Author’s note:  Wow, two subscribers, and I haven’t even started writing the main plot yet! XD Thanks guise!   Also, I know very, very, very basic Korean (like just hello, goodbye, please, thank you and how to introduce myself) so Ellie’s learning curve is going to reflect my own ^^” Sorry!

CHAPTER 1: Ikea Furniture and New Friends

-- Korea --

I sat on the floor of my new apartment, surrounded by boxes.  I had packed up my entire life into cardboard only last week, and moved halfway around the globe all because my manager told me to.

 I felt like crying.  I had no idea how to get around this infernal city, from the eight zillion subway lines to the three hundred and twelve bus routes.  And the language!  I barely remembered anything from my Korean classes in University, seeing as I had taken them when I was 18 and at the start of my degree, and I barely remembered how to introduce myself.

I had taken a red-eye flight to Vancouver, the closest port city to my hometown, and spent six hours waiting until my plane to the Incheon International Airport departed.  Ten and a half hours later, we arrived, and I grabbed my only suitcase and found that not only had Brian forgotten to give me the forms necessary to bring Piplup, my blue Quaker Parrot, overseas, but he had not informed my new manager of my arrival. 

So there I was, alone in a completely foreign country, unable to speak the language, with no clue how to get to Itaewon.  Can you say “screwed”?

Besides the fact that I was a complete “wae-gook”, as I had already been called umpteen times, I stuck out in a crowd.  Being brought up in the extreme northern recesses of the Canadian Tundra (near the Alaskan border) we never had much sunshine, and by consequence, I had remained pale throughout my entire adult life.  Also, a lot of older ladies had come up to me, staring, most likely because of my copper coloured hair.  Sometimes, it really to have the Scottish genes in the family.

Anyways, as I was in the airport, frantically searching for a way to get to Itaewon, a Korean guy, maybe a couple years younger than me, came up and asked me if I needed help.  In PERFECT English!  I told him where I needed to go, and found out that not only was I saying the stupid word wrong, but that the original bus I was planning on taking was not going to take me where I wanted.  Oh no, it would have taken me in a completely different direction.

Eventually, I found my new apartment fairly early in the afternoon – directions courtesy of Brian – and barely managed to converse with the building manager.  To say the least, there was a lot of grunting and pointing done by both of us until he called for someone from the back room to help us out.

“Junjeong-sshi!” I heard a male’s voice yell back before something else was said in Korean.  It obviously wasn’t good, as the man in front of me turned tomato red, and yelled something to the extent of “if you don’t get our here now, you don’t want to face the consequences!”

My uncle had the same reaction when my cousin complained about having to go milk the cow when we were twelve.

The curtain behind the counter moved aside and a really, really handsome – I don’t want to say young man, since that would make me sound super mom-like – boy-man-person, dressed in shorts and a tee shirt, walked out and stood beside the man behind the counter.

“Hi,” he said coolly, “my name’s Eli, this guy is the building manager, Choi Junjeong,” at the sound of his name Junjeong bowed and introduced himself to me in rapid Korean.  Continuing his talk, Eli nodded at me, “What brings you to our little apartment building? And what’s your name?”

“My name is Ellandra Macalester, but everyone calls me Ellie,” I told him, smiling, “and I’m here because I’m supposed to be living here, or so says the guy that sent me here.”

Eli nodded, and said something to the boss, whose eyes widened as he understood what was going on.

“Ellie!” said Junjeong, throwing his hands in the air, smiling.  I was guessing this was a good sign, as he opened up a filing cabinet, pulled out yet another folder, and pushed it towards me, along with a pen.

“Ummm…” I had no idea what was going on.  Luckily, Eli saw my confusion, and explained the form to me.

“Luckily, your employer has already paid for everything, so you don’t need to worry about a key deposit.”

I nodded, thinking about how I was going to even get to the bookstore tomorrow.

“Hey, Ellie,” Eli pocked me in the forehead, “if you’re free later, I can show you around the area.”

I looked up, the tip of the pen between my teeth, “You’d do that for me?”

“Heck yeah!” he said, smiling, “how else would a girl like you figure out this city?”

I laughed, “I guess you’re right.  When are you off?”

Junjeong looked up from the completed forms and looked at me, “key,” he said, interrupting the conversation between Eli and I all while handing me a key, “your noom, two… tree… uh… seven?” he looked at Eli for confirmation.  He nodded.  Proud of himself, Junjeong grinned and walked – pardon – strutted into the back room.

“Room two thirty seven,” I repeated.

“Anyways,” Eli continued, “I’m off at seven tonight.  Meet you down here at seven thirty?”

“Sounds great! Thanks again Eli!” I walked to the stairs and walked up the flight.

Now there I was, the clock ticking closer and closer to the appointed hour with Eli, and I was still struggling to build the Ikea bookcase that my mom had helped me take apart in my old apartment in Okotoks, which was just outside of Calgary.

“Why!?” I half screamed, half groaned to the instruction booklet, “why are you so hard to understand!?”

Everything else had gone up fairly easily, including the wall unit that had to be built diagonally.  But with the stupid black lacquered bookshelf, all my patience had disappeared.

Throwing the stupid wrench that had been packed with the shelves to the floor, I sat back and yelled in frustration.  How could something as simple as a bookshelf be so hard to assemble?  I had assembled at least a dozen shelves when Blotts was just starting up, yet I couldn’t figure this specific one out.

Someone knocked on the metal door to the apartment.  Thankful for the distraction, I walked over to the door and opened it.

Eli was standing there, dressed in a pale blue shirt and a pair of casual jeans.  I looked at my watch, panicking about having been so absorbed with my failed attempt at a bookshelf.

“Don’t worry Ellie,” he said, “I got here early, and I heard someone yelling and assumed it was you.  Having a problem?”

“Hey,” I said, “it’s a stupid bookshelf that my mom helped me pack.  I can’t for the life of me put it together, and the stupid Ikea instructions don’t make sense.  Anyways, come on in.  Don’t mind the mess of cardboard boxes though.”

The living space was cluttered with boxes piled on top of each other.  I didn’t have many possessions other than books, but once assembled in such a small space, it seemed like a lot.

“Can I offer you a drink?” I asked, “I have invisible juice, invisible milk and water.”

“I’m good, but thanks.  Can I help with the shelf?” he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, baring well-muscled arms.

“Be my guest!”  Honestly, if he was going to try to show off and attempt at putting up the shelf, he was welcome to it.

Not even ten minutes later, we pulled the shelving unit up off the floor and set it on its feet.

“I’m impressed,” I said, “I doubted that this thing would ever stand upright!”

Eli laughed, his eyes crinkling as a smile erupted across his face.  I have to admit, he was super good looking, not to mention genuinely friendly.

He glanced at his watch, “Oh no! You’re late for a very important person!”

“Hein?” I said, mentally cursing the French that marked my English, “what time is it?”

“It’s almost seven twenty!  If you don’t get ready now, you won’t be on time!” he joked.

“It won’t take me more than five to get ready!”

I rushed up the stairs to the loft, ducking my head despite my short stature, so that I could change into a pair of grey skinny jeans and green shirt.  I ran my fingers through my hair to detangle it and slapped on some lip balm before running back down the stairs.

“Tada!” I exclaimed, showing to Eli that not all girls take hours to get ready.

We walked down the stairs and out onto the street.  He pointed out places to eat, places to shop, the bus route, among other things.

It was getting late in the evening as we rounded the corner of the street we were currently walking.  Eli pointed out a small shop nestled in between two large buildings.  The lights were off, but I could see that there were shelves inside, lined with books.  There were three Korean characters over the door.

“What does it say?” I asked, while pointing at the sign.

“It says ‘kkum lideo’ in Korean,” Eli said, “It roughly translates to ‘Dreamy Readers’ in English.  I hope you don’t mind that I looked through the file that Junjeong has with your information.  I wanted to make sure that this was the right place.”

“Well, as long as you won’t steal my identity, you’re fine to look at it,” I said, “is this the shop where I’ll be working?”

“Apparently,” Eli said, “come on, I know the owner, so he won’t mind if we go in.”

“But Eli, it’s closed!  Won’t that give a bad impression of me to the boss?”

“Hyung won’t mind,” Eli said casually as he knocked on the door.

“HYUNG! Yah! Hyung!” he yelled as the man behind the counter looked up.

The man opened the door a crack and talked to Eli in Korean.  Eli replied in the same language, leaving me out of the loop linguistics-wise. 

I watched the boys argue, watching the one I didn’t know through the glass.  He was tall, much taller than I was at 160 centimeters, with his fringe hiding his forehead and elusive dark eyes.  He had dyed his hair a light-ish shade of brown, and his face was sort of round.  Again, I was missing the words to describe him, which was mostly due to the intense jetlag.

The boy on the other side of the door rolled his eyes at Eli and opened the door for us to enter.

“This is my friend Soohyun,” Eli said while motioning to the other boy.

“Cho neun Macalester Ellie imnida,” I said while bowing.  At least I could remember that much from class.

Soohyun bowed to me, “Cho neun Shin Soohyun imnida.”

He said something else, in Korean, while smiling at me.  I smiled back, nodded and looked at Eli, “What did he say?”

“He says he pleased to meet you, and that he looks forward to working with you,” Eli explained.  He then turned to Soohyun, said something or other, and the smile fell off his face.  He, in turn, replied to Eli.

“He isn’t too impressed that you don’t know Korean,” Eli translated, “he says that you need to learn in order to keep working here.”

“I’ll try my best!  Hwaiting!”

                “Ellie-sshi, you from America?” Soohyun’s broken English was almost as cute as his smile.

                “Aniyo! No, um, Canada-saram,” I replied, letting him know that I was from Canada.

                “Ah,” and with that, Soohyun walked to the bar on the far side of the shop.  It was only then that I noticed that while the vast majority of the shop was dedicated to shelves upon shelves of paperbacks and hardcover books, there was a small coffee bar in the room as well.  Soohyun had moved behind the counter and started pressing buttons on a percolator, and within moments, the warm, rich smell of fresh coffee penetrated the room.

                Eli walked over to the bar and sat down.  Soohyun placed two coffee cups on the counter and motioned for me to sit down.  I did so, and he started talking, pointing to the far corners of the room.  I added sugar to my coffee and stirred as I watched, unable to understand the string of words coming from his mouth.

                “Hyung says that the romance section is down that way,” Eli said while pointing down an aisle, “Science fiction is a row behind that, and general fantasy is closest to the window.  The used section is closer to the door, and non-fiction is over here.” I was starting to get the jist of the place.

                Soohyun grabbed a napkin and a pen and started sketching out a rough representation of the store.  He wrote all the sections in Korean, and then drew the bar where we were currently seated, drawing three stick figures.  He reached behind the counter and pulled out a red pen, and coloured the hair of one of the figures. 

                He pointed at the figure with the red hair, “Ellie-sshi,” he put down the napkin map and mimed taking something out of a container and putting it on a shelf.

                “I get to put away books?” I asked.

                “Yes!” exclaimed Soohyun.  I have to admit, his smile was the most adorable thing ever.

                Eli grabbed the napkin and wrote the English equivalent to the Korean labels, so that I would know what section was which.

                The night continued on in this manner, Soohyun miming what my job would entail, Eli translating when I couldn’t guess right.

                “Ahobsi jeong-gag,” Soohyun said as we were leaving.

                “Pardon?” I asked.

                “He said nine o’clock, Ellie.  Monday morning, nine o’clock, that’s when you start,”

                “Ahob?” I asked, using the Korean word for ‘nine’.

                “Deh!”  Soohyun smiled and bowed, “Goodnigh!”

                “Bye!” I waved as Soohyun rounded the corner and out of sight.

                Eli linked my arm through his as we walked back towards the apartment building.  A little unnerved, I tried to pull my arm away.

                “What’s wrong?” he asked.

                “Sorry,” I stopped pulling as we walked out onto the main street and into a huge crowd.

                “I just don’t want you to get lost on your first day in Korea,” he made sense.  I had travelled to Tokyo when I was in high school, and our group had managed to lose me on our first day since nobody linked their arms together.

                “Aren’t you worried that people are going to think that we’re a couple?” I knew that most Asian countries frowned upon being too couple-y.

                “Don’t worry, I could do a lot worse than a redheaded Canadian,” he smiled as we made our way through the crowd.

“How is your English so perfect Eli?  You don’t even have an accent!”  This had been plaguing me since we had met earlier in the day.

“God, Ellie, you can’t just ask people why their English is so good,” I smiled at the reference, “I’m from America,” he finished bluntly, as if there was something that he didn’t want to discuss.

“I see,” the rest of the walk back was filled with an awkward silence.

We turned down the side street that led to the apartment, and Eli unhooked his arm from mine.

“Do you think that you’ll be able to find your way to the shop tomorrow morning?” he asked me.

“I hope so,” I replied, “I really, really hope so.”

I had been the student that would get lost every day at university, so I really hoped that I would be able to memorize the short distance between the store and home.

“Junjeong is probably going to ask you to have breakfast with us tomorrow, just to let you know.  He wouldn’t stop talking about your hair when you left.  Is it naturally red?” and he was back to his regular joking self.

“God, Eli, you can’t just ask people if they’re naturally ginger!”

We looked at each other for a very brief moment before dissolving into giggles.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at breakfast, Eli,” I said before heading up the stairs.

“See ya!” he waved before walking behind the counter.