Loveboat in 서울

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The guy pulls me to my feet as if I weigh no more than a monkey. I feel like a monkey—a clumsy one in desperate need of a shower, hair-combing, and breath mints.

"You okay?" he asks. "Jet lag's pretty bad off these flights. It's four in the morning for us."

He's making excuses for me emotional wreckedness; for looking like I just got spit out of a jet engine—and it's the kindness of this stranger that undoes me. As he releases my arm, I dash it over my damp eyes.

His jet-black hair is soft and bouncy, like he doesn't need to bother with first impressions. He's paired an navy-blue shirt with hip-hugging gray slacks that mean he wither has very good taste, or knows someone who has. He's tall and leanly buff—I've never seen a real-life guy with so much prime real estate in arm muscles.

"H-hi!" I stammer wittily. "Um, hi!"

He tugs an earpod free. It stings with a homey Beatles song that reminds me closing down the Patio Grill, where I worked last summer, only there has never been a guy like him there.

"Are you Bae Suzy?" He rights my suitcase with a firm thud and scowls. "You're an hour late. We've been waiting for you."

ʕु-̫͡-ʔुྉ*ᴸᵒᵛᵉᵇᵒᵃᵗ✲ﾟⁱⁿ*。⋆ 서울시。⋆ *

Five minutes into the ride to Yonsei, I realize there's something  familiar about Joohyuk Nam of the swoon-worthy arms. Is it his name? Face? Maybe I'm loopy from jet lag, but surely I'd have remembered an Asian guy of his sheer size and bulk. He takes up half our bench, which creaked and sagged toward him when he sat beside me. He moves with a sense of controlled—almost graceful—power, as if he's never taken a wrong step in his life. Meanwhile, my upper arm slowly purples with his handprint, a reminder that I nearly wiped out before him and every occupant of this fifteen-passenger van.

"Have we met before?" I venture.

"No." Joohyuk falls into a silence that doesn't invite further conversation, his initial kindness evaporated like a splash of water left behind on the airport pavement. He fidgets with his cell phone, which isn't getting a signal. It drops and he swears and picks it up again, removing and reinserting his tiny SIM card. Oh, no. I forgot to buy one at the airport like Appa told me to. I've never been as addicted to my phone as my classmates, but now I can't even make a desperate lifeline call to Wendy.

Upside: I don't have to take calls from Eomma and Appa either.

Joohyuk restarts his phone. His knee jiggles and he drapes his thick-wristed arm over it, running his thumb along the inside of his fingers in an odd, fidgety gesture. His wall of silence would have felt less awkward if the other kids weren't jabbering a mile a minute around us, as they have since I slipped into my seat.

Is he really that annoyed they had to wait so long for me?

Jungwoo, our driver who is also, apparently, head counselor, meets my eyes in his rearview mirror. He's about ten years older than us, rail-thin under his fluorescent-yellow Yonsei shirt, with a thick shock of black hair, black-rimmed glasses, and a square jaw. He speaks in Korean, and with a jolt, I catch my Korean name—Sooji—which he'd used to check me off his list. Sooji: wiser than others, which has always felt pretentious in Korean. But no one but halmeoni, who named me, ever used it in real life, and she passed away when I was four.

On Joohyuk's other side, by the door, a beautiful girl with pencil-straight black hair pulling over her shoulders wraps up her flirting match with a hawk-nosed guy named Seonho. Beside him is a prematurely graying guy named Yoo Subin, who apparently is taking a gap year to work on a Senate campaign this fall. I haven't gotten the girl's name yet, and I feel a pang, wishing Wendy were here—everyone seems to know each other already.