Chapter Text

Chapter One: The First Ferry

Okay, so. Let me set the scene, because I need you to understand exactly how humiliating this was.

I am Zhou Anxin, nineteen years old, holder of exactly one suitcase, two duffel bags, and a backpack shaped like a turtle that I refuse to apologize for. I had never been to this island before. I had never been anywhere before, if we're being honest, unless you count the time in middle school I got lost in a department store for forty minutes and the security guard had to page my mother over the intercom like I was a missing toddler.

Some things about a person do not change.

The ferry dropped me off at a dock that smelled like salt and grilled squid, and I stood there holding a paper tourist map that some auntie had shoved into my hand at the terminal, and I could not, for the life of me, figure out which way was north.

In my defense, the map had no north on it. It just had a smiling cartoon dolphin pointing vaguely at "FUN THINGS!!"

So there I was, turning the map upside down, then sideways, then upside down again like maybe gravity would rearrange the ink for me, when a voice behind me said, very solemnly, "You know the dolphin isn't actually a compass."

I turned around and found the single most punchable, most beautiful face I had seen in my entire life, currently arranged into an expression of pure delight at my suffering.

"I knew that," I said.

"You were holding it upside down."

"I was testing a theory."

"What theory?"

"That the harbor moves. Some harbors do that. It's tectonic."

He laughed. Not politely. Not a little chuckle to be nice to the lost foreign-looking boy with too much luggage. He put his whole head back and laughed like I'd told him the funniest thing he'd heard all month, and something about that laugh made my ears go warm in a way that had nothing to do with the summer heat.

"I'm Chung Sanghyeon," he said, once he'd recovered. "And you are extremely lost."

"I'm Zhou Anxin," I said. "And I prefer 'exploring inefficiently.'"

"There's a difference?"

"Enormous difference. One of them sounds like a personality trait instead of a problem."

He picked up my heaviest bag before I could stop him — which, rude, I could have carried that, probably, eventually, with a running start — and jerked his chin toward the hill. "Café's this way. I assume that's where you're headed, since Mrs. Han has been talking about her new summer boy for a week like she's expecting a delivery of very fragile teacups."

"I resent 'fragile.'"

"You almost fell off the dock just now."

"That was the dolphin's fault."

"You keep blaming the dolphin."

"The dolphin has yet to prove its innocence."

He didn't answer that, just kept walking, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitch, and I decided right then, dragging my turtle backpack up a hill in the ninety-degree heat behind a boy who wouldn't stop smirking at me, that this summer was going to be a problem. A wonderful, ridiculous problem.

Halfway up the hill, my turtle backpack strap snapped clean off, which is the kind of thing that only ever happens to me, in front of exactly the person I would most like to appear competent for, and my turtle bag went tumbling down three steps of stone stairs, spilling a phone charger, two protein bars, and — mortifyingly — a small stuffed rabbit keychain my little sister had shoved into my bag as a "good luck charm" before I left.

Sanghyeon crouched down, gathered everything with the calm efficiency of a man who had clearly picked up after careless tourists his entire life, and held the rabbit keychain up between two fingers like evidence in a trial.

"Explain," he said.

"It's for luck."

"It's for cuteness. There's a difference. You said so yourself, ten minutes ago, about map-reading versus exploring."

"I contain multitudes, Sanghyeon. Keep up."

"I've known you for four minutes."

"And already you're keeping up remarkably well. I'm impressed. Most people need at least five."

He clipped the rabbit back onto my broken bag strap himself, tied a knot in the strap with the unbothered competence of someone who fixed things for a living, and handed the whole bag back to me like it was nothing, like his fingers hadn't just brushed mine twice in the process, like my heart wasn't already doing something it had absolutely no business doing four minutes into meeting a stranger.

"There," he said. "Fixed. You're welcome."

"I didn't say thank you yet."

"You were about to. I could see it building."

"I was about to say you have main character syndrome."

"You were about to say thank you," he said again, already walking, and infuriatingly, he was right.

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Chapter Two: Seventy Days

Here is a list of things I invented, over the following two weeks, purely in the name of "good customer service," which is a phrase I used at least eleven times to Mrs. Han while she looked at me over her reading glasses like she'd caught me stealing from the till.

One: I started delivering iced coffee to the bicycle rental shop. Nobody there had ordered iced coffee. This did not stop me.

Two: I forgot a receipt at said shop approximately every single day. Mrs. Han pointed out that I had never once forgotten a receipt at any of the other seventeen shops on the strip. I told her I was going through something.

Three: I borrowed an umbrella from the shop on a day with zero percent chance of rain, according to three separate weather apps, and then had to return it, which required a second trip.

Four: I "accidentally" gave Sanghyeon's grandfather too much change and had to go back and correct it, a transaction that took ninety seconds and that I stretched into fifteen minutes through sheer force of will and a lot of questions about bicycle maintenance I did not care about.

"You know," Sanghyeon said, on my — I want to say sixth visit that week — while wiping down a bike seat and very deliberately not looking at me, "for someone who claims to hate being obvious, you are astonishingly obvious."

"I don't know what you mean."

"You gave my grandfather change for a ten thousand won bill on a purchase that cost four thousand won."

"Math is hard in the heat."

"You're a business major."

"I haven't declared yet. Anything is possible."

He finally looked up at me, and there it was again — that almost-smile, the one he seemed to ration out like it cost him something. "Why do you keep coming here, Anxin?"

I could have said something smooth. I had several smooth things prepared, actually, in a folder in my brain labeled "Things To Say If He Ever Asks." Instead what came out was, "Because you're the only person on this island who makes fun of me back instead of just being nice because I'm a tourist."

He blinked. Then he laughed — the real laugh, the head-back one — and said, "That's the saddest reason I've ever heard for a crush."

"I didn't say crush."

"You didn't have to."

Mrs. Han, when I got back to the café four minutes later than any coffee delivery has ever taken, took one look at my face and said, "Oh, honey," in the tone of a woman watching a slow-motion car accident she had personally arranged.

"What," I said. "I have no idea what you're implying."

"You have iced coffee on your shirt."

"There was a wind incident."

"There is no wind today, Anxin. I have lived on this island for forty-one years. I know wind. This was not wind."

I did not have a rebuttal for that, so instead I busied myself restocking napkins with the focused intensity of a man defusing a bomb, while Mrs. Han watched me with the barely-contained glee of someone who had clearly already decided how this story was going to end and was simply enjoying the previews.

That was also the week Grandpa Chung — a small, sun-weathered man with the world's most deceptively gentle smile — started assigning Sanghyeon errands that always, somehow, required passing directly by the café at exactly the hour I was on shift. Deliver a spare tire pump to the fish market. Pick up a specific brand of grease that, as far as I could tell, was sold at exactly one shop, located directly across from where I made lattes.

"Your grandfather sends you on a lot of errands," I said, the fourth time this happened, handing him an americano he hadn't ordered.

"He does."

"Convenient timing, some might say."

"Some might."

"Does he know something we don't?"

Sanghyeon took a slow sip of the americano, looked at me over the rim of the cup with an expression I was starting to learn meant he was choosing his words very carefully, and said, "My grandfather has been trying to get me to talk to tourists for three summers. You're the first one who talked back instead of just being polite and leaving a good review."

"I did leave a good review, actually. Five stars. 'Excellent bicycle, mediocre customer service, ten out of ten personality.'"

"You didn't leave a review."

"I was going to."

"You've been here two weeks and you've visited my shop eleven times and you've never once rented a bicycle."

I opened my mouth. I closed it. There was, genuinely, no comeback available to me, so I did the only sensible thing, which was change the subject entirely and ask him an aggressive number of questions about tire pressure until he got so annoyed explaining it to me that he forgot to be smug.

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Chapter Three: One Rule

There's a fireworks show on the island every Friday in July, shot off a barge just past the breakwater, and everyone gathers on the beach with instant noodle cups and beer and children who are absolutely going to be up until 2 a.m. on a sugar high.

Sanghyeon and I ended up sitting together without either of us officially suggesting it, which was, at that point in the summer, just how things worked. I brought two convenience-store beers. He brought a blanket that smelled like bicycle grease and something warmer underneath it, something like sun and salt and him.

"Can I propose something insane?" I said, watching the first firework bloom gold overhead.

"Depends how insane."

"Let's date. Until summer ends."

He didn't laugh, which somehow scared me more than if he had. He just looked at me for a long moment, the fireworks reflecting little green and purple sparks in his eyes, and said, "You're serious."

"I'm always serious. It's a personality flaw."

"You told me two weeks ago that your entire personality was 'exploring inefficiently.'"

"I contain multitudes."

He was quiet for another firework. Then: "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay. But with conditions."

I sat up. "This is already the least romantic negotiation of my life."

"No exchanging numbers. No social media. No promises about after. When the last ferry leaves in August, that's it. Clean. No 'we'll text.' No 'we'll figure it out.' It ends when summer ends."

"That's extremely specific for something you just came up with on the spot."

"I've had a while to think about it," he said, and something in his voice went quiet and old in a way that made me want to ask a hundred questions I somehow already knew he wouldn't answer. So instead I just held out my hand.

"Deal. Seventy days. No strings, no forever, no phone numbers."

He shook it. His hand was warm and a little rough from bike chains and grandfather-assigned chores, and he didn't let go for exactly one firework longer than a handshake requires.

"If it ends now," he said, quiet, almost to himself, "it can't become disappointing."

I didn't know yet what that meant. I would, eventually. But that night I just squeezed his hand once and said, "Deal," and let the fireworks be louder than either of our doubts.

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