“You look so lovely when you eat, my girl.”

Barely able to swallow, I gulped back my tears. When it was time to leave I got up and staggered awkwardly back to the guest house, my stomach distended from overeating.

IT WAS customary to celebrate Seollal with the family. Tteok soup followed by a trip to the cemetery to place rice balls on the ancestors’ graves. My mother expected me to be there. I made arrangements with Park, I’d cook the tteokguk in advance, he’d only have to reheat it for himself and the girl with the bandages. And Kerrand too, should he deign to sample my cooking.

The girl had been spending all her time in her room since the boy left for Seoul. I’d find her clothes tangled up on the bed along with psychology magazines, the personality tests all dutifully completed. From time to time I’d do one myself, just to compare. Are you more of a dog or a cat? She was something in-between, I was a cat. Sometimes she’d come and watch television in the lounge, a drama series, a Hong Kong Chinese film. Another layer of dressings would be removed from her face. You still couldn’t make out her features.

Sokcho was bedecked in finery in readiness for Seollal. Strings of lights were hung along the main street as far as the great steel arch, its light-blue metal structure adorned with an inflatable dolphin for the occasion. The dolphin leered, brandishing a sign that dangled from its flippers, bearing the words “Rodeo Street.”

In the supermarket, I stopped in the manga and manhwa section. It wasn’t very well stocked. No western books at all. I scanned the titles and eventually found one of the few manhwa novels I’d read and enjoyed. A tale of a mother and daughter in Ancient Korea. Clean lines, bright colors, a world away from Kerrand’s drawings. I bought it.

Kerrand was in the visitors’ lounge, leafing through the Korea Times. He saw me come in and closed the paper. I handed him the manhwa.

“It’s in Korean, but there’s not much dialogue.”

He flicked through the book, running his finger along the strips like a child learning to read. He looked up after about ten pages. He was hungry. Did I want to have dinner with him? Caught off guard, I didn’t know what to say. He looked at me expectantly and I offered to make us some radish soup. No, he said he’d rather go out. I was hurt. But I kept it to myself and suggested we go to one of the fish places down by the water.

STALL-OWNERS WERE stretching tarpaulin sheets in front of their stands to protect them from the wind. The customers, old men. Shouts mingling with the chilli and fermented cabbage smells of kimchi and steam from the soups. One stand serving octopus, another crab, raw fish. Kerrand was shaking his head. The noise, he said, the smells, the lack of space. He needed peace and quiet. There were no more stalls beyond the quayside, only Dunkin’ Donuts. A decision was needed. In the end he picked out a stand I wasn’t familiar with, away from the others, the quietest one.