Kim Jong Kook pulled up to her hotel early the next morning. He saw her standing outside, her hands clutching the straps of her backpack, her hair picked up by the wind and swirling in front of her face. He stepped out of the car and called to her. When she saw him, she smiled, and he was happy that he had decided to come. During the drive to her hotel, he hadn’t been sure that he would actually stop. He was nervous. He had never picked up and left like this before, not with a stranger, not like this.

He opened the passenger door for her and, as he walked back to the driver’s side, he saw her checking out the cameras mounted to the inside of the windshield. “These cameras are filming us in the car?” she asked, when he had sat down beside her.

Jong Kook nodded. “Yeah, these cameras film us in the car,” he said. He looked back and pointed to the van behind them where the two cameramen waited. “And they’ll film us when we’re out of the car.” He paused a moment and then asked, “Are you okay with the cameras?”

She smiled and said she was getting used to it.

He handed her a protein shake that he had made that morning. After she thanked him, she said, “I know in Korea there are titles you add to people’s names for respect, like ssi. Should I say Jong Kook ssi? Or, maybe Yeobo?”

Jong Kook held the gulp of his protein shake in his mouth, unable to swallow. He looked at her, and when he saw that she was sincerely asking, he swallowed and began laughing. “Why did you say yeobo?”

“Oh,” she said. “Is that wrong? I know that young girls call older men oppa, but I saw a Korean drama where a man and woman looked like the same age and she called him yeobo.”

Jong Kook laughed again. “Yeobo is…” He forgot the English word for couple. “Yeobo is… is not right.”

They drove off, heading southbound out of Anyang, saying little at first. She had asked where they were going, but he said he wanted to keep it a surprise. She seemed to enjoy not knowing. He asked when she was born and she said 1979. When she asked his age, he told her that his birthday was Saturday. “I have plans with friends for dinner that night so we will only have today and Friday for this trip.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “And happy birthday! How old will you be?”

“Forty,” he said. “I was born in 1976.”

“But it is 2015 now. So, if my math is right, doesn’t that make you 39?”

He explained that in Korea, the months inside the womb were counted as one’s first year.

“Well, then we should spend these two days doing everything you always wanted to do before you turned forty,” she