Seoul, Republic of South Korea. 2030.

“I hear it might snow later,” said the taxi driver, with a glance in the rearview mirror.

Park Chaeyoung didn’t answer.

She just grasped at the tiny data chip she wore on a rubber band around her wrist, as if it were priceless jewelry. She knew she looked silly. But it was comforting, having the chip with her all the time.

The first snow.

That had always been Jisoo’s favorite day of the year. It’s when the world feels full of magic, “when anything seems possible”, Kim Jisoo used to say, with an infectious smile. Then she would drag Chaeyoung outside to twirl in the snow, before coming back in to make hot cocoa.

Chaeyoung reached up a hand to wipe wetness at her eyes.

It was still hard, thinking about Jisoo.

I’m going on a date tonight, she thought, wondering how Jisoo would have replied.

Probably something like, “What shoes are you wearing? Send me a pic!”

Chaeyoung glanced down at her soaking gray boots. Definitely not Jisoo-approved.

Well, it was a big deal that she was going on a date at all. She was really only here to experience the Whistle App algorithm.

Anyway…

Whistle had launched a few years ago, when Chaeyoung was in high school. Now she was a junior at SNU studying computer science. It had been a normal enough college experience so far with Jisoo, helpless-romantically speaking.

It had felt so logical.

They were in the same classes. They loved same lipstick color. They liked all the same things… until Jisoo broke it off, Chaeyoung hadn’t even felt sad. Which was how she’d known that they’d never really been more than friends the whole time.

And a month later, Jisoo died.

It was a brain aneurysm. She’d had a terrible headache one day and passed out, and then she was gone. Poof-ed. Just like that. Just like magic. It felt senseless and irrational, and even now, Chaeyoung couldn’t fully process it.

Jisoo wasn’t showing any symptoms. The doctors assured Chaeyoung and Jisoo’s parents in the emergency room, something like,“there was no way you could have known”. As if that knowledge might somehow make them feel better.

It wasn’t fair. She never got to graduate, to go to college, to actually live.

After it all happened… Chaeyoung had ignored her dean’s offer to take some time off and fled straight back here, to school. Jisoo’s parents were home in Busan, grieving and alone, and part of Chaeyoung knew she should go and be with them.

But another, greater part of her needed space. Her head was filled with too many memories.

And it was so much easier in the bustling, comforting anonymity of Seoul.

Still, her dean had called her in again just last week, and strongly encouraged her to take a few weeks of personal leave. Guess they’d finally noticed her dramatic drop in grades this semester?

Her classwork was only suffering because she’d been pouring all her energy into something else, something that, in the long run, was much more meaningful than college.

We’ll get to that later.

But even Chaeyoung couldn’t avoid learning about Whistle. It was everywhere now; in pop-up ads on her phone and enormous billboards outside her dorm room, and in half the conversations she overheard on the subway. Com-tech magazine had even given it a front-page feature. The future of relationships, people were calling it, the answer to modern romance. The greatest data project ever undertaken.

That was when Chaeyoung had taken notice.

She knew better than to believe Photoshopped ads, but with data? She’ll be logically understood.

From its sugary and glittering promises of happily ever after concept, Whistle App was entirely data-driven. The moment Chaeyoung joined the app service, it swept the web with surgical precision, finding every last trace of her digital presence; like her Facebook posts, the scans of her high school yearbooks, every item she’d purchased online or reviewed on or wish-listed.

With Whistle compiled it all, a web of lingering digital fingerprints used that to formulate its famous thousand-item questionnaire. All that accumulated data, about all its millions of users, enabled Whistle to predict romantic potential with terrifying accuracy.

And if you still think Whistle’s a lame, hopeless-romantically app ever created? You’re probably right.

But why not?

Chaeyoung had thought once she’d read the article. She was trying to code personality analytics herself; it might help her research. And what did she have to lose, anyway?

When she’d finished the survey, the computer had promptly informed her that she had two hundred and eleven matches in the Republic of South Korea with a compatibility rating of over ninety-seven percent.

Was she interested in them all, or just the alpha one in the ninety-ninth percentage?

Chaeyoung had hurriedly selected the ninety-ninth percentage. The thought of two hundred dates made her dizzy.

As if reading her mind, the taxi TV before her eyes lit up with an all-too-familiar ad of a couple rocking on an old-fashioned swing set, their heads tipped back in laughter. Typical. Classic at its finest. In the most cringe way. But they looked beautiful and carefree and charmed.

“When it’s right, it just Whistles, hwi-hwi!” a cheerful voice-over reminded her.

Hwi-hwi.

Hwi-hwi.

Yeah. Genius and oh-so-creative name app idea.

Chaeyoung crumbled further into her seat. She pulled the data chip off her rubber band and began snapping it nervously in and out of her phone.

“I’m actually about to go on a Whistle date and whistle someone,” she shocked herself by saying out loud.

The driver gave a warm laugh. “Good for you! My daughter joined Whistle last year, and now she’s engaged!”

Chaeyoung knew he meant well, but the statement made her even more anxious.

They then pulled to a stop. Chaeyoung held up her phone to confirm e-payment before fumbling for her coat and her purse, then stepped out.

The door to the restaurant swung open before her, an enormous iron gateway with a scrolling sign that read ‘The Aviary’. It was trendy and new, with intimidating white tablecloths and French words painted on the walls; the type of place that Whistle had clearly approved for first dates.

She then realized with slight panic that she’d never actually been on a real, mature date. And now she was about to go out with someone without knowing their name or what they looked like or anything at all about them, except that Whistle had decided they were ninety-nine percent compatible.

The thought of the compatibility rating calmed her.

One person.

With ninety-ing-nine percentage.

Chaeyoung imagined her own personality mapped out in binary code… a ghostly string of ones and zeroes… like the instructions for some program about to be run.

People were so complicated; they were sensitive and unpredictable. But code? Code made sense. Code could be analyzed, and fixed.

Right?

She hurried through the front doors to the dark wood bar, grateful that she’d arrived early.

She put her bag down as she ordered, but left the coat on. “Water, please.”

The bartender barely glanced over as he poured a glass. It was sparkling water, little bubbles floating lazily toward the surface. Chaeyoung hated sparkling water, but she was too yawn-ey to protest. She took a quick gulp.

“Hey, I think we’re supposed to Whistle.”

Chaeyoung blinked.

“Hwi-hwi.”

A girl, with black short hair and tawny skin, leaned on the bar next to her. She gave a playful smile and a bit of a shrug.

“I know that sounded stupid. But we’re in it together, right?”

The girl held up her phone, and on her gloriously shattered screen Chaeyoung saw the revealing indicative pink color of the Whistle App.

“Um,” Chaeyoung paused, reaching in her bag for her phone, to prove the girl right. “Yeah. Hwi-hwi.”

Hold up.

So… she was in her ninety-ninth percentage of compatibility?

Overall, she had a good look and was so attractive in all the ways that made girls do stupid things.

Sensing her cheeks were heating, Chaeyoung’s gaze fell to the girl’s lips. Too late. They were tipped up on one side and started to appear in a tease. The lips started moving, but Chaeyoung didn’t hear a word the girl was saying. She wanted to move away. But she didn’t want to. It was like being caught between two opposite magnets.

For Everyone Information: Girls like her, just… never went for girls like, her.

Already, Chaeyoung felt like the of some universe joke.

“I’m Lisa,” the girl went on.

Chaeyoung nodded, distracted, fishing through her bag with a rising sense of urgency.

.

.

She realized with a nauseous, sinking feeling that she’d left her phone in the taxi. And the data chip was still snapped into the phone.

“I-I don’t… I can’t…”

All her work, everything that mattered to her anymore, was on that data chip.

.

Lisa leaned forward, her eyes lit up with concern. “Are you okay?”

Chaeyoung shook her head. She was about to scream or cry, she wasn’t sure which first. “I left my phone in the taxi.”

“Want to use my phone to call yours?” Lisa offered, holding out her iPhone 20 Pro Max.

Chaeyoung took it quietly, her pulse quickening as she tapped out her own number.

Tap tap tap.

Come on, come on, she thought, praying that the taxi driver would pick up.

But no one answered.

“What if you tried to track it?” Lisa suggested, but Chaeyoung was already logging in, fingers flying as she answered her elaborate series of security questions.

On the spidery cracked glass of Lisa’s screen, appeared a map of Seoul. And there was her phone, a tiny yellow dot struggling against the traffic of Myeongdong Shopping Street.

She looked up at her, knowing this date was ruined before it even began, but also oddly relieved that she wouldn’t have to go through with it. It would never have worked anyway. Lisa was so insanely confident and she was, well, just herself.

“Can you help me get my phone back?”

“Okay,” Lisa said slowly, caught off guard by the question. Then she smiled. “I’m Lisa, by the way.”

Hadn’t she already said that?

It took a moment for Chaeyoung to realize what Lisa was doing: giving her an opening to provide her own name.

She felt even more foolish. “I’m Chaeyoung,” she said, hoping that explained everything, and started toward the door.

***

Lalisa Manoban clung to the subway pole, staring in curious amusement at the girl before her. She was pretty in a wispy, ethereal way, with fair hair and eyes, and the sort of translucent skin that comes from spending too much time indoors, as if she were still reflecting the glow of her computer screen.

A modern-day digital fairy.

If that made sense.

She’d looked so devastated, and embarrassed, when she’d asked for her help getting her phone back. Lisa couldn’t help but agree, because some part of her loved playing the hero, and hadn’t she always bragged that adventures brought out her best work?

So she’d hiked her camera bag higher on her shoulder, and followed her out the door.

Now they were on the RCP mission: Racing Chaeyoung’s Phone, in complete silence. Chaeyoung hadn’t said a word since they boarded the train eleven minutes ago. There was a single tan rubber band around her wrist, which she kept snapping anxiously against the pale skin of her forearm.

For once, Lisa found herself with a girl, with no clue what to say.

There was something weird about this setup, about being told that you were ninety-nine percent compatible with someone before you even met her… before you even knew her name.

It birthed too many expectations.

And it’s breeding.

It made her wish that she’d met Chaeyoung the normal way; at a crowded bar where they’d have to shout over the music, where she didn’t know anything at all about her.

And with more alcohol. Definitely more alcohol.

Except she knew she wouldn’t have talked to Chaeyoung if it weren’t for Whistle. She was nothing like the girls she normally went for, with their wide eyes and loud voices, wearing short dresses in bold colors. She was something completely different.

It intrigued her, and scared her a little, too.

“Why did you sign up for Whistle?” Chaeyoung asked, clearly thinking along the same lines.

Because of Jennie.

Lisa tried to make light of the question. “Already want to know why ‘normal’ dating hasn’t worked for me?” She smirks. “Do you ask all your Whistle dates this early in the night?”

“This is my first Whistle date.” Chaeyoung kept snapping that rubber band, her entire body held rigidly, stiffly, like she had a glass of water balanced on her head and her life depended on not spilling it. “I signed up because it seemed like the logical way to go on dates, I guess.”

“Hmm. Logical way.” Lisa bit inside her cheeks, trying not to smile. “Interesting.”

The train rattled around a turn. Chaeyoung clutched the central pole tighter to avoid swerving off balance, but Lisa reached at the same time. Her hand landed atop hers.

Chaeyoung quickly shifted away.

And Lisa? She shivered, in the good kind of way.

“It’s my first Whistle date, too.” She admitted.

“Did your friends talk you into it?”

“More like all the brides I’ve photographed lately. It’s how most of them met their partners.” Lisa instantly felt awkward… because she shouldn’t have brought up marriage with someone she’d just met, right?

But Chaeyoung didn’t seem especially bothered by the comment.

Though she herself might be slightly more bothered by the truth, which was that she hadn’t fully gotten over her ex.

Because she’d fallen too deep for Jennie. Too fast. But then, love came easily to Lisa; she was always tumbling in and out of love to varying degrees. Love adventurer. A lovesick girl.

She loved an unnie on her block, with her window box full of daisies. She loved a girl who worked at the coffee shop and always slipped her extra peanut butter. She loved every bride she’d ever photographed. She couldn’t take a decent picture of something without falling in love with it, at least a little.

She could still remember the exact moment she met Kim Jennie.

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