Statkus bent over the paper. He was no artist, but he concentrated hard on making this sketch look good. He'd been on his bed for an hour, drawing with a reference picture on the laptop before him. It was still up, even though he had long since passed from the sketching to the inking phase. In fact, he was almost done. As much as he'd thought that the lapdesk Tanya gave him for his birthday two years ago was useless, it proved to be just the thing for drawing on the bed. John carefully finished the last few lines, then blew gently on the ink and waited for a few seconds.

"Alright!" Statkus folded the paper twice. "Done. Now all I have to do is tell Aldaris I have it."

Statkus blinked. He wasn't expecting the blue glow of Protoss technology to sparkle around him so quickly. Had Aldaris been watching him? His stomach sank; if Aldaris could watch him without him realizing it, then what else had he seen? Could Aldaris know instantly if Statkus communicated with the the government? ...Could he see when Tanya was over?

These questions and more faded once he realized he wasn't on Aldaris' ship. Statkus groaned; it was another adventure, another waste of his time. It didn't help that he was tired - it was almost evening at home, and he'd planned on going to bed early. Instead, he was standing in a narrow and completely unremarkable hallway. The carpet was brown, the walls tan, and a brown stripe of crown molding ran the length of the hall, except where interrupted by doors of a similar brown. Each door sported a number pad near their handles. It could have been a hallway in any motel anywhere in the world.

Great, right when I finally have what Charlie needs to trace me, I'm somewhere random. Statkus lifted his hands in surrender. Well, time to tour. If I have to tell someone the truth, then it's not my fault.

With a quick rattle, the door in front of Statkus opened up. Out popped an Asian woman, her sudden exit interrupted by the American. She stared wide eyed at the foreigner, and Statkus backed away.

"Uh, uh...sorry, I must have the wrong apartment," Statkus stammered, instantly wishing he bothered with foreign languages. "I'll just...I'll just go and find the right one..."

"Statkusu?"

Statkus looked past the first woman to see Cheonha. He almost laughed with relief. "Hey, Cheonha! I guess this is the right apartment after all."

The other Korean frowned and said something to Cheonha. Cheonha gave a cheerful little laugh (which even Statkus noticed was a little fake) and joined the other in the doorway. She pointed to the American.

"Eee-saram John Statkus-irumeh. Statkusu, this is Choi Eunha."

"Nice to meet you." Statkus held out his hand.

"Nice to meet you, too." Eunha said, half distractedly, before she turned back to Cheonha and went into a long spiel in korean.

Statkus stood there blankly, regretting his lack of knowledge. He'd had months to start learning korean, and he'd never so much as considered trying. So he just stood there like an idiot while the girls said things. John pricked up his ears; did Cheonha just say "date"? It would explain why she suddenly grabbed his arm and stood by his side.

"Date?" Eunha frowned and pointed at Statkus' feet. "Kudu-rul opsoh."

Statkus looked down. Since he'd been drawing in bed, he hadn't been wearing shoes. Now his feet freely wiggled on the stale carpet of the apartment complex.

"Uh...I don't like shoes," Statkus improvised, standing up straight in assumed confidence. "I don't want to wear them."

"John!" Cheonha smacked him on the arm. "I said wear shoes! In Seoul, wear shoes."

John lifted his head with confidence. "Wearing shoes is an artificial custom imposed by society. If no one wore them, no one would need them."

"Yes, but shoes also keep you from stepping in dog poop and broken glass," Eunha retorted.

Eunha then said something else to Cheonha, but Cheonha just shooed her away with a laugh. Very reluctantly, Eunha went down the hallway. She looked back, but after a long eventuality, turned a corner and went out of sight. Cheonha immediately let go of Statkus' arm and backed away. She bit her lip.

"Bethany..." she said, struggling to find the right word. "Bethany...here?"

Statkus shook his head. "It's just me. Your english is pretty good, for a beginner."

Cheonha was confused for a moment, but she eventually nodded. "Yes."

"So..." Statkus asked. "What now? Ald - I mean, Charlie won't know I'm here right away."

"One, wear shoes. Buy shoes. Two, food. Three..." Cheonha suddenly grinned. "Play Starcraft."

"Starcraft?" John exclaimed. "You play Starcraft?"

Cheonha nodded. "I play Terran."

"Me too." John broke out into a smile of his own. "But I don't have a computer with me."

"No PC Bang in America?"

"Pee-shee bahng? What's that?"

"You know...soon. One, shoes. Statkusu...I shoes buy."

"Okay, okay."

-t-

Toby typed into his computer. It was the perfect afternoon for a stay in a coffee shop, wasting away the evening chatting with friends online. He preferred offline, but that's just the way the day shook out. None of his other friends had the evening free. Chen Fu Hao, the friend he met on his accidental teleport to China, was online. It was much later in Beijing, but Fu Hao had the typical university mindset; he well understood the importance of staying up late.

"Fu," Toby typed. "When are you coming to London?"

"Soon!" the words popped up on chat. "I'm applying for scholarships. University is expensive there."

"You're telling me," Toby typed in reply.

He sipped his mocha, and contentedly leaned back into the sofa. This was the life. To be sitting in the loft of a coffee house, surrounded by the scents of various caffeines and the gentle murmur of low-level conversations and keyboards of other patrons clicking away. It was Toby's night off, and this was exactly how he wanted to spend it, absent of having more in-person friends around.

Now would be a really good time for Aldaris' teleporter to mess up. Toby stretched. Hmm...is that guy looking at me?

Toby set his sights full on the older gentleman sitting at a table near the loft's railing. It was a white guy, some older person with a head of grey. Now that Toby saw him, the guy wasn't looking. He felt a bit silly; the stranger was intently focused on his laptop screen, and wore massive headphones that surely blocked out all sound. Toby shook off his weird feeling.

It's sort of odd that an older person would work on a laptop in a coffeeshop like this. Oh, I don't know, I shouldn't judge. Older people have come here before.

A sudden "ding" caught Toby's attention, and he turned back to his own computer. The chat display read, "I have to study now! Goodnight!" Toby returned his own "goodnight" with disappointment.

There goes my only company. Let's check the face of book, why not?

Toby logged into his facebook account. Much to his delight, there was a message for him. Eagerly clicking the little speech bubble, Toby found a message from Statkus. And only a minute old!

John: Hey Toby, guess where I am right now.

Toby eagerly ran his hands over the keyboard.

Toby: where?

John: I'm in Korea with Cheonha. We're playing Starcraft 2.

Toby: omg! so jealous.

John: She's kicking my butt.

Toby: hahaahaa!

John: It's because she doesn't have a job right now, so she has time to practice.

I don't even own Starcraft 2.

Toby: i wish i was there so bad!

if you don't have scii, how are you playing right now?

John: I'm in a PC Bang. It's a place where people can basically rent the use of a computer by the hour.

They hae Starcraft on on all the computers.

*have

Toby: ...we need that in london, so very badly. imagine the tournaments we could have!

John: All the controlss for the game are in Korean.

I don't know what I'm doing, so I really suck.

Toby searched through his laptop bag with all the energy of a five year old with an energy drink. He knew it was somewhere in there...or was it? So far it was nothing but old receipts and repeat drinker coffee cards. And then Toby laughed. This wasn't original Starcraft. He didn't need the disc to play the game.

TC: i have scii on my computer.

can we play on different servers?

JS: Yeah, they set up Global Play. You just have to log in on the Asian server.

TC: kk, then lets get a game going.

Toby happily scrolled across Rose Tyler's face to the Starcraft II icon on his desktop. As he did, the old man watched. Since his table almost faced Toby's position, it was easy enough to watch the younger male, but instantly have his eyes on his own screen if Toby got suspicious. The man typed one final thing into his computer before taking off his headphones and rubbing his eyes. The headphones, lying prone on the table, emitted no sound.

\\\\\\\

Author's Notes:

- I know it's been a while since I updated. Sorry about that. It's just that real life intervened, and it's been hard having the inspiration to write anything at all. It's been pretty bad. Things are...looking up now, but the temptation to get on a bus and just go is still there. It depends on if I get a job and a house or not. More on that later. Since this is a short chapter, I'll have another short chapter up a bit later soon.

- Remember not to take my korean too seriously. I'm pretty bad at informal endings, because the korean books I use always teach new words in polite or formal style. I'm hoping there's a chapter later on informal endings. In any case, a polite style ending is always eh-yo or yo, depending on whether or not the base it's attached to ends in a consonant or vowel. The formal style ending is imneedah, including the i only if the base ends in a consonant. Polite style is for when you're talking to strangers, and formal style is for when you're talking to important people, or people much older than you.

- Oh, and Cheonha has to add the "u" (pronounced "uh") to Statkus' name, because any word that ends in an "s" in korean is pronounced like a "t". That goes for "Aldaris" and "Protoss" too. Also, the english word "date" (day-tuh) is used in korean sometimes. Note also that "PC Bang" is pronounced "pee-shee bahng". That's because there is no "see" sound in korean, as the s figure next to the i figure always produces a "sh" sound. Also note the second word is pronounced "bahng" not "bang". All the phrase means is "computer room".

Author's Notes New:

- It turns out that the Teach Yourself book does explain plain style, I just never made it that far in my original book because the first edition of it put too many words with Roman letters. For some reason too many korean books out there try and teach the language without using hangul, and/or by putting the english pronunciation guide in bold, too obvious lettering. Um, hangul writing is not so difficult to read. You can go from knowing nothing about korean to being able to pronounce most of the letters in an hour. Nobody needs that many pronunciation guides, outside of the kind of phrasebook that travelers buy to quickly know important statements.

Thankfully, the new edition of the book only uses Korean letters. I'm still not quite happy with the book, but it's still good in many ways, like in the dialogues. I have my own theories on how to best teach korean, but I'll save that rant for other places.