Yoon Seri posts an inquiry about the mysterious piano song she heard in Iseltwald on an Internet forum and an anon commenter picks it up.
A Crash Landing on You AU fiction. #serihawky
Illustration by @chummychurri (Twitter)
Cover design by @edelweir...
March 28, 2021 12:57 AM Cafe Badalo, Gyeonso-dong, Gangneung
"Jeong-hyeok, are you sure we're at the right place?"
"Yes this is the place."
"It's a cafe?"
"There's an apartment upstairs."
"Oh..."
Their weekend trip came on a whim when Seri crashed into Jeong-hyeok's house a week ago. "Let's still go somewhere." Seri urged her boyfriend sleepily. "Bad or good, I don't want to be in Seoul after the show. I want to disappear somewhere where the sky is blue and maybe wake up next to the ocean."
The way Seri said that gave Jeong-hyeok pause, it sounded almost like the reason why she went to Switzerland years ago.
"Why are you looking like that?" Seri threw a pillow at him. "I'm not gonna jump into the ocean. I just want some space to breathe."
It sounded simple and innocuous enough, but finding a good place with only a week to the travel date proved a challenge. Even if Seri encouraged Jeong-hyeok to splurge away, there were some rather impossible requests.
"No hotels." She said later when Jeong-hyeok was already browsing a hotel search engine.
Jeong-hyeok looked up from his tablet. "Any hotel?"
"Nothing that has a shared space with other people." Seri said while scrolling down a report in her computer at her apartment.
That took away all the beachfront properties the pilot was looking at. While Seri instructed him to take over the planning, she would vote down any property he would show her. She would comment on the size of the bathroom, the bed that didn't look sturdy, the color of a particular closet and the lackadaisical arrangement of the furniture. After several back and forths, Seri stopped him and said she would go with whatever he decides. No more protest.
No pressure.
After almost three hours, the car eased into a spacious parking space of a quirky stand-alone building, which Seri thought was what the Sydney Opera House would look like if it was a cafe and made of granite because of how its window arches were topped by sail-shaped elements. There was no ocean in sight but they were a few minutes walk away from the beach.
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Seri was peering at the cafe interiors from the dashboard when Jeong-hyeok opened the door to her side. "Let's go." He offered his hand.
The closed sign was displayed but there was a man behind the counter. Jeong-hyeok knocked on the glass door to get his attention.
The man looked over their way, waving to Jeong-hyeok in recognition and hurried to the door, taking his keys from his apron.
"Do you know him?" Seri asked but didn't get an answer yet as the door was opened for them.
