The first thing he did when he arrived in South Korea was to check his phone whether there was anything from Hazel.
Nothing. Not even a message on his Whatsapp telling him she was sorry for not coming. He saw she was online just an hour earlier but she didn’t bother to leave him a message. It crushed him.
It was worse when he saw her IG posts of her and Jan having fun at their sleepover doing make-up and putting masks on their faces. He switched his phone off. After all these times, he thought their friendship had meant something to her.
He decided he didn’t want to contact her either. It hurt too much what she had done to their friendship for the last couple of days and maybe he needed time to clear his mind. Maybe he expected too much from her and that’s what’s really hurting.
His grandmother lives in Incheon, which was the third-largest city in South Korea, but whenever they visited, they always took her to Gyeongju and Jeju island where she likes to spend her Summer.
She lives alone in a small house, so his dad always took them to stay at the best hotels to enjoy their vacation together. It was a nice gesture on his dad’s part, even though his mom had died almost thirteen years, he never ceased to respect his grandmother.
Lee admired his dad for that, he believed in the deepest of his heart that his dad still loves his mom, and he was lucky that Josephine didn’t mind it. She was actually supportive of it, and that was the recipe for their wonderful relationship.
They understood the hardship of losing her only child and living far away from what’s left of her family. Every time he looks at his grandmother, he remembers the same soft look on his mother’s face, her sweet smile, and the warmth of a mother’s love. And it made him want to be close to his grandmother which made him thought about moving there for college.
He had made his own research, there was a few good dance school in Incheon where he can pursue his love of the craft and be in the same country as his favorite boyband. He may even have a future there. But he kept it to himself, he wanted to be sure before he tells his dad about it.
There’s a lot of things he can do in South Korea to get his mind off Hazel. He only goes there once a year and he loved it like a second home. The food, the entertainment, places to go, and most of all the company of his grandmother, A-Yeong, that means elegant, graceful and refined which exactly how he would describe her.
With an interpreter in tow, they spend their first days going around the city like they always do even though it was pretty hot and humid in the summer. They traveled to Geongju by train the next week where they enjoy a more cultural vacation from temple to temple.
His grandmother kept asking him if he had a girlfriend because she wanted to introduce him to some of the young single girls of her friends’ granddaughters. His mixed blood was considered a favorable feature among Koreans, it was true in his hometown as well although he never saw himself as good-looking.
He shied away from the question not sure if he had a girlfriend but he knew he had only one girl in his mind. The girl who failed to contact him for the past week or so he had been in Korea, then his smile turned to a frown. But it didn’t prevent him from looking for merchandise to buy for her, he remembered his promise to look for that T-shirt she loved so much.
He bought her the accessories he likes to wear that she swore she would steal from him if he wasn’t looking. BTS mini-dolls that were sold in various stores in Korea, he chose the Jungkook one even though her favorite was Jin. They would argue about it, he never understood why she chose Jin as her favorite because Jungkook is a whole package, and she would say because Jin was worldwide handsome … like him, he wasn’t sure if she was joking or whether it was a compliment. He thought, he would let himself be her real life Jin and not a cardboard cutout like Harry Styles, and that will be enough for him.
The more he thought about her, the worst it gets. It was as if he couldn’t function normally without knowing why she was suddenly vanished from his life. It made him anxious, nervous, there was a big hole he couldn’t fill with everything he was doing in Korea, even with dancing. Then he did something he never thought he would do, he told his grandmother about her.
A wide smile dispersed on A-Yeong’s face and made her face beamed in delight and wisdom of an old woman who understood exactly what he was going through even though they didn’t speak the same language. She clasped her hands together on her chest and said, “You are in love.”
He was devastated to say the least, but what his grandmother said was indeed the core of his troubles. He smiled shyly.
“There is nothing more beautiful and terrible than being in love for the first time,” she shook her head still with a blooming face, “Now stop being foolish and tell her that,” she added.