Page 76 of When Worlds Collide
He nodded. “Okay. I will talk to people at the company. Today.”
“It doesn’t need to be ENT,” I said quickly. I didn’t want him to think I was using him to get a convenient role.
“No, it makes sense,” he nodded again. “It is a good place to start.”
“If they’ll have me,” I crossed my arms over my chest, finally giving voice to something that had bothered me ever since we’d first discussed working for ENT. They were a massive entertainment company, managing some of the biggest names across various media industries. I was… an intern. Worse; an intern that got fired for fooling around with a client.
I groaned, rolling my head back onto my shoulders. “What if they don’t want me?”
“Then the chicken shop down the road is hiring.”
I opened my eyes to stare at him.
“It’s true. I saw the sign in their window.” His lips twitched.
My head was throbbing. I’d gone into that Korean class thinking that starting right at the beginning would be – if not easy – manageable, considering I’d been learning already using an app.
Total. Bollocks.
If anything, it made it harder because I’d been labouring under that misapprehension.
The tutor was very kind, though. Honestly, I think she was just surprised I’d taken the effort to learn any Korean before coming, beyond, “where’s the train station?” and “how much is this tteokbokki?” She’d practically fallen out of her chair when I’d been able to demonstrate I could at least identify the Hangul characters in the alphabet. Most of them.
At least I now had my expectations set as to my Korean proficiency. My tutor was convinced I’d be conversational within a year – provided I attended at least one in-person lesson per week, and followed up with the online class.
She gave me the option to pay the whole year up front, but I opted for paying monthly. It felt like too much pressure to sign up for a year when plans were so uncertain, and also, Jihoon had flat-out insisted on paying, and I just couldn’t bring myself to smash through that much of my boyfriend’s money. Ick.
Jihoon was going to a Pilates class after his recording session, so I had a bit of time to kill before meeting him back at the apartment. He kept trying to insist that I call a driver to ferry me around, but I refused. Having moved from the back-of-nowhere country side in the north of England to London the year I turned eighteen, I’d had a fast education in city-life. Then moving to LA the year after I graduated meant cities no longer fazed me, whatever side of the globe they were on.
I just kind of enjoyed wandering around, seeing what I could see.
When Jihoon and I went out into the city, it was usually to well-known places where he could either blend in with the crowds, or exclusive places where people were less likely to pay any attention.
Walking around like this, just me and a maps app, felt more like I was getting to know the city I was potentially going to be calling home for… who knew how long.
Though I didn’t like to do it often, just following the roads and exploring really did allow for comparisons to be made between Seoul and the cities I had known before, and honestly – aside from the obvious things, like the language on the signs and some of the architecture – there were a lot of similarities.
The centre of any city was always a theme park; it’s usually where all the big touristy places are, the shiniest malls, the most famous streets for food, even the most eccentric streets became a tourist attraction. The suburbs of any given city all kind of had the same vibe.
Every city had something unique though, something different. With London, I’d always thought it was the way the modernity of it went head-to-head with the hundreds of years of history. Awkwardly shaped skyscrapers locked in a perpetual staring match with Westminster Abbey. Shakespeare’s Globe a stone’s throw away from Millennium Bridge. Bumped up against a shiny, modern building was always some crooked little alley with the original cobblestones.
LA didn’t have quite the same opposing personality. It’s just complete chaos, and absolutely unapologetic about it. You either lean into it, or get out of its way.
Seoul? I wasn’t sure yet. Sure, the city centre was all shiny, and modern, and just down the way from those skyscrapers were picturesque walks, lined with blossom trees. Beyond that, I didn’t feel qualified to make a real assessment of it yet.
I walked around for a couple of hours after my language lesson, using my app to navigate to some interesting areas including this bomb cafe where I got a pastry shaped like a fish, called a bungeo-ppang – which meant ‘carp bread’. The word ppang I knew from my language app, but not having moved onto aquatic species, I’d Googled the rest of the name. I don’t know why it’s named carp bread, because the one I got was filled with a sweet, red bean paste which sounded weirder than it tasted. The owner of the cafe was a cheerful, older man who’d been so charmed by my clumsy attempt to order in Korean, that he’d sprinkled extra sugar on my still-warm pastry, and insisted I try it right there. After I’d awkwardly taken a bite, and involuntarilydone my happy-food-dance, he’d clapped in delight and told me in broken English to come back and eat more pastries.
It was probably one of the most wholesome encounters of my life.
With the help of the Naver app, I mapped my route back to Hannam. It was only a fifteen-minute walk, but Jihoon was already back by the time I pushed open the door to the apartment.
He said something to me in a stream of Korean so fast that I was only able to pick out a word or two, and one of them was my name.
“Well, annyeong to you, too.”
“Wah, what are we paying your seonsaengnim for, if you don’t speak Korean yet?”
“My teacher has more patience than you do, Mr Baek.” I toed off my shoes and walked towards him to give him a kiss. I’d meant it to only be a little drive-by peck, but instead, he grabbed me around the waist and yanked me against him. I squealed, and batted at his chest as ineffectually as I might have batted against a boulder.
