Romancing on Jeju

THE BEES ARE SLEEPING

The detective’s face was completely blank as she took Sumi’s statement. She offered none of the usual sympathetic remarks about how hard this all must have been on her, nor did she reprimand Sumi by asking how she could have done something so stupid. The detective simply told Sumi she would need to visit the police station once she was discharged. With only that remark and an order for Sumi to get well soon, the detective left the hospital room.

Sumi sighed, grimacing from the pain in her chest as she shifted to lie down again. The doctor told her she had broken a rib and would need to rest for a while as it healed. She held an arm up to her forehead and placed her head on the pillow.

She’d heard from Kyungwoon that the haenyeo had managed to fish the bag out of the water. Like the detective, Kyungwoon hadn’t reprimanded her, either, even though he would now never know what had been written on the notes inside it.

“The police told me they were my wife’s lab notes, plus reports she’d been sent from universities in the US. They decided to turn them over to a company working on the development of super bees.”

Sumi remembered the day Hyeyoung had first told her about all this. It was spring, and the two of them were on Hyeyoung’s bee farm, looking out at the blue ocean glittering beneath the sun. Breeding the super queen bee was a success, Hyeyoung said quietly. They had created a queen bee resistant to all pests, a queen able to rear bees that were faster and stronger than any others. The experiment to extract her queen mandibular pheromone is also in its final stages, Hyeyoung said, laughing a little shyly. Am I about to become super famous? Will I win the Nobel Prize? she joked. But she lowered her voice as she went on about how this super bee’s pheromones could be used to create different medications. For the first time, it might be possible to use trace amounts of honeybee pheromones to produce powerful aphrodisiacs. It was a dangerous technology. Hyeyoung looked worried as she warned that it could be abused, that there’d be people chomping at the bit to get their hands on it.

Honestly, Sumi didn’t fully understand everything Hyeyoung was saying. It was like listening to her husband ramble at length at every meal about the beekeeping classes he was taking. She’d never had the slightest interest in beekeeping. Or in her husband, for that matter. Whenever she was cleaning or doing laundry around the guesthouse, Sumi gritted her teeth and thought about how she should have divorced him when he quit his job in architecture and urged her to leave her job at the bank so they could move to Jeju. At that time, though, she couldn’t even consider divorcing him for that reason. There was no sense of newness in their marriage, and they’d hoped the move to Jeju might break them out of that rut once and for all. Their friends in Seoul always talked about how nice it must be to live on Jeju, but their wistful fantasies only went as far as going on a trip or spending a year there—none of them wanted to live there for the long term like Sumi. Never mind what they said about the famous Jeju lifestyle on TV or in articles filled with beautiful words—nothing about her day-to-day life on Jeju was all that enjoyable. She hated the humidity that dampened the pages of all the books on her shelves even with the dehumidifier running, and she hated all the bugs that found their way in through the windows in the summers. Sometimes she took comfort in watching the spread of soothing colors as the sun set beyond the mountains, or else in looking out at the ocean alone and listening to the tranquil early-morning waves.

She met Kyungwoon and Hyeyoung through a local meetup. They seemed much different from Sumi and her husband. They were good colleagues, and Kyungwoon was a good husband. Sumi didn’t think people needed to have a shared passion for something in order to get married, but she realized that a shared passion was important for maintaining a marriage. When Sumi met Hyeyoung, she understood this for the first time—that love was wanting to share in passions you had never wanted to share with anyone else before.

For a while, Hyeyoung was just the wife of an acquaintance of Sumi’s husband. Then five summers ago, there was an incident. One day when Sumi’s husband wasn’t around, an out-of-towner came to the guesthouse, found Sumi alone in the kitchen, and started making a move on her. At first, the man pretended to be a guest, but he changed his tune when he realized no one else was around. If Hyeyoung hadn’t stopped by to meet up with her husband, who knows what might have happened? Hyeyoung chased the man off with her screaming. Then she went over to comfort Sumi, who was sitting there crying and in shock. It was the first time since Sumi had come to Jeju that someone had held her hand. Hyeyoung’s hands were as rough as Sumi’s. But for Sumi, the feeling of those hands on hers was the gentlest feeling in the world.

Now, when an urgent “code blue, code blue” sounded over the intercom outside her dark hospital room, Sumi heard hurried footsteps disappearing down the hall. This meant someone in the hospital was knocking on death’s door. After Hyeyoung passed away, Sumi found herself thinking about her final moments whenever she read or watched news stories about accidents. Even as she lay in bed at night beside her husband, it was the outline of Hyeyoung’s face she caught herself tracing in the dark. There wasn’t a corner of her heart that didn’t hold remnants of the other woman, but weirdly, it was only the memory of her face that had begun to fade.

That was why Sumi decided to get back in touch with the person who had reached out before with an interest in Hyeyoung’s research and attempt to make a deal with him again. It was the first time in her life she’d been proactive about something. Three years ago, she and Hyeyoung had been planning to start a new life overseas and needed money. Hyeyoung wanted to protect her research, but at the time, she had no other options. She was still on the fence until the very end, and Sumi reasoned with her. Hyeyoung hated breaking Kyungwoon’s trust, but she wanted to be with Sumi. She said if they couldn’t be together without betraying anyone, they shouldn’t have started this new relationship at all. But it had already begun, the betrayal already committed.

The last day of her life, Hyeyoung had messaged her, saying she’d decided not to sell the research. She’d been admitted with a scholarship to a doctoral program in the US and invited Sumi to join her, said this could be their fresh start. She was planning to tell her husband the whole plan. But then Hyeyoung died, leaving nothing but that message behind.

In the three years since, Sumi had longed to leave Jeju before even more of her memories of Hyeyoung faded. Every day was hard to bear. There was nothing she could do. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the man who had reached out three years earlier about the research was still interested in the deal. Sumi also considered Kyungwoon’s amnesia to be a lucky break, as it meant he couldn’t remember the details of Hyeyoung’s work. The buyer had requested a queen bee from the hive as a sample, and Sumi knew the bees Hyeyoung had reared were now living on that bee farm in the mountains. She thought everything was set. If only she hadn’t seen the suspicious man hovering around Romi, and if only she’d left Romi with him regardless of what might have happened to her. If only she’d pretended not to notice that man’s dark, dangerous gaze.

When she first learned about Romi and Kyungwoon’s relationship, Sumi had despised Romi. It was a strange feeling. If Hyeyoung were alive and thought Kyungwoon was seeing another woman, she would have felt that loathing too. Even though Hyeyoung was the one who had left him first, she wouldn’t have been able to bear it if he’d left her. The number of people in the world who remembered Hyeyoung was dwindling by the day, and Sumi hated the thought of someone else taking her place. She hadn’t known why this dangerous man was approaching Romi, but she didn’t even want to warn her at first. Still, when she saw her at the outdoor exhibit, she couldn’t simply look away. Not while knowing Romi would be in danger if she did. For some reason, when she thought about how Hyeyoung had helped her, she couldn’t pretend not to know what was going on.

When the code blue was lifted, the hallway outside her room fell silent again. What did that silence mean? What had happened to the patient in danger? The crisis could have ended in either life or death. Sumi thought about that fine line. She had ended up on one side of it, while Hyeyoung had ended up on the other. Those lines weren’t parallel. Even if they walked along what they thought were separate paths, they would meet again, Sumi thought. Whenever she was lying in bed, eyes wide open in the dark, she ended up imagining Hyeyoung’s face again, as always. She realized she liked certain memories once she found that remembering them was painful. No matter how much it hurt, she still hoped those memories wouldn’t completely disappear. Sumi remembered the day Hyeyoung had told her about the bee farm for the first time, how she felt she had accomplished something huge. She remembered the sunlight glittering on the rolling sea like pearls spilled from a snapped necklace, the sound of the bees like music, the day Hyeyoung had come to her carrying that paper moon and yellow lantern—she remembered them all. She recalled Hyeyoung’s face in that light, the sound of their laughter spreading into the night sky. These memories, too, might end up coated in dust like that lantern, which Sumi kept in her living room now, but they were memories in which the two of them could be together until their lines met again.

Project: Searching for Honeyman

Day Nine, Night, Seogwipo

“Chanmin ended up confessing. Said he’d planned to sell off the super bee sample and the results of the breeding experiments. Turns out he’d presented Kyungwoon’s wife’s findings under his own name and gotten academic acclaim for them, then bought her out. This was apparently a revolutionary breakthrough that would solve the crisis facing the modern beekeeping industry. That didn’t seem to be the main draw for the foreign gang that wanted in, seeing as they sent a guy with a gun to pass himself off as a beekeeper. But if there was more to the deal, I doubt anyone will say.”

When he was first taken into custody, Chanmin had tried to refuse to give a statement. But when he learned that Sumi had already confessed, he gave up. Sumi’s motives were unclear, but she claimed to have been close to Kyungwoon’s wife and to have already known about the existence of the super bee for a while. Now, three years later, when Chanmin attempted to make this deal again, Sumi accepted. Kyungwoon’s amnesia had worked to their advantage. The plan was to steal the queen bee first and induce the swarm to follow her to a new hive hidden nearby, then contact Chanmin to coordinate the drop-off. Chanmin was then to hand over the hive to a third party that would be on standby on a boat. Sumi hadn’t anticipated anyone getting hurt. Instead, with Kyungwoon unable to remember anything, she’d planned on tweaking the experiments and slightly altering the lab reports, keeping the author’s true identity hidden forever. If the man in the black suit hadn’t shown up with a gun, things wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand. Seriously, why would someone bring a gun to a honeybee theft? Chakyung felt sorry about how it all had gone down, but this wasn’t her business to meddle in. She hadn’t even known about Chanmin’s hundreds of millions of won in gambling debts, nor about the hardships his father’s company was facing. They had been planning to spend their lives together, but they hadn’t even been able to share their troubles with each other. Chakyung felt like she was only now discovering who Chanmin truly was. Certain discoveries could completely erase the person you thought you knew. The Chanmin she had known in the past was being wiped away. Their relationship aside, it was a shame to see a person’s life go so far off course.

Chakyung didn’t want to tell Romi all this. When the haenyeo pulled Romi from the water, Soo-eon had performed CPR to save her. The police arrived immediately afterward, and though she was rushed to the hospital, her condition wasn’t critical. Once she gave her statement to the police, Romi had insisted on going straight back to Nol. Now she was lying in bed in their room, listening to the whole story. She said she was feeling fine and planned to head to Seoul the next day with Chakyung and Hadam. But as far as Chakyung was concerned, it might be a while before Romi was truly okay.

“Luckily, Hadam managed to track the guy who was with Chanmin—the one who had the gun—and record everything, so the investigation is going smoothly,” Chakyung said.

The drone had been filming in the dark of the evening and from a bit of a distance, but it had captured scenes that were at least recognizable in places. It had been a long time since Jaewoong had filmed anything, but he’d managed to get some good footage.

“Romi, what can I say? I had no idea my sunbae—no, that asshole Pilhyun—was the stalker who’d been terrorizing you for years, and I kept bringing him around,” Hadam said. She gripped her knees and bowed her head in apology.

Romi waved her hands. “What are you talking about? He was terrorizing me way before you introduced us, Hadam.”

“He’s in custody and under investigation for the assault and kidnapping here, but I heard they’re looking into other crimes he committed in Seoul as well.”

Factoring in the past charges brought forward by Hwayoung, the situation grew more complicated. After hearing Kyungwoon describe a suspicious car following him around from the bee farm a few days earlier, the police decided to look into the dashcam footage. Either figuring he would be found out soon enough anyway or else having given up hope entirely, Pilhyun also confessed he’d been at the site of the accident three years ago, chasing after the car Kyungwoon and Hyeyoung had been in that night. He hadn’t known which car the man who’d gone to see Romi was driving, so he took out his anger by trailing Kyungwoon’s car, not knowing they would end up in an accident. Thinking he’d be questioned for his connection to the crash, he’d fled Jeju. He didn’t know Kyungwoon had lost his memory. Hearing all this, Kyungwoon woefully remarked, “I guess Sumi ended up avenging Hyeyoung after all.”

At Kyungwoon’s request, Hadam didn’t tell Romi this part of the story. Relaying these facts and resurrecting these memories were his decisions to make. He said he would tell Romi when he felt she was ready to accept it. It was too cruel for both of them to harbor guilt all this time later over something neither of them could have prevented. And if they still felt guilty nonetheless, it was up to each of them to determine their share of that guilt.

“I didn’t know he was that kind of person,” said Romi thoughtfully, “but that’s because I had no reason to look too closely into who he was deep down. I just hope everything he’s done gets brought to light.”

“He’s a standard-issue stalker who obsessively follows around the woman he’s interested in and, when she shows no interest in him, channels his anger into violence. He’s probably committed lots of other crimes.”

Hadam had no idea how she could describe so dryly this person she thought she’d known for so long. But she couldn’t say she’d known him all that well. Everyone lived their lives loosely connected to people they hardly knew at all. Still, you believed you knew them based on nothing more than those loose threads.

“There was no interest I could have shown in him,” Romi said, sounding somewhat tired and completely indifferent. “You have to know someone exists to have an interest in them in the first place.”

This would have been a stalker’s berserk button, Hadam knew. They were self-contradicting monsters who lurked in the darkest of shadows yet longed to be discovered. But no one knew them. No one wanted to know them. They were insignificant to others no matter how violent they became trying to prove their own existence.

There was a knock on the door. Chakyung went to see who it was.

“Romi, it’s Kyungwoon,” she called, casting a glance at Hadam from the doorway.

Hadam stood up. “We’ll leave you two alone to talk.”

Kyungwoon stepped aside so the two women could pass. Meanwhile, Romi quickly smoothed down her hair and sat up straighter. Kyungwoon bowed in greeting and approached her cautiously, looking awkward as he took the seat Hadam had been in earlier.

“How are you feeling?” he asked gently.

“I’m perfectly fine—so fine I feel embarrassed about cosplaying as a hospital patient like this.” Romi lifted her hands in a gesture meant to show off her strength, but that only made the mood more tense. Neither of them could look the other in the eye. Romi folded her hands and fidgeted with her clasped fingers.

“I heard you jumped into the water to save me,” she said.

“But I couldn’t save you in the end,” Kyungwoon said slowly.

“Still, I’m sorry. For causing you so much trouble.”

“No, no. I’m the one who’s sorry. It was because of my bees that everything got so out of hand.”

“No, it’s not your fault. I should be the one to apologize. I’m the reason the queen bee drowned and everything,” Romi said, waving her hands.

A thin smile appeared on Kyungwoon’s lips. “Don’t worry about that,” he said.

“But I caused problems for everyone, and it’s not the first time I’ve done that, but it’s so embarrassing.”

As the words came rushing out of her and she continued waving her hands, Kyungwoon’s eyes softened slightly, the tension in them easing up.

“Why do we keep apologizing to each other?” he said. “We’re not the ones who did anything wrong.”

“You’re right. I’m a victim here, but I can’t think of anything to say right now except that I’m sorry.” In the heat of the moment, she’d ended up spilling all her feelings. Their eyes met. They burst out laughing.

“Not that I’m complaining, but what brings you here? Did you come to take back the royal jelly?” Romi asked, picking up the shopping bag on the table.

“I came to ask you something.” Kyungwoon unclasped his hands and placed them on his knees, then leaned forward. “Why did you come to the convention center, to the exhibit, last night?”

Kyungwoon always spoke seriously, but something about him, his expression, seemed noticeably different today.

Why had she gone there? Romi thought back to her feelings at the time. It had seemed so urgent then, but now she couldn’t verbalize what she’d wanted to tell him. She knew in her heart what she wanted to say, but the words just wouldn’t come out.

“I can’t really remember.”

Kyungwoon was so close to her that her heart began to race like it was aiming to set the hundred-meter world record.

“I see.” Kyungwoon pulled back again. “You should get some rest.”

As he stood, Romi bolted upright and grabbed ahold of his arm.

“What are you doing? You’re leaving, just like that?”

Romi could feel the muscles in his arm tense under her hand. Why was he acting like this all of a sudden? It wasn’t the first time they had touched. But this time felt different. When he sat down again, his voice was even lower. “Should I not?”

She hadn’t prepared anything to say, but she didn’t let go of him. “We should—we should talk, shouldn’t we?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know! Anything.”

“Mmm.”

Kyungwoon reached across himself and took Romi’s hand, still clutching at his arm, in his own. He lowered their hands, gently interlacing their fingers.

“Actually, there is something I wanted to say to you. It might be awkward, but ...”

Romi’s eyes widened, ears perked up to listen.

“I don’t know if it’s all right for me to tell you this given my situation.”

Romi didn’t know what he was trying to say, but she nodded eagerly. “Of course it is!”

“Some of my memories are starting to come back to me,” Kyungwoon said softly. Romi’s racing heart started to press on the brakes as if it had come to a yellow light.

“I remember bits and pieces of my wife’s face, the accident, what happened that day.”

“I see.”

“Romi.” He squeezed her hand. “The day of the typhoon, you remember what you said, right? That you’d come all this way to find me.”

Her heart had pulled up to a stop sign now. Romi lowered her head, feeling drained. “But I was actually mistaken the whole time.”

Kyungwoon shook his head. “I know there’s no turning back time. The more I learned ... the truth ... about my wife, the better I was able to understand her. The more memories I recovered of her, the more easily I was able to let her go. And the more easily I was able to break free of the past.”

“You lost her queen bee because of me.”

“Another one will be born,” Kyungwoon said. “When the season comes, another queen will hatch. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a super bee—how could I have lost something I didn’t know I had? I can raise a new colony of them. If it hadn’t been for you, I might never have known they existed.” With that, Kyungwoon let go of her hand and looked her in the eyes, then bowed his head in gratitude. “So thank you. For finding me, even though it wasn’t me you were looking for. For helping me to move forward.”

When he looked up again, there was a brief silence. Like the pause when several cars came to an intersection with no traffic lights and the drivers were all trying to decide whether or not to floor it.

“I’m glad my terrible memory could be helpful to someone,” Romi said. Ironically, though, she didn’t feel 100 percent glad. “And I have something to thank you for too.”

“What is it? Don’t tell me it’s the royal jelly?” Kyungwoon pointed to the shopping bag she was holding, his voice teasing.

Unlike her usual self, always the first to laugh, Romi was the picture of solemnity.

“Before, whenever I wanted something, I used to wait for someone else to bring it to me. Just sit around and wait for someone else to reach out first. But now I know. I can only get what I want if I set off in search of it.” Something caught in her throat, making it hard for her to speak. “But when I did set off to look for it,” she said, “I couldn’t find it.”

A shadow passed across Kyungwoon’s face. “Romi, I know I’m not the person you wanted, but—”

“But even though I couldn’t find what I wanted, I found something different. Something I hadn’t expected at all. Something better.”

Romi gathered her courage and looked up to meet his eyes. But before she knew it, her own eyes filled with tears, blurring her vision.

“Geez, what’s wrong with me? So embarrassing. I always get like this.”

Kyungwoon reached up and brushed away her tears with the back of his hand. “There’s no reason to cry,” he said.

The tears began to spill nonstop and turned into full-on sobs. “I know. I’m happy, so why am I crying? Maybe it’s because today’s my last day here on Jeju.”

“Today’s not your last day,” Kyungwoon said quietly, lowering his hand.

“I leave for Seoul tomorrow.”

“Even if you leave, that doesn’t mean it’s the end here. Not if you don’t forget about me once you’re there.”

She couldn’t tell whether his voice was wavering due to laughter or nerves. She sucked up her tears as suddenly as they had begun to fall. She rubbed her eyes and looked at him straight on. Once again, he was watching her, his face unfamiliar. But that was fine. Romi had come to love every moment she’d spent observing this stranger. All those lovely moments of unfamiliarity had come together to make him familiar to her at last.

In all seriousness, she told him, “That would be impossible.”

A smile she had never seen from him before appeared on Kyungwoon’s face. It was gentle but strong, a smile with a sort of determination to it, one that made his face unfamiliar yet again. “How can I trust that you mean that?” he asked.

“Should we kiss?” Romi blurted out, flustering even herself. “I mean, there’s no way we could forget each other if we went so far as to kiss, right?”

“If you think so, I suppose we could try it,” said Kyungwoon, bringing his face close to hers once more.

Just as their lips were about to touch, Romi murmured, “I’m not sure just a kiss would be enough, though ... considering how terrible my memory is.”

His breath grazed her lips as he laughed. “Then we’ll have to do whatever it takes to make sure you don’t forget.”

“The moon today is like a yellow French manicure.” Chakyung gazed at the sky, then lowered her eyes again. “Now that I think about it, I’m overdue for a manicure. My nail polish is chipping.”

Hadam examined her own nails. “I should probably get mine done, too, once we’re back in Seoul. I never could while I was at my old job. Long nails would have just gotten in the way.”

Even the French tip moon seemed to tremble as the wind blew through the yard where the two of them were sitting on a bench. Hadam shuddered a bit.

“When did you want to head up?”

Chakyung mulled over the question. “I was wondering whether we should head to a hotel and leave the two of them alone to talk through things.”

“We still have to pack, though,” Hadam pointed out.

“You’re right—we do.” Chakyung took her phone out of the pocket of her hooded jacket. “Then I’ll give her a call and see if I can suss out the vibe—”

Right on cue, her phone pinged in her hand.

“Is it Romi?” asked Hadam, excited.

Chakyung scrunched her nose, as was her habit when she encountered a headache waiting to happen. “No,” she said. “It’s my job.”

“At this hour? Don’t tell me it’s Director Dim?”

Chakyung sighed. “I don’t think so.”

Once he was all done with golfing, Director Dim should have gone back to Seoul, but it seemed he’d used the typhoon as an excuse to extend his vacation and even dropped by the event hall to pretend he was working. Earlier that morning, he’d kicked up a huge fuss over the phone, accusing Chakyung of dragging out the part-timers’ shifts into overtime on a whim in a pointless act of kindness. As Jeju news outlets reported on yesterday’s incident, they mentioned the haenyeo who had been taking part in a “cosmetics event” nearby when they rushed into action to save a life, and it seemed the story had rubbed Director Kim the wrong way. No matter how many times Chakyung tried to explain that this was a good thing, he lashed out about the company having been mentioned in connection with an ongoing criminal investigation. Growing fed up, Chakyung said she would take full responsibility for the situation. But she couldn’t hold her tongue at just that.

“I’ll cover the part-timers’ overtime fees out of pocket. And I’ll submit a written apology as well. But I must say, Director Kim, I had no idea you were so sensitive about overtime work.”

Naturally, he lashed out again at that, but Chakyung—who had spent her entire life molding herself to be in harmony with the collective, putting the company’s needs above her own—finally did away with any intention to compromise. The glass had already been knocked over.

“I suppose I’ll have no choice but to write a report outlining my own overtime work,” she said, “as well as the personal errands you’ve sent me on. There’s quite a lot to cover if we’re taking into account the last few years.”

She hadn’t even brought up the fact that he’d used a business trip as a pretense to golf, or that whenever they had a workshop, he went way overboard on comments that constituted sexual harassment. Chakyung ended the call with gritted teeth.

The message she had just gotten, though, wasn’t from him but from a junior director at her company, Yoon Kyungwon. After Chakyung had declared war on Director Dim, she had reported him to Director Yoon, who was next in line for a promotion to senior director—in the event of a vacancy. Whatever her motives, Director Yoon would support Chakyung. But even with Director Yoon by her side, there was no way the company would look favorably at an employee who turned against an executive. Even before she saw Director Yoon’s concern-laden message, Chakyung had braced herself for that.

Just as she sent a reply, Hadam tapped her on the arm. Chakyung looked up from her phone, following Hadam’s finger toward where it was pointing. Through the lit window looking into the kitchen, she spotted Soo-eon sitting at the table and playing with the dog.

“Go,” said Hadam gently. When Chakyung hesitated, Hadam got up from the bench first. “I was just thinking of going for a drive anyway.”

Soo-eon wasn’t surprised when Chakyung came in from the courtyard. Already, it was clear they couldn’t part ways without saying their goodbyes.

Chakyung hurried over to the table where he was sitting. Her heart was racing even more than it had been when she’d filed the complaint against Director Dim.

Soo-eon looked exactly the way he had when they’d first met. But now she knew him better, in more detail. Eyes that smiled even when he was sitting still, a high but rounded nose, a jawline that had angles but wasn’t sharp. Over the past nine days, his face had been strange in some moments, familiar in others, and always new to her. He was someone she’d gotten to know over so little time that parting ways here and now would make them strangers again, yet enough time that carrying on the way they were now could only make them closer.

Chakyung had already thought about what she wanted to say ahead of time. She felt such a sense of urgency that the words spilled out of her without any sort of preface.

“I can’t bring Gnarly with me,” she said.

The dog, as if already used to his new name, perked up his ears at the sound of it. Soo-eon’s expression clouded over. He rested a hand on the dog’s head.

“I see. In that case, I can—”

Chakyung raised a hand to stop him. “Hold on. Hear me out. What I mean is, I can’t bring him with me right away.”

Soo-eon looked at her wordlessly. Both his and Gnarly’s eyes were fixed on her.

“I’m asking you to look after him for the time being. You told me if I take the future seriously but not the present moment, I’ll never be able to move forward.” Since that night, the words had embedded themselves in her heart like chunks of ice. Now, she could pull them out. Her heart had warmed enough to melt them. “So in the spirit of being faithful to the truth of this moment, I’m trying to make plans that will hold true in the future as well.”

No one can be in a relationship that forces them to deviate from their nature. Chakyung was the same way. Her feelings at the moment were burning hot, but she couldn’t proceed without a plan. She’d lived her entire life that way, planning for what she wanted. She could always revise the ones that went awry later. But she liked even the process of planning. It was something she’d always done. Even now, that hadn’t changed.

“Here’s my plan. Step one: I’ll move out. I—I thought I was getting married and was planning to live with my parents until then. Now I have to explain to them that I’m not getting married after all. Of course, everything that’s happened will make that easier to explain. I mean, it’s not a good thing Chanmin turned out to be this kind of person, but it’s no skin off my nose. Anyway, that’s not what matters. My family has allergies, so I can’t bring a dog with me right away. Which means I need another plan. Step two: I’ll look for a place in Seoul. If Seoul’s too expensive, then Gyeonggi-do. That should take a month at the most? Then Gnarly and I will have somewhere comfortable where we can live. I have to find a place that allows dogs, of course. Step three is about my job, and this is a problem. At the moment, I don’t know what’s going to happen at work, but I’ll figure that out too. Gosh, why am I rambling like this? It feels like the biggest mess of a presentation I’ve ever given.”

Chakyung had never babbled so much in her life. She’d worked so hard to prepare a clear and organized pitch. But as she laid out her plans, watching his face for a reaction, her words got tangled up in her emotions. Even more than any of the clients she’d had up to now, she couldn’t guess what Soo-eon had thought of her spiel. He lowered his head for a moment, then looked up again, placing a hand on his chest. He let out a breath. Then he stood up. “You’re fine,” he said. “This is honestly the best presentation I’ve ever seen.”

Now, Chakyung had to look up at him. She remembered the first few times they’d come face-to-face and the emotions she’d felt then. She’d enjoyed every one of these encounters. She was speaking with the present and the future in mind when she said, “I’ll be back. I’ll bring Gnarly with me, and we’ll talk about what’s going on with us.”

When Soo-eon took her wrists in his hands, the corners of his eyes gently crinkled. “Okay,” he said.

“I’d love for you to come with me too. That is, if you want to. If I have to go wherever you are, I’ll just need to know what to prepare ...”

Soo-eon raised a hand. “You can end your presentation there.” He leaned down and peered into her eyes. “I also have to think hard about this. About what I can do. I have to leave again so I can graduate, finish up my studies.”

Chakyung stumbled back in surprise. Now that she thought about it, they hadn’t had much time to hash out these sorts of particulars. “Your studies? Don’t tell me you’re a student. An undergrad?”

Soo-eon’s eyebrows shot up playfully. “No, I’m a grad student—in oceanography at the University of Hawaii. I’m on a leave of absence at the moment, but—what’s wrong? You have something against students?”

Chakyung let out a sigh of relief. “Oh no, that’s fine. I was just a bit shaken up at the thought of dating an undergrad at my age ... though, of course, it wouldn’t matter either way.”

Soo-eon took another step toward her. “So we’re dating?”

Chakyung realized she hadn’t used the word “dating” since she herself had been an undergrad. But she didn’t have a better word for this. The word alone still made her heart race the way it had in her college days. “We are,” she said, “if that’s all right with you.”

He leaned in closer. “It’s been all right with me since the first time I saw you.”

“When I was passed out and looking like a total wreck on the plane?” she said, her hands coming around his waist.

Soo-eon placed a hand on her neck and the other on her back. His nose grazed her cheek. “I don’t remember you ever looking a wreck. And I doubt I ever will.” Gently, he pressed his mouth to hers and said into her lips, “But let’s stay together long enough that I get to see that side of you too.”

There was no need for Chakyung to reply. Because a moment later, his lips were on hers again, and she couldn’t have said a word anyway. Gnarly, who’d been watching the two of them from afar, hurried over and squeezed himself between their legs to have a seat.

She’d come to Jeju and seen more than enough of the sea—the sea that took on a different appearance every time she looked.

Hadam leaned up against the car and counted the lights from the fishing boats. One, two, five—seven, if she counted the ones all the way out in the distance. What had the haenyeo said again? In Jeju, the near sea was “apbareu,” and the distant sea was “nanbareu.” But until what point was the sea near, and from what point on did it become distant? Hadam wondered whether there was a way to determine this with certainty and thought to look it up. But even searching for how to determine what was near and what was far in relation to the distance between people yielded no clear consensus.

On her way to the docks, she had gotten a message from Jaewoong. Think about it. I’ll wait. She hadn’t stopped here to call him back. She’d stopped because, before she thought about anything, she knew she needed to stand still.

When she came out of the police station after giving her statement, Jaewoong was waiting. They each rode in their own car to the nearest Starbucks to talk.

“I think she and I will manage to sort everything out,” Jaewoong said. “I’m taking full responsibility. And when it’s all over, I’m going to pay both our families a visit to apologize.”

His expression was hard, but his eyes wavered with emotion. Hadam hemmed and hawed for a bit before saying only, “I see.”

She still was firm in believing this wasn’t her fault, that the problem lay with Jaewoong and his fiancée. She’d already said as much before, though, and didn’t feel the need to bring it up again.

What Hadam couldn’t stand wasn’t just the fact that Jaewoong had been silently deceiving her the whole time. It was the fact that because of his silence, he’d put another woman in a position to be hurt. Never mind whether he intended to or not. Even if it meant hurting someone else, he should have let Hadam make her own judgments and choices. He hadn’t even given her that opportunity. He hadn’t asked her what she thought at all.

“I hope you don’t think I was just momentarily swept up in those memories or looking for a cheap thrill before the marriage. Seeing you again made me remember who I was. I thought I could live like the old me.”

Strictly speaking, Jaewoong hadn’t lied. But he hadn’t told the truth either. And because the truth had been kept from her, Hadam couldn’t say the feelings she’d had for him were real. They existed only in a fantasy world where he wasn’t already betrothed to someone else. Once that realization settled over her, Hadam found she had nothing to say.

“I’ll wait for you,” Jaewoong said. “This time, I’ll wait.”

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard someone say something so heartfelt. All her life, she’d thought she was the earnest one. But now that someone was showing her that same earnestness, she didn’t feel happy or ecstatic. In fact, she felt somewhat sad.

All she said in reply was, “Thanks for helping us find Romi. As for everything else ... I don’t know.”

This was the truth. Aside from her gratitude, she didn’t know what else there was.

It was a night when even the cars were racing full speed ahead. No matter how hard she stared out at the darkly swaying sea, no thoughts bubbled up in her mind like the sea-foam on the crests of the waves. In this case, though, the thoughts wouldn’t be coming from her head—they had to come from her heart.

First, she had to leave. There were some truths that could only be learned with distance.

On her way back to the car, her phone pinged with another message. She glanced at the screen. This time, it wasn’t Jaewoong.

I heard you’re going back to Seoul tomorrow. It’s too bad we didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. If you ever need anything from me, please be in touch.

Hadam thought of Hwachul’s round face and gentle appearance. Only later had she noticed his strong arms, which had carried her when she passed out. Just as Romi had been searching for her own Honeyman, Hadam might have also found hers. But ...

She messaged back: Thank you so much for so many things. I’m sure I’ll be in touch to consult with you about bee farming for the documentary. I’ll message you later on.

The reply came while she was still holding her phone, debating whether or not to wait for it: Yes, let’s talk soon.

With that, Hadam put her phone back in her pocket.

Not every trip had to end with a romance. And not every story had to end with a couple kissing, the camera spinning around them a full 360 degrees. Just because a lot of people made that their ending didn’t mean she had to. What was a romance to some people could be a documentary to others. The same scenery did not make for the same footage in everyone’s eyes. That was what editing was for. While it would be nice if she could leave her life in the hands of a more capable editor, Hadam didn’t have too many regrets.

She got in the car. It was time for everyone to head back to where they belonged. But maybe she could go for one last ride along the coast.

Once she started the car and her phone automatically connected to the Bluetooth speakers, rich sound poured out. The playlist she had been listening to earlier came back on. Coincidentally, the song playing now was the one by the famous singer she and Jaewoong had been listening to when they were trapped in the car during the typhoon—the song about welcoming in the summer. After that day, she’d searched for it on YouTube.

The lyrics described a summertime reunion of two lovers. Why had they listened to a song like this? Did everyone have the same anticipation that when they set off on a trip alone, they would come back coupled up? Hadam thought about it and decided this hope wasn’t a bad thing in itself. Everyone pretending to imagine the same possibility whenever they went somewhere new—that was what made travel fun. But on this trip, Hadam felt no need to lament that this hope hadn’t come to fruition. You expected your life to change, then felt frustrated with yourself for expecting so much, but the good thing about traveling was that you could step right over the remnants of those toppled hopes and leave them all behind.

Hadam tapped her phone screen to skip to the next song. The sounds of the guitar and bass eased into a steady rhythm that flowed from the speakers.

The song’s title slowly came to mind: “Summer Plumage,” referring to the feathers of a bird said to grow right as the season shifts from late summer to fall. Their plumage was the most beautiful during this time of year for the purpose of mating. The summer passes by. People pass by too. Even memories eventually fade.

Hadam found the lyrics asking the listener to sneer at the singer’s botched work of art especially piercing. No, she thought, shaking her head. Maybe her Jeju romance had been botched, but the project hadn’t been. Not yet. She had tons of stories to tell, one for all the many things that had happened. She hadn’t planned for the Searching for Honeyman story to end simply with them either finding Honeyman or not. It was a project she’d started with the desire to make a film about several people’s ongoing searches for their own Honeyman. She was still searching. She was still making that film.

So long to the summer, and on to the fall. Listening to the guitar riff coming through the speakers, Hadam got back on the road, leaving the sea behind. For the first time since she’d come to Jeju, she drove with no destination entered into the navigation system. She didn’t know where she was headed just then, nor did she know what awaited her, but in that moment, this felt to her like the perfect ending.