Chapter One:

I didn’t want to leave England. My wants and wishes were, however, the least of my parents worries at this moment in time; father had just been made redundant at his accounting job and our income had fallen drastically. At first I thought my parents wishes to go back home to Korea were nothing more than plain nonsense but this was before I saw the moving truck outside our house, ready to pack up our items to ship them to Korea.

I remember running into the house to see my father on the phone to our relatives in Korea whilst my mother was directing men around the house with boxes, big cardboard boxes filled with expensive china and glassware. “Jang Dongwoo…go help the men to your room and tell them what you want and don’t want”. I stomped up the stairs and pointed to a few things already packed away, namely my Wii, comics and albums; my clothes were already packed away in suitcases. My mother arrived up to my room and began to brush my hair, “Did you say goodbye to your friends?” I didn’t answer her and just stared blankly out the window. “Oh come on Dongwoo…you know how bad the economic climate is…there is no work anymore!” I turned around to my mother, “That may be so but did you take into account the fact I have a life here? We all do! You have friends as does father! I’ve never even lived in Korea longer than the two months we stayed during the summer!” She kissed my forehead, “Keep your head up, you’re a Jang after all…now, lets get going, come on”. My mother lead me by the hand out of our old three-storey London townhouse and before I knew it I was on the standard Heathrow to Incheon Korean Air flight brushing up on my Korean.

I looked out the window to see the clouds below us and began to draw in my notepad my friends had bought me back home in London. By the time I was down shading in the last of the clouds the food was being served and after that we were preparing for our descent to Incheon. A man in a business suit met us at the airport. He was from the company that father was now going to be working for in Seoul and swiftly took our bags, putting them into the boot of his black Mercedes. Mother sat in the back with me whilst father conversed in Korean with the man in front. I looked out the window to see a bustling city lay out before us and I felt intimidated, how would I survive in such a big metropolis, I had barely survived in London and still even up to a few weeks ago got lost on occasion. Mother squeezed my hand tight and smiled and before I knew it we had arrived at my grandparents home just outside of Seoul.

They lived in a house, which was quite unusual for people in Seoul, a white two-storey western style house with a picket fence. My grandmother greeted us, dressed in simple clothing, taking our suitcases and passing them to my tall grandfather. When my grandmother bent down to pick up our suitcases, before I could of course tell her there was no need, I noticed her necklace shining a deep but bright scarlet colour. I looked down to my chest to see mine was now a pale pink colour. Gasping, I grabbed my suitcase and ran into the house. I heard my mother complaining, saying I was just sleepy because of the long flight. My grandmother seemed to agree and walked into the kitchen, bringing out some food for me. I nodded politely and began to eat the food whilst the elders got reacquainted with each other.

I sat by the window in the kitchen just drinking in my surroundings whilst picking at the food my grandmother had brought me. The trees out by the side of the house moved gently from side to side in the light Seoul breeze, making their shadows dance. I was interrupted from my train of thought as a boy, roughly the same age as me walked past in a simple black vest and trousers. He had a hat on his head to protect him from the harmful rays of the sun and carried some gardening equipment in his hand. He turned around and saw me through the window and stopped and simply stared back at me. The thing that attracted my gaze to the boy was not his face nor body, it was his necklace, which was shining a bright scarlet red colour. This was my first glimpse of Lee Howon, the schoolboy who worked as a gardener during the summer.

We kept contact until his eyes wavered south and began to stare at my chest. Through the black fabric of my shirt, there was a bright red colour protruding. It was from my necklace. My necklace mirrored the colour on Lee Howon’s necklace. I broke contact with the boy and turned away. I tried to draw something in my notepad, anything but the stupid boy wouldn’t leave my mind. Even as I slept in my grandparents’ spare room that night, Lee Howon was very much becoming a permanent fixture in my thoughts.