And yet, he knew it was in her company's best-interest (and therefore her own) for her to attempt to make arrangements to return to Seoul. A return for her—under certain conditions—seemed for some time to be possible. Money and influence, as always, could accomplish much. And yet he understood how unfair it would be for him to insist on it for her. Were their situations reversed, and he the businessman able to return (if he wished) to his country and company, or to stay here with her, he knew his choice. He knew his heart.
"I think I have won the lotto," Se-ri says one day, while still at her make-up mirror, touching up her appearance before a Zoom call. "Even though I never gamble," she adds, not bothering to elaborate, but craning her neck to the mirror to ensure that he can see her smile from where he stood having just returned from a shower, wrapped in a robe, water still threatening to drip off the pointed tips of his hair.
She thinks how flustered this moment of intimacy would have made her only a year or so ago, thinks of how comfortable—how comforting—and natural it feels now. "Jackpot-winning… which often presages disaster," she says, but that only to herself, having seen more than one episode of "Lotto Destroyed My Life". She makes an effort not to share this dread, works to lock it out of their comfortable, natural life together here.
Weeks tumble into months. He finds himself becoming the de facto contact for the NK students—and those from other countries stranded here. But, in particular the NKs. It earns him the affectionate nickname "guidance counselor", as they bring both their musical struggles and their cultural and separation issues to him for resolution, for analysis. He listens. And when he does speak, he knows the familiar pitch of his voice's accent connects with something hungry inside them. It is something he can offer, some service he can perform.
Se-ri, whom he suspects concocted the "guidance counselor" label, visits the local animal shelter and brings home puppies. "To foster," she says, when his eyebrows shoot up at the pair of roly-poly cocker spaniels in the crate she asks him to carry into the house. "A boy and a girl." They name them Jingnyeo and Gyeonu.
Almost instantly, the chalet becomes lively, and it seems impossible they had ever felt truly at home without these new additions.
It is an afternoon when Se-ri has logged off her laptop. He is on the sofa, teasing Jingnyeo with her favorite chew toy. She is by far the more high-spirited of the two. At the kitchen counter, Se-ri sighs, in a way her work sometimes causes. He looks up, as always attuned to her, and she must read it in his gaze; that look of understanding that running her business would be far less clumsy were she able to do it in person.
"You cannot ask that of me," she replied, though he had said nothing aloud. Her announcement is sharper than he has heard her speak to him in a very long time. He considers this for a moment, and acknowledges the new brittleness in it as well.
"You could go and check on things—" he begins, as gently as a breath used to cool tea.
It has the opposite effect, here. "And risk you being recalled before I return?" she counters, with the energy of someone who has spent plenty of time assembling their argument beforehand. "Or, worse, discover some new restriction, some new lockdown prevents me from coming back to you? No. I won't do that. It's fine," she told him.
"Things are fine," she says, her tone still brittle as a dropped glass moments before impact. He watches as she re-collects herself, repositions her response. "It's all treading water, anyway," she waves it away with a hand.
She is managing him. He sees this.
Sees it and wholly understands it, her heart his own.
"We can't plan for a new product launch," she needlessly explains, his knowledge of the workings of her business now nearly as complete as her own. "We can't attend trade shows. All economies are moving like slow syrup right now. Not forever, but for right now. It's a good speed, slow, actually, to help some in the company learn new positions."
This idea is new to him. It raises something of an alarm in his mind. "Are you saying you think to replace yourself?"
She scoffs. "You can't replace the unreplaceable. No, but I am thinking of advancing a few people into newly-created positions that will better support the workload when things pick up again."
It is not a bad idea, he knows, but the motivation behind it, the desire for it that Se-ri has never shown him before-power-sharing, possible abdication-of this he takes special note.
Does he watch her more closely than he did before? No, impossible. Does he 'put a pin' in the topic of her likely necessary return to Seoul? Similarly impossible. With the future as unable to take form as oil in the hand, with tomorrow unable to be reliably plotted-such plans cannot be made.
Se-ri does not return to Seoul, and the window for such a trip closes indefinitely. They are both now at once fully settled down, and yet conversely in limbo. 'Outside of time,' he hears her say once from where she lay against his chest as they watched television one evening. He lets his fingers slip through the hair at her temple. She is echoing a notion in the science fiction program they are watching, where the rules of time and space and science no longer apply to the protagonist.
They are adventurers, he thinks momentarily, charting an unknown future course. It is not an uncomfortable thought. Particularly with the weight of her lying against him, the scent of her about him, the reassuring expansion and contraction of her lungs.
Somewhere along the way he is invited to join in weekly Facetimes to Se-ri's mother. He doesn't say much, as is his way, but his heart is glad to hear the two chat with each other, to share their lives and doings, to encourage each other. Mom never asks when Se-ri will come back to Seoul, never brings up when—or how-he will return to NK.
Himself, he hears nothing from the embassy in Bern, neither do Se-ri's stranded music students. He can only imagine the administrative disarray and directionlessness he witnessed there has increased. Some of the NK students, worried for their families, begin to despair.