Chapter Text
June 2023
Tarzan killed the birdhouse was not a sentence Dalmi thought would ever describe an actual event occurring in reality. Certainly not one she thought she’d have to wrap her head around as she was exiting Seoul Family Court, squinting against a blistering summer sun and casting her first unsteady steps into a new life. But that’s how she knew it was probably true – because the crazy things in life never waited their turn.
To clarify, she heard two things from two different people, which added up to Tarzan killed the birdhouse. One came from the owner of the restaurant beside Halmoni’s old hotdog stall, who had promised many years ago to let Dalmi know if anyone dropped by the birdhouse or asked about it. Somebody else might have thought that promise worthless, but Dalmi had a good feeling – the restaurant was the kind of establishment with an address book thick with names and places that had long stopped existing, a Lost and Found that served the whole neighborhood, and owners with a gossipy streak. Humoring a request like hers would have been part of their serendipitous brand.
Specifically, it was the daughter of the family that left a voicemail, an old high school classmate: Dalmi-a. That birdbox of yours – caput. Come if you want the splinters.
She got another call right after, from a junior engineer from Cheongmyeong Company with a breathy, anxious voice. One of our Tarzan models crashed in Seonju. No injuries. We have a team on the way.
Therefore, Dalmi strongly suspected, Tarzan had killed the birdhouse.
There had been a bit more to her classmate’s message. Dalmi mulled over it as she drove to Seonju, tapping impatiently at the steering wheel whenever she hit a red light:
Fair warning, the woman had said. You’re not the only one I’m calling about this. His name, where did I-? Anyways, if the beautiful man gets here first, I’ll give the scraps to him.
Only one guy had the right looks and motive. Dalmi glanced at her left hand on the steering wheel, eyebrows knotting. Better to keep the ring on for one more afternoon – she had the rest of her life for I’m sorrys and Are you okays, and had agreed with Dosan to announce tomorrow. Take the ring off and the ‘beautiful man’ would put it all together, no matter what lies she threw his way – he would know even if desperately, he didn’t wish to.
She parked in front of her old, abandoned house. She left her blazer in the car and brought her hair into a high ponytail, but sweat still pooled on her forehead as she wound her way through Seonju’s narrow streets. At the scene she found some cops, the Tarzan model snug against the birdhouse’s pummeled, half-uprooted tree, and one man in a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, looking at the scene from a distance. Han Jipyeong was so engrossed in his staring – biting his lip in thought – that Dalmi snuck up on him.
He gave a tiny start that dissolved into the kind of friendly one over reserved for someone you hadn’t seen in a while. “Dalmi-ssi. I was wondering if I should text you,” he said. “Circumstances aside, it’s good to see you.”
Dalmi smiled. “It’s good to see you too, Director Han,” she said.
It had been months, though her life had been a blur for so long she couldn’t gauge how many. His eyes had a steady brightness that she was glad to see. But more than anything, her attention was drawn to his words, dispensed easily – that he’d thought to text her, that it was nice to see her. He probably wouldn’t have offered even that bit of emotional honesty three years ago – not as an opener. Dalmi suspected he’d honed a bit of frankness with his exes.
But his new earnestness probably had the same limit as that of everyone else – at embarrassment. She crossed her arms as she peered at him.
“Were you just passing by? Or, don’t tell me,” she added with a slight teasing tone, “they have excellent galkuksu here, too?”
Jipyeong gave her a mild stare, the edges of his lips curling upwards. “I think you know the answer to those questions. Why I’m here is a bit of a story, though, and I shouldn’t keep you.” His eyes turned towards the crash. “Seems the cops are wondering if we know anything.”
One day, Dalmi hoped to deflect a question as smoothly as Han Jipyeong. But he wasn’t wrong – she should speak with the police first.
“Can you wait for me until I’m done?” she asked as she started walking towards the crash. “I’m here for the birdhouse, too.” She gestured at the restaurant for good measure.
Jipyeong raised his eyebrows, his lips becoming ajar. “Wait, you are?”
-
It became clear the two of them had come up with the same idea, to leave instructions in the shop. Jipyeong had dropped by years after Halmoni and Dalmi had left Seonju – once he’d graduated from college. But he had left his real name – even if the restaurant had called Dalmi (I’m sure I did, her classmate said), the name Han Jipyeong would have meant nothing to her. The thought tugged at her heart – that Jipyeong had tried to find them, but it had meant nothing.
They now huddled, shoulders bumping, in front of the cardboard box where the restaurant lady had set out with the remains. Tarzan had half torn into the birdhouse and half launched it across the street. Some of the pieces looked like nest fodder and could only be distinguished as birdhouse by the specks of worn paint.
An absolute mess. Dalmi bit the inside of her cheek lightly. At just 2:30 p.m., it had already been a long day of confusing farewells, of not very clean breaks with the past. The birdhouse had caused her heartache, what with the two-Dosans thing, but Dalmi had never stopped loving it – this pretty and untouched memento.
“Twenty years – that we know of,” Jipyeong said, in a low tone. "That’s a pretty good run, I think."
“True.” When she looked up at him she caught the subtle pursing of his lips – but he turned himself around like he always did, with a crisp smile that he shared readily with her, as though gently prying her away from her bad mood. He never was one to wallow.
“I can hold the pieces until we decide what to do,” Jipyeong said. “Fair?”
“Fair,” she replied, shaking her head a little to shoo away her own discontent. “But I want to keep one piece. As security.”
He had started gathering the cardboard box in his hands when he trained his eyes on her curiously. “To be clear,” he said. “You want it as security against me running off with the birdhouse scraps. Or security against something terrible happening…to me.”
“To the scraps,” she corrected, keeping a straight face (which wasn’t too hard since she was only half joking).
He leveled a stare at her until his dimples threatened to show.
“Fine, but not this one,” he said, pointing with his nose at the most unharmed piece of the red roof.
That was acceptable – Dalmi reached into the box and singled out a piece of the yellow perch.
The restaurant lady saw them (correction: Jipyeong) off, and Dalmi excused herself to speak to her on-site engineers, feeling somehow lighter than she had going into the restaurant. Her team hadn’t yet ruled out a software malfunction – a terrifying possibility for a self-driving car company, but pointless to worry about without more data. She directed her engineers in an even voice to ease their nerves, then went to tackle what she could as they ran more diagnostics. She filled in her press and legal departments and replied to emails that poured in by the minute. She even managed to field two, appeasing conference calls with Seonju government officials while sitting on one of the benches that had, in her childhood, doubled as a hot-dog eating spot. Thankfully, at some point a harried-looking junior engineer bounded up to her bench and gave her good news that made the work feel worthwhile – the car had faulty brakes, it turns out. Cheongmyeong lived another day.
Not bad, Seo Dalmi. You worked hard. She held onto that thought for as long as it wouldn’t hurt – one, long exhale.
She thought Jipyeong had gone at some point and she’d missed her chance to say goodbye, but once Tarzan was towed and the cops and engineers had started to clear, she saw him (cardboard box nowhere to be seen – he must have left it in his car). He was in front of the banged-up tree, inspecting it from all angles.
“You’re still here?” she asked.
“To meet the botanist,” he explained as she approached him. “The sanitation department gave me a few hours to make this not an active hazard. Mind that side, Dalmi.”
She’d been peering at the heavily slanting side of the tree when he drew her away with a light touch at her elbow, but she had seen what she needed – a messed up tree clinging futilely to life.
“You’re actually trying to save it?”
"Yes, and I thought you of all people would support me,” he said with a small smile. When he looked around and saw mostly everyone had scattered, he added: “Let me walk you to your car.”
They ambled slowly through the streets, not minding the lull in conversation. The sun had started easing into the evening, golden hues taking over the harsh yellows of the early afternoon.
“So you’ve cast your bet for the tree,” she said, looking at the clouds. “What do we do with the birdhouse?”
Jipyeong hummed. “Send it off with a bonfire?” When Dalmi stopped in her tracks, he chuckled. “That’s a no, clearly. But let’s recognize that would be your husband’s preferred outcome.”
Ex-husband as of today, and even if he wasn’t, the answer to this particular problem would have been the same: “My birdhouse. Ergo, my rules.”
He was quiet for a moment. “We can commission someone to recreate it. Make two copies of it.”
“Director Han, it has to be one birdhouse. And we could fix it instead.”
“You can’t fix sawdust, Dalmi.”
“It’s not all sawdust, and maybe–” She turned to him and saw how his face had settled into ‘unflappable Han Timjangnim’ mode, and recalibrated. “Let’s table this for now,” she finished, looking ahead. But his scoff made it clear (after seven years of mentoring, how couldn’t it be clear?), that he knew this wasn’t over.
Dalmi reached the handle of her car door and one thought broke through the buzzy autopilot of their stroll– just a bit longer.
She hardly ever lingered on her feelings. She let them develop on their own until they commanded her to act, as though bubbling up from a stew. But with how things had turned out, she had to wonder if that was the best approach to her internal life. So she tried to hone in on this subdued, little thought. She closed her eyes, letting the sunlight settle on her eyelids. Jipyeong broke through:
“Something the matter?”
“A bit,” she admitted, letting her eyes open but focusing on nothing at all. Tomorrow, everything would change. But at the same time, the sun would still shine. The quietest things – a walk down a familiar street – could feel like a steadying breath.
When she looked at Jipyeong, she found him assessing her with concern. Asking without words – do we talk about it?
“It’s OK to just recognize it aloud,” she said, squinting her eyes to show she didn’t mean her words unkindly. “Really, Director Han.”
It didn’t feel like a bluff, strangely. She opened her car door. “You’ll take care of the birdhouse?”
He considered her for one more beat before doing a rare thing for him – giving her a slow, little bow.
“With my very life, Lady Seo,” he said with unusual formality, like he was an honorable Joseon soldier. A joke like this was so rare for him that Dalmi broke into a surprised grin.
The intended effect, it seemed – Jipyeong returned a small smile, then spun and walked away.
-
“Yongsil-a,” Dalmi greeted as she worked off her shoes at the darkened entrance of her house. Cheeky little thing that it was, the AI flickered with light only to send out canned cheers from its speakers that echoed horrifyingly in the dark. Dalmi sighed ruefully.
“Not your best, bud,” she said. Nothing beat that time he turned on an opera at full volume. “Also, I need information on birdhouses. Have a broken one I need to fix.”
“Processing request,” Yongsil said. Then, in an unusual spur of good manners, it turned on a soothing piano piece.
It was a spare prototype. When Dosan left the house two months before they formalized their divorce, she asked Dongcheon for it. Dalmi hadn’t realized how little she liked living alone until the silence was all she came back home to, all that shrouded her when she went to sleep. Even now that she had firsthand knowledge of what Dongcheon called Yongsil’s “eccentricities,” she still liked the AI’s companionship in this house of halves – half the furniture, the dishes, the books. The place she had so carefully curated, where every picture on the walls meant to reflect back the promise of future happiness ten times over, now felt like a museum. Except when Yongsil occasionally made it feel like a funhouse.
She changed clothes and took off her ring, holding it up to lamplight for a moment. She thought of letting Dosan go like unraveling a knitted thing a few stitches at a time – each tug at the yarn aching in her chest, though she adjusted more to the sensation with every act of undoing. Writing her initials on every page of the divorce papers, or closing up each box of items addressed to his parents’ house. One tug, then another. Here, with her ring, was another stitch coming apart, more easily than she thought it would.
As she placed the ring in her jewelry box, her phone buzzed with a message from Dosan. The man could have impeccable timing.
NDS: I heard you were onsite in Seonju after the court hearing.
NDS: You worked hard, Dalmi.
Dalmi sighed. Those words – you worked hard – could hurt her now, which she had never expected. The words were true, and she was proud of that, and still, they hurt. She did say them somewhat embarrassingly to her divorce lawyer, which was part of it – maybe we worked too hard. The business faced troubles. We drifted apart.
She had found it hard to say more, to scrape her thoughts together. She didn’t explain to her lawyer that she had promised with Dosan to be each other’s Trophy, Pride and Dream. How a year into marriage Cheongmyeong’s exponential growth startled them, piling on problems to sort and debate on every day – who to hire or fire, what products to prioritize, what weekends to give up on an altar of yet another update release. She didn’t rhetorically pose to her lawyer the question that roamed her head at the time: was it possible to butt heads nearly every day, with missteps piling up (a few bad hires, some mediocre launches) and still be a Trophy, Pride, Dream? Dalmi couldn't describe how Dosan began running diagnostics on their bond, asking for things in C-suite meetings he knew she’d push back on (working on a resource-consuming feature, or a new R&D effort too out-of-scope to justify), an unhappy look blooming in his eyes when she did not give him an easy, trusting yes. Or how quickly her overworked mind came to a single conclusion devoid of nuance: save the business, save the love. The one had always followed the other when it came to them, after all. She traveled, had lunches and dinners with mentors and potential partners; she networked every weekend (with Dosan sometimes, but often not). She did it for them, to prove they could make the Dream succeed, but Dosan said that she was running, and not in his direction.
“I think we should leave Cheongmyeong,” he said one day. “It’s straining you to the limit.”
Why was her company what had to be given up? Dalmi pushed that thought aside. What had been worthwhile about Cheongmyeong, they had built together.
“I’m – we are fine, Dosan-a. We knew there would be bumps in the road,” she said. “Let’s stay the course a little longer. Please?” She anchored her voice at chipper but suspected Dosan could see through it – even as he nodded, his gaze held a flicker of doubt. She didn’t understand why the doubt was there and didn’t appreciate it, when they both were working so hard. The doubt always made her stay an extra hour at work trying to nab a win, wanting to avoid the quiet, sulky moods it forecasted at home. Circling like that around Dosan, her life narrowed more and more. So much that when she first slipped into bed at 6 in the morning glad that Dosan didn’t stir long enough to peck her cheek, craving the lull of sleep more than his touch, she thought it was just all their contact in the workplace being enough for them. She thought that the next day, too.
Dalmi did mention to her lawyer the Incident, since an employee leaked info and the Seoul Times ran an article on it. And she supposed everything really did change that day, at the boardroom where Dosan answered a director’s question meant for her, with words she would have never said – the Vertex partnership would be an extraordinary opportunity. She had hesitated for weeks to green-light the project for a reason – it could be a great success, but strain their teams to the limit. With one sentence, Dosan anchored the directors into expecting full-speed ahead on the project, and wiped her objections to nothing.
The brave thing, like smashing the nameplate or bidding against the odds. Trusting her when even she herself wasn’t ready to. In another time Dalmi’s heart might have swelled, or forgiven it all by the time they were celebrating the launch over fried chicken and beer. But whenever Dosan tried to explain, her mind filled with noise. They weren’t children. They were leaders – with hundreds of employees, hundreds more contractors, with millions getting on cars that used their software on a daily basis. She had five painful resignations on her desk the week after the partnership launched; dozens of complaints from the teams.
During one of those bouts it emerged unprompted, that thought – if it’s between the business or the love, I choose the business.
It was as insane a thought as it was persistent. And when Dalmi realized it wouldn’t go away on its own, not without sitting Dosan down to pry apart their problems, it was too late. I’m worried about us, Dosan-a – the words, their every insecurity manifest, plunged them into a depth they were too exhausted to swim out of. After weeks they agreed it was over, but not without one last indignity. Because their key man had never really changed. They put the terms into their divorce papers – Nam Dosan will remain CTO of Cheongmyeong for one year. Seo Dalmi will resign as CEO.
We built a great thing, Dosan-a. Let’s give it the best shot we can, she’d said to convince him. Which is why she could never begrudge Dosan anything in her life – when even heartbroken, he did as she asked one last time. And also why, when Dosan sent You worked hard, Dalmi, on her last day before leaving Cheongmyeong, there only was one possible answer, and Dalmi, tears blooming in her eyes, really meant it:
SDM: You worked hard too. Thank you, Dosan-a.
She had moved Yongsil to her bedside table and lied down atop her covers, doing Pilates-like movements with her arms and feet to a drowsy rhythm. Tears fell along the sides of her face as she ran through her nightly ritual of thoughts: Were they doomed from the get-go? Could they have saved it, and on what day did it stop being a rescue mission? Whatever route her mind considered, she arrived at the same thought – that, for someone so hell-bent on finding the perfect love, she had been surprisingly bad at loving. She hadn’t protected the most important relationship in her life.
How do you even start fixing that? She had her feet pointed at the ceiling, tracing ovals in the air. How do you learn a language you didn’t even know you had failing grade on? Where was the freaking starting line?
She hadn’t realized she was murmuring aloud until Yongsil answered: “Here is guidance on where to begin. Folders 1 through 20 contain resources on birdhouse DIY, self-repair, and local woodworkers. Folders 21 though 40 discuss the history of carpentry.”
“Yongsil,” she said in a low tone. “I want your best 15 MBs on birdhouses and that is it.” But she got up on a sudden burst of energy. She found her purse and the yellow bit of birdhouse she’d wrapped in napkin, and used a damp towel to wipe it clean. Somehow, cracked as it was, the yellow scrap felt cheerful – Dalmi didn’t want to just stick it in a drawer. She propped the piece against Yongsil, then settled back on the bed.
She couldn’t easily fix her heart, but she could fix a birdhouse. And maybe that would be her silly, little start – practicing with the same verb.
Assuming, she thought with a yawn, that Jipyeong agreed.
Dalmi would only realize this later. How the truly crazy things in life – miracles, or love –could have the strangest beginnings.