That night, as they lie in bed, neither continuing to discuss her earlier admission, nor ignoring it, he brings his arm more tightly about her. "Even soldiers on long campaigns need R-and-R," he tells her. "Constant vigilance is exhausting." He brings his other hand to smooth hair away from her opposite shoulder. "We should go on a trip. There is a short school holiday coming up. Can you do it?"
It is not like her, of course, to step away from her work, save those two weeks a year. And yet it is closing in on a year since those two weeks last passed—and turned into today, tonight. "A trip? We would go on a trip?"
"We'd have to confine ourselves to Switzerland," he says, as the travel privileges he was granted likely do not allow him to travel beyond, and it could prove dangerous to test such limits. "Would you like to go to a hotel, or do you want a house?"
"In the…country or the city?" she asks, beginning a litany of possibilities to decide upon. "In the forest or by a lake?" She thinks of luggage, "Do we take a car or fly? Do I pack or buy everything there?"
His smile is muted, sent into the darkness, swollen with relief. He has turned her mind to other things, to actions to take.
"No," she says, bringing her list of 'this or that' to an end. "I want to go somewhere beautiful," she tells him, turning her head into his shoulder. "And eat delicious food." She smiles, which he feels as her face muscles pull back and move against his bare skin, and he understands she has made her decision. "Somewhere neither of us have ever been. Somewhere only for us."
He nods and makes a noise of acceptance. He can do that for her, he thinks. He can find such a spot and go with her there.
The school holiday approaches, as does their trip.
Se-Ri finally settles on hiring two assistants for herself from among the local population. Sigrid, the first one she begins training, will come to the chalet 'office' to work, and Mia Baumann will manage the small storefront Se-Ri acquires in the village to begin selling her hygiene and beauty line of products. A hobby shopfront, to be sure, but after months of sharing Se-Ri's Choice products among both staff and students at the college, and people asking where to get more, it has a strong chance of proving successful and possibly demonstrating an appetite for a newer, more boutique-level global market opening, or so Se-Ri says.
Sigrid is trained well-enough to be left to manage any business concerns in their absence, including tending the dogs.
Se-Ri has Jeong-Hyeok drive them to their destination—she never asks where it's located, or how long they must drive until arrival, but he has found a comfortable accommodation in a charming cottage arranged by the scholarship's contact, Mr. Keller. It is situated in a scenic, wooded, highly-rural area, but an easy drive to local museums and a cultural center. At night the sound of the trees and insects is all one might hear.
Once they arrive, she powers down both their phones, stows them in her handbag. Short of driving here to find them (and knowing that this, in fact, is where they are, which only Keller does), they are now unreachable.
She relaxes a moment after this task. Now, she says to herself, even the embassy—even his father-cannot disrupt them. The days they will spend here guaranteed, his and hers alone.
It is the second night of their stay when sounds other than trees and insects awake him. Feeling her out of bed, he follows what little light is being cast from under the cottage's bathroom door. He does not bother to check and see if it is locked, stopping before it, inclining his ear as he asks if she is alright.
"Yes, it's fine," she tells him, and her voice betrays no reason for him to attach any suspicion to her location. He waits a moment and then returns to bed, falling asleep before she rejoins him.
They walk a bit the next day, drive into the town and buy some groceries for lunch, which they return to make. She seems fine to him, so much so that he has forgotten the late-night bathroom call the night before. They talk about the new shop and its possible future, of Sigrid and Mia whom they are both just getting to know. They wonder if the dogs miss them yet. They are easy with one another. He thinks, happy-peaceful.
Once back, he sets to making lunch in the kitchen and she retires to the bathroom to freshen up. He reaches a stopping point in preparation—just before the cooking begins—and she has not yet returned. He is now reminded of the night before, but embarks on the cooking. The cooking finishes and he moves the food to the table. She does not reappear.
Once again, he approaches the bathroom door. His mind wonders for him what might be going on. He is about to speak, asking through the door if she is okay when the door abruptly pulls open, and he feels the rush of air around him pouring into the smaller space. In a short moment of comprehension his eyes take in Se-Ri, hand still to the knob, her other hand holding something like a white wand.
This was not the right choice, his mind arbitrarily resolves, though it is not a question he has been contemplating. Yet his mind races on. Coming to Keller's cottage first was not the right choice for this trip. It should have been the high-rise penthouse first in Zurich, he thinks, he should have taken her shopping—eaten at Prime Tower's Clouds. Why has he miscalculated? Why is his understanding of her needs falling out of alignment?
Doubts about a misstep swirl in his head as, on the way to searching her face, in the background, on the sink counter he sees four other similar wands, and several crumpled packages printed in Swiss-German, English and at least one in Korean.
She does not let go of the one in her hand.