Jinyoung ran his fingers through his hair in lieu of a comb, keeping an eye on the red numbers on the digital clock by his bed. 6:03 pm. If he didn’t leave in the next two minutes, he would be late for sure. 

Figuring that it was just dinner with a friend and there was no reason to put any real effort into his appearance, he didn’t bother changing out of the same blue flannel shirt that he’d worn to class that day. He grabbed a jacket, switched off the lights in his studio, and was out the door. 

Wonpil was a fellow med student at Cheonbyul that Jinyoung befriended during orientation. They weren’t as close as Jinyoung and Jackson, but Jinyoung figured it was time to make more and new friends. He saw so little of his college friends since graduation, and it would be nice to have someone to hang out with.

Wonpil had picked a restaurant by The Mile, which was, as the name suggested, a mile of trendy restaurants and shops that was a short walk from the beach and just a little bit longer of a walk from Jinyoung’s apartment. He decided to make the journey on foot and reached their meeting place in about twenty minutes’ time. He spotted Wonpil standing outside the restaurant.

With two girls.

Jinyoung stopped in his tracks. Wonpil was paying considerably more attention to one of the girls than the other, which could only mean one thing: a blind double date. Jinyoung considered turning around, walking back home, and then pretending he got sick all of a sudden, but Wonpil had already spotted him and was waving him over. Jinyoung sighed and approached.

“Took you long enough!” Wonpil said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I thought you said your place was close by?”

“Can I talk to you a minute?” Jinyoung whispered, pulling Wonpil aside and casting an apologetic smile to the girls. “What is this?”

“Okay, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you ahead of time,” Wonpil said, his voice low. “But I didn’t know about this until last minute, either, and I figured ‘what’s the harm?’ You don’t have a girlfriend, right?”

Jinyoung’s jaw twitched. “No,” he said plainly. Wonpil didn’t know about Jisoo, but Jinyoung knew that if he attempted to explain that situation, they’d never hear the end of it. Wonpil shrugged.

“Alright, well then let me introduce you,” he said. 

“I’m not dressed for a date,” Jinyoung said. Wonpil looked him up and down.

“You look fine.”

He grabbed Jinyoung’s sleeve and brought them back to where the girls were standing. They were both very pretty. It was getting colder so they were wearing pea coats over dresses and they wore their hair loose. 

“This is Wendy and Seulgi,” Wonpil said, gesturing to each of the girls. Wendy immediately detached herself from Seulgi and then slipped her arm around Wonpil’s, which left Jinyoung to assume that Seulgi was to be his date.

“I’m Jinyoung,” he said, introducing himself and shaking Seulgi’s hand. She smiled and shook his hand warmly. 

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “You go to Cheonbyul, too, right?”

“Yeah,” Jinyoung answered. “School of Medicine.”

“Awesome, Wendy and I go, too,” Seulgi said. “In fact, I think we have a class together. Wednesdays at 4?”

“Dr. Hwang?”

“That’s the one,” Seulgi said. “How’s your paper coming along?”

“Non-existent,” Jinyoung said, and Seulgi laughed along. Wendy and Wonpil joined in the conversation about non-existent papers that would be due shortly. They all laughed about it, but only to cover up how panicked that actually were. In another minute, a waiter came out to tell them that a table was ready. 

The situation was unexpected, but Jinyoung didn’t want to be rude, so he let himself be seated next to Seulgi and made conversation with her. All-in-all, the experience wasn’t entirely painful. Seulgi was actually quite pleasant, and Wendy was pretty funny. They talked about classes and assignments, talked about social events going on around campus, about shows that were playing on TV, the latest celebrity gossip, the girls went silent when Wonpil turned to Jinyoung and spent fifteen minutes talking about baseball, then vice versa when the girls started discussing new trends in makeup. Wonpil and Jinyoung split the bill at the end of it. 

When dinner was over, though, it felt awkward to end the evening there. So Wendy and Wonpil suggested taking a walk down The Mile. It was a cool evening and it was windy this close to the sea, but there were still tons of people out tonight.

Wendy and Wonpil walked a little bit further ahead than Jinyoung and Seulgi, and they were arm in arm. Jinyoung and Seulgi walked beside each other, though they still maintained a bit of distance.

“So,” Seulgi said. “What kind of doctor do you want to be?”

Jinyoung shrugged. “Not sure, yet,” he said. “But I have a non-medical assistantship at the Children’s Hospital. So a children’s doctor, maybe. What about you?”

“Not sure yet, either,” she said as they passed a street performer doing magic tricks. “But my parents were both neurosurgeons.”

“Impressive,” Jinyoung said. “Not sure how you can top that, though.”

Seulgi laughed. “Challenge accepted.”

It was a crowded night at The Mile. Couples, groups of friends, and families were all out braving the November chill, walking between one shop to the next, filing in and out of restaurants, and forming circles around street performers beneath strings of lights. Jinyoung had never spent much time on this side of the city, but with the sound of ocean waves on just the other side of the street and the acoustic guitarists busking on the curbs, it reminded him of the riverside park back in the city center. The memory brought back with in a melancholic feeling. 

“Ooh, this place is new,” Wendy said, breaking Jinyoung out of his stupor. She was pointing at a bookshop across the walkway.

To Anyone: Independent Books and Publishers.

Wonpil and Wendy were already heading towards it, and Jinyoung and Seulgi had no choice but to follow. Jinyoung couldn’t help that small flush of guilt that overwhelmed him when he entered the shop. Books always reminded him of her. The inside of the shop was much more spacious than it looked from outside. The walls were painted evergreen and covered in provocative photography behind glass frames. There were rows and rows of books with signs above each shelf marking the genre. Already, the new bookshop was overrun with literary types. All glasses and flannel and leather shoes and an air of intelligentsia. A signpost on the wall pointed in the direction of the store office and the editors’ office, in case of publishing inquiries.

“This is interesting,” Wendy said, letting go of Wonpil’s arm to leaf through a large book about the art of Van Gogh. Wonpil headed straight to the science fiction section and browsed through the titles. Jinyoung surprised himself by unconsciously wandering over to the romances. Seulgi, not sure where to go, followed him.

“Didn’t know you were into the romances,” she said. Jinyoung looked over his shoulder at her.

“I had a friend who was obsessed with them,” he said. “Guess it rubbed off on me.”

He was browsing the titles, mentally noting the ones he’d seen on the shelf in her bedroom, which only reminded him of what happened the last time he was in her room. He cleared his throat and tried to come up with something to say to cover up the resulting blush.

“So, do you read books?” Jinyoung asked, moving on from the romances and over to a shelf marked “New Arrivals.” Seulgi shrugged.

“Not really, to be honest,” she said. “I don’t have a ton of time and… I’m not that interested in novels, actually. I have enough to read in Hwang’s class.”

Jinyoung was about to laugh and reply with another joke about Hwang’s class but a book on the N