There’s a little garden with some sort of monument, and we sit on its marble platform. A squirrel is startled by us. The platform is cold, so I turn to tell Sol to sit on my lap, but she sits on the rock across from me.

“Are you going to his place tonight? Are you moving in with him?” Sol asks abruptly and urgently, as though she’s been holding back this question, waiting for this moment.

“I dunno.”

“Are you guys officially dating now? You guys even dropped the honorific, I guess you really are going to live together, huh?”

“I really don’t know. Stop saying things as though they’re decided.”

“If you aren’t moving in with him, why else did he buy all that stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“I saw him buying several packages of frozen bone broth from the restaurant earlier. It’s supposed to be good for bones, right? He’s clearly thinking about feeding you.”

“I didn’t know about any of that.”

“I don’t like how you’re all,I dunno, I dunno. You seem so passive. Even defeated! Yeah, I know you’ve been struggling, and yeah, things are rough. But are you just gonna go with him like you’re a piece of gum that got stuck to his shoe?”

“Is that how you think of me? You don’t take me or my life seriously!” I’m pissed and I jump up to my feet.

Eunyong, who’s been staying out of the conversation, minding her own business in the distance, comes back to intervene. “Whoa, my friends. Please don’t fight. If you want to fight, at least make it physical, grab each other’s hair, make it fun. Don’t do it like this.” Eunyong is in a good mood for some reason and picks a flower from the bush, pins it to her hair, and giggles to herself. She stops giggling when she walks up to the monument and reads its plaque: “‘On December 24th 1970, four men from the Army Corps, Construction Unit 1203, died in an accident while blasting the cliff to build this road.’ Fuck. They were working the soldiers on Christmas Eve? Sheesh!” Eunyong’s brother is in the army, which might be why she’s upset by it. Somehow I sense that there might be more to her sudden fury.

“Here.” Jihyun is back and hands me the pack of cigarettes. I open it, but then feel too awkward to smoke in front of the monument. It seems disrespectful. I don’t want my cigarette smoke to bother these poor men’s souls. When I put the pack of cigarettes into my pocket, I find the letter I’d been meaning to read.

“Read this for me,” I pass the piece of paper that I folded up in the shape of a kite to Sol.

“What is this? Is this for me? Should I read it now?”