Seoulmates (Seoul 2)

“How long will you be like this?” he teases. “We will not be able to ride on the Namsan cable car.”

“Has this been a goal of yours?” I stare up at the fake fire powering the fake balloon instead of the fake ground that looks a thousand miles below my feet.

“That cable car has never failed.”

“There’s always a first time.”

He laughs again and hugs me. “Then we fall together.”

“You’d be right about that. I have no plans on going up in that tin can with anyone else.”

“There’s also a few paragliding places.” There’s a big smile on his face and his left dimple is so deep that I could fall into it and never come out.

“I will watch you from the ground and take a thousand pictures. You’re welcome.”

His chest shakes with his happiness. I lean in, resting my cheek against that solid surface. Hearing him laugh, feeling his warmth, I can almost make myself believe that this will all work out. Yujun takes one more solo flight trip while I eat a snack and watch him sway on his platform. He should look foolish with his arms outstretched, leaning left and right as he simulates flight motions, but he is one of those people who can get away with doing anything. It might be because his frame is lean and long and he has a certain elegance in movement. It could be my love-tainted vision. Possibly both.

His face is all smiles, dimpled cheeks, and bright eyes when he’s finished. “Hungry?” he asks after we return the equipment.

“Yes.” I wasn’t really, but a meal means more time with him and I will never turn that down.

“Should we take the metro? I know you love it.”

I do. It makes me feel like a Seoulite, navigating the subway system, eating food from the vendors in the underground, buying twenty-thousand-won shoes and one-thousand-won socks. These are things ordinary people in Seoul do, and there’s nothing more that I long for than to feel ordinary here in this big city that gave birth to me.

Yujun holds my hand and sneaks a quick kiss. Hand-holding and matching outfits and couple rings are common, but a kiss in a public place is not. I guess it’s the one out-of-the-ordinary thing I enjoy. We take the 6 train and get off at the World Cup Stadium Station exit. It takes about thirty minutes to get to Nanji Hangang Park but it’s a nice night, and I am, as Yujun requested, wearing tennis shoes.

“This used to be a garbage fill, but it was rebuilt. There’s a camping site and a marina. You can set up your own tent or rent one,” he explains as we cross over the bridge and approach the park. The Nanji Hangang Park is more like a campground. The ground is packed hard and covered mostly in dirt, with only a few green areas carefully tended in between the sandy roads. Yujun points out a graffitied concrete skate bowl and a field of huge reeds to the east. Below us the tent city dots a grassy expanse that is separated from the riverbank by a wide paved boulevard. The tents are mostly small ones—the kind that you have to crawl to get inside, and as I watch, some of them are moving in a recognizable rhythm.

“Are they . . . ?” I trail off.

Yujun winks at me. “Teenagers. Some adults but mostly teens, who, for obvious reasons, need some privacy. The tents are supposed to have two sides open, and some parks, like the Yeouido one, make you take down the tent after seven.”

“Really?” I hope Yujun and I are never so desperate for privacy that we rent a tent here at the river for some conjugal action. I’d cry. “Please tell me we aren’t here to rent a tent.”

“I have the apartment, Hara.” He’s amused.

“Right. Right.” As if I could forget. My dream is to hide in that small jewel box of an apartment and pretend that he is not Choi Yujun, stepson of Choi Wansu, and I am not Choi Hara, daughter of Choi Wansu. “I never did get the view of the Han.”

Yujun chuckles. “That was in the advertisement, but you can only see it if you stand on the toilet seat and stick your neck out of the window to the southwest. I bought it because it is close to IF Group, and when I work late, it takes too long to get home. Eomma’s place is still home to me. Even before you came, I would spend many nights there and most weekends.”

“Your dad is there,” I add. “When I got my own place after college, I was lonely, too. And I worried about my mom, Ellen, being alone. I worry about that now, to be honest. She’s back in Des Moines all by herself.”