It is two twenty-nine in the afternoon. Jaeseop drums his fingers against his coffee cup (black and already half-empty). The seat across from him is vacant. The sun reflects off the back of the wooden chair in front of him. He squints against the glare.

Jaeseop checks his watch for the third time that minute. Still two twenty-nine. Whoever he’s waiting for is not late (yet), but not early, either.

The street surrounding the café is crowded with bodies, not a speck of concrete spared. People and cars move as a writhing mess. It’s giving him a headache.

He looks down at his watch again. Two thirty. Takes a sip of his coffee. It is lukewarm.

Some people believe in five minute “grace periods” when meeting up casually. Fortunately or unfortunately for whoever will occupy the vacant seat across from him, Jaeseop is not one of those people.

It was Jinye who suggested it. Her friend’s cousin, Jung Taekwoon, was housing a friend who had apparently just returned from a few years of traveling.

“Maybe talking to him about the places he’s been can help you out of your writer’s block,” she chirped, clearly proud of herself for thinking of the idea. Jaeseop thinks he groaned into the receiver, still groggy from being so rudely woken at (he looked over at the clock that hung, crooked, on his wall) – five in the evening. The lack of inspiration had taken its toll on his circadian rhythm.

He sighed. “Inspiration doesn’t happen like that, Jinye. It’s a very slow and delicate process.”

“You know you have a deadline to meet. In, like, a week.”

Jaeseop paused. “.”

“So you’ll talk to him?”

He hung up the phone.

The man sitting across from him can’t be much older than Jaeseop. He smiles graciously at the waitress when she asks if she can get him something to drink.

“A glass of water would be great, thank you,” he says, and Jaeseop suddenly feels conspicuous, still nursing a now-cooled cup of coffee. It is so much more bitter cold that he doesn’t dare take another sip.

Lee Kiseop, the man had greeted him when he first arrived, jogging around the corner before spotting Jaeseop, alone at a two-person table with his more-bitter-cold-than-hot black coffee. He had smiled at Jaeseop – Jaeseop can’t remember if he returned the gesture – like he was actually genuinely happy to see him.

Kim Jaeseop, he had replied. They shook on it before settling back into their seats.

The more Jaeseop looks at Kiseop, the less real the man feels. The waitress comes back with a glass of ice water, already sweating at the sides. Kiseop smiles at her. It is a neat, subjectively perfect smile – though Jaeseop tries to observe the whole exchange as objectively as he can.

Arrives five minutes late. Prefers water over coffee. Is a figment of my imagination?

Kiseop’s laughing at him when he snaps back to attention. “You’re staring. It makes me a little uncomfortable.” His eyes, irises dark, seem so full of life. They watch him, amused, like the laughter that escapes his lips.

“Oh,” Jaeseop says. “I’m sorry.” He’s not really.

Kiseop shakes his head and stirs his water with his straw. The ice cubes clink against the glass; oddly loud despite the traffic in the congested street beside them. Jaeseop wonders how that is.

“So you’re a writer? That’s what I heard from Taekwoon, at least,” Kiseop asks, dark eyes twinkling. Though they appear interested – and they are, as far as Jaeseop can tell – there is something else there. A deeper kind of curiosity. An expectation.

Arrives five minutes late. Prefers water over coffee. Is a figment of my imagination? Habitually stirs his water. Curious, and rather intensely so. Jaeseop nods. “I am, but I’m afraid my first two novels haven’t been very popular.”

Kiseop hums, the pity that Jaeseop has come to expect from broaching the matter at dinner parties notably absent. He accepts the fact for what it is and, perhaps out of respect, does not linger on the subject.

“I’m sure you’ve heard that I’ve traveled quite extensively over the past few years,” he says. The ice cubes clink around the glass again, the opening score for this new topic of conversation. Kiseop’s palm folds against his mouth, his eyes still twinkling, though somewhat less amused than before. The atmosphere grows heavy.

Jaeseop swallows. “Yes.” The innocuous word rolls off his tongue like lead. Kiseop continues stirring his water. “And my travels would help you and your novel writing very much?” His palm shifts against his mouth, and the corner of a sad smile peeks from beneath his wrist.

Jaeseop feels like he is swearing an oath of secrecy. Everything feels much more serious than what Jinye had proposed. This is all my editor’s idea, he could say. I just want to meet my deadlines.

But that’s not his only motivation anymore. There is something enticing about the dense air Kiseop’s question raised, and Jaeseop wants to know why – why Kiseop traveled like he did when he should have been securing himself the job he would have for the next thirty years – and how. Jaeseop nods rather than replying verbally – noise might render this whole meeting a dream, dissipating into the depths of his mind when (or if) he wakes up.

Ice clinks against glass. Kiseop places the hand that had covered his mouth back in his lap and lets go of the straw. His eyes, irises dark, are blank now compared to before. Fish eyes. He takes a sip of his water, his first since the waitress brought it over.

“If I tell you my story, you must agree to stay put until I finish – or we can just forget this whole afternoon. Feel free to change the names of whomever I speak about, but you must never, ever, tell the story solely from my perspective.”

This is when the entire encounter becomes – for the lack of a better word – surreal.

i. The child of God. Nevada

On the fateful night that Alexander Lee Eusebio met Lee Kiseop, the former was still living in his parent’s old apartment. The complex was the product of a renovation creating living spaces out of the former town hall. Alexander lived in apartment number eleven, the first room on the first floor. It was not odd for visitors passing through this town to mistake his front door as the entrance to town hall, but it was odd for visitors to be passing through this town in the first place.

Lee Kiseop (as the shivering man on his doorstep introduces himself) speaks first. “I’m guessing this isn’t Town Hall.”

Alexander nods.

Lee Kiseop loops his arms around his torso. “I need a place to stay and I think I’m beginning to lose all feeling in my feet.” As if to cement his point, a bout of lightning flashes through the downpour of rain and the crack of thunder hums beneath Alexander’s oak hardwood floors.

Alexander skipped his nightly prayer, so he uses it now and prays that this Lee Kiseop is an angel.¹ The man drips over the oak. His father’s treasured Jesus statue in the guest room can help Alexander decide what to do with him in the morning.

Lee Kiseop looks like a hollow shell in the daytime. If hollow shells wore soggy flannels and black jeans and inspected handcrafted, twelve-piece Nativity figures such as the set sitting on Alexander’s fireplace.

The man smiles when he notices Alexander walking over to the cramped kitchen. It is a nice smile – delicate upturned lips, eyes following suit – but there is something strangely empty about it. The intention of that smile exists, but it becomes lost somewhere before the action is completed.

“So what brings you here?” Alexander asks, handing the man a bowl of lumpy oatmeal. Lee Kiseop studies the words circling the rim thoughtfully (Romans 8:28, one of Alexander’s favorites) before picking up an appropriate mouthful with his spoon. The man then lets the oatmeal fall back into the bowl – more sad than disgusted.

Lee Kiseop looks straight into Alexander’s eyes. They are dark eyes, with dark irises, but eyes so heavy and full. Full of – Alexander searches for the word – grief. They are so filled to the brim with an abyss of ache the Alexander doubts the man is actually man at all.

“I’m looking for UFOs.”

Area 51. Of course.

Aliens.

(“I can interrupt you, can’t I?”

“Of course.”

“You were looking for UFOs? This whole time?”

Kiseop contemplates for a moment. He does not seem to sense the incredulous tone of Jaeseop’s voice. “Yes,” he says, quite serious.

Again – surreal.)

“They’ve taken someone important to me,” Lee Kiseop continues. Alexander belatedly realizes he forgot to say grace as he swallows a spoonful of oatmeal. I’m sorry, he thinks, looking to the Mary statue next to the coaster rack for forgiveness. She stares at him stoically in return.

“They?” Alexander prompts. Lee Kiseop has not touched his oatmeal apart from the spoon.

The man nods. “The aliens.”

The only aliens Alexander willingly acknowledges appear from windstorms and have four faces and four wings with straight legs with bronze feet.² And he cannot imagine them taking anything – let alone any person – from the Earth. What Lee Kiseop is saying makes no sense to Alexander, who is beginning to wonder whether he is hearing the man correctly.

“Would you know how to get there?” Lee Kiseop asks, palm folding over his mouth. His voice seems to echo – as if there were an emptiness within him, causing the sound to build, to deepen, before it exits his body. Alexander, still struck by all of Lee Kiseop’s previous statements, cannot find it in himself to answer verbally. He shakes his head.

He expects disappointment. For Lee Kiseop to scream or sigh, obviously dejected. Maybe even for the man to reach over to the Mary on the kitchen counter and smash her against the wall.

Instead, the man puts a hand over Alexander’s and says a simple, “Thank you.” And there, in his gentle, grateful gaze, Alexander sees a loneliness buried beneath the grief in those heavy dark irises. Whatever he was expecting from Lee Kiseop, this was definitely not it.

The night after Lee Kiseop leaves, there is a dust storm. Howling gusts rattle the windows, wailing to be let in. And Alexander, with his Bible on his bedside, dreams of swirling sands – so bright that they look like flames, dancing in the wind – and a hollow shell walking through the storm, dark eyes full of loneliness and grief.

There is no way to get into Area 51. The U.S government has been quick to debunk rumors of UFOs at the site in the past. But loneliness and its deep, deep wanting drives people to the ends of the Earth.

In his dream, Alexander knows that Lee Kiseop will never stop searching.

Alexander wakes up to his clock chiming. It is already noontime. Jesus and his Apostles³ painted under the twelve are still having supper.

It is a Sunday. Alexander realizes he just missed church, for the first time in his life.

ii. Romeo and Juliet. Sint Maarten

(“The Caribbean? Why?”

“I heard before that UFOs frequent beaches. It seemed fitting to spend some time there.”

“How did you even get there? How long does that take by boat?”

“It does not matter how you get there, as long as you get there.⁴”)

A man looks thoughtfully between the oranges and papayas in the grocery store. Yixing, helping out his family over the summer now that he doesn’t have classes, watches him as he himself restocks the apples. “Are you finding everything ok?”

The man nods and decides on the oranges. “Actually, I’m ready to pay.”

Yixing goes over to the cash register. His mother, who usually rings people up, is with his grandmother at the hospital today for her regular check-up. His father is probably smoking out back again, a reward for unloading all the produce.

It’s not a reward if you have one three times a day, Yixing had chided the last time his father started coughing loudly in the kitchen. He was lectured for twenty minutes about the merits of hard work due to his filial concern.

“I’m new around here,” the man says after Yixing hands him his groceries and receipt. “I was wondering if you’d know of any hotels or places to stay in this area?”

Yixing – third generation Chinese-Sint Maartenian, born and raised on this island – actually doesn’t. But he knows someone who does. “If you can wait an hour, I know someone who can help you out.”

Ahn Heeyeon, the girl of every boy’s dreams (or Yixing’s, at least), looks up at him pointedly from where she’s sitting; legs spread wide on an upturned crate in the storage room of her parents’ grocery store. The Ahns – third generation Chao Xian Zu⁵ and second generation Sint Maartenian – have always been the Zhang household’s biggest rivals. From who sold more fruit to whose storefront had more attractive curb appeal, the Ahns and Zhangs were always competing. The youngest family members were expected to carry on this competition, though Yixing wanted nothing to do with it and Heeyeon didn’t seem to care. However, the pressure to outperform each other during high school (“go and show Ahn Heeyeon your test score, Yixing!”) eventually led to Heeyeon and Yixing making out in the Ahn’s fruit storage room.

This time, they’re not making out though. Heeyeon frowns at him. “Are you serious, Zhang Yixing? This is a tourist island and you can’t even name one hotel?”

“You’ve lived here your whole life,” Yixing tries. Heeyeon picks up a pear and he wonders if she’s going to throw it at his head (again – the girl of Yixing’s dreams).

“So have you,” she counters, “but do you think this guy is really going to wait around your grocery store for an hour to get information from you that he could get anywhere in town?”

Yixing hadn’t thought about that. He takes this as further proof that Heeyeon is the perfect girl for him.

A couple weeks after Kiseop first comes to the Zhangs’ grocery store, he returns and thanks Yixing for his (Heeyeon’s) suggestions on where to stay on the island. He buys three more oranges and leaves his name.

A couple days after that, Kiseop buys even more oranges. After a quick discussion at the cash register, Yixing learns that he and Kiseop are the same age.

“Are you in college, then?” Yixing asks as he bags the fruit.

Kiseop pauses, as if, for a moment, he doesn’t know how to answer. “No.”

“Oh,” Yixing nods. He hands the oranges to Kiseop, who waves at him as he leaves. Yixing waves back. When he wipes down the snack aisle shelves later that night (upon his mother’s orders), he wonders why Kiseop’s small smile as he waved goodbye felt so strange.

“Maybe you guys are actually friends, Xing,” Heeyeon suggests, turning to look at him. They’re in the Ahns’ fruit storage room again, lying on the floor, still half-breathless from making out.

“You should marry me, Ahn Heeyeon,” Yixing had tried. As always, it turned out to be a fruitless effort. She had responded by pushing his head away. Yixing had wondered about Kiseop aloud sometime after that.

Yixing doesn’t think it can be that easy. Friends aren’t strange. Heeyeon – somewhere in between a friend and his significant other (or so he’d like to think) – wasn’t strange, either. He meets Heeyeon’s gaze (currently rather judgmental) and there’s electricity there, the kind that makes him want to kiss her again (and again and again, repeat).

He thinks about Kiseop. Kiseop had seemed older than Yixing – not physically, but mentally, as if he had seen more in his years than Yixing could even comprehend.

“He seems…” Yixing trails off. He thinks of the way Kiseop smiles, the same, polite smile every time. It looks practiced, like he does not will the corners of his mouth to turn up, but reflexes do not obey thoughts, emotions, voids of being. A single figure exits the glass automatic doors with a bag of oranges.

“…lonely.”

The next time Yixing sees Kiseop, he’s at the beach. Yixing’s parents had given him the day off (“Go and enjoy your summer!”), and he intended to spend it near the ocean with Heeyeon. It was odd seeing Kiseop when he wasn’t bagging his oranges or totaling up the items in his basket. It took Yixing a moment to adjust to this new image.

“Kiseop!” Yixing calls. The man lowers his binoculars and waves back. Yixing goes over to join him, taking the unoccupied corner of Kiseop’s beach towel.

“What’s with the binoculars?” Yixing laughs.

And then there’s that smile, same as ever. He meets Yixing’s eyes before they can be shielded from the sun, burning behind Kiseop’s head. “I’m looking for UFOs,” he says, completely serious.

Yixing wonders if this is a new trend that he’s unaware of, or if Kiseop is stranger than Yixing originally thought. “UFOs? Why UFOs?”

Kiseop sets the binoculars in his lap. The sun reflects off of the shiny black plastic. “Just because,” he shrugs, a light laugh escaping between the words. It sounds rather dry. Maybe something is actually funny, but Yixing just doesn’t get the joke.

He spots Heeyeon inching her way through the crowds lining the sand from behind them. Unsurprisingly, she’s in a baggy t-shirt and well-worn blue jeans. It makes her easier to pick out between the swimsuit-clad tourists.

Kiseop follows his line of vision. The corners of his mouth twitch a little further up before settling back into his usual smile. “Is that your girlfriend?” His eyes twinkle, clearly amused.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Yixing sighs. “It’s kind of complicated.”

Twenty feet away, Heeyeon looks like she’s trying not to pick a fight with a tourist brandishing a bright green drink. Kiseop hums for him to continue.

Yixing buries his face in his hands. “I keep asking her to marry me – and I really mean it – but she always rejects me. Our families kind of hate each other, though. That’s probably why.”

When Yixing lifts his head, Kiseop’s eyes are still twinkling, more subdued now. “I once had someone like that in my life,” Kiseop starts, quietly. “Someone very important to me.”

Kiseop leans back. The beach, inundated with bodies, seems to simmer to a collective silence. Though Yixing can hear the conversation of the couple sitting not far from them clearly, their words escape him. Instead, Kiseop’s voice keeps Yixing tethered to this spot in the sand, on the beach towel, with the sun overhead and the ocean a rolling blue carpet before them. “You have to cherish those who are important to you. Try harder with them.”

The waves lull, hypnotic. “I only learned that once it was too late.”

Heeyeon finally sits down next to Yixing in the sand. “He’s a strange, strange man,” she says after a moment of silence.

Yixing turns to look at her. “Who?”

Heeyeon smiles, part- eating grin, part-entertained by his cluelessness. You space out sometimes, she likes to tell Yixing, flicking him on the forehead. “Your friend. With the binoculars.”

“Oh.” Yixing tries to spot Kiseop amongst the throngs of people, but the man is either long gone or lost amongst them. The image of a single figure exiting the glass automatic doors with a bag of oranges comes to mind.

Heeyeon tangles her fingers with Yixing’s and her jean-covered shins knock against his. He thinks about what Kiseop told him. The ocean rolls on, towards the horizon. Yixing squeezes her hand in his and vows to never give up on them.

In a surprise turn of events – and after much fighting and several reluctant meetings (or “peace treaties,” as Heeyeon referred to them as) between the Ahns and the Zhangs – Heeyeon and Yixing do end up getting married after they both graduate from college.

The two grocery stores merge to become one business – two links in a chain. They end up being the most successful grocery stores in Sint Maarten.

Yixing smiles every time he restocks the oranges. But he never sees or hears from Kiseop again.

iii. The catalyst. Seoul (before Nevada and Sint Maarten)

(Jaeseop considers biting his tongue, but his curiosity is insatiable. “May I ask you a rather personal question?”

Kiseop crosses his right leg over his left. “Shoot.”

“Who is this someone you were looking for?”

The man sitting across from him pauses. He leans forward in his seat, fingers playing with the straw in his glass of water. He stirs it again. All the ice cubes have melted into fragments. “I suppose I ought to tell you,” he says. His eyes twinkle when they meet Jaeseop’s, though they are far from amused now. On the contrary, there is a deep, deep pain apparent in Kiseop’s eyes. “None of this would make sense otherwise, would it?”

Jaeseop does not know whether he should agree or disagree, or if the question the other man posed was even for him to answer. The most he can do now is wait for Kiseop to continue.)

I may be understating the pain I felt, but please bear with me. This is not an easy story for me to tell. Whereas touching the lives of others can be joyful, this portion of my life – which I could call The Catalyst to my journey – is anything but.

The Catalyst begins in a fourth story apartment in Seoul, with an itch.

Suppose you were looking for a new dress shirt. And as you’re browsing, you encounter a shirt that you know is the one to replace the old one.

However, this shirt has a large tag at the nape that you anticipate will irritate your neck. Now, you could easily cut the tag off, but then how would you remember how to wash the shirt? Warm water or cold? Dryer or air-dry? You could write down the instructions, but you might lose the paper you copied them down on. So, instead, you keep the tag on, and it scratches your neck every time you wear the shirt.

Like the itch, everything I’m about to tell you could have been avoided. Maybe if I had written down the instructions, things would not have unfolded as they did. Or maybe they still would have.

The fourth story apartment in Seoul was a space I shared with my partner, Soo...Soohyun. I still do find it hard to say his name. After all, he was the first, and only, man I have ever loved.

We met through friends, and friends of friends, and friends of those friends. We moved in together rather suddenly, but that was the kind of love it was – whirlwind. We were in college at the time. We had completed our military service around the same time. We were happy. Or at least, I was. I believed Soohyun was happy too. Maybe I only wanted to believe that.

And here starts the itch. For a week I had this strange...feeling, that I would wake up or come home and find that things were irreparably different from how I had left them. It didn’t worry me much back then – Soohyun and I were young and had all the time in the world. And we loved each other very, very much.

I came back from a meeting with a professor late one night, expecting to go out to eat with Soohyun, but I was drained by the time I got home. When I stepped through the door, I was set on suggesting that we eat out some other day. My eyelids felt like ice.

All the lights were on in our apartment when I walked in. I collapsed on the couch and called for Soohyun. He would usually be beside me by now. I called for him, again. There was no answer.

It is hard to understand my panic, I suppose. You see, the lights were all on and Soohyun wasn’t home. It was strange. Then there was the itch. Part of me just knew that Soohyun was gone. Where would he be if not here, in this room, in this apartment?

Something was irreparably different.

Though I tried to fight it, sleep won over me in the end. I still regret that today. Maybe Soohyun would have returned if I remained awake, waiting for him.

When I opened my eyes, everything was blue. It made me wonder if I was dreaming. To this day, I still think I might have been.

The light was coming from the other side of the living room window. I squinted. I could see a figure through that light, and it looked like Soohyun, standing on the other side of the glass. His arm was stretched out but I couldn’t tell if he was waving or reaching out to grab my hand.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but I didn’t know where to start. So I stood there, stock-still, and stared. Maybe if I had just reached out and grabbed Soohyun’s hand through that blue light, he would still be here with me. But I just stared. I did nothing.

When I woke up again, Soohyun was still gone. And it kept happening: every time I went back to sleep, and every time I woke up, Soohyun was still gone.

Irreversibly gone.

Grief takes us to strange places, holds us on the edge of reality and dreams. After Soohyun disappeared, everything else felt insignificant. Though I could still smile, laugh, and feel happy, even – every action seemed to amplify the emptiness of our once-shared apartment and the loneliness of facing the world alone every time I woke up.

I skipped all my classes. Refused to pick up any phone calls. All I could focus on was the last time I had seen Soohyun – ever.

The blue light was all I had to go on, so I started there. I tried searching for information on the internet, but I didn’t even know where to begin. I was desperate for the dream to return to me.

When it didn’t, I became convinced it had not been a dream. It had to be reality, I concluded one afternoon, not much different than this one. It had to be reality.

That was when I decided Soohyun had been abducted by aliens.

iv. Miss and Mister 262. Seoul (after Nevada and Sint Maarten)

(“I returned to Seoul on a whim. My search for UFOs in other countries had been almost entirely fruitless. I felt that I needed to come back to the place where everything began to finally make sense of things.”

“Stop me if I’m being insensitive,” Jaeseop starts. “But why didn’t you just give up if you learned nothing new?”

A sharp silence falls between them. Then Kiseop smiles, quite sadly, “I don’t know. I just couldn’t.

I guess you could say I was lost. And when you are lost – to logic, to grief, or to anything – you just can’t bring yourself to deviate from the path you’re already on.”)

Oh Semi always takes bus 262, departing from the intersection either seven minutes to or seven minutes past nine. It is usually quite empty – sometimes there is another man or woman, dressed in a freshly ironed business suit, reading a newspaper in one of the front seats, but Semi never sees them again (on the 262, at least).

Though the 262 is quiet compared to other buses, it doesn’t take the most logical route for exhausted, communting office workers. The bus’s circles the business district only. So while crowded in the daytime, almost all the seats are vacated by seven in the evening, save for the few who believe they can find a “shortcut” somewhere. Instead, it takes them an extra hour or so to get to the metro.

But Semi thinks there is something oddly therapeutic about taking bus 262. She leans back in her seat and imagines the bus from a bird’s eye view – just a small rectangle amongst the black strips of streets curling around the skyscrapers. Further up, her life has no individual significance. She is in the little rectangle, carried in a circle around the business district. Everything probably looks like a toy set, children’s play in an adult world, when you’re far enough away from it.

She never minds the extra forty minutes it takes to get back to her apartment, anyway.

The first time Semi sees the man, she notices his sneakers. Workers don’t wear sneakers to work. Maybe he is just visiting the area.

The next time Semi sees the man, he is still wearing his sneakers. But he, unlike the few others who take the 262 at nine o’clock at night (give or take seven minutes), has returned.

The third time she sees the man, she takes the seat beside him. The first time is normal, second time a fluke – so the third time must be a constant.

Aside from them, 262 is completely vacant. He smiles at her, a wide upturn of the lips, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Semi smiles back. She leans back in her seat and thinks about two tiny dots – no bigger than a period in a very, very small font – inside a little rectangle, right next to each other.

As it turns out, Mister 262 (as Semi has taken upon herself to dub the man) has traveled extensively around the world before returning to Seoul. She listens to his stories with a fascination for unknown worlds she will probably never travel to.

Between outlining his experiences of the Caribbean, Semi asks him this:

“If you could go that far, then why come back to Seoul?”

Mister 262 thinks about it. His shoulders slant like they have carried something heavy all this time, though it had never come to Semi’s attention.

“I’m quite lonely here,” he says, staring out the window. A fresh blanket of snow coats the sidewalks, waiting to be shoveled to the side in the morning. “I think I needed to remind myself that.”

Semi hesitates. She pats his shoulder in place of the words she wanted to say. She hopes he gets what she meant to say.

In two weeks, the city will vote on opening new bus routes or closing old ones down. Along with bus routes, bus fares will be decided –

Semi shuts off the radio. She continues chewing her toast in silence.

“Miss 262,” Mister 262 says when she takes the seat beside him, as usual. His eyes are twinkling – half-mischievous, half-delighted to see her (or so Semi would like to think. Company was turning out to be quite pleasant on a usually-vacant bus).

After he had told her about his travels, and the reasoning for his consequent return to Seoul, Semi felt the unsettling burn of a question on the tip of her tongue. As they bump along the streets, she turns to Mister 262.

“Tell me…are you happy here?”

The corners of his lips turn down for a moment before settling back into an even, but relatively vague, smile. “Hmm,” he starts. “You could say that.”

Semi shakes her head. There is something hollow about his words, like he does not actually intend for them to seem real. Maybe she isn’t phrasing the question correctly. Maybe, like the magic eight balls her friends loved to play with when they were in junior high, Semi had to be more specific when she phrased the question.

“I mean, are you happy here, in Seoul?”

Mister 262 hums, neutral, in thought. I’m quite lonely here, he had told her. Then, Semi understood his sentiments. Many times, she had stood in the shadows of corporate skyscrapers and felt the dull pang of a very vast grief that she did not believe she deserved. Looking at progress and success was supposed to make her, as an individual in a capitalist society, want to work harder and achieve more. Instead, she felt a crippling sense of inadequacy and weakness. And loneliness – a still point in a bird’s eye view of Seoul: where everything around her was in constant flux, yet she was quite immobile.

But Mister 262’s grief – very vast, Semi estimates from the far away, glassy look in his eye every time the 262 drove past high-rise apartments – felt deeper than that. Deserved, perhaps. What Semi did not understand was why Mister 262 insisted on returning to Seoul, being in Seoul, riding the useless 262 when there was a world of discovery past the East Sea that he had gotten a taste of.

He meets her eyes. And in them, Semi sees a harbored loneliness and melancholy that has grown and festered somewhere inside.

He seems to understand Semi – her questions, her opinions, her most private moments of loneliness – in return. Mister 262 sighs but a small smile grazes his mouth. His eyes are still sad, but the smile feels rather genuine this time, unlike the others he had shown Semi before then.

“I guess it’s time I stopped searching.”

In the end, bus 262 stops circling the business district after seven in the evening. Semi has no more reason to wait for the 262 at the intersection.

Sometimes she wonders about Mister 262 on the subway home. She imagines him still sitting there – on the old 262 route – gazing out the window at every high-rise it passed by. Maybe he was caught in a slip between time-space in which the 262 was still useless.

Other days, Semi thinks about Mister 262 and hopes. He never did tell her what he was looking for. But she hopes he’ll find it, someday.

v. Antarctica

(“Antarctica?” Jaeseop echoes, incredulous.

Kiseop nods. “It had to be somewhere where no one lived.” He sips his water. “Then I could finally give up. Besides, I’ve heard that hiking there in the summer is rather lovely.”

The statement seems to make sense to Kiseop. Maybe that was all the really mattered – that things make sense to you, and you alone. Jaeseop lets him continue. He feels that the end is near.)

There can’t be UFOs in Antarctica. Everything is an expanse of frost blue snow. He hikes uncomfortably against the cold in his snow shoes.

But if –

No.

Halfway along the trail, a whiteout hits. Kiseop stops, leaning against his hiking poles.

It is like being in a blindingly white room. You cannot tell where the walls meet or how far up the ceiling is – the light just makes everything lose dimension. Everything is so, so white.

The only thing that keeps you tethered to life is the fact that you know you are alive. You cannot even hear yourself breathe, or your heart beat. But you know – you know you’re still there, standing in that blank space. Alone.

You are alone in the middle of a storm, or in the middle of blinding conditions. But you are alive, and you think about all the lives yours has touched. Suddenly you feel a fullness in your body, a body that exists. For once, it is not grief, or emptiness, or loneliness.

You are alone in the middle of a storm, and for the first time in a long time, you feel happy, and you let yourself feel happy.

They sit in relative silence after the end. Jaeseop leans back in his chair, trying to make sense of everything Kiseop has told him during the past few hours. Kiseop’s glass of water is empty now. The waitress asks if he would like a refill. He shakes his head.

Jaeseop leans forward again. “So you never saw Soohyun again?”

“I never saw Soohyun again.”

“Oh,” someone says from behind Jaeseop. When he turns around, he sees a woman maybe a few years old than himself with warm, wide eyes looking at Kiseop.

The twinkle returns to Kiseop’s dark eyes. “Why if it isn’t Miss 262,” he smiles. The woman returns it. “Fancy seeing you here.”

She laughs. For some odd reason, the sound reminds Jaeseop of ice cubes clinking against glass. “I haven’t seen you on the 262 in a while.”

The 262. The 262? In a while? Didn’t the bus route change? Jaeseop looks questioningly at Kiseop. The man sitting across from him meets his confused gaze and winks. “You wouldn’t mind if I took off now, would you? Or,” Kiseop says, uncrossing his legs. “Do you happen to have one last, burning question for me?” His gaze is rather expectant.

In that moment, Jaeseop swears Kiseop knows exactly what he’s going to ask.

“Did everything you told me actually happen?”

The man considers. He looks at Jaeseop and leans his cheek against his palm. He smiles, a sheepish yet sly grin.

“Did it, now?”

The waitress brings him the check. There is only one charge, his coffee, on the bill.

Miss 262 and Kiseop have long left, swallowed into the crowded streets. Jaeseop watched them leave. They had chatted pleasantly while moving down the sidewalk. Kiseop laughed at something she said. At some point, their hands met and their fingers twined, and then they were lost amongst the other bodies, never to be seen again. And in that last glimpse, Kiseop looked truly happy – an unrestrained happiness that came from somewhere deeper than the pain Jaeseop saw in his eyes when he spoke Soohyun’s name.

“You see,” Kiseop had told him in that last moment. “Personal stories are always in a state of continuous change. Sometimes you forget an important moment. Someone’s always getting cut out of the anecdote. Sadness is somewhat downplayed and achievements are usually exaggerated.

But the thing is – what matters most is that we’re full of stories. Just by being alive. Truth or tall-tale: we are here, we are alive, and, because of all that, we tell stories.”

Jaeseop thinks about it. The traffic of the congested street surrounding the outdoor café blares, grating to his ears now. Was it ever quiet? Or had reality merely been distorted during the hours when Lee Kiseop had occupied the seat across from him? Did the whole encounter actually even happen?

He takes a sip of his cooled coffee, hoping it will help him make sense of his thoughts. It still tastes bitter.

¹ Refers to Hebrew 13:2 “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”

² Refers to Ezekiel 1

³ Refers to The Last Supper, the mural painting by Leonardo da Vinci

⁴ Quote from Elizabeth Gilbert

⁵ Chao Xian Zu (朝鲜族), ethnic Koreans with citizenship of the People’s Republic of China