I See You - K.NJ

I - She : New Chapter, New Life

"Ladies and Gentleman, we are now approaching Incheon International Airport, we ask you to please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts."

Finally! Finally after 14 long months, Y/N was finally going back to Korea.

She loved to travel, and loved discovering new countries, new landscapes, new adventures. But she always felt the need to return where she felt home. So once every several months, she would go back to South Korea, the country that had definitely stolen her heart.

This time though,  was somewhat special compared to all the other times. She had quit her job after mastering her Tesol certificate, which allowed her to be an online teacher, and thus be able to work anywhere in the world as long as she had an internet connection. It was the very first time she was entering South Korea with no specific departure date.

She knew her tourist visa would only be valid 3 months, but she could do a visa run. Which means that she would have to travel out of the country at the end of the 3 months, and apply for another 3 months as she returned.

All this freedom all at once was sure bit scary, but she just took a long and deep breath smiling to the future and smiling to all the opportunities that ahead of her.

In her past trips she had made a bunch of Korean friends and she was excited to see them all  again. She had even booked a flight that would arrive in Seoul early this Saturday, because DongHwan, one of her closest friends, who was a super talented guitarist, had a major performance that night. So she and SongHee, his girlfriend, had arranged it all to keep it a surprise.

"Ladies and Gentleman, we have arrived in South Korea. The weather as you can see is very sunny and the temperature is up to 32°C. It is currently 10:37 am and ..."

Y/N was so happy and excited, she stopped paying attention to what was being said, having just one wish : exhuming the sweet air of this country she loved so much.

She knew that South Korea wasn't as extra as she saw it. But somehow it had always been her safe place.

A lot of people recently loved Korea for Kpop or Kdramas and it made Y/N a bit upset because Korea was much more that few bands dancing and singing and was definitely way more than those fantasy fairy tales everyone was so crazy about.

Okay she admitted her love for Korea had begun like that as well, 15 years ago, when most of western countries didn't even know there was a country called Korea, let alone 2.

But the connection she had felt during her teenage years was quite different. Whenever she would be pressured to be something people were expecting her to be, she would run away to Korea. Mentally at least. Whenever she felt misunderstood, she would run away to Korea. Whenever she was angry, sad, desperate, whenever she had negative feelings, she would comfort herself with the idea that one day she would leave all what made her life miserable behind, and would go to Korea.

When she finally was old enough to go, she felt scared. Right after graduation, nothing holding her back, she had enough savings to stay at least 3 months, but she was so scared.

Not of travelling alone. Not of travelling that far away. But she was scared that all her dreams and hopes would turn out to be illusions. She was scared to death to not have an escaping, safe place to run to anymore. To be disappointed. So instead of going to 3 months, she went for 1.

The result of it was that she cried all the way back home. Korea had not only met her expectations it had exceeded all she had ever hoped or dreamed of.

That's how she continued to travel and discover other countries, but once in a while she felt the need and the urge to resource herself in Korea.

Of course it wasn't a perfect country. Because such thing as perfection doesn't exist in our word yet. But nevertheless, she felt like she belonged here, and that feeling was enough for her.