“Hello!” I call out. “I’m Hara. Hara Wilson.”

I nearly fall on my face when he looks up from his phone. I’m not a chatty person, but I’ve never been at a loss for words. I’ve always got something to say, but not this time. It’s as if my tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth.

He is beautiful.

It is not a term I’d generally use for a man but there’s no better adjective. He’s magazine beautiful. Photoshop beautiful. Beautiful in the way that if I uploaded a picture of him on Instagram, the post would go viral. It’s possible I’ve conjured him much like a thirsty woman in the desert imagines an oasis, but in reality she’s licking a sand dune.

I’ve been up for nearly twenty-four hours. It’s hard to sleep on a plane when you have two inches of leg room and are scrunched between a businessman wearing a bottle’s worth of cologne and a woman who takes selfies every five minutes before passing out on your shoulder. I probably have a film over my eyes that’s acting like a real-life blur filter. I blink twice, but when I refocus, he’s still there, except now he’s staring at me like I’m the odd thing.

“I’m H-Hara,” I stammer out, but there’s not even a flicker of recognition. Then I remember that he probably knows of Boyoung since she arranged for him to be here. “Boyoung Kim. I mean, Kim Boyoung,” I correct myself, remembering that last names go first. “Kim Boyoung arranged for you to drive me to my rental.”

The man looks from my face to my hand and back again. That feeling of home is leaking away and a familiar sensation of otherness creeps over me, turning my cheeks red. Suddenly, I realize that when Boyoung was telling me that everyone dressed up here in Seoul, it wasn’t a commentary on Seoulites, but a gentle piece of advice that my preference for sweatpants was going to make me stick out like a red crayon in a box of neutrals. I didn’t get the message and now I’m regretting my choice of joggers, an old Puma T-shirt, and sneakers. The heat spreads to my ears.

I’m about to turn away when he reaches out and clasps my hand. He has long, piano-playing fingers and a firm, dry grip. The contact snakes a line of electricity from his palm to the back of my neck and other places farther south.

“Choi Yujun,” he says in perfect, hardly accented English. “You’re American.” It’s not a question.

What was left of my “I’m a local” bubble deflates, as does the surge of energy from his handshake. I pull away and wrap my fingers around my purse strap. “How did you know?”

“The accent or, rather, the lack of one.” The left corner of his mouth quirks up slightly.

“You don’t have much of an accent either,” I point out. This driver speaks English like my coworker Jeff but for a faint hint of an accent that I can’t place.