Day 5

He tugs his tie impatiently, counting the seconds he leaves for the day. He stayed late to finish the building model, and now he gets to hand it in personally. 

He weaves through empty corridors bathed in dimmed lights until he reaches her office. 

He asks permission from the receptionist, even if he can see Shim Su Ryeon on her desk through the glass door. “Always talk to the receptionist” was his father’s motto when he’d parade him through the company to mold him in his image. Only the old man said flirt, not talk, and Logan didn’t want to be that guy. 

The girl, Ahn Na hides a yawn expertly, a permanent pleasant expression affixed as she gives him the go-ahead after a light chat. 

He knocks lightly. Her office is fitting to an art director. One wall is charcoal, two impressionistic paintings popping off the dark background, the other is full of clip-ins for current projects, photographs, notes, inspiration. between them sits a desk with a drawing panel, and its current occupant lifting her head from the screen to him. 

“I got the final sketch, we can go to print first thing tomorrow”. He hands her the envelope, it’s the same copper brown as her wrap dress.

She inspects it for a silent minute and nods to herself in approval. “Very well.” He stands taller at her praise. “You didn’t have to give this to me personally”. 

“It’s late, I sent my assistant home”. The wall behind her is all glass, the lights of the city chiming in. She is bathed in starlight, as one who’s read a lot of Keats would say. Not Logan though, that would be inappropriate. “Are you heading out?”

“In a minute”. On her desk sits a row of photographs of herself along with a woman and a girl, he can’t see details without invading her privacy. There are a lot of personal touches on her work space, sketches littering the desk, cups of coffee with a rose gold handle, a planner with pink stickers and pens, and a takeout menu peeking from inside a drawer. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow for the approved design, then. Have a good night”. 

“Goodnight”, she smiles at him behind the white pen and he turns to leave. At the last second, he swivels. 

“Do you by chance know any good noodle restaurants around here?”

She pauses, clicks on something in her computer and turns to him. 

“Luosifen. It has the best salted noodles, my niece the plate”. 

Niece, as in the girl in the photos. 

“Really”. 

“You should order the sesame rolls with cashew sauce, it’s divine”.
 

There's something in there that pushes him to ask, out of the blue. 

“Would you join me?” 

She falls into a calculative silence, and before he scares her, he plays it off. 

“Don’t let the poor new guy eat alone”. 

–

“What happened to your tie?”

She noticed , he smirks, twirling decadent creamy noodles to absorb the sauce. Then again, her position of art director and her delectable style suggest a keen eye for detail. 

And beautiful, warm eyes. 

“The tie is off. It means I'm off work”. 

She arranges the wine glasses to the side so she can look at him directly. 

“Is it like a ritual for the incurable workaholics?”

He laughs, meeting her eyes. The cozy restaurant isn’t high end, a friendly warm glow surrounds them, the dim light and soft music creating the illusion they’re the only people there. For that, he confesses. 

“I used to see my dad working all day. When he had the tie on, he wasn’t my dad, he was the CEO. Even at home, as long as that damn tie was around his neck, he still took business calls or locked himself in the home office. Then he’d yanked the tie out and he’d play with us and kiss my mom on the cheek. A whole different person”. 

She studies him. He belatedly wonders if this attitude about work doesn’t bode well for him. He wants to make friends, not alienate the only person at the office he’s curious about. 

“Do you want to be a different person from the one at work?” 

“No. But I have to.” He takes a sip of wine and decides to go for it. “For the people at the company, I’m the overprivileged transplant that parachuted on top of them. After working hours, I can pretend to have a personal life”. 

His father would have scoffed at his admittance. ‘Put your best foot forward with women, never let them see you sweat’, another one of his father’s lessons floated in his mind. Tired of presenting a perfect image all day -and the fact that he’s already made a fool of himself in her presence-, he discards it completely. Let her see him sweat . The voice sounds suspiciously like his mother. 

“What does your imaginary personal life entail?”

“Hmm. Seeing friends, having delicious dinner”. 

“You’re already halfway then” she clicks her glass to his and he takes the judgment-free encouragement. She sombers, a realization hitting her. “You have no friends here”. 

“Hey! Don’t make me sound like such a loser”. 

“Not a loser, just the new guy who’s not sticking around for long anyway”. 

This is temporary. Even if he fails here, New York will be waiting for him. 

“That doesn’t mean I want to eat alone for four months”. 

“Then start now”.

“Can we be friends, Ms Shim Su Ryeon?”

Phrased like an eight-year-old, he winces. But she contemplates it. 

“Why me?”

“You could have kicked me off the project and worked with the people you already trust. You took a chance on me. Take another”.

She plays with the chain of her bracelet, a thin gold piece that sits on her slender wrist. 

“The neighborhood for orphans you proposed, it's like you read my mind. it’s what I want to do, why I got the degree in Art and Design, I want to use art to make their lives better”. 

“Were you…?”

“No” she doesn’t elaborate, but keeps eye contact. It’s easy sitting here, he muses. She doesn’t take off a tie, but out of work she’s all her energy and brightness goes directly to him. He basks at it. 

“Is it hard as a foreigner for people to trust you?”

“It's not that. I had friends in New York. Then I got” he makes air quotes “promoted, and worked all day while everyone else moved on”. He didn’t have time to hang around, forgot to call and suddenly he hadn’t seen his pals for months. To prove to everyone -and to himself- he deserved the higher post, he took on more projects, stayed up late and went for drinks to satisfy the clients, getting up early to repeat it all again. Other people had milestones but for him it was all an endless work day. “A chunk of my life passed before my eyes, while I was sitting on a desk, wearing a tie”. 

“I know how it feels”. He waits, it’s at her discretion to explain. “I had a group of college friends whom I stupidly abandoned a few years after, when I got married.”

Married ? He has scanned for a ring -out of habit, he tells himself- and found nothing on that finger. Is she going home to someone after this? 

“Society dictates I associate with other dignified married women of the same class. So I did. I was living my own, poorly written makjang, where we’d only see each other to brag about our husband’s jobs and compare status symbols. You’ll never hear anyone talk about chandeliers to that extent.” she laughs, but there’s a bitter edge. “When I divorced him, all those people just disappeared. Before the ink dried, they’re gone. They didn’t have to explain, our friendship was conditional on status”. 

“If you’re not how they want, they’ll turn their backs”. 

“Unfortunately”, she sighs. “I was fine with that for some time -I wasn’t fine but I took it as punishment for pushing my college friends away. After a while I met Yoon Hee and her daughter Rona, and they showed me that love isn’t contingent on where you are in life. You move and love moves with you”. 

What a way to put it, Logan thinks. If you love someone you stay. 

The meal ends too early for his liking, even if he got dessert and coffee just to talk to her a little longer. Like a song you get into the more it plays and you’re dreading the sound of the last chords. 

“Thank you for the company” he infuses all the meaning. Her simply being there eases some of the heaviness in his chest. 

“Thank you for not wearing a tie with me”. 

–

Su Ryeon plans to leave the next day, an oversized bag packed with sketches in various stages of completion, tasks checked off the list with purple highlighter when Logan peeks in her office. 

Three words. 

“How about Italian?”. 

And thus it begins, without ceremony or preamble. The work day ends, dragging the last poor souls into overstaffed trains and busy buses and Logan swings by her office waiting for her to gather her things and they go to dinner.

It becomes their unspoken tradition. 

–