Jisoo stared out the window with an increasingly worried look on her face as the van passed, passed, passed, and continued to pass every hotel along the way. Then the hotels stopped passing them by. Small town gave way to pasture and field, and the wheels hit dirt and gravel. She finally leaned forward and tapped the driver’s shoulder.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Where are you taking us?”

Her father had his nose gleefully glued to the window. “Look, Jisoo! It’s that village I was telling you about, the last bit of civilization we’ll hit on our way up the Han Mountains.”

“I thought you said we were staying at a five star establishment?” Jisoo said. 

“We are,” her father said. “But come on, Chu, you can’t expect to get in on any of the dig action if you hole up in some luxury hotel all day. Where’s the fun in that?”

“Okay,” Jisoo said, holding onto the car door handle as the vehicle bumped over the rocky path. “So where exactly is this place we’re staying? Actually in the mountains? And is there any chance he could drive just a little bit rougher? I don’t have any bruises yet.”

Her father, on the other hand, was actually enjoying the bumpy ride. 

“Ooh, off-road adventure,” he said. “I feel like Indiana Jones.”

Their journey up to the Han Mountains to the dig site had so far included a private flight from their beachside estate at the southern tip of the peninsula to the capital, and they were now into the fifth or sixth hour of a car ride that seemed to go on forever. Jisoo was exhausted. She’d never been much good at traveling, and neither had her father, but he was far too excited to show any signs of tiredness. He spent the entire drive reading and re-reading a graduate student’s dissertation about the immigration routes of Homo Erectus from the continent to the peninsula, occasionally spouting random passages aloud to Jisoo.

“Listen to this, Chichu,” he said, tipping the stapled stack of papers toward her. “‘Addressing the stakes of this study, should this hypothesis be proven true, it would not only negate previously assumed knowledge about the origins of Homo Erectus on the peninsula, but would also disprove the species’ use of watercraft.’ Fascinating, isn’t it? Doesn’t this just fire up your curiosity? It fires up mine.”

“I can see that,” Jisoo said, amused. He was at it again.

Every month or so, he would switch it up, pick a new subject to become an amateur expert in or take on a new pet project. It was a habit he picked up after he officially stepped down from his position as CEO at Blink. As the mega search engine’s creator and the company’s founder, he still had a significant stake in the company as a shareholder, but he was never much keen on the business side of it. After leaving Blink in the hands of more interested men, he figured he was the fourth richest man in the country so he ought to do something with all that money.

He dabbled a little with funding small tech start-ups and film students’ thesis projects. He built a science fiction library in China and founded an animal shelter, then he rescued 200 cows from slaughter and donated them to poor farming communities in Africa. He got a license to fly a helicopter, bought a new helicopter, and started a helicopter ride-sharing service where he gave people lifts to the airport. Then he paid for a prosthetic leg to be made for a three-legged horse named Franny who was now Blink’s official mascot.

This month, it was paleoanthropology. 

He watched one documentary about human evolution on TV and then dove headlong into his new obsession. Like a little boy with a brand new toy. He read hundreds of articles online and even invited scientists over to the house for brunch so he could ask them questions. He started visiting famous dig sites all over the country, began collecting petrified plants and wood, and even bought a completely restructured Australopithecus afarensis skeleton from a legal dealer and then displayed it in the main foyer.

The car started up an incline. They were beginning their ascent into the mountains. Jisoo held onto the edge of the leather seating while her father radiated with unbridled excitement. It was almost spooky how happy he could be, considering that just three months ago, he could hardly get out of bed.

A little over a year ago, Jisoo’s mother lost a years long battle with cancer. For months, her father scarcely ate or spoke or slept or left the house at all. He lost weight and all the willpower to go on. Jisoo postponed her post-grad plans to stay home and be there for him. When his obsession with paleoanthropology began, she did nothing to get in the way of it. He needed something distract him from his grief, something to help him move on and come back to the world. Even if she did find the skeletons kind of morbid.

Now, they were on their way to meet her father’s latest investment. A post-grad student of paleoanthropology whose senior thesis her father was funding. 

Jisoo only insisted on coming with him because she didn’t trust him alone in the wilderness with a bunch of strangers. On top of his rheumatism, his blood pressure, asthma, and irritable bowel syndrome, her father was also prone to giving his heart and money away to undeserving people. Someone had to be there to make sure his money and kindness wouldn’t be taken advantage of.

“What do you think, Chichu?” her father asked as their car continued up the steep incline, taking them deeper into the mountain range. Her father held up the study again.

“You think this guy’s onto something? You really think we’re going find Homo Erectus out here?”

“It’s hard to say,” Jisoo was still holding onto her seat. Her heart pounded as the elevation numbers climbed higher and higher. “To be honest with you, Appa, I didn’t actually read it, so I don’t know what’s really going on.”

“Oh, then you should read it!” He handed the papers to her. “Real riveting stuff in there, Chichu, you’ll love it. This guy’s got real gumption, his paper is basically a gigantic middle finger to the rest of the paleoanthropological community. Ballsy move! You’d like him!” 

She doubted it. As excited as he was about his new project, Jisoo’s feelings toward the trip were neutral at best.

The car bumped over a large rock, making her yelp as it brought the car close to the edge of the road. She had a harrowing view from the window down into a steep ravine, and her heart jumped into . 

“Are we there, yet?”

“Almost, miss,” said the driver. Her father reached over and took her by the hand. After about another half hour of braving the winding mountainous roads and steeping even higher into the cliffs, the car finally started to slow down. Jisoo went to the window once more to look out for this mythical five star hotel her father kept telling her about, but nothing came into view. Then the SUV stopped.

“Ah, we must be here!” her father said, reaching for the door before the driver could even hop out. Jisoo looked out the window at the place where they were going to be staying and couldn’t believe it.

The SUV had stopped in front of a very old and very small traditional home made of stone and moist timber that sagged under the weight of a tiled roof crowded with moss and ivy. There was a stable connected to the house with two donkeys and chickens roamed freely around it. A woman was sweeping the flat stones on the dirt ground that led to an uneven wood foundation. Windows were shaded by browning screens. There were three trucks parked to the side, and there were men unloading boxes and carrying them into the house. 

Having grown up the daughter of a ridiculously wealthy man, Jisoo was always careful not to say, do, or even think anything that would make people think her a spoiled brat. But this simply couldn’t be it.

Her father hopped out of the car first, stretching his legs and straightening out his linen shirt. He reached his hand inside to help Jisoo out of the vehicle and into the muggy afternoon air. 

“So cute and rustic, isn’t it?” her father asked, smiling and gesturing all around him. “It’ll be like an adventurous camping trip for the both of us. Nice to get away from the city, isn’t it?”

Before Jisoo could answer, two men walked out of the house and approached them. Her father turned around to greet them. One was wearing a black tank top that showed off a pair of toned brown arms. The other wore a buttoned white shi