Chapter Text
Zoey Park was on an adventure. Well, it wasn’t a particularly dangerous adventure, but it was a journey nonetheless. It would test her courage, her cunning, her wit: succeeding today would mark a milestone that could shape her whole future. Failure was not an option.
As she handed her boarding pass over to be scanned, she likened herself to the great adventurers from her favourite TV shows and movies. She thought of herself as Frodo setting out on his journey, or Ash Ketchum off to become the best there ever was. She even had her trusty iPod shuffle loaded with music to get her into the adventuring mindset: a series of hype songs to get her in the zone. This trip was destiny, she knew it. She would set off as Zoey Park, from Burbank, freshly-thirteen and officially old enough to travel unaccompanied, and she would return with a new identity. Someone cooler, someone better.
Someone who could actually fit in: Zoey Park, from Korea.
Ok, nope! Not getting into that now. Not as the plane was taking off and adventure awaited her on Jeju Island. She turned on her favourite Sunlight Sister’s playlist and dug out one of her cherished notebooks, allowing the song to wash over her and help get her into a zone. Lyrics came to her naturally, like the music itself was something tangible and she could pluck the words from the ether to bring to life with her pen. It wasn’t always a clean process. Sometimes the universe fought back, struggling like a particularly aggressive trout on the end of a fishing line. The pages of all her notebooks bore the scars and debris from these struggles, in the form of scribbles and doodles and smudged eraser marks. But the pages were still filled with partial songs and lines, or sometimes just a chaotic brainstorm of ideas. To a casual observer, it was a mess of barely-legible chicken scratch on wrinkled pages from overworking with an eraser. But to Zoey, every page was something special: ideas she had managed to capture from her overactive mind and preserve, right down to the crazy thought processes to get to those ideas.
Writing in these notebooks helped her find meaning. She could refer back to something from a few days ago and realize she did have a productive thought. She could remember stuff that would come to her, spur of the moment, and if she hadn’t written it down it would be gone forever. Each page was a time capsule of who she was the day before. She had learned early on that not everyone wanted to listen to her random, mile-a-minute thought processes, but the notebooks always did. And yeah, each page was messy and chaotic but...so was she.
The kids back home in Burbank didn’t understand. She might have come on a little too strong in trying to make a friend. She might have info-dumped about her obsession of the week, or if they were someone she really wanted to be friends with, talked their ear off about turtles. But she couldn’t help it! She just wanted someone who cared as much as she did, and once she’d get started, it was hard to stop. The notebooks helped (she had a whole bookcase at home filled with notebooks stuffed with information she found interesting). But to the other kids, she had been “Notebook Girl”, and...not in any cool way.
(She’d never forget the time the popular girls got a hold of one of her lyric books. At first, she thought they were complimenting her. They repeated lyrics to each other, even adding a few dances and hand movements, until she realized that their laughter after saying the lines was not merely from having fun. Well, they were having fun. At her expense.)
No, stop it! Stop dwelling on that. Those girls were back in California, no doubt fighting each other for the coveted head cheerleader position. No, Zoey was in a different place, a new place! One where she could get a fresh start and really become a new Zoey. She knows better now to not corner potential new friends with a documentary’s worth of knowledge. She knows how to approach potential companions in a cool, totally not-weird way. She’d taken what Korean customs her parents had taught her and expanded her knowledge, ever since her mom told her they’d be moving. And, above all, she knew better than to let anyone see her notes. Not for a long time, anyway. Not until she was certain she could trust them.
She blinked, coming back into her head. She glanced down to discover her pencil had been lazily scribbling random shapes in the margin of her page. She shook her head, dislodging some of the thoughts contained within, and jotted down a few new lyrics.
The ocean passed by below. It was a beautiful day: the sun shining down through fluffy white clouds, sparkling off the deep blue. From high above she could spot one of the ferries making the trek back to the mainland, along with the odd cargo ship. Out the window, to the West, she could see even larger, fluffier clouds on the distant horizon.
This was supposed to be her chance to prove she could do something adult all by herself. She had wanted to prove she was confident in Korea after having moved in with her mother a year ago. Travelling to Jeju alone had been a personal test. She wasn’t sure why she had chosen Jeju. She could have picked anywhere (within reason, of course). She could have gone to Seoul, which would have been way closer. Or taken the train to Busan. But something in her heart had told her to venture out to Jeju. It was far, and it had taken some convincing (with the help of an expertly crafted PowerPoint, mind you). But her mother relented after an impassioned speech about taking personal responsibility and becoming a woman. She was also quick to remind her mother of her blue belt in taekwondo, should anyone try anything. It was only supposed to be for the day: a short flight in the early morning, a quick visit to the main city, see some sights, hit up a cute little shop she had heard about that sold a bunch of turtle stuff, then a flight home. Her mother had instructed her to call at the sign of any problem, but she was still back home in Incheon. The point of this was for Zoey to figure it out on her own. She had grown up able to do just that back in Burbank, gaining the ability to navigate around a large chunk of LA either by herself or with her skater friends. (Granted, in hindsight it may have seemed like a large chunk. A few city blocks was a lot for short legs to traverse, after all.)
But that was Burbank, and while sprawling and massive, it was also a car-centric suburban snoozefest compared to the tightly-packed, colourful streets of Incheon. Even if her mother had chosen to move into what could be considered suburbs in that city, it was so different compared to LA. Everything felt busier, sleeker, cooler. Her mother had stressed the importance of not getting lost, but come on. Zoey was great with directions! She got lost one time when they first moved and her mother had been hovering over her ever since.
That is...until she met someone. A boyfriend. A boyfriend who suddenly took up a lot of her time. Zoey knew she had to be fair and happy that her mother had found someone after the divorce, but... Well, the fretting over this day trip had been the most worried her mother had been for her in a while. And while most teenagers would quickly welcome a break from all the smothering, there was a little nagging feeling in the pit of Zoey’s stomach that left her missing it. It was not helped by the Boyfriend’s eagerness to get Zoey out the door so they would have the day to themselves.
It’s just...that’s her mom and here’s this random dude who–
She blinked, finally cluing in to the fact that she had been scribbling a stick figure – who looked suspiciously like the Boyfriend – getting attacked by a shark.
She quickly flipped to a new page.
As the flight progressed and the little airplane on the map on the screen in front of her ticked closer to Jeju, she peered out of the window again. The island was creeping into view now, rising out of the blue sea like an emerald on velvet. She jotted down a few ideas – lines to work into lyrics later. She noted how from above, the island looked like the back of a giant turtle. She jotted down a few words about her anticipation, about the food she might try and the sights she had read up on. But there were words she felt in her heart, stronger than any other feeling. It was like a pull, something affirming that she was doing the right thing. Underneath her observations about the island, she wrote, “Today.”
She felt the plane begin its descent, and she let out a breath. Today.
Today her adventure begins.