The police station was hectic that morning.  A motley ensemble of homogeneity milled impatiently beneath the stark florescent lighting of the waiting area. 

On one side, a group of mothers and grandmothers with furious expressions huddled in a tight pack exchanging war stories about their wayward sons. 

On the other, a few grandfathers shuffled and glanced around with bored looks then leaned back to yawn and stretch their limbs. The younger men, buried under baseball caps and hoodies or hidden behind dark sunglasses, looked jittery. Several nervously bounced their knees while others played with their cell phones.

Alone in one corner sat a pale and lost young wife, there for the first time to bail her drunken husband out of jail. 

Near the entrance, a life size cartoonish figure of a jolly, pot-bellied officer had been stationed to welcome visitors.  The statue was frozen in the middle of a friendly wave with one hand while the other rested, palm upward, inviting newcomers to enter and take a seat.  An oily, middle-aged man, artfully covert beneath sunglasses, a wrinkled overcoat and a greasy looking mustache, pushed his way through the glass and steel entry.  Glancing over the rim of his glasses, his eyes darted around, quickly confirming the coast was clear before he jabbed his cigarette into the statue’s plastic hand to extinguish it.

Hawk and the red-headed girl sat on one of the ancient, wooden benches lining a dull stretch of wall space as they waited their turn.  Keyboards clicked and, from somewhere in the back of the room, a telephone rang unanswered.

Hawk watched her as she watched the chaos. Fascinated, she leaned forward, craning her neck to take it all in while she toyed with her pendant. The shy hesitancy she’d shown the evening before had vanished and now, like a little kid, she just seemed curious.

She was dressed in Seung-Bae’s baggy grey gym shorts and faded, red world cup t-shirt.  On her feet, she wore the yellow slip-ons she’d arrived in.  The mismatched ensemble was somewhat masked by the long red hair that tumbled in wayward ringlets around her shoulders to her waist.  Each time someone walked by, the after-draft would send the infantile curls at her hairline drifting upwards to brush across her forehead and cheeks as though they had a life of their own.  With each small surge of air, a deliciously clean scent wafted off of her.

Hawk caught himself in the act of leaning closer to get a better whiff. The motion of the oily overcoat man sitting down in the open spot on her other side had broken the spell. 

Hawk looked away and pursed his lips. 

The realization that eyes were watching came in stages.  He dismissed it as an inevitable result of the girl’s striking appearance, but the tiny hairs rising along his forearms and at the nape of his neck pricked at his logic, taunting him that instinct was given for a reason. He scratched nervously at his arms. 

Suddenly, his cell phone went off, blasting at full volume from his pocket.  He quickly dug it out and set it to vibrate mode.  The call had come from the apartment.  When it lit up again, Hawk pulled the battery out and stuffed it back into his pocket. 

“Aishh,” he sighed.

Despite how logical it had seemed earlier, he was beginning to doubt the brilliance of his plan to bring the girl to the local police station. Seung-Bae was going to be furious when he got back home.

“Yang Shin-Hyuk?”

Hawk jumped to his feet. A junior officer in a crisply starched uniform waved him over. 

“I’m Officer Cho, what can I do for you?” the man asked as he led Hawk down a narrow pathway between the rows of cubicles to a makeshift workspace.  The desk was little more than a simple table, its top cluttered but meticulous with orderly stacks of paper and manila folders. 

Hawk took a seat in the black, plastic folding chair situated at an angle in front of the desk and then turned back to check on the girl.  Down the walkway, he had a clear view of where she sat with her knees together and ankles crossed. She folded her hands in her lap and blinked at him.

Hawk cleared his throat. He leaned over the desk towards the officer.  In a hushed voice he confided with contrived embarrassment, “I met this girl.”

He glanced back again over his shoulder.  She’d begun to toy with a lock of her hair, and another man had taken the spot on the bench that he had just vacated.  She gave Hawk a small smile.

He turned back to Officer Cho and frowned.  “I think she might be lost.  She doesn’t speak Korean so I haven’t been able to find out anything about her.  But something doesn’t seem right.”

“Is that her there? Wow … she’s pretty, eh?  Don’t think I’ve ever seen hair that color before. She looks Australian or maybe American …” Officer Cho turned to his computer and began typing.  “Where did you find her?”

“Uhh ...” Hawk turned again.  The oily overcoat man was leaning toward her and sniffing at her hair. The man slipped his hand into his pocket.

Hawk’s stomach churned with a sense of wrongness; he rubbed his suddenly sweaty palms down the length of his blue jean covered thighs.  Across the room, the girl’s eyes locked onto his with resignation as if to convey, “I knew this would happen …”

“We do have a report of a missing American college student.  It’s a preliminary report and I don’t see a name, but it looks like she was living in Jeju and diving with the haenyeo.” Officer Cho clucked his tongue. “See something new every day in this place.”

“The haenyeo?”

“The sea-women,” the officer looked at Hawk in surprise.  “You know … the female divers of Jeju.”

Hawk nodded as the idea sunk in. The haenyeo of Jeju, a large island off the southern tip of Korea, had been the breadwinners of their families for generations, diving into the ocean depths to fish and harvest other highly sought delicacies.  In today’s modern world, the haenyeo’s numbers had dwindled to a small group of mostly seniors.  It seemed logical that even international students would be attracted to the women’s history and culture.

“Ahh, I see.  Could it be her?”

“There’s not a photo here.  Give me a minute.”  The officer rose and disappeared into another room.

Hawk chewed his lip as he mulled it over.  Sokcho was over 300 miles away from Jeju.  If it was her, how could she have gotten so far with no passport and no money?  And if she was a college student, why was she acting so strangely?

He glanced back.  His eyes widened in shock.

A crowd of men had gathered around the girl.  Through a thin opening between the bodies, he made out that her gaze was still locked onto him.  But in place of the once tranquil expression, her eyes were now full of terror.  Then, one man moved in closer, and she vanished.

“Ya!”  Hawk sprung up from his seat.  

Tearing across the room, he burst through the crowd just as the oily overcoat man cooed something incoherent and reached out to the girl’s cheek. 

Hawk’s stomach twisted and every muscle in his slim body tensed up.  “Wrong …” his head screamed, but behind it, somewhere deeper in his mind, another thought formed.  “Mine.” his mouth whispered.

Grabbing the girl’s hand, he yanked her away and fled.

.  .  .  .  .  .

“I checked the initial report but there’s no name or picture included …” Officer Cho halted in surprise, the document in his hands forgotten as he realized that the young man he’d been gathering information for had disappeared.  Glancing into the waiting area, he discovered that the red-headed girl was also gone. 

Near the spot where she’d been sitting stood a cluster of men, their faces slack with confusion.  Officer Cho marched over to the group.

“What happened to the girl that was just here?” he demanded.

The men all looked upwards or away, brows raised and lips pursed, attempting to appear innocently uninvolved. 

A greasy looking man in a questionable overcoat chuckled as he twirled a toothpick between his teeth.  “She ran off with that kid she was with,” he grunted.  “But I got a picture.”  He held his cell phone out and grinned triumphantly. 

In unison, the crowd dipped their faces in for a closer look.

“Let me see that.” Officer Cho took the phone.  He forwarded the picture to his Seoul Metropolitan Police Station email account.