Wonwoo stepped out of the boat and let his eyes roam over the town for a few seconds. Many small houses littered the landscape, and they remained as dull as he had remembered them. The colors of some had changed, while others had been reconstructed altogether, but no amount of new coats of paint could seem to hide the sense of antiquity of this place. Wonwoo had always thought of his hometown as an island stuck on time, a trait that visitors usually described as endearing or calming, but those visitors never stuck around for long anyway. Nobody from outside stayed in this island for long unless they had to; underneath all those comments about “vintage charm” and “uniqueness,” the nagging exasperation at a lack of decent wifi reception or air conditioning would eventually drive the city visitors away one by one.

But it wasn’t just the old fashioned-ness of the town that made Wonwoo describe it as a place stuck on time; in this island, Wonwoo always felt the days drag on endlessly from one to the next.  The “calmness” that visitors often mentioned felt more to him like a sense of inertia. It was too quiet. Too tidy. Nothing ever seemed to change about this town, for better or worse. As a teenager, Wonwoo hadn’t just felt a simple sense of boredom at the lack of occurrences here, but a sense of uneasiness that he himself would stay the same for the rest of his life. That he would get stuck on the days, without ever making something out of himself. Most of the time he reasoned that it was an irrational fear, but summers in the island would bring the uneasiness right back in full force. The heat and humidity would cling heavily to his skin, and the stillness of it all would suffocate him.

That had been why as soon as he became an adult one summer morning, Wonwoo had chosen to move to Seoul and never look back. The city was constantly changing at a pace that was frankly impossible for Wonwoo to keep up with, but he enjoyed it that way. Surprisingly, the city also provided Wonwoo with enough anonymity to hide himself from his past. Even when he was surrounded by hundreds of people in subway stations or restaurants, everyone always minded their own business. Wonwoo was never forced to talk about himself with anybody, and that made Wonwoo’s life easy. The lack of feelings, of human connection, made Wonwoo’s life easy.

Maybe there was more than one reason why Wonwoo had left the island all those years ago, but with his current situation he couldn’t bring himself to elaborate on those thoughts.

He stepped away from the beach and began his walk to the house awaiting him at the very edge of the small town. The place had been deserted for years before his father bought it, since it was right at the top of a hill and a long distance away from the port, but his father had insisted that it offered more space for the dogs. Although the house itself was small, the terrain around the house was big enough for the pack to roam around freely and kept the house secluded from any outsiders. Forty five minutes of walking finally le