“Perfect, this is just perfect.”

Grumbling jadedly, 22 year old Park Hannah rubbed her temple and the top of her head in hopes of calming the aching headache that seemed to have followed her since the initial departure from locality until now. It had been a total of 16 hours; 16 long and excruciating hours that she had to endure in order to get to her final destination. A normal person would have hailed pain killers their best friend the minute they realized the flight wasn’t going to be as peaceful as they had hoped it would be. Then again, nobody said Hannah was the epitome of normal.

“Song Hannah, with your luck, your luggage most likely landed in the middle of South Africa, and masticated by vicious animals on the prowl.” Cursing at her own luck, and silently begging that her bad lucky maybe, just maybe, skipped out on her this round, Hannah stood at the conveyor belt with no intentions of leaving until the last piece of luggage had been claimed. Infuriated and fed up with everything, she forcefully made a mess of her already tousled up hair and growled like a beast from the back of . Maybe someone took her luggage by accident? But she clearly wrote her name in big black letters, so how could people miss it?

It wasn’t that she lost her luggage, per say. It was more like a luggage switch-a-roo. She had grabbed what she thought was her belonging, but really, upon closer inspection, nowhere on the identification tag had her name written in big bold letters. In fact, nothing was written on the identification bag. Being the drama queen that she was, instead of thinking logically that someone probably grabbed the wrong bag she imagined it all the way in another continent.  

The last thing she needed right now was lost luggage on top of the 16 hour flight suffered, 8 hours on a plane was already pushing it, and anything more than that, she transforms from a fairly patient person who goes out of her way to open doors for others, to a blockhead on the verge of cracking skulls of annoying strangers. It was supposed to be a 14 hour flight from Canada to Korea, but unfortunately for everyone, the weather decided to play a sick and mean joke on them. It was a grand total of 14 hours plus the 2 hours of insufferable turbulence.

But it wasn’t just the turbulence that contributed to her present meltdown. How could she ever forget about the Space Hoarder who got annoyed at her reclining her seat, and going as far to tapping her on the shoulder to say,

“Miss, could you please not recline your seat? I don’t have much room to begin with.”

To make matters worse, the person in front of her had reclined their seat, just like the person in front of them, and the person in front of them. So for the entire flight, she had to sit with her seat in lift off position, only to have no room whatsoever to freely move her legs… and she wasn’t even that tall.

Unluckily for her, the Space Hoarder’s pint sized punk had decided he liked the back of her chair and thought it was the perfect time to practice his defensive kicking skills. When she thought her fellow flight passengers couldn’t get worse, she got a Space Hoarder who was moreover The Grabber—someone who hoisted themselves upwards by grabbing onto the seat in front of them—which happened every time he had to use the restroom. With attractive flight attendants offering drinks every half an hour, the gleaming eyes of The Grabber did not once decline the generous offers. Thus, the chances of him using the restroom were undeniably more often than not.

Nor did she know she was travelling with her newly found best friend, The Chatterbox, on the right of her, who also turned out to be the Armrest Thief. At least the Chatterbox wasn’t like the Leaner Sleeper who slept during the entire flight… on her shoulder. In the end, Hannah had turned into the Girl that got up to use the washroom every hour with music blasting out of her iPod—by no means a Grabber—and when she did, she would turn to find the Leaner Sleeper glaring at her as if she took away her pillow and the Chatter Armrest Thief displeased that she wasn’t paying attention to her. It was enough of a nightmare already that she had to undergo a 14 hour long flight and 2 hours of turbulence; the neighbours contributed nothing to make it more of a sweet dream.  

Slowly—after claiming all their belongings—people started to leave one by one until Hannah was the only being left standing at the conveyor belt, still foolishly staring at the moving mechanism. And clearly, there were no more luggage left. Yet Hannah stood there with her arms crossed at her chest, her forehead clouded with wrinkles, and her right foot tapping at an irregular beat.

“Okay, so this is what’s going to happen. I’ll close my eyes and count to ten. When I say ten, I want you to pop up magically in front of me. Ready?” Taking a deep breath, Hannah closed her eyes and crossed her fingers.

One…

Two…

Five…

Nine…

Ten…

She opened her eyes slowly, only to find herself staring into another pair of brown orbs. Quickly, her eyes scanned the face in front of her, and creepily traveled downwards; the face of a God sent angel, the body of a high fashion male model. An angel or a model, it didn’t matter because her eyes focused solely on one thing. There it sat on the floor, the exact same looking luggage as the one she currently had in possession. Except this one had her name written on the ID tag so big and bold she thought the guy must have been crazy or something to not have seen her name.

Her mind screamed and her body did a little dance as she leapt at her luggage like there was no tomorrow. And suddenly everything felt right because she was finally reunited with her belonging. If she had actually lost her luggage, a part of her would’ve been lost with it. She eagerly shoved the other bag at the stranger, and fixed her composure, her eyes fixated on him.

“Seriously…” was the first thing that came out of . “You seriously mistook my luggage for yours even though MY luggage had MY name written on it that even the blind could see it a mile away.” She scoffed, and crossed her arms. It was his fault that she had to go through all this trouble, and anxiety. Even if he was a real angel or a famous model, she instantly disliked him for taking her belonging—accident or not.

“That was my mistake, and I’m sorry for it.” His voice oozed like a hot chocolate fondue. If it was another girl, she would have fainted the second that voice reached her ears. However, to Hannah, it sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

The thought of losing her luggage bothered her so much that all she wanted to do was to leave the airport and head to the place she could call home. She really didn’t have the energy, or fight, in her to take this to the next level. “Yah, that’s right. It was your entire fault. If you had actually lost my luggage, you would’ve had a situation in your hands that even your beautiful face wouldn’t be able to solve it. Now scram before I change my mind.” She growled at him.

Grabbing her luggage and lugging her backpack back on, she turned around to leave when a hand suddenly grabbed her shoulder to stop her. Not pleased with the action, she whipped around to unleash her anger, but she was faced with a card—a business card, it seemed like.

“I said I’m sorry, and I mean it. Take this, and if you’re ever in trouble, don’t hesitate.” And before she could get the last word in, the guy shoved the card into her hand, grabbed his belonging, and walked his way out like he was on the red carpet.

“Who does he think he is?” Hannah whispered aloud, astounded by the male’s presence, or now lack thereof. Seconds later she shook herself out of disbelief, and grudgingly spared the card in her hand a glance. It didn’t have much on it, but it was strangely appealing to the point where Hannah was captivated by it, and she had no reason why. Breaking the stare, she chucked the card into her pocket, careful to not tear or bend it. She stole a look at her watch and noticed that it was just past 7 in the morning, the perfect time to pick up the keys to her newly bought apartment from a lovely old couple whom she had been communicating with back and forth the past month or so. As much as Jay had insisted on buying her a new apartment, she couldn’t take that from him. She already owed so much to him, that if she took an apartment under her name, she’d spend the rest of her life paying him back; though she saw him as a father figure and he did say time after time that she was like his real daughter. She was lucky enough to have found this cozy little apartment, and even luckier that the old couple was willing to generously sell it to her for cheap. They said they weren’t using the empty apartment anyway, so might as well sell it to earn some rice money.

“You seem like a nice and pretty girl that I would want my son to marry if I had a son,” she remembered the old lady telling her over the phone without ever seeing her. Hannah just assumed that she had a nice girl voice, and it never brought her any harm, so she embraced that.  Singing, on the other hand…

As Hannah waited for a taxi, she took the time to look around the airport. Coming from a small and quiet city in Canada, the Incheon International was comparatively bigger than her city’s international airport. On another thought, it wasn’t just comparatively bigger; it was at least one hundred times bigger and better. Calling it ‘breathtaking’ wouldn’t begin to cut it. Even the number of people bustling around the airport early in the morning differed significantly. The amount of people she had seen so far the past hour could tap the amount of people she’d see in one day in her home city. Even so, when she left Canada, the airport attendants might as well have been swatting flies. Anyways, that didn’t matter anymore; she was finally here—the place her parents sent her away from when she was 10 years old, sent away with Jay. No friends, no family, and not knowing English took a huge toll on her as she grew up on her own. But at the end of the day, she knew that it was best for her because that was what her mom had told Jay to relay to her if ever came the day. To this day, she still believed that.

“You’ll learn to take care of yourself, and you’ll grow into a beautiful and smart woman, smarter than mommy! If mommy and daddy could, we would come with you, but we can’t. You’ll understand why when you’re older. For now, it’s what’s best for you.” Her mom had said. Of course, she put up a fight. Leaving Korea wasn’t what she had planned on doing. All her friends were there, the boy she liked was there, and that was where her home was... where she belonged. In the end, she had no choice; it happened so fast, she wasn’t even given the choice.

However, there was one question Hannah never stopped asking herself.

Was it the right choice? Leaving Canada?

She had always dreamt of leaving Canada to go back to the place she was born, but dreaming was one thing, and actually doing it was another. Standing on the world’s third most densely populated country’s ground, Hannah needed to shed her 12 years of small city living and adapt to the bigger picture. It wasn’t a bad thing, it really wasn’t. Her life wouldn’t be the same; she could no longer move at the pace of a turtle anymore knowing Asia in general was advancing in every way possible every minute of every twenty-four hours, and instead of counting in hours, she’d be counting in minutes. Let’s just say her time to explore the different aspects of the world had come; she would just be doing it on her own—something she was very much used to already.

She’d always imagined herself living the grand and exciting life in Seoul, which would be nearly impossible to have if she was stuck in Canada. Wasn’t that where the Hallyu wave originated from; one of the top ten cultural experiences in the world? If she was lucky, Bi (Rain) would show up on her doorstep asking for her hand in marriage. If she was any luckier, M.net, KBS, SBS, and MBC would be fighting to shower them with money just so they could film a reality show of their perfect marriage.

Now that would be the life to live. Alas, her life wasn’t perfect, and never a day in her life was she going to meet a celebrity, much less have one show up on her doorstep.

“Alright… time to say goodbye to this place!” She uttered to nobody in particular.

She stepped out into the cool spring air, and realized how hot and stuffy she was getting. Must have gotten too worked up over that guy, she thought to herself. She hailed herself into the airport taxi and gave an address to the driver. As the car took off, she seated herself comfortably, her hands never leaving her luggage, and gazed solemnly out the window.

As the car sped steadily through the streets, Hannah couldn’t help but allow slumber to overcome her sense. It was, after all, a few long and enduring few days for her, and she more than deserved a little bit of sleep, even if it was just a car ride long. And seconds before her body and mind shut itself off; one last thing crossed her mind.

Exoticism. What an interesting name.