“A boring fact—I’m from Seoul, South Korea. An interesting fact, hmm…”
His ‘hmm’ vibrated through me, the refrain of a song with a great bass line, the first sip of a strong drink that sends shivers down to your fingertips.
“When I was young, like Kinder-aged, I thought that cars and buses were animals that swallowed up people and then spat them out. I couldn’t comprehend how people were getting the car-animals to spit them out where they needed to go.”
He chuckled at himself.
“I think that I had decided that people tickled the stomachs of the cars and that’s how they did it.”
“What? You’d never ridden in a car? That’s crazy!”
Immediately after the words slipped out of my lips, I regretted them. His family could’ve been poor, still could be poor. I had just called what must have been his experience crazy. It must have been a particularly smarting comment. Poverty, poverty deep enough that he had never seen the inside of a car, especially in a country as wealthy and industrialized and technologically advanced as South Korea was, must have been soul-crushing. If my blood wasn’t too busy rushing around my body desperately trying to keep me warm, no doubt I would be blushing up a storm.
He didn’t seem too bothered, though.
“Right?! Umma was in a phase when I was little where she hated even the idea of traffic; we’d take a helicopter for short distances and one of the jets if she wanted to go further afield.”
“Oh, thank God, you’re rich!”
Apparently, the filter between my brain and my mouth was completely disconnected.
“Oh, oh sorry! I was just worried that I had super, super offended you by calling you too poor to be in a car.”
There was definitely a start of a smile on his face, and I would take it. He had a nice mouth, with full lips that were not too full.
“I’ve never heard someone say ‘thank god you’re rich’ aloud, but I have no doubt that many people have thought it. You couldn’t tell I was wealthy?” he asked, seemingly genuinely puzzled.
“Yes, while that boat was capsizing, I was very worried about trying to discern whether the Gucci you were wearing was real and how many hundreds of dollars your cologne costs.”
Some people preferred my cheerful, eager-to-please self, but Jin Woo seemed to like, or at least not mind, my snark.
“Gucci is gauche, and I’m quite certain that my cologne is definitely in the thousands plus range, but I couldn’t really say.”
“You don’t buy your own cologne?”
“No,” he paused for a particularly aggressive shiver to pass before he continued, “I have a guy for that.”
“Oh, a guy,” I said mockingly, “ Ok, rich boy.” I elbowed him as gently as I could so as not to dislodge him from the bannister.
There was that flash of a smile again.
“But, I continued, “you still owe me a juicy, juicy secret.”
The blob with the trees was further separating, letting me see its parts. First, a gravelly beach, interspersed with large rocks that sloped upwards, and then behind what was beginning to show itself as a thin fringe of trees, was a large hill, the whole place currently looking like an old-fashioned friar with a thin circle of hair and mostly bald pate. Of course, my salvation would look like a balding old man; it seemed I couldn’t get away from them!
Jin Woo shifted next to me. He wassopale and getting paler by the minute. It looked like it was only a hundred or so meters to the island, maybe five minutes of swimming time with my extra burdens, but Jin Woo was truly flagging. I moved my arm from across his on the log to around his waist, hauling him up higher on the wood, hopefully helping him stay a little drier.
Even with him being a bit more out of the water, I knew that I had to get him to land as quickly as I possibly could. I started kicking with all my might, physically feeling the energy and warmth run out of me rapidly as I propelled us to land.
“My secret,” Jin Woo croaked into my ear. I could barely hear him over my own splashing.
“Save it. You can tell me when we are dry and warm and drinking hot spiked cider, with so much booze it makes our eyes water, yes?”
“No, I have to tell you,” his voice was fading but adamant, as the salty, fishy water seeped into my mouth, my toes and fingers numbing quickly. I had no more energy to fight him. Let him tell me his secrets if he wanted.
“I’ve…I’ve never told my fiancé that I love him.”
In a normal circumstance, I would be shocked, would be curious, but not now, now my toes brushed slimy rock and gritty sand. We’d made it!
