Page 29 of Free Fall #1

Sejin

O ur kiss doesn’t last very long, but when it’s over, I feel like my heart’s going to pound out of my chest. I don’t think Dan is a wise bet, and I don’t think he’s the seahorse of my dreams, and yet I don’t want to walk away from this anymore. Not even if…

I swallow. Not even if it all ends in a gory mess. Still, it’s easy enough to ignore that possibility right here in this starry moment.

“So, what now?” I ask, as Dan strokes his fingers against my cheek, and gazes into my eyes.

“I don’t know.”

He’s breathing a little erratically, and I again consider tossing aside my original insistence that we aren’t having sex tonight by offering to blow him, but then he leans back and asks, “Want to listen to some music?” He turns to that bag he keeps producing camping gear from and holds up a small, square object. “I’ve got a Bluetooth speaker.”

“Sure.”

He powers it up, opens Spotify, and then glances at me. “Want to listen to one of your playlists?”

“We could, but I’m curious. What kind of music do you like?”

He shrugs. “A little bit of everything, but mainly I listen to more raucous stuff, you know, to get my blood pumping before a climb or during a hard push up a pitch. None of it seems right for…well, for a night like tonight.”

“A date?”

He smirks, scrolling through music lists on his phone. “Yeah, a date, I guess. I mean, does this seem like it fits the mood to you?”

A ripping guitar chord tears into the stillness of the night, and it’s startling enough that I yelp.

“That’s what I thought,” he says, laughing, and turning the song off.

“Here.” I hold out my hand and he passes his phone over to me.

I look up one of my public playlists and press shuffle-play.

The first song is a piano cover of “Stardust” by Astro, and I check the queue quickly to make sure nothing jarring is coming up next, but the app has coughed up a nice, soft piano-focused playlist of some of my KPop favorites. “This okay?” I ask.

“Sure,” he replies, and then we spend some time cleaning up the camp area and securing the food. Once everything is put away, and the twigs refreshed in the portable stove to keep the fire going a bit longer, Dan unrolls the sleeping bags.

As we crawl into our respective bags, piano notes drift from the speaker, and the night swallows them as the music drifts up into the sky. I roll onto my side and look at Dan, and he reaches out, twining our fingers together.

“When did you start listening to KPop?” Dan asks.

I stretch my hand open, and he places his palm over mine, comparing sizes.

My fingers are longer, but his palm is a bit bigger.

“My cousin Nevaeh, which, in case you don’t know, is heaven spelled backwards—and that’s important for the rest of this story because it tells you a lot about her parents…

Anyway, she got super rebellious in high school and started dipping her toes into things her parents thought were dangerous. Like KPop.”

“They thought Korean pop music was dangerous? Why? Because it’s in another language?”

“No, they thought relatively hairless young men, wearing make-up and dancing in high fashion outfits to elaborate choreo was dangerous. Mainly because of their internalized homophobia, racism, and ethnocentrism, but they truly believed Nevaeh was being subtly seduced to the queer side by KPop, and also maybe becoming a communist. Which is hilarious since South Korea is one of the most capitalistic countries in the entire world, not to mention deeply misogynistic, and frankly not at all accepting of us homosexuals—”

“I’m bisexual, actually.”

“Ah, okay. Well, not accepting of us queers, that’s for sure. It’s not even legal there to marry or adopt kids if you’re not in a heterosexual relationship.”

Dan sneers, but says nothing. What is there to say? It’s not like the US is a longtime bastion of equal rights for the LGBT community either, and our rights are being threatened every single day.

“South Korea has a way to go in that regard,” I sum up.

“I assume her parents hating KPop just made it more enticing for your cousin,” Dan surmises.

“Of course. They hadn’t yet figured out that the queer snake in the grass was me. So, she would come over to my house, where I, a spoiled only child, would have access to all the KPop goodness of her dreams. She introduced me to her favorite group, and I was a goner right from the start.”

“Was that group…uh, Astro, was it? Were they always your favorite?”

“No, and even now I wouldn’t call them my favorite.

My ult, as the kids say”—I wink at him—“is a group called SHINee. I fell in love with their song ‘Replay’ as soon as I heard it. Then it was just a long, winding tumble down the SHINee rabbit hole until other groups began to make it onto my radar. Now I’m what’s known as a KPop multi.

I like multiple groups and solo artists. I get around.”

“Can I hear it?”

“What?”

“The song that made you a fan.”

“Ha!” I sit up and reach for the phone and cue it up. “Okay, but it’s an old song, a bit dated.”

“S’okay.” Dan sounds a little sleepy as he tucks his hands under his head and smiles up at me. “I’m fine with that.”

“Alright. Here we go.” I press play and the familiar music starts up. I sing along lightly, the lyrics and sounds embedded in my memory.

“I thought you said you don’t know Korean.”

“I don’t.” I laugh. “I’m probably pronouncing most of it all wrong.

But, yeah, I’ve learned a little from the songs.

For example, the word noona means older sister or older girl in general, and it’s a little flirty when used by someone who isn’t a relative.

So, the lyric I just sang is ‘Noonan neomu yeppeo,’ which means noona is so pretty.

So, this song is about a pretty older girl that the singers have a crush on.

” I do some of the upper body choreo. “And the dance is a little like this. I have the kids perform it sometimes.”

“How do the kids feel about not understanding the songs?” Dan asks.

“Oh, they don’t care, and a lot of them learn the Korean words to a larger degree than I’ve been able to. They’re so young and their language centers are still wide open.”

“Would you like to learn more?” Dan asks.

“Korean? I guess.” I lean back and stare up at the stars. “I mean, I looked into it and there are free online resources for beginners, but I…” I trail off.

“But something’s keeping you from starting?”

“Do you know any other languages?” I hedge. My reasons for stalling are pretty absurd.

“Nothing more than some basic Italian from Duolingo. I want to climb outside of the US one day, and the Dolomites in Italy are at the top of the list. But I’ve heard there’s some good climbing in Thailand and China, as well as Laos.

There must be some good climbs in Korea and Japan… ” It’s his turn to trail off.

“I’d love to travel too,” I say. “And, yeah, before you ask, I do want to go to Korea one day.”

“I wasn’t going to ask that, actually.”

“You weren’t?”

“No, I was going to come back to what’s keeping you from starting to learn Korean. You’re passionate about the music and lyrics, and you can imitate some of the sounds. That seems like a good start.”

I clear my throat. “It’s a dumb reason. I should start. I really should.”

“But what’s the reason?”

“Tenacious little jerk, aren’t you?”

Dan smiles and shrugs again. “Sort of my calling card—stubborn, obstinate, determined. Required in my line of work.”

“Is it work, though? Like do you have a sponsorship or…”

“No more trying to switch topics. Just answer the question.”

I frown, a burst of rebellion making me want to tell him to fuck off, but instead I tell him the truth.

“I feel like I’d be betraying my parents.

Which is dumb, like I said. I mean…neither of them ever asked me to stay monolingual.

In fact, Mom really hoped I’d pick up more Spanish than I did back in high school.

” I pull my hairband out and let my hair fall around me.

“Besides, where was I supposed to find a Korean teacher in West Virginia, or here in Mariposa County for that matter?”

Dan lifts up on one elbow and pushes one side of my hair back, searches my face, and then falls to his sleeping bag again.

“I have a pal…” He breaks off. “Well, okay, I met this guy once, I don’t think Peggy Jo would let me call the guy an actual pal…

Anyway, he teaches Greek—his mother tongue—online through some service, and he only charges about eight bucks an hour.

He gets enough by teaching something he knows well to keep climbing as his main passion.

Surely there’s someone like that out there teaching Korean. ”

“Maybe…”

“If you’re not interested, don’t worry about it.

It just seems like you’re on the verge of something here.

It’s like when I was learning climbing from Peggy Jo.

There was the introductory phase, and I could have stayed there indefinitely and just enjoyed indoor climbing with autobelays, but eventually I took the next step. ”

“What would I do if knew Korean? I mean, what benefit would it give me?”

“Beats me. The pleasure of learning it? You could ask me the same about climbing.”

“Hmm.” I don’t know that I want to commit to anything right now, but he’s given me something to think about. “I should probably get off my cousin’s couch before I start spending money on language lessons, though,” I say.

“Your cousin’s couch?”

I realize I’ve never told him about my living situation, so I fill him in.

“So, those kids I saw you with at Papa Bear—and the boy I met—are your cousin’s and his wife’s?”

“Did you think they were mine?” I ask, laughing. “And Leenie was what? My wife?”

“No, no, of course not. I just assumed you had your own room there, and she was a friend or a roommate.” He frowns. “I mean, I hadn’t really thought that much about it. I mainly just wanted to get you away from them so I could have you to myself.”