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Doyoung hated Hartford.
He dreaded every single moment of his life that led to the decision to move to the United States. He was a lawyer in Seoul, and he worked for a firm called A127. He was happy with his job, he got close friends working there, such as Taeyong and Jungwoo, and some amazing interns, like Ryo, who made his life way easier. Not always, but most of the days.
Because they wanted to expand the business, they decided to move onto the American law and tried to open a branch in New York City, but, they didn’t have the budget for it yet, so they decided to settle in a close city, way cheaper and more accessible, business-related. They started to meet and talk about this branch opening, and they needed to select about ten people to move there. It was true that his company was very kind, and they wanted their workers to feel as comfortable as possible, so they did all kinds of surveys to make a final decision.
Things weren’t looking great for Doyoung because he had nothing in Seoul: he wasn’t married, he didn’t have a partner either, he didn’t have kids, god, he didn’t even have his own house, he was just renting a flat. So it didn’t surprise him that he was one of the candidates to go overseas. He thought that maybe going to America was going to change his life and that maybe thirty-five years old wasn’t too old to start living the incredible American dream, but he was wrong. Oh boy was he wrong.
Because they didn’t have the budget for New York, they settled for Hartford. Yes, Hartford. The city in which everyone who moved in wanted to be close to the big city, or not even that, he had to take a hundred highways just to get to Boston, which Doyoung hated, because it wasn’t only far away but the traffic was insane too. He missed the Seoul subway every single morning.
It was true that the company paid him more, way more, but the taxes that he had to pay there? Doyoung wanted to cry every time he had to do his taxes. The first time he actually did.
It was an extremely dangerous city too. He knew he was kind of a Victorian child, no one could say otherwise by looking at him, but still, Hartford was way too dangerous for him. He hated walking and driving by himself, and he got paranoid at every single noise that he heard at night. He had to witness robberies at the next buildings, shops, and even car thefts every single month. It was insane.
It was expensive, it was cold, dangerous, lonely… And all for what? It’s not like he could look for a new job because he still had two years of the contract left. It was driving him mad.
But because the city was mad. Exactly, it was a mad city.
“I am telling you Jungwoo,” Doyoung was telling his friend through FaceTime “Yesterday I went to a new grocery shop because the one that I used to go to was closing, that’s another thing Jungwoo, everything is closing! But yeah,” he continued as he was preparing himself some breakfast “This cereal that you are seeing? They taste like microplastics and it cost me almost five dollars Jungwoo! Five dollars for some cereal box! Are we losing our minds?”
“You look like you are”
“Jungwoo I am being serious!”
“You should go out more Doyoung, you are going to become insane”
“I know! But where should I go!? Everything is so fucking expensive and I don’t know any English!”
“That’s a you problem babe,” Jungwoo said “But listen, can’t you go to some, like, intercultural meeting?”
“Are you trying to set me up in an orgy?”
“Not that kind of intercultural you pervert” Jungwoo scoffed “When I went to Madrid for a year during my Erasmus we had this kind of intercultural meetings… we usually had some coffee and everyone tried to communicate in English, it didn’t matter if we knew the language or not, but it was really funny… That’s where I met Jaemin”
“Oh really?”
Doyoung was now interested.
Jaemin was one of Jungwoo’s best friends, and Doyoung liked him very much too. He thought that they met at university but clearly, he was wrong.
“I didn’t know” Doyoung added
“Well now you do” Jungwoo smiled at him, kind of blurry because his connection wasn’t the best “Trust me, find something like that, and debate with them about the inflation, I honestly couldn’t care less Doyoung, I’m sorry”
Doyoung would hit him if they were having a real-life conversation. But because they weren’t, he just hung up on him. He hated that he was right, and he hated more that he was creating a Facebook profile to look for these kinds of groups. God, who was he? He glanced at the groups that the app suggested to him after selecting some things for his profile.
Konglish Exchange
Jesus Christ.
Tongue Twisters United
Maybe this one was actually an orgy.
Bilingual Buddies
This one too.
Hangul to Hollywood
This was just cringy.
Globish Gang
Excuse me?
Kimchi & Cookies Chat Club
Okay.
He liked kimchi, and he liked cookies. He could work with that one.
He entered the group, and he was pleasantly surprised that there were less than twenty people over there. He went to the description and saw that they met every Thursday afternoon. That meant he had five days to get ready.
He didn’t lose any time until the meeting, spending almost two hours every single day in Duolingo. He wanted to meet people and talk in English, and for that, he needed to say at least something in English.
He thought he was a bit prepared for the whole meeting thing, honestly because he hadn’t given it too much thought, he was just getting the lines over and over in his head. So when he went to the coffee shop and saw three men sitting together at the table and laughing loudly, he almost shat himself.
At first, he thought they weren’t the same people in the group, but he couldn’t know because he hadn’t been looking at their profiles as they were all private and he didn’t send any friend requests, he wasn’t a psychopath. But the tallest one was waved at him, so he thought they must be them, right? They didn’t look Korean, at least not fully Korean, and until that moment he hadn’t thought about the fact that maybe the people he was about to meet didn’t know Korean at all and he was going to be depending solely on his amazing knowledge of the English language.
“Hi! Doyoung?” he said “Nice to meet you, I’m Johnny”
“Hi! Nice to meet you too, I’m Mark” the youngest one looking added
“And I’m Ten”
Ten? Wasn’t that a number? What kind of name was Ten?
“Hi, yes, I’m Doyoung, I’m Korean” he tried to settle some common ground
“Oh really? I’m half Korean” Johnny said in Korean, and Doyoung wanted to cry because it had been so long since he had listened to Korean in real life and not through a laggy video call “Mark is half Korean”
“Yeah, half Canadian too, not even American”
“Well your English is really good too” Doyoung added, already feeling more relaxed talking in his mother tongue
“Well we do speak English in Canada”
“Fuck true” Doyoung cursed at himself, god he was embarrassing
“I’m Thai, but I spent some years in Busan, so sorry if my accent is a bit weird, I actually pick up accents whenever I spend more than two days” Ten said sipping on his coffee
And that’s how it started, his new group of friends.
Maybe not friends, maybe just acquaintances, but it was a huge step for Doyoung.
They tried to see each other almost every month, and thankfully they all gave up the whole speaking in English thing, everyone needed to practice more on their Korean (everyone except Doyoung, but he wasn’t mad about not being able to practice English, he just wanted to talk to people in his mother tongue, sue him). Eventually, other people stopped going to their meetings because they wanted to practice other languages, which was completely fair, but they had so much fun with each other that they didn’t really mind being only the four of them.
He realized the group had nothing to do with kimchi or cookies either, because all of them were terrible at cooking, but he didn’t mind it. He didn’t mind it at all.
As months passed, they saw each other more, breaking some friendship milestones such as having lunch in their houses, meeting outside friends and family members, and taking weekend trips to nearby cities. Doyoung couldn’t believe how close he got with them in a span of one year; it was amazing. He thought his life was going to keep on like that for a while now, and he was happy because he could totally get used to it.
But one day at the beginning of July, where another man came to their reunion.
It was weird because they didn’t upload it as much on the group chat, but because they were going to go to a small café that held a concert of some Korean artist, they shared it.
The man who approached them was tall, definitely taller than Doyoung but probably shorter than Johnny. He seemed younger than him, and he was extremely handsome. He was lean, with sharp facial features, soft hair, and deep eyes. Doyoung almost forgot how to speak any language when he sat with them at the cafeteria, introducing himself.
“Hi I’m Jaehyun, I’m here for the intercultural meetings?”
Fucking hell, he was going to want to talk in English, why did he expect otherwise?
“Hi! I’m Johnny, nice to meet you!”
“Hi dude, I’m Mark”
“And I’m Ten”
Doyoung wanted to introduce himself but the conversation picked up extremely quickly for his liking, and he didn’t know how to speak English that fast. Apparently, this man, Jaehyun, had lived in Connecticut for some time when he was small and now he came back because he was looking for a job here. He was half Korean, but he wanted to practice his English. That’s all Doyoung picked up.
He tried to intervene in the conversation, especially when his friends encouraged him to do so, but he was feeling overwhelmed by the situation. Not only Jaehyun was not paying him any kind of attention, but he also started jumping to conclusions, thinking about how this new person was going to get closer to his friends than him, they were going to do American things together, they were-
“Sorry I didn’t catch your name earlier” Jaehyun interrupted his thoughts
“Kim Doyoung”
“Oh, are you Korean too?” Doyoung nodded, and Jaehyun smiled back “Nice to meet you then”
His voice in Korean was something out of this world. His face became even more mesmerizing, his eyes expressing a hundred things more, his lips-
“Doyoung came to the group to learn some English but we realized we needed to get on with our Korean more” Ten explained, sipping on his drink
“I see” Jaehyun turned to Doyoung, again “I can teach you some English if you want to”
Not only this man had ignored him for the past hours, but now he was being condescending? Doyoung tried to play it nice and smiled at him.
The bar became more and more crowded with the small concert, and they quickly switched from coffee and teas to beers, Ten even ordered a cocktail. It was already past midnight, and the place was going to close soon, so they decided to wrap it up, for the sake of their mornings.
“I live close, so I’ll just walk” Jaehyun said, pointing at some deserted street
Doyoung knew that street too well because, at the end of it, he had his car parked. Like he always did. All of them took their usual way back, including Doyoung, and Jaehyun looked at him surprised, kind of smirking.
“You don’t need to walk with me, I’ve lived here before” Jaehyun said, thankfully in Korean
“My car is at the end of the street” Doyoung explained
“Oh, nice then” the taller man coughed at the response “How long have you been living here?”
“Some years now, around three”
“And you like it? I know it is kind of a mad city”
Exactly Doyoung’s thoughts.
“Not at all, I miss Seoul a lot”
“Where did you live in Seoul?”
And just like that they started talking about their lives, jobs, and families, and it didn’t matter that they reached Jaehyun’s building a while ago, they were standing in the street, telling each other about each other, and Doyoung liked it. He liked how Jaehyun listened to him, how he seemed calmer when they were by themselves, how his voice shifted when he just finished laughing, or when he grabbed Doyoung’s shoulder and pushed him closer when some drunk passed by them, blabbering something.
“I hate drunks”
“Me too,” Doyoung said, taking a step back again, looking at the drunk man walking away from them “Thank you”
“It’s okay” Jaehyun smiled, and he took a step closer to him
They kept on talking for some more minutes, and another couple were walking now towards them, so Jaehyun grabbed his shoulder again, getting him closer. When they walked away, Doyoung took a step back again, smiling at him with confusion.
“They didn’t seem dangerous”
“I know” Jaehyun grinned
Doyoung decided he was going to be as bold, because what the hell, he wasn’t going to be flirted on by such an attractive man and just sit pretty there, smiling. He took that step forward, getting close to him, and when Jaehyun tucked some of his bangs behind his ear, he tip-toed slightly enough to kiss him. It was quick, magnetic, energetic but comfortable at the same time. When they broke their physical contact, Jaehyun smiled at him, his face all flustered.
“Is it too straightforward if I ask you to come up to my place?”
“Kind of” Doyoung admitted “Very American of you”
“But you have been living here already… aren’t you used to this American lifestyle?”
“That’s a very demure way to ask me if I usually fuck more guys on a daily basis”
“Oh my god no, I meant-”
“I’m messing with you Jaehyun” Doyoung hit his arm playfully “But no, I don’t, I haven’t tried this American lifestyle”
It was true, at least partially, but just because Doyoung only lived the corporate boring American life, not the fun, energetic, and full of expectations one. He hoped Jaehyun could show him some.