“There you go. How does that feel?”

Seung-Bae had brought Haenyeo down to the underground levels of the high-rise apartment building. The space was packed tight with cars and lit by long overhead florescent lights. He settled her on the back of a sleek, steel-grey motorcycle and adjusted a spare helmet so it fit snugly onto her head and over the tiny buds he’d placed in her ears.  The wire ran down to an old mp3 player in the inside pocket of the black nylon jacket he’d wrapped around her.  He zipped it up then reached to tuck in a few curls that tried to escape around her face and catch in her eyelashes.   

The gesture startled her, it seemed intimate in a way that was new, a way she’d not experienced before and, suddenly, she felt shy.

After showing her where to place her feet, he climbed onto the motorcycle in front of her and started the engine.  It roared then settled down into a heart thrumming purr. In her ears, the music began, slow and tentative. But when the bass and drums set a tempo, the music swelled, and the familiar sound of Seung-Bae’s voice joined in.  

When they set off, winding through the parking garage and emerging into daylight, she was terrified and thrilled at the same time.  Clinging to his shirt, she kept her eyes sealed closed and tried to pretend she was in another place; someplace deep. Someplace safe. 

This ride was different than the rides in the bus and taxi had been.  She could actually feel the wind pushing against her, as though it wanted to sweep her off the bike and send her sprawling onto the ground.  When she dared a peek, the gritty road raced past beneath the yellow canvas and scuffed rubber of her shoes.  She gulped and squeezed her eyes shut again.

When they flew around a corner and the bike leaned off-center, she almost climbed up onto Seung-Bae’s back in fright. She felt more than heard the chuckle that rumbled through his chest.  A minute later, they stopped at a red light and he patted her hand. He looked over his shoulder and smiled. 

“Don’t worry,” he said.  “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

They set off again and she laid her chin against his shoulder, surrendering to the experience, and watched the city flow by.  His back felt warm and strong, and suddenly, she did feel safe. Safe, and more alive than she could ever remember feeling.

Beyond his scent was the sooty discharge of the city. The smell burned in her nostrils, and she tasted the mad rush on her tongue. The city itself shouted and jostled with color and sound. All parts and no pattern. Only crowding chaos. No rhythmic wash to lull her mind. Instead, it stabbed at her, heightened her with the pain of dizzying sensation – woke her up and shook her.

She locked her fingers around Seung-Bae’s waist and held on tightly.

They made one stop before leaving the stone forest of towering buildings.  He left her on the bike and returned a few minutes later with a pair of bags that he tucked into a back-pack, looping its straps around her arms.  The blossoms of a dozen, soft-pink roses wrapped in cellophane peaked out from the top where the zipper failed to enclose them.  Their sweet scent made her head feel light and giddy. As they moved on, leaving the slower city traffic, and picked up speed, the loose plastic crackled in the wind, a fifth instrument joining in belatedly with the harmony playing in her ears. 

They travelled out of the city and into the thick greenery of the mountainside above.  The morning was overcast with a thick, gloomy sheet of mist that reached down to weave wispy strands of fog through the trees.  The sky held its breath, leaving the air warm and humid from the strain, not yet ready to release the torrent of water it held inside.  As if it waited for something.

After a long, winding climb, Seung-Bae finally slowed to maneuver the bike into a spot alongside the road.  He turned off the engine just as the final piano notes playing in her ears faded into silence.  He took of her helmet and stowed the headphones in her pocket.

“Did you like the music?” He asked somewhat shyly. The corner of his mouth tugged upward and a small dimple creased his left cheek. “Those were songs that Hawk and I wrote.”

She nodded, and he beamed in satisfaction.

“We’re almost there.  We have to walk a bit from here.”  

Seung-Bae took the backpack from her and led her to the entrance of a well-worn trail.  The path twisted, rising through dense clusters of green shrubbery and trees whose dewy leaves were lush and plump from the overnight drizzle.  Curling like a snake, the path disappeared into the curve of the mountainside.

He offered her his hand and they began to climb.

.  .  .  .  .  .

“What is taking so long?”

“Hyeong … sit down.  You’re making me nervous,” Min-Jae complained, yawning in contradiction until tears blurred his eyes. 

In front of him, Hawk paced, back and forth across the police station’s lobby. “I hate waiting.  Why does today have to be that officer’s day off?” Pulling off his black beanie, he began twisting and tugging at the knitted length. 

A sour-faced policeman fielding the front desk had informed them that Officer Cho had taken several days of leave to attend to a personal matter.  However, he’d assured them, Detective Lee, the officer in charge of the missing person’s case, would be happy to speak with them just as soon as he was free from his phone call.  That had been over thirty minutes ago.              Hawk glanced at his watch and groaned in frustration.

“What if it’s not her?” Min-Jae beat out a rhythm on his thighs with his index fingers.  His head bobbed along.

“It’s her.”

“What if it’s not? What if Seung-Bae was right?”

Hawk him, “How can you say that? How is that even possible?” He pointed a finger at Min-Jae’s chest. “Are you saying that you believe she’s a mermaid?”

Min-Jae shrugged.  “You’re too black and white, hyeong.  Sometimes things aren’t that clear.  Sometimes you just have to take things on faith.”

“On faith?  This isn’t God we’re talking about Park Min-Jae!  It’s mermaids!  Mythological creatures?”

Min-Jae stilled and then nodded thoughtfully.  “Do you think she’s a bad person?”

“No ... I never said that.”

“Do you think she’s trying to hurt Seung-Bae?”

“I think you need to be quiet, that’s what I think.” Hawk plopped down on the bench next to his friend.

“I just don’t get why you’re so worked up about it.”

“What’s not to get worked up about? Seung-Bae could get into a lot of trouble over this.”   Hawk lowered his voice as a few curious faces turned to see what all the commotion was about. “Don’t you understand that? Aishh, maybe we all could.”

“It’s more than that though. I’ve seen the way you look at her.  Not to mention what you said last night. Do you like her?”

“What?” Hawk sputtered.  “You’re crazy Park Min-Jae.”

“You know … I wouldn’t blame you.  She’s definitely beautiful.  Plus, she has that whole ‘I’m helpless! Save me!’ thing going on.”

“I feel bad for her of course. That’s all. I mean ... look at her situation. Besides, Seung-Bae likes her.”

“Exactly,” Min-Jae nodded.

Hawk bit his lower lip. “She doesn’t even have a change of clothes.”

“Are you going to fix that too?”

Hawk turned and glared at him. 

Min-Jae pursed his lips together and pretended to turn an invisible key then tossed it away.  Suddenly bored, he pulled out his cell phone and began to play a game on the tiny screen.

Hawk continued to ravage his cap as they waited.  Truthfully, he felt like he was coming out of his skin.  He needed to know who she really was.  He needed some sort of logical explanation for the things he was feeling.  Plus, he needed hard evidence of the insanity of her story to beat Seung-Bae over the head with. 

Resting his elbows over his knees, he buried his face in his hands and rubbed at his throbbing temples.  That was when he noticed.

“Hey ... are those my pants?”

“Err,” Min-Jae hemmed.  “Aww come on, hyeong.  I needed a change of clothes too!  Don’t you feel bad for me?” 

“Your dad may not get a chance to kill you if you keep it up.” Hawk reached over to twist the flesh on his friend’s leg.

Min-Jae whimpered and scooted away.  “Oh ... hey.  What’s that?”  Eager for a distraction, he pointed across the room towards a pretty assistant officer who had marched out into the lobby from behind a door marked Authorized Personnel Only.  She was smartly dressed in starched, blue uniform slacks and a white shirt, and she was tacking a sheet of paper up onto a bulletin board mounted on the far wall.

When she stepped away, Hawk squinted to get a better look at the distant image she’d posted.  “Isn’t that …”

He jumped up. 

Grabbing Min-Jae’s arm, Hawk pulled him across the room to stand in front of the cluttered board.  The title of the freshly posted bulletin read “Missing Person.”  Just below – her  pale face unmistakable underneath a frame of wavy, red hair – was a picture of their Haenyeo.

.  .  .  .  .  .

When they reached the top of the mountain, Seung-Bae led her off the trail and down through a thick copse of evergreens.  They pushed through the prickly, interlaced branches that sprouted from wind twisted tree-trunks, and out onto a wide, rocky crag overlooking a spectacular view of sprawling Seoul city. 

They stood on the edge of the world.

“No one comes here; the trees are too thick to see this spot from the trail. If someone does come, we’ll hear them first. It should be alight if you want to speak.”

She nodded.

“This is Mt. Achasan.” Seung-Bae took in a deep breath. “I needed to come here today.  I hope you didn’t mind the climb.”

“No, I did not mind,” she replied. “It is beautiful here.”

“This place is special to me. I used to come here all the time with my mother.  She would pack a picnic lunch for us, and we’d sit over there.  She’d sketch, or sometimes paint, and we’d talk about things.  She was an artist, a rather famous one actually. Some of her paintings are at the Museum of Art.”

“You miss her …”

Seung-Bae nodded.  “It’s been five years. But it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long.”

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and, suddenly chilled despite the heat, hunched his shoulders.  “It was really hard when she got sick.  After the surgery, she became so sad all the time.  And the chemotherapy just made it worse.”

He took a step closer to the edge of the mountain and studied the view of the city. From a distance it looked like an endless maze of toy building blocks. It was his home, yet it suddenly felt alien, as if he were seeing it for the first time. “It was just the two of us. And then she died.”

“In the upstairs room …” she said. 

“Yeah. In the upstairs room.” He stabbed the toe of his sneaker into the ground, kicking loose a few jagged stones. “I like to come here sometimes … to remember the good times.”

They stood in silence, listening to the lonely rush of the wind.

“After she was gone, I stayed at Hawk’s for awhile,” he finally continued.  “I don’t really have any other family, and my father is always travelling for his job. When we started university, Hawk and Hyun-Woo moved with me, back into the condo … back home. I didn’t really want to be alone.”

“I do not like being alone either,” she said.

He turned to look at her, and a pang of guilt ran through him. Underneath the nylon jacket, she wore one of his old high-school gym shirts, the one with faded navy lettering and a tear on the shoulder.  She’d scavenged it herself that morning out of his closet.  Below that, she wore the pink sweatpants he’d bought for her at the beach in Sokcho.  Even her yellow canvas slip-ons were scuffed and muddy from the hike up the mountain.  If it wasn’t for the fact that she was so stunning, her cloths would have pegged her as an oddity, a vagrant.

“Hawk’s right,” Seung-Bae sighed.  “I haven’t taken proper care of you, have I …”

She turned to him, her face expressionless. 

“Are you hungry?” he asked.  “I brought something for us to eat.”

He took of his jacket to spread over the exposed face of a smooth stone and gestured for her to sit.  Then, he pulled one bag out of the backpack and began emptying its contents. 

He placed a packed lunchbox at her knee and, peeling off the plastic cover, reached inside to break open her pair of chopsticks. These he handed to her, then popped open the top of a jar of orange juice and sat it on the ground beside her.

After organizing the makeshift picnic, Seung-Bae settled back and dug in to his own food.

            “Tell me about you,” he asked after a few quiet minutes had passed. “Where do you come from?”

“I come from the ocean.”

“Yes, but before that?  Where were you born?”

“Born?  I do not know … it was so long ago. I have no memory of that.”

“What about your family? Where are they?”

“I do not know. I have lived alone for many, many years.”

 “What Eun-Mi said, last night, about your name? Is that true?”

“That I am called the sixth sister? Yes, that is true. It is the only name I have.”

“Then you have sisters? Where are they?”

“We parted long ago. One was lost. Because of that, and other things, we argued and eventually went our own way, followed our own paths.”

“I’m sorry. You must have been lonely.”

She nodded.

Seung-Bae reached over and took her hand. “But you’re here now.  With us … with me.  You’ll never have to be lonely again.”

He’d meant to comfort her, but suddenly she looked troubled. He changed the subject.

            “What do you want to be called? Do you want me to call you Sixth?”

She smiled, and his heart swelled at the small victory.

“Call me Haenyeo,” she replied.  “I like it, and it seems fitting.”

“Fitting?  What do you mean?”

“Does it not seem so?  It is, after all, what I do – diving into the depths of the sea to pluck out that which is precious to me, that which I require to sustain myself.”

“To … sustain yourself?”

“Yes.  You are my bond, Seung-Bae, my sustenance.  I need you.  I need you so that I may continue to exist.”

Seung-Bae fell silent, a fiery blush rushed to his cheeks.  The conversation had taken a turn that he wasn’t ready to face.

After a moment, he reached for the backpack and pulled out the second plastic bag.  Lifting out the bouquet of roses, he removed the clear cellophane and began plucking the pink petals from their stems.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“These were my mother’s favorite flowers,” Seung-Bae explained.  “They always made her smile, no matter how much pain she was in or how sad she was.  She loved the scent of roses.  Here.  Hold out your hands.  Don’t let them escape.”

As he pulled them free, he dropped the petals into the cup of her palms.  When he’d finished, he reclaimed half, then led her to the edge of the sloping precipice. 

“Are you ready? Now, let them go,” he instructed.

The pair held out their hands, offering the piles to the expanse of grey sky.  The wind came, lifting the petals up in a fluttering swarm before carrying them off to tumble and scatter away over the swaying treetops below.  The landscape rippled, letting loose a soft sigh, and then fell still.

Seung-Bae turned. The girl stood beside him, her hands still stretched outward and upturned. Suddenly, she looked wild and alien and he was afraid that, like the petals, she would break apart, shatter like a beautiful illusion and drift away from him forever. Reaching out, he grabbed her wrist tightly.

 “Thank you,” Seung-Bae stammered.

She turned to face him. “Thank you?”

“For coming here with me.  For listening to me.  And for saving me …” 

He reached up and swept his fingertips over her cheek, drawing away a few strands of hair that clung to her lips. He stood beside her, his fingers entwined with hers, drawing out the moment, loath to move.