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Ji Sun’s head leans out the side of the passenger side window of her husband’s 1954 slate gray Ford. A sea of dried corn plants passes in her view, but the pleasant, cool wind billows hair in front of her face and she’s not sure where the corn ends and strands of hair begin. But she gazes out onto the landscape regardless, a staple of that “Americana” you could paint a picture of, pale yellow and brown fields fading into a cloudless late-summer sky.
“Enjoying yourself?” her husband Brad comments.
She turns her head back towards him in response with a small smile. “It’s a lovely view, isn’t it?”
Brad’s eyes do a double take towards her, and his grin widens, chuckling to himself.
Ji Sun frowns slightly. “Something wrong?”
He flashes his bright white teeth at her, a used-car salesman smile, taking one calloused hand off the wheel and haphazardly brushing the hair from her face. “Maybe we should close the window, it looks like a twister just went through you.”
He laughs again, but Ji Sun doesn’t say anything and quietly slides back into her seat. Her fingers find a stray lock of hair, and she tucks it behind her ear. She cranks the window about halfway closed, her eyes still fixed on the passing rows of corn, the view broken only by faded signs of happy dancing vegetables pointing five miles up the road to a local farmer’s market.
“Oh, come on, honey, y’know I was kidding,” Brad sighs.
Ji Sun looks back to him, his eyes fixed on the long road ahead with seemingly no end in sight. She gives him a small “mmm,” a nod, and a closed-mouth smile.
“You probably haven’t seen corn this much before in your life, huh?” Brad continues. “It’s nice, though. Life moves a little slower ‘round here. No neighbor dogs shitting in the lawn, no nosy neighbors, just peace ‘n quiet…”
“That sounds nice.”
“And there'll be plenty of folks wanting to buy my tractors, lemme tell you what,” Brad laughs. “Everybody’s got a lot more money jingling in their pockets since the war’s over.”
Brad reaches down as he rounded a turn, flicking on the radio dial. A lovely, romantic tune plays through the faint crackle of the signal, the passionate vibrato of a female singer.
“Fly me to the moon
And let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars…”
Ji Sun lets the saccharine yet charming lyrics sink in, the strings soaring. She smiles earnestly, looking out the side window again and seeing bluebirds fluttering, circling the power lines.
“On Jupiter and Mars, huh?” Brad’s voice cuts through, “You know what happened down in Roswell a few years back?”
Ji Sun shakes her head.
“They said they found a U.F.O. crashed by somebody’s ranch. Said they found some little green men inside it and the government didn’t want us to know. You know what it was? A weather balloon!”
Brad starts to laugh so hard that he snorts. “People’ll believe anything.”
“Crazy,” Ji Sun says simply, laughing a little quieter.
By the time they reach the house, the sun has already set, the moon illuminating the field beside it. The truck slowly ambles up the dirt road, situated behind a moving van already in the driveway. Ji Sun can already see the moving men pulling boxes out of the van, and when she notices one carrying her antique lamp, she rushes up to him, placing her hand on his shoulder.
“Oh, I can take this…”
Before she even touches it, Brad takes her wrist in his hand. “Let ‘em do their job, honey…”
Ji Sun opens her mouth to speak, but Brad is quicker.
“Why don’t you go on a walk while we take care of it? You can get a good look at all that corn.”
He smiles at her, and Ji Sun isn’t sure how to parse it, but he’s already walking to the moving van before she can think much of it. Ji Sun turns towards the cornfield, the stalks all much taller than she is, but there’s a clear gap in the rows of corn. With her heartbeat quickening, she takes a step down the makeshift pathway. As she ventures further and further in, the voices of the moving men fade, replaced with the soft rustling of dry corn leaves in the breeze, pleasantly quiet. She isn’t sure how far she’s walked through until she reaches a small, circular clearing.
And right there, sitting on a mossy tree stump in the center of the clearing, there’s another woman.
The first thing Ji Sun notices about her is her bright green dress, a pretty number dotted with red poppy patterns. Her dark hair is bob-cut, perfectly coiffed tresses touching her bare, sandy-colored shoulders as she looks up into the night sky. Facing away from her, she doesn’t notice Ji Sun is even there until a fallen corn stalk crunches under her shoe. The woman turns with a start, and Ji Sun’s pulse stops for a moment when the woman’s bright eyes meet hers, blinking slowly.
“Oh! H-hi!” Ji Sun stammers, placing her hand on her chest. “We...we’re the new neighbors, my husband is helping us unpack...I’m Ji Sun!”
Ji Sun holds out her hand, and the woman looks down at it curiously. Slowly, she takes her hand and shakes it. Her skin is impossibly soft.
“I am Sae Rom. Sae Rom…Lee,” the woman says, her voice soft, almost questioning.
Ji Sun looks up, and she smiles wide, taking in an entire galaxy’s worth of beautiful stars dotting the night sky. “Golly…”
“It’s beautiful…” Sae Rom sighs, in awe.
Both women jolt when Brad’s voice soars over the cornfield, and he arrives, rushing through the corn. “Honey! Oh, there you... oh. ”
He looks at Sae Rom. “New neighbors?”
Sae Rom nods. “You’re the...husband?”
He grabs Sae Rom’s hand, shaking it with gusto. “Brad. We just moved down the road. If ya wanna come over to ours for a spell, tell your husband and we can have a nice chat!”
Once Brad lets go, he wraps an enthusiastic arm around Ji Sun’s shoulders, making her jump in surprise. “Let me tell you, my little Ji Sun makes the best three-bean chili in the whole world.”
Sae Rom nods silently, her brows furrowed, staring at him like he had a second head. Then, she turns to Ji Sun and smiles.
“I look forward to it.”
Brad’s work at the tractor dealership is long, leaving Ji Sun home hours by herself every weekday. It’s not much of a bother, though; it lets her get some cleaning done and sit by the television in the quiet of the country.
Ji Sun just catches the ending of The Wizard of Oz when the door slams open, Brad’s tie loosened, teeth gritted, and his face red like a lobster.
“Son of a bitch...dumb son of a bitch, thinks he can fool me out of a downpayment...thinks I’m some kinda charity worker…” he seeths to himself, pacing around the kitchen like a rutting bull, throwing his hat aside and his suitcase on the floor. When he looks up at Ji Sun, that used-car salesman smile spreads across his face.
“Bet he doesn’t have a lady like mine to come home to…”
Ji Sun gasps quietly when his hand bunches up the dress fabric around her waist, suddenly holding her close.
“I needa relax… ” he mumbles into her cheek, the stubble scratching.
She looks down at his shiny black shoes as his hand clenches around her wrist, so tight it might leave a bruise.
Ji Sun can see the stars out of her window again that night, and they start to call to her above Brad’s snores. With a cardigan over her shoulders, she quietly steps out of bed, guiding herself to the door and down the cornfield path. When she reaches the clearing, she isn’t sure whether she should be surprised that Sae Rom is there, too.
Sae Rom turns, her eyes crescents when she smiles. “You wanted to see the stars, too?”
“Yeah,” she replies, and it’s not a lie, but it’s not exactly the truth either. She points up at a cluster of stars. “That’s the Big Dipper, right?”
“Correct,” Sae Rom says with a proud smile. “You know your constellations.”
“It’s the only one I remember.”
Ji Sun feels Sae Rom lean in a little closer, their shoulders brushing, pointing up at another cluster of stars. “That one is Andromeda. It’s my favorite.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s always there…it’s almost like home,” Sae Rom says simply, and her smile is just as bright as the stars she’s staring at.
The next time, Sae Rom is sitting on the ground next to the stump in that same green dress, patting the grass next to her, beckoning for her to sit. Ji Sun takes the offer without hesitation, silent for a moment, unsure of the words to start a conversation with.
“Does your husband...not like the stars?” Sae Rom asks with almost childlike innocence.
Ji Sun chuckles. “He...he needs his sleep. He works all day, and when he comes home we...go to bed, and he sleeps. Doesn’t even know I’m out here…”
Sae Rom frowns, and Ji Sun can’t say she blames her for doing so. “Does he love you?”
Ji Sun’s heart catches in her chest, and she smiles reflexively. “Well, of course he does. I’m thirty already, he could have had any young gal he wanted, but he chose me. And he’s so smart, he knows business opportunities when he sees them. He took me out here so we could have a good life…in America...”
“Do you love him?” Sae Rom asks, and Ji Sun’s eyes dart to Sae Rom’s soft hand overtop of hers.
Ji Sun blinks, and she hesitates, her fingers trembling in the grass. “Well, I...of course I do...with everything I sort of owe it to him, don’t I?”
Sae Rom’s hand doesn’t move. Neither does Ji Sun’s. Sae Rom’s finger inspects Ji Sun’s wrist, dark spots of purple and blue bruises blooming underneath. Ji Sun remembers why she’s here, and the tears well up in her eyes.
“Do you ever wish you could just...fly to the stars?” Ji Sun manages, and she looks up, but her vision clouds, and she can’t make them out.
Sae Rom doesn’t respond, but the gentle squeeze of her hand is enough.
It’s become a nightly routine, Ji Sun and Sae Rom’s stargazing. Ji Sun knows that she’s losing more and more sleep, carrying over into mid-day like a hangover, but each night, she feels more alive than she ever has. The stars are millions of miles away, yet even seeing them from across the hall, out of her front windows, the night sky framing that wonderful old front door...she feels like she can snatch them from the black and hold them between her fingertips.
She’s only a foot away from them, but she’s pulled back.
Ji Sun’s blood turns cold at the calloused hand constricting her wrist, and she’s sure if she were to look up into his eyes that she would surely turn to ice.
“Now, I know you ain’t just going out for some fresh air,” Brad whispers, his voice hardened and ominous.
Ji Sun says nothing, her pulse racing beneath his fingers.
His smile peeks from between his lips. “ Honey , come back to bed…”
Her heart is racing, but the words don’t come to her until she begins to ball her fist, her face clenching up.
“To do what? So we can just...lay in bed and I can pretend that everything is okay?” Ji Sun snaps, and her eyes widen immediately after, realizing what she just did.
Brad pulls her in jerkily, and her body is pressed against his. “I came all the way out here for us , y’know that? I give you a roof, I give you this place, I give you all the comforts I can…”
Ji Sun flinches, his grip on her wrist growing tight, pins and needles in her arm.
“And you’re going out in the middle of the night so that woman can put things in your head—”
“Brad...you’re hurting me…”
“Ji Sun, I don’t care! ”
Brad lets go, and her breath finally comes back to her, her hands shaking. She feels bile bubble in the back of her throat when she finally looks into his pale eyes, devoid of any human compassion. Her hand tremors, finally curling over the door handle.
“And I don’t either.”
Ji Sun bursts out the door, her heart pounding in her ears, Brad shouting her name muffled above the thumping of her feet against wet grass. A fallen corn stalk crunches underneath her shoe, and she knows she’s close. She’s so close…
“Sae Rom!”
Ji Sun digs her heels into the dirt, dread pooling in her stomach when she doesn’t see Sae Rom there. The moon is barely a sliver, and the heavy stomps of footfalls she knows aren’t Sae Rom are far too close for comfort.
“Ji Sun, get back—”
A blinding, white light suddenly floods Ji Sun’s vision, stark and spotlighted on her. The wind whips her hair in front of her face, and when she looks up, she is met with a thousand colored lights. Stepping back, she sees the rest of what is emitting the light; round, silver, floating maybe fifty feet above her, bigger than a weather balloon.
Silhouetted in the multicolored lights, a figure descends, floating down slowly until Ji Sun can see Sae Rom’s bright green dress, the red poppy flowers, and those beautiful eyes of her, now glowing green, reflecting, meeting hers with a soft, ethereal laugh, like wind chimes.
Ji Sun’s eyes stream tears, and the hands that gently take hers and pull her close feel as soft as sand.
Ji Sun’s body is weightless, her legs like jello as she floats up, up, closer and closer to the light. She can’t resist the laughter that bubbles up from her lips, her forehead pressing against Sae Rom’s and their noses tapping together.
Sae Rom’s breath is featherlight against Ji Sun’s lips.
“Would you let me show you those stars up close?”
Ji Sun breathes out a laugh. “What was that one you told me about, Andromeda?”
Sae Rom’s eyelashes flutter across her otherworldly eyes, their lips closing the gap between them, and the spaceship’s lights swirl around them like a rainbow, and Ji Sun longs for the home in Sae Rom’s arms.