“Noona, the taxi is waiting for us.”

Daniel had his phone in his hand, his glasses hanging off the bridge of his nose as the foreign heat hit us. Michi followed right after him, and I right after her. We wheeled our empty suitcases past the locals who had just come home. It was nothing but the sounds of the cars going by and the luggage carts being rolled past us. The fatigue had hit, but we kept our eyes open.

“Well, this definitely looks familiar.” Michi adjusted the brim of her hat over her pastel lavender hair. “Same smog, same heat.”

“And yet here we are, still wearing jackets.” I carefully wrapped my coat and folded it into my backpack.

“How far is the drive?”

Daniel spoke once more, only glancing over his phone for a moment. “Half an hour. Dara is already at the apartment.”

I couldn’t let the sleep hit my eyelids. As gray as the city was, I kept my stare out the window. Our driver didn’t speak anymore after finding out where we were headed. One by one, two by two, cluster by cluster, the buildings flashed by in a steady rush of time.

Have you ever given a place a soundtrack? Not the sound of the cars or the din of conversation, but a playlist that seemed to match the air. I needed a soundtrack for Seoul, and no song seemed to sit right with me. I skipped through my usual music choices, settling on something I’d heard a hundred times before just so I could stop wasting time. This place was missing its music, and