God it's hot.
Han Ji-pyeong had been walking for almost two hours. He could feel the sun burning the back of his neck as a bead of sweat slid under his collar. He had just kept walking from the coffee shop with no thought to where he was going. It was better than stewing alone in a hotel room yelling at an AI.
Now he found himself in the middle of Central Park. He stopped and looked around at this hidden green world surrounded by skyscrapers. Han Ji-pyeong had not noticed the lush peace that it offered until now.
"What the heck am I doing?"
He said it a bit too loudly. A man walking his dog shrugged and then gave him a sympathetic look as he hurried by.
Yeah I don't know either.
Han Ji-pyeong shuffled over to a bench and slumped onto it. While rolling up his sleeves to seek relief, he spied a plastic bottle on the black lacquered wood. He wrinkled his nose at it and tossed it towards the trash. It bounced off the side and spun to a stop on the path in front of him.
Han Ji-pyeong fumed and kicked it away petulantly.
Why can't it be me?
It was the defining question of his life: a constant drum inside his head even if the melody changed. As a teen it fueled him with jealousy every time he saw a child with their parents at a restaurant. Or longing whenever a someone else from the orphanage packed their suitcase never to return. Or discomfort when he watched Dal-mi smile at Do-san on the rooftop. Or despair when he said those words out loud to Grandmother only to be told to stay silent. Or, finally, sad resignation as he opened the invitation to Dal-mi and Do-san's wedding.
Now he was asking it again alone on a bench in the middle of a strange place. Yet this time it did not quite fit. And that was the damndest thing about it.
He let out an exasperated breath and threw his jacket to the side.
Kim Mi-rae had flat out told him that she looked for him too. She even called his hotel!
Han Ji-pyeong tilted his head and stopped the conversation replaying in his mind right there. He wanted to stay in that moment forever. Her brown eyes were wide and vulnerable. And full of emotion. For him. Even now his heart raced just thinking about it.
She likes me.
It was not his imagination.This afternoon had offered an exquisitely painful revelation. Han Ji-pyeong knew better than most what it was to look into a person's eyes and realize that they did not feel the same way. No woman had ever looked at him like Kim Mi-rae. It filled him with breathless wonder. Last night he had harbored an intense crush. Now Han Ji-pyeong was in a free fall.
Kim Mi-rae was the most astonishing person that he had ever met. All day long she floored him with her intellect, her poise, and her precise command of the intricate details of a sprawling merger across two industries and three continents. She never once hesitated in response to a single question that he asked. Rather she seemed to enjoy debating with him. No one ever reacted to him like that. Han Ji-pyeong did not have to hold himself back with her — indeed he clamored to impress her.
And after, she did not shrink from the awkwardness of their situation. Instead of avoiding him or papering over the morning's debacle, Kim Mi-rae faced their misunderstanding head on. She offered him the grace of trying to understand what had happened in lieu of judgment. Nor did she pretend that their attraction was not mutual despite the circumstances.
He winced at the memory of dropping the lid like a clumsy fool in front of her. And yet Kim Mi-rae still looked at him like she would choose him if she could. It had given him courage like he had never felt before. For a moment, all of the complications had just melted away. In the middle of the afternoon over coffee in paper cups, Han Ji-pyeong felt everything that he had in that dark corner of the bar last night. His mind ran wild with the possibility of taking that beautiful face into his hands and kissing those red lips. He had dared to hope again.
