked up, her face stained with tears. “Do you think so?”

Chakyung couldn’t tell whom Romi had in mind at that moment. Honeyman? Or his older cousin?

“It’s better to have fooled yourself. Rather than be fooled by someone else.”

A voice muffled by blankets spoke up from across the room. Hadam’s face was hidden where she lay curled up on the floor.

“Even though I was continually being lied to, I had no idea. I mean, it was stupid of me to assume he didn’t have a girlfriend from the start, wasn’t it? At his age, in these times. Maybe before he got married, he wanted to see his ex from ages ago and have his fun with her while she was in town. And I must have wanted to feel like the main character in a movie or book. I must have wanted to believe he hadn’t forgotten me.”

Chakyung and Romi stared in her direction.

“Of course, what Jaewoong did was wrong,” Chakyung began cautiously, “but he said he was going to tell you.”

She remembered his new wristwatch. From the first time she saw him at the Honeycomb Guesthouse, that TAG Heuer watch had caught her eye. It was a more expensive model and clearly brand-new, but she hadn’t thought too hard about it, just assumed he was interested in watches. She had seen the same model on the wrist of the concierge at the hotel, but she hadn’t drawn the connection. She’d thought it was an unusual coincidence, but not one worth mentioning to Hadam. Chakyung caught herself wondering why she felt compelled to consider the situation from Jaewoong’s perspective.

Hadam tossed off the blankets and sat up straight. “If he was going to tell me, then what was stopping him? He didn’t say a thing! Why was he so worried about the typhoon? And why, why did he hold me like he did? Why make me the other woman to someone else’s fiancée?”

Chakyung and Romi exchanged a look. So he’d even held her ... In that case, it made sense that Hadam was furious, but then again, given how often men and women hugged each other in modern society, a simple embrace may not have been such a big deal. Even something more than that wouldn’t have been strange. But the two of them did their duty as her close friends and kept their mouths shut.

This all had gotten especially complicated for Chakyung. When she spoke about other people’s situations, it was hard not to interject her own point of view. Any other time, she would have been able to offer a more level-headed assessment of the situation. But at the moment, she wasn’t sure where she stood on anything.

“I’ve seen so many movies like that,” Hadam went on, murmuring to herself more than anyone else. “So many men like that, chasing after a bit of fun with another woman before they get married, looking for assurance that they’re still the kind of men it’ll be a shame to see taken off the market. I thought things would be different. I believe my stance is always clear. Even knowing that I have a hard time telling excitement apart from love when I’m traveling, I fell for the act anyway. Having someone encouraging me when I was feeling anxious after quitting my job made my heart waver yet again ...”

Chakyung thought back to Hadam’s shouting about the movie Architecture 101 and decking Jaewoong in the face, but she knew now was not the time to laugh.

“If you look at it that way, I was the biggest fool of all,” she said instead. “With no idea what kind of person the man I was going so far as to marry was. Or maybe I did know, but I just closed my eyes to the truth. I knew he went to clubs, and there were times I had a feeling he was talking to other women. But I didn’t ask him about it because of my pride. I thought it was enough that he seemed like a decent guy on paper, that he wasn’t so bad when he was with me. I thought that kind of pattern matching was the same as love, that letting the unforgivable things slide was the same as compromising. That was the most foolish part.”

Hadam was silent as she listened to her friend’s self-disparaging remarks. Chakyung hadn’t mentioned Chanmin once since the day he came by Nol, and Romi and Hadam hadn’t spoken to each other about it either. They all acted as if nothing had happened.

“Well, you couldn’t have done anything about that,” Romi assured her. “It’s hard not to be fooled by someone determined to fool you!”

Hadam reared up, clenching her fists. “Exactly. Who could win against an expert liar? You can’t call someone a fool for believing in lies.”

Chakyung wondered whether this wasn’t a sudden and complete attitude shift for two people who had been curled up under the blankets just moments earlier, but she took comfort in their words nonetheless. Still, she couldn’t simply ignore the reality.

“I don’t think it was their lies that pulled the wool over our eyes,” she said.

Hadam brought a chair over from the table and placed it next to the bed. “What was it, then?”

“Could it have been that we all had our own expectations for what a typical romance should be? Meeting your perfect match by chance, going on an appropriate number of dates like you see on social media, getting married and starting a so-called normal family. Weren’t those fantasies also lies?”

They were all silent at first. Then Hadam spoke up, sounding glum.

“I guess even I can’t say I didn’t harbor some version of those expectations. I think I got caught up in the narrative of two lovers reuniting after a years-long misunderstanding. Maybe it was because we share the same passion for movies. I must have dreamed up a beautiful ending for us, like some kind of romance novel.”

“Getting swept up in delusions has to be a patented Do Romi trademark,” Romi said. “I managed to come up with a fantasy about a guy I saw once three years ago and couldn’t even remember. Clearly, I’ve seen way too many dramas about meet-cutes while traveling.”

Romance lies to us. The countless love stories of our generation deceive us. They cover our eyes and turn us away from the obvious truth, passing off relationships that would require endless compromise to maintain in real life as love. Romance has the same bitter taste as betrayal—a false belief from the start. This was the painful truth the three of them had discovered on this trip to find love.

“What is this, a self-reflection session: Jeju Island edition?” Chakyung said with a slightly bitter smile. “Are we each coming clean about where we went wrong?”

Romi waved her hands. “No, let’s not go down that path. None of this was our fault. In the end, it was our expectations about romance to blame.”

“You’re right! To hell with romance!” Hadam banged her fists on her lap. But her friends said nothing. “Oh, come on. What’s up with you two?”

Romi leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. “I know it’s stupid, but I can’t give it up.”

“What?”

“Romance. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t give up on it. Because when I do manage to find it, I like it too much.”

The sound of barking came in through the window. Chakyung crossed the room and opened the curtains. Someone was in the yard petting a dog. A man in a baggy T-shirt was on one knee, but he wasn’t hunching; his shoulders were ramrod straight. Chakyung could only see him from behind, but she could tell from a glimpse of his side profile that he was laughing. A tingling sensation ran from the tips of her fingers through her veins until it reached her heart.

“To hell with romance, all right,” she muttered.

Romi and Hadam couldn’t see the expression on her face, but there were moments when certain emotions exuded from a person’s back alone.

She spoke quietly, her hand pressed against the window. “You might know full well what a shitty concept romance is, but you still can’t abandon it. Even when you end up getting fooled again, you can’t cast it aside. You know it’s wrong, but you fall for it time after time. Because you can’t help dreaming that you’ll find the real thing.”

Just then, the puppy barked toward the window. Soo-eon looked up, shielding his eyes with his hand. Chakyung didn’t know if he could see her, but he grinned. Even in the dark, she could see his beaming smile.

“So I guess romance really does screw us in the end,” Chakyung said softly.

Lingering vestiges from the typhoon swept through the night, rustling the trees.

Project: Searching for Honeyman

Day Seven, Seogwipo

The traces of the wind had disappeared, leaving the sky perfectly blue and clear as glass. On sunny days on the island, everyone wanted to get out and go somewhere. Chakyung went to a traditional teahouse in Seogwipo with its own green-tea fields for a marketing research meeting about the company’s green-tea cosmetics. Hadam wanted to wrap up the rest of her filming and said she would be wandering around the area close by. Romi spent the entire day holed up in the apartment, drawing on her tablet. She didn’t want to see anyone. Even in the midst of heartbreak, a person had to work.

She may have been able to withstand the hunger—she’d wolfed down the curry Chakyung had brought up to the room the night before—but it was hard for any human being to endure without so much as water. She thought about getting some from the tap and cooking up something on the stove. She could even make barley tea or green tea. But the fridge in their room was empty. She waited until she thought there might not be anyone downstairs and sneaked into the kitchen through the courtyard. If she played it cool, no one would notice her. She was filling her jug with water from the purifier when a man in a black long-sleeved shirt and slacks came in through the door to the café, a coffee mug in his hands.

“Oh, Romi! You’re here.”

Even without looking up at him, Romi knew it was Boknam.

“Yep, I am.” She bowed her head, hurriedly clamping the lid back on her jug and heading out of the kitchen.

“Romi, wait up!”

The jug was too slender to hide her whole face, but Romi held it up anyway and shuffled out to the courtyard. Boknam followed, awkwardly calling after her, but she pretended not to hear him.

“Romi! Romi! Just because you cover your face doesn’t mean I can’t see you!”

He rushed in front of her, blocking her way.

“Romi, please—let’s talk.”

She gave up and lowered the jug. Boknam led her toward the table in the courtyard. He folded his hands and placed them on the table. Now that she was getting a good look at him for the first time, the only similarities between him and Kyungwoon were their slim faces and their heights—their facial features themselves were quite different. Romi had chalked these differences up to the accident.

“I heard you mistook me for—I mean, you thought the person you met three years ago was Kyungwoon hyung.”

Romi’s jaw dropped. “Did Kyungwoon tell you that? What did he say?”

“No, I heard from Ayoung and some of the others. They said ... it seemed like you came to Jeju to find the person you’d met back then.”

Romi said nothing in reply.

Boknam chose his words carefully. “I went on talking to you like I was involved in bee farming, and I caused you to misunderstand.”

Head bowed, Romi fixed her gaze on his folded hands. Quietly, she asked, “Why did you do it? Why did you lie?”

He seemed taken aback by her question. “I—”

“You came to see me, but were you afraid I would recognize you later? Were you hiding your identity?”

“No, I wasn’t thinking about all that. It was because you’d misheard me first. I thought about correcting you, but you kept wanting to talk about bee farming.”

“I see. Well, my hearing is clearly terrible, but still—you could have told me.”

“I mean, it was honestly sort of funny—”

Romi slammed her hands on the table, rattling the jug next to her. Boknam hurriedly reached out to stop it from falling over.

“It was funny? Making a fool of someone was funny to you?”

The smile on his face vanished. He drew back his hands and lowered his head. “I’m sorry. At the time, I didn’t think we would see each other again.”

He didn’t think they would see each other again. No matter how Romi thought about it, this hurt more than if he’d simply deceived her. While she’d been dreaming about moving to Jeju for him, he’d been thinking the two of them would never again cross paths.

Romi thought back to Hadam’s birthday, the day this Searching for Honeyman project had begun. She remembered the guesses they’d made that day as to why she hadn’t been able to find him—because he was married, because he’d lost his memory. They thought all their predictions had turned out to be correct, but they hadn’t. The true answer, in the end, was that the real Honeyman simply wasn’t interested. He just wasn’t that into her.

“Then why did you come back the second day? Why did you change your clothes and switch cars?”

“Because I had so much fun the first day. The second day was fun too—I enjoyed the time we spent together. The clothes I wore that first day were hyung’s clothes because I’d come straight from helping him with his work, but the second day, I went more with my style. It was the same with the car. I borrowed hyung’s truck the first day and his wife’s car the second. I was still staying at their house at the time, so I didn’t have a car of my own.”

Romi was at a loss for words. His response was so innocent. She realized why she’d been so certain Kyungwoon was the one when she first saw him. On day one, Boknam was dressed in the same sweater Kyungwoon was wearing in the photos in the gallery, and his truck was identical to the one Boknam had driven. She thought she would remember him, but in reality, all that had remained in her heart were these faint impressions. Weren’t such impressions all that memories of a person were? The clothes they wore that day, the car they drove, certain specific moments. Faded memories she’d believed were crystal clear.

Ultimately, the blame lay with human memory and romanticism. To hell with romance, as she and her friends had declared the day before—she had once been so immersed in the love-story narrative that she dreamed of that sort of ending, where a pleasant time spent in the company of another person would lead to an intimate relationship. But he had never promised her anything of the sort, had never shown an inkling of interest in that at all.

“I get it now,” Romi said, mustering all the poise she typically lacked. “You enjoyed meeting me. But not enough to go to the trouble of seeking me out again once I left.”

Just a few days earlier when her friends asked her why she was going to search for Honeyman, she’d said the same thing. She thought it would be fun. But it was different in Boknam’s case. For him, that fun wasn’t enough to want to see her again, while for Romi it had been enough for her to come back to find him.

Boknam waved his hands. “It’s not like that,” he said. “I really did like you.”

If she’d heard those words the first time she’d come to Jeju, Romi would have been thrilled. But timing could change things, and the same words now took on a different meaning.

“I see.”

“The reason I came to see you twice wasn’t because I was plotting anything, but because I really wanted to talk to you.” Boknam poured some water from the jug into his coffee mug. Romi thought that would make the coffee taste stale, but Boknam didn’t seem to mind. Romi tasted a faint, secondhand bitterness in her mouth.

“You don’t have to say that just because,” she said.

He seemed to deflate at that, fidgeting with the handle on his mug. When Romi first met him, she thought he was older than she was or else around the same age, but looking straight at him now, she realized she’d been wrong.

“I’m sorry,” said Boknam, resting his hands on his knees and bowing his head in apology. “I shouldn’t have lied like that, whether I was kidding around or not.”

“It’s fine,” she said.

When Boknam looked up again, his voice was so quiet as to seem foreboding. “But part of me feels so glad we were able to meet again like this,” he said.

“What?”

“I didn’t know you’d been thinking about me so earnestly for three years. If I’d known how you felt, I probably would have thought about you the same way.”

“I’m sorry?” Romi couldn’t properly answer him, seeing how his eyes had softened with so much sudden affection.

“Even now, our fates have brought us together again.”

Romi bolted up. “What are you saying?”

Was this some kind of hidden camera prank? It felt like the exact scene she had dreamed up coming into this trip. Reuniting with the beekeeper (who’d turned out to be a tailor), confessing her true feelings. But was this really what she’d had in mind?

Someone cleared their throat. Kyungwoon stood in the doorway with a cup in his hands. Romi panicked. Had he heard their conversation? How much of it? Could everyone hear them all the way from the kitchen?

“Did I interrupt something? I was just heading out, so you two can continue your private chat.”

“It’s not like that!” Romi shouted, surprising even herself.

Boknam caught on and stood up, too, awkwardly pointing toward the exit. “I’d also better get back to the café. I’ll talk to you later, Romi. See you tonight.”

She could see a signal that was impossible to misunderstand in the glint in Boknam’s eyes. A green light.

“But—but—”

Boknam vanished without hearing her reply.

For a moment, an uneasy silence lingered between Kyungwoon and Romi. He gestured toward the exit with his cup, too, turning to leave. “I should also get going.”

“Wait!” Romi called.

He stopped and turned around again.

“Um.” What should she say? That she was sorry for mistaking him for someone else? That she was wrong for needlessly causing him so much confusion, for having fallen for someone else? Should she ask him to forget everything that had happened? Her head was a tangled mess of thoughts.

Kyungwoon was watching her, waiting.

“I’m sorry! For being so weird!” Romi bowed a full ninety degrees. Then, worried he would see her roots growing out as it had been a while since she’d dyed her hair, she snapped upright again.

Kyungwoon continued to study her. “You’re not weird,” he said. “And everything turned out just fine. You found the person you were looking for.”

He’d heard them! Romi felt her throat close up. She poured herself a glass of water from her jug and gulped it down. As she did, she remembered how parched she had been.

“No,” she said. “Or, you’re right, I did, but—”

“The person you met who inspired you three years ago was Boknam, and Boknam is interested in you too. Seems like a great outcome. And you don’t have to worry about me. I won’t tell anyone what happened.”

Romi felt like each of his carefully chosen words had stomped on her heart and kept walking. “Why are you saying that? Like you don’t know how I feel—”

“How do you feel?” Kyungwoon asked. He had always moved at a slower rhythm, waiting until others finished speaking to chime in, so to have him interrupt her now left Romi speechless. Even she didn’t know exactly how she felt. Whom did she have feelings for? The person she had known back then? This new person she had just met? Where did feelings born out of a misunderstanding eventually land?

“I . . .”

What about you? Don’t you care that the person I fell for in the past wasn’t you? Romi wanted to ask, but in the end, she said nothing. It would be too shameless.

Kyungwoon stood there for a moment, seemingly waiting for Romi to continue. Time slipped by unnoticed.

At last, Kyungwoon spoke up again. “I lost my memories, so the only Romi that I know is the version of you standing here in front of me. But the version of me that you know isn’t actually me.” He paused for a moment, looking at Romi. “I guess sometimes having amnesia is more convenient.”

With that, he left the courtyard. Romi plunked down onto her seat. It occurred to her that she ought to drink her fill of water now and grab a few barley tea bags to bring back upstairs. That way, she wouldn’t have to leave the room for a long time.

Perhaps because the weather had cleared up, a bunch of young surfers in their wet suits were there dripping water onto the floor of the café well into the late afternoon. The energy they exuded left a deep impression on Hadam. She made a mental note to film something focused on surfers next.

Hadam didn’t cut through the café but instead went around the building and through the yard. Though not to the same extent as Romi, Hadam also didn’t want to see anyone. She wanted to get back to the room, and fast.

She was treading carefully over the grass when she spotted a black figure moving in the shadows in a corner of the yard. She almost dropped her camera in surprise.

“Geez, you scared me.”

The shadowy figure also took a step back, seeming startled, but her voice was quiet when she spoke. “Hadam? It’s me.”

“Sumi? What are you doing here?”

Sumi, whom she had only ever seen wearing linen shirts in natural colors and wide-legged pants or long skirts, was dressed in a black hoodie and jeans, gripping a black backpack in her hands. Maybe Sumi was actually a really sporty person, Hadam thought. The other woman hurriedly slung the backpack onto her shoulders.

“I came to talk with Ayoung about our meetings. We’re holding the next one at our place, the Honeycomb. I was wondering what I should prepare.” Sumi looked behind her as she spoke, her voice somewhat high-pitched.

“I think I saw Ayoung inside the café.”

“Oh, right—I just got here. I was going to head to the café through the kitchen, but I saw Romi and Kyungwoon talking in the courtyard.”

Following Sumi’s gaze, Hadam could see Kyungwoon leaving. She only caught a brief glimpse of him from a distance, but she thought his face looked serious.

“Did something ... happen with the two of them? Was Kyungwoon the reason Romi came to Jeju in the first place?”

“No, not at all!” Hadam said, probably too quickly. Sumi didn’t seem to believe her, but she murmured “All right” anyway. It seemed some doubts about their relationship had already firmly taken root in her mind. Or she might have been genuinely uninterested. Sumi coolly adjusted the straps on her backpack and started to walk away.

“Well, then—ack!”

Hadam whipped her head around at the sound of something rustling behind her. When she realized what it was, her heart resettled.

“Pilhyun sunbae? What brings you here again?”

“Um.”

When he didn’t answer right away, Hadam suddenly had a hunch.

“What, did Jaewoong tell you to come by and check on me?”

She must have hit the nail on the head, because Pilhyun pouted slightly. “Well, he didn’t say those exact words, but ...”

“Go back and tell him to mind his own business.”

“What?”

“Tell him I said to mind his own business!”

Startled by the outburst, Sumi staggered back a couple steps. People in the courtyard craned their necks to see what all the noise was about. The bee farmer—no, the tailor—as well as Sumi’s husband and Department Head Boo all appeared at the window. Department Head Boo looked like a Messenger emoji with his round face and round eyes. Why were all these people here every day? Hadam wanted to know. Were they that close? Did they have nothing better to do? Either way, they always seemed to be the audience for the drama Hadam and her friends couldn’t seem to escape. She felt embarrassed now for shouting.

“Sorry, sunbae. I’m really tired today. I think I’d better turn in.”

“Sure,” said Pilhyun curtly. He seemed to be in a sour mood.

Hadam couldn’t quite interpret his expression. But she didn’t have the energy to lend much thought to how he was feeling at the moment. She was upset, too, and there were all these people watching.

The three shadows cast by the afternoon sun intersected on the grass. As Hadam passed by Sumi and Pilhyun, she saw the two of them exchange nods. Did they know each other? Hadam wondered. It wouldn’t have been all that unusual. It was a small world. The island was even smaller. Jaewoong and his fiancée, the young surfers—they were all linked in a chain of mutual connections. Were the mainlanders the only ones not in that loop?

The first one to hear Chakyung’s footsteps in the darkness and come running was none other than the puppy. It hadn’t been more than a few days since she’d found him, and already the thought that this creature remembered her made her heart ache; it was so adorable. He leaped around excitedly as Chakyung sat down with him and scratched under his chin. She caught a pleasant whiff of the smell coming from the dog’s sun-warmed fur. She could immediately tell without looking whose fresh shower-gel scent it was.

“You’re back late today. Did you have dinner?”

She looked up, her heart lifting before her head fully had. Before their eyes even met, she knew his would be gleaming with a smile.

“Yes, I had dinner with my coworkers after our meeting wrapped up.”

“Something tasty?” Soo-eon plopped down across from her. The dog let out low, contented sighs, loving the additional attention.

“Well, since we’re all visiting Jeju, everyone just wanted to have raw fish.”

She could have come back earlier, but she purposely hadn’t. She knew when she did, she’d have to face Soo-eon, and as much as she wanted to see him, she was afraid too.

He didn’t ask her anything else, just continued to gently pet the dog. “Were you bored today, Gnarly? You were all alone, weren’t you?”

“Gnarly?”

“That’s what I named him. G-n-a-r-l-y. It’s surfer slang for ‘amazing,’ ‘daring,’ ‘cool’—that sort of thing. I want him to live big even though he’s little.”

“I see. It’s a nice name.”

Time flew by just doting on the puppy. Gnarly must have been in a good mood, resting his head on Chakyung’s palm. She beamed at him. Watching them, Soo-eon suddenly asked, “What are you going to do?”

“About what?”

“Gnarly. What would you like to do with him?”

“I should figure that out. I ... have to head back to Seoul tomorrow.” Chakyung realized how silly she sounded. She must have seemed so irresponsible.

When she’d contacted the pet shelter, they told her no one had reported a white poodle missing. When she’d first taken him in off the streets, she had the vague notion that she’d keep him for a day or two and then send him off to the shelter. So that he could find a new owner. Chakyung looked into the dog’s eyes, black like baduk stones. Would he be able to find a new home? There were nearly six thousand abandoned pets on Jeju alone.

“I can keep him here with me at Nol for now,” Soo-eon said, reaching out to scratch between Gnarly’s ears. The dog leaned his head back. This was, as Soo-eon had said, a “for now” fix. But Chakyung was the one who’d taken the dog in. It was one thing to cross paths on the street and offer help. But it wasn’t often that a chance encounter like this ended up coming home with you, becoming part of your everyday life. Could Chakyung care for a dog? Technically, she needed to work only the standard hours at her company, but in reality, there was a lot of voluntary overtime. She lived with her parents, but her mother was allergic to animal fur. More than that, she couldn’t be sure what they would say once they found out she wasn’t marrying Chanmin.

“But the problem is, I’ll probably only be able to keep him for a couple months. It’ll be hard to bring him with me to Bali,” Soo-eon said.

Chakyung’s heart sank at that unexpected announcement. “Did you say Bali?”

He had said it casually, but with the certainty of someone whose plans had already been made.

“I did. I’m headed there this winter. To run a surfing camp. It’s been in the works since last year.”

“How long will you be there?”

“At the moment, I’m under contract for the season. Until February.”

“And after that?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he said evenly.

“I see.”

You said you would wait, Chakyung wanted to say. The words sat on the tip of her tongue, but she ultimately tamped them back down. She was old enough to know that waiting didn’t mean you wouldn’t go anywhere or do anything, that you would have eyes for only one person all that while. Still ...

After yesterday’s typhoon, after what happened with Romi, after seeing Hadam in a rage—Chakyung had to reflect.

Even if meeting someone on a trip could be considered fate, it was still nothing more than a chance happening. Even if you believed it would change your life, the reality was that you could still be mistaken. She couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t feeling that way now. Because they had fatefully crossed paths in an unfamiliar place, because her fiancé had betrayed her, because Soo-eon had treated her with such warmth, she now found herself wavering. But would this feeling remain after she returned to her old normal?

Soo-eon could sense her hesitation. “But when you’re undecided,” he said, “you can decide anything.”

Still seated, Chakyung looked up and locked eyes with him. His gaze wasn’t forceful, but it was intense.

“I can come back. Doesn’t matter where. But ...” He held out his hand. “Will you come back too?”

If she took his hand—then what? Chakyung knew she had to give him an answer. But was she ready to? Could the two of them meet again in Seoul or Jeju, or Bali, or anywhere else?

For the person hesitating, time moved quickly, and for the person waiting, time dragged on. While Chakyung wavered, Soo-eon lowered his hand.

“I’m sorry for keeping you waiting,” she said.

Soo-eon stood and stepped away. “You said you’re headed to Seoul tomorrow, right?”

Chakyung stood up without his help. “Right.”

“Safe travels,” he said, as if they were parting ways here and now. And she supposed they were. If she didn’t say what she wanted to do, then all they could do was say their goodbyes for now.

She needed to answer him, but in that moment, Chakyung could bring herself to say only, “Soo-eon, I’ll—I’ll think about it. Seriously.”

He smiled. Even with that hint of forlornness in his smile, he was still a bright, positive person. “I know you will,” he said. “You take every moment of your life seriously.” He turned toward the dark courtyard and added, “But you know something?”

Chakyung studied his back. Broad, strong, and always warm enough to lean on—but now it was out of her reach. She wanted to go closer to him, to assure herself that he wasn’t as far away as he seemed. But her feet wouldn’t move.

The last thing Soo-eon said fell over her like a blanket of fog descending on the island. “If you take the future seriously but not the present, this moment right now? You won’t be able to move forward.”

When Chakyung opened the door to their room, she didn’t see Romi but could hear her voice coming from the bathroom. Hadam was at the table in the common room, her face dimly lit by the one small light she had on overhead.

“Hadam, why are you sitting in the dark?”

Hadam blinked, snapping out of a daze. “Oh, right—I don’t like when it’s too bright.”

“Well, can I put on a bit more light in here?” Chakyung’s hand found the light switch.

“Go ahead, I suppose,” Hadam said, getting up and heading to her room.

Bright light filled the apartment, but that did nothing to brighten the mood. Chakyung followed after Hadam, who was sitting in front of her open suitcase and winding up her computer adapter cable. Neat stacks of clothes sat beside her.

“Are you packing now? I thought you weren’t heading back until the day after tomorrow.”

Hadam didn’t look up, keeping her answer curt. “I decided to leave tomorrow night too.”

“Why?”

“Hmm. No particular reason.”

Hadam was acting different. She usually welcomed questions about what she was doing and would explain her reasoning down to the letter. Chakyung didn’t press her on it, though, as she took a seat beside her.

“Can I help you pack?”

When she picked up an unfolded white T-shirt, Hadam snapped at her, “Just leave it. I’ll do it myself.”

“It’ll be faster if we work together.”

Hadam snatched the shirt back. “I said leave it.”

Many conflicts tended to pass if you held back and waited a little while. Three hours or so should do the trick. Three hours without asking why the other person was angry, without getting angry in turn. That was usually how Chakyung handled such clashes. But seeing as they were in this confined space and this conflict had arisen while they were on a trip, it was hard for her to let this slide.

“Hadam, have I done something to upset you?”

Too quickly, Hadam replied, “It’s not that.”

“You’ve been talking to me for the past while as if I have.”

Chakyung noticed that Hadam had been winding and unwinding the same cable over and over and was now unwinding it again. In the end, she tossed the cable aside.

“I’m just a little bit disappointed in you, Chakyung. I thought this thing with the surfer was a diversion, but it must be pretty serious.”

Chakyung could guess what Hadam was talking about. She would have had a clear view of the yard from their window, and though she wouldn’t have been able to hear their conversation, she could have gotten a sense of the vibe from watching.

“Hadam, I know how it looks. But it’s not like I intended for this to happen—”

“It’s never the sort of thing that happens intentionally,” Hadam cut in, picking up the cable again. “Sure, you might find yourself drawn to someone else ahead of your marriage. Maybe even before you’ve sorted out your relationship completely. Either way, it’s up to you to pick a side.”

It’s up to you to pick a side, she’d said, but there was an undercurrent to her words, as though it were possible to choose wrong. Chakyung knew she must have seemed no different than someone like Jaewoong in Hadam’s eyes. And it wasn’t only Hadam. Lots of people would see things that way, regardless of Chanmin’s egregious faults. She couldn’t always offer excuses. She knew she’d have her share of criticism to endure.

“Hadam, I—I don’t think I should have to explain this, but regardless, this isn’t some simple phase I’m going through before I get married.” She didn’t need to, but she at least wanted to explain to her friend the emotions she hadn’t even been able to explain to herself. “The relationship between me and Chanmin is our problem. We have to resolve it on our own, the two of us. Soo-eon is a whole other issue. I can’t just put him in the middle of things—it’s not his place.”

Hadam yanked on the cable hard enough that Chakyung worried it might snap.

“Plenty of people say that. But the new relationship can wait until the old one is figured out. It’s not like it’s so hard to control yourself.” Hadam paused to catch her breath. “I’m sorry, Chakyung. I know the situation with Jaewoong is different. But if Chanmin hadn’t come by that evening and you hadn’t found out he was cheating ... would things have turned out differently?”

That was one of the thoughts that had been continuously gnawing at Chakyung’s mind. Was she simply using the fact that Chanmin had come to Jeju with another woman as justification for breaking off her engagement to someone she already had doubts about marrying? If she hadn’t found out, would she never have developed feelings for Soo-eon?

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But that’s what happened, and I did find out, and now I can’t imagine going in any other direction.”

Emotions flowed like water that might change course when it ran up against rocks but could never flow back in the direction from which it had come. Chakyung realized there was nothing that could be done about feelings that had already flowed elsewhere.

“Well, it’s your life,” Hadam said with a shrug. It felt like the air between them was riddled with tiny thorns, sharp enough to pierce them both. Just as the words Chakyung had been holding in were about to leap out, a scream came from the other room.

“Aaaaaah!”

Hadam and Chakyung exchanged a look, then leaped up and raced out of the room.

The overhead lights shone on the towel wrapped around Romi’s wet hair. She must have just gotten out of the bath. Her face was pale, and her entire body was shaking. She was holding her tablet in both hands.

“What’s wrong?” Hadam asked urgently.

Chakyung took the tablet from Romi. Hadam wrapped her arms around Romi’s still-trembling shoulders.

It was hard to decipher the message written on the tablet. The screen was filled with red, and there were roughly scrawled words on the image. It was a crude sketch, but still clearly meant to be blood. Chakyung tried reading the message.

“What does this say? ‘Do Romi, get yourself together and go home. If you don’t want ... to end up like her.’ What does that mean?”

Hadam and Chakyung turned to Romi, but she shook her head. “I don’t know either. But I’m getting chills imagining someone coming in, writing this, and leaving.”

“Shouldn’t we report this to the police?” Chakyung looked serious, setting the tablet down on the table. She glanced at Hadam, who was pulling out her phone.

“Should we?” Romi’s face had lost all its color. “This time, too, there’s no clear threat. It doesn’t say anything specific. If the police decide it’s just someone’s scribblings, they’ll probably give up there.”

“This time? What do you mean?”

“Actually, I got a message when we first landed on Jeju. From a stranger.” Romi took out her phone and showed them the text. “I don’t know if it’s the same person, though.”

As she read the message, Chakyung’s tone shifted into analysis mode. “It’s a possibility. For one thing, this message also sounds weirdly like the lyrics to an old-timey pop song, and for another, the writing style is similar. So it seems possible these are from the same person. But this message may have also been sent by mistake. Still, it’s upsetting, so it should be reported.”

Hadam opened a browser on her phone. “If this started after you came to Jeju ... maybe things will be okay once you leave? Which jurisdiction should we report it to?”

Chakyung screenshotted the message on Romi’s phone and forwarded it to herself. “I think we should look into this ourselves for now. But there’s a more important issue we have to deal with first.”

The silence between saying one thing and another was always meaningful. The other two watched and waited while Chakyung chose her words.

“Whoever left this message on the tablet must have come into this room.”

A shiver ran down all their spines. When and how could someone have gotten in? When Romi was alone in the apartment? Or while Hadam and Chakyung were having their little war of nerves?

“Romi, when did you last look at your tablet?” Chakyung asked.

Romi put her hand to her head, trying to remember. “Earlier this afternoon, I was doing some work on the tablet ... then I went downstairs to get some water ... and after that, I had a headache, so I lay down for a bit, and then Hadam came and we had dinner. That whole time, I didn’t look at the tablet.”

“So there’s no way to know when this person came in,” Hadam said. “I got back around five o’clock. I don’t think they could’ve come in after that.”

Truly anyone could have entered the café or the courtyard. Each of the houses in the residential area had steel padlocks on the doors that required a passcode, but someone who knew the code would have been able to come inside anytime. The passcodes at Nol didn’t change until the residents came and changed them. Additionally, if there was a property manager, they could have used their key card. Who could have done this? One of the residents here? Or one of the customers at the café? While they turned over all the possibilities, a tense quiet hung in the air.

“What’s scarier,” began Chakyung, her low voice cutting through the chilling silence, “is that this person somehow also knew the passcode to unlock Romi’s tablet.”

Romi clamped her hands over her mouth to cover her scream. Hadam’s eyes widened. Chakyung looked over the scrawled message on the tablet again, then went to the door and examined it for a moment too.

“I’m going to look around outside for a bit,” she said. “I’ll be back.”

“No!” Hadam and Romi shouted.

“Chakyung, it’s dangerous,” said Hadam. “What will you do if someone’s out there?”

A sense of darkness had descended on the room. Even the small shadows in the corners of the apartment seemed unsettling now. Chakyung opened the door a sliver, looked around, then closed it again, pointedly sliding the latch shut.

Romi hugged herself. Goose bumps had risen on her arms. “I have a really bad feeling right now. Could this be the stalker from before?”

Hadam hugged her. “The security here should be fine. If you’re really scared, do you want to move to a hotel?”

Romi pressed her mouth shut, thinking. She shook her head. “I think it’d be better not to leave. It’s not a good idea to go wandering around at night either.”

After Chakyung had finished checking their surroundings, she said, “The coast is clear. For now, I’ll call Ayoung and ask if there are any CCTVs or anything we could check. It could be a thief, so we should let her know right away. I’ll tell her to file a police report.”

Romi didn’t have anything to add, but she didn’t think this person was some random thief. The intruder even knew her name. The reality of the situation was dawning on the three of them. After Chakyung ended the call, she took Romi’s hands in hers.

“Romi, it’s all right. We’re here for you.”

Hadam’s hands joined theirs. “You’re okay,” she said. “We’ll protect you.”

Romi studied her friends’ faces. They wore the same fear. But there were fears that grew bigger as more people shared them and fears that grew smaller when they were shared with others. With all of them together, they could protect one another. Tonight, she would be able to put aside at least a little bit of her fear.