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...
June 29, 2016 5:43 PM Economy Candy, New York, USA
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How embarrassing, Seo Dan thought as she sat alone in the SUV with the stereo left to pump out some inane beats about eating cake by the ocean.
She was making one poor decision after another, from the moment she botched her report for consumer behavior class that morning to the minute she accepted that stranger's ride without so much of a resistance as she might have liked to project.
Seo Dan blamed those imbeciles she was cursed to share a class with and their degenerate sense of humor for laughing at someone who happened to have an accent different to their own. Then she was mad that a woman had to swoop in to rescue her but calling those buffoons out, leaving Seo Dan to linger in that undesirable position of a damsel in distress.
Then her coffee spilled on her shirt that afternoon.
That the same woman earlier that day would drive by and lower her window to offer Seo Dan a ride back to her apartment just as she was failing to hail a cab was salt to injury.
But Seo Dan would contend she was left with no choice.
So she was left inside the car as the woman made to stop in front of a candy store of all places, leaving her to stew in her stained shirt.
Well come to think of it, the woman was no stranger if she gave her name. They owned the same kind of passport and took the same program. Surely such coincidences were enough to bridge a friendship.
The driver's door swung open as Yoon Seri slid back in her seat. Earlier that day, she entered the classroom with a strong impression donning a pair of large sunglasses and a polka-dotted suit, jacket thrown loosely over her shoulders, ankle-cut pants revealing strappy heels. Now she did away with her jacket and left on her plain white shirt. She tossed a shopping bag of candies of inordinate amount to the backseat, another bag she extended over to Seo Dan.
Seo Dan stared wordlessly at the plastic packaging with chocolate bars inside.
"Take it." Seri waved it to her face. "It's good to eat when you're feeling down."
"That's rather presumptive of you." Seo Dan begged to differ.
"I don't assume, I just know it." Seri let go of the bag that Seo Dan haphazardly caught. The driver fastened her seatbelt and rejoined the New York traffic. "Far too many bad days to count."
Her rescuer's admission that she had off days had Seo Dan relaxing somewhat. Maybe it was relatability, or the comfort of knowing that someone could have been in a worse situation than she was that day.
Seri would not tell of those bad days just yet, she was focused on driving. But somewhere down that ride, they reverted comfortably to their native tongue and it was nice after days of having to grapple with a foreign language since their arrival at JFK. The shared vernacular gave way to dropping formalities and trading stories about where they came from. They found familiarity with how they were trying to find their footing in the industry without any help from their families—that both didn't know were influential just as yet. Seri was a businesswoman who had a specific vision of how clothes should be sold, Seo Dan was a model who wanted to understand the business for the prospect of growing into it.
