ME: I’m sorry but I have plans. Thank you. For everything.

YUJUN: If your plans fall through, the view of Seoul from Namsan Tower is amazing. Daebak, we Koreans would say.

I’d seen that needle-pointed tower on nearly every travel site I’d visited as I was buying my tickets and getting ready to come here. It was even in a K-drama I’d watched with Boyoung, so turning down a visit to the tower, which is top of my list to visit, is very sad.

ME: Thanks

It’s sufficiently terse that I don’t get a reply. Not even an attempted one where the three dots appear, causing you to hold your breath in anticipation. I plug in my phone, climb into bed, and try not to be upset that Yujun took my rejection to heart. The audacity of him to respect my wishes!

I get no sleep. I’m mad that I turned Yujun down. I’m mad I don’t know more Hangul. I’m mad my dad died before I got here. I didn’t even get an opportunity to curse him out for abandoning me. I didn’t hear his excuses about being poor and unprepared for fatherhood. I didn’t get to tell him how it didn’t matter that he gave me away because I lived a good life—am currently living a good life. I was robbed of that and it pisses me off.

I roll out of bed at dawn with scratchy eyes and a sore throat. The bathroom mirror says I should go back to bed for at least five days, but I know if I lie down again, I will want to text Yujun, spam email Kim Jihye, and basically do all the things that aren’t good for me. I have to get out of the house. I don my single Sunday dress and toss a cardigan around my shoulders. I’m halfway down the walk when I realize I’ve forgotten the strawberry candies. I dart back into the house and stuff the box into my purse.

I wander down one alley and then another, avoiding the main six-lane road and keeping to the small passages where it’s easy to forget that I’m in a city of millions. Seoul in the early morning is quiet. There aren’t many cars on the streets and the city feels like it’s still sleeping. Metal gates are rolled down, covering store windows. The lights are off inside cafés and coffee shops. A few people stream in and out of the occasional twenty-four-hour convenience store carrying small plastic sacks of goods. Some are even sipping coffee from to-go cups. I’d like to go inside and get my own coffee but I don’t think I’d know how to run a machine or communicate with a clerk, so I keep walking.

I haven’t paid much attention to the city itself since I arrived. I’ve scouted the area around the place I’m staying and it’s a mix of mid-rise buildings filled with restaurants, cosmetic stores, and other small businesses. There always seem to be a lot of people walking with purpose. In the underground subway tunnels, there’s another city, with vendors selling hot foods, umbrellas, socks, and shoes. Music drifts out from the stores like a conveyor-belt radio station. Move down one storefront and you get a different song.