Daehyunnie was lost. He didn’t know where he was going and he could only barely read the signs. He pouted and looked around him. Maybe it was a bad idea deciding to go on vacation to a foreign land all on his own.

            He wandered up and down the aisle, pushing along his suitcase. People rushing to get to their terminals pushed past him and he took a deep breath. The next person he met, he was going to venture and ask where he was. But as he walked, there suddenly seemed to be a desertion of the human race. Nobody was in his part of the airport.   

            He spun around on the spot, hoping to see someone. As he turned, he hit something both solid and soft at the same time.

            “Oomph.”

            Daehyun’s heart raced. That sounded like a human. He turned back around and saw a girl before him. He had managed to knock her suitcase to the ground and the latch had opened. “Oh sorry!” he panicked as they both knelt to pick it up. His head hit hers and she reeled back.

            “Wow, you’re like a human bumper car.”

            He couldn’t understand a single word except ‘car’ so he figured she wanted to know if he had a car. “No?” he answered hesitantly.

            She muttered something but smiled. “It’s okay. You don’t need to help me.” Again, it was a load of gibberish. Daehyun didn’t quite know how to respond so he just helped her pick up her stuff. When they were done, she stood and held out her hand. “Thank you.”

            This he knew. “Ah, no problem. I’m sorry.”

            “Where are you going?”

            “New York,” he answered. “I’m here right?” He could communicate a bit. Just don’t throw any difficult vocabulary his way.

            “Yes,” she giggled. “Where are you from?”

            “Korea!”

            She took out her phone and started to tap furiously at it. He frowned until she turned the screen towards him. There, she had managed to find the Korean phrase for “Are you here alone?”

            He nodded and smiled. Google Translate was notorious for being completely off and wrong, and the grammar here was not pretty either. “Yes,” he answered and she looked relieved, as if happy that the translations were going well.

            She typed again. “What do you plan on doing in New York?”
            This he needed to translate. He took out his own phone, and it was just the two of them exchanging phrases in the broken Google Translate grammar, in the middle of the airport. “I wanted to sightsee! But nobody in my family wanted to come, so I decided to tackle it alone. But now, it seems so daunting.”

            She furrowed her brows. The translations made it seem more severe but she understood his meaning. “I can take you around if you like,” she offered.

            Daehyun brightened but remembered that she was in the airport too. “Why are you here?”

            “I just came back from a study abroad in China.”

            He shuffled. “I’m not comfortable taking your time and making you show a tourist who you can’t talk to around the city.”

            “I can talk to you!” she insisted. “I have friends who are Korean and we’ll have a lot of fun together. New York City is the best place, I promise. So, you ready or not?”

            Daehyun took a deep breath. He might as well. “If you insist,” he said in English and she blushed.

            “Don’t say it with that face!” she typed furiously.

            He quickly translated his reply. “What face?” She imitated him, how he sort of eyed her with a sly smirk and he grinned. “Sorry. My brother always tried to teach me how to be a lady’s man.”

            She backed away playfully. “Uh oh,” she said. “I’m not sure I want to hang with you then. You seem dangerous.”

            He laughed and Daehyun did a dorky dance. “Dangerous!” Then suddenly remembering his manners, he stretched out a hand. “I’m Daehyun.”

            She told him her name and he struggled a little to pronounce it. She mouthed it again and when he got it right, she gave him a thumb’s up. “Alright, let’s go explore the city!”

            And because he let his excitement get the better of him, he grabbed her hand and ran with her down the terminal. “Let’s go!”

This is for BlueBoiceGirl

Yeahhh repping NYC