“Yes. Choi Wansu is Eomeo-nim. I was going to text you that I was inviting her to dinner with us tonight so you could talk about your search, but you’re here. Would you like to come up and meet her now?”

My eyelids flutter shut and I gulp down a rock that would fill the Grand Canyon before nodding. “Yes. I would.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I barely register the other people in the elevator.

“Do you know me?” I blurt out.

Yujun smiles down but he looks confused. “Yes. I do.”

Maybe I’m reading the confusion into his face and voice. Maybe I’m seeing what I want to see, because if this has all been a setup from the beginning and he’s been pretending to like me the whole time . . . well, the mix of anger and humiliation swirling in my gut is an awful concoction. I want to throw up on his shiny shoes and then punch him hard enough that the dimple becomes a permanent dent.

“Did you know me before I came? Did you purposely meet me at the airport?”

“No.” He shakes his head. He’s still smiling lightly but the questions are growing. “But I am glad that we did meet.”

“Why? Why did you drive out of your way for me? I was a stranger. I mistook you for someone else.”

“Hara.” He reaches up and touches my shoulder again. I didn’t realize I was trembling. “Are you okay?”

“Tell me,” I demand.

His smile fades away entirely. “I saw you come through the exit. You went and rented an internet modem and struggled a bit until you realized they all spoke English. I had stepped forward to help you but you were able to complete the transaction. When you looked for your driver and didn’t find him, I thought I could not allow such a pretty girl to have a bad first day in Seoul.”

I want so desperately to believe him. “But the other night, you said you knew I was here to find my birth parents.”

“I suspected, yes. When we met at the airport, you said you were not visiting family and that you were adopted.”

I rub clammy hands over my face. Was it luck, then? Or coincidence? Seoul is such a big city. There are millions of people here. It seems big, but it’s small. Everyone’s connected, Jules had said that day when we ran into a coworker of hers in the subway.

“I think we should get you something to eat. You’re shaking, Hara.” He turns to someone in the elevator and says something in Korean. Bap? Rice?

I don’t know. My head is aching and I can’t concentrate. The elevator speeds to the fourteenth floor and then the doors open. No one moves.

“Hara?” Yujun says gently. “This is our floor.”

I curl my trembling fingers around the strap of my purse and follow Yujun off the elevator. My sandals slap against the wooden floor and down toward a set of glass doors. Inside, a slickly dressed woman rises and bows. I barely manage a nod in return.