Page 142 of A World of our Own

“No,” I agreed. “No, Joon, and if this were another time, then maybe we could–” I cut myself off, because even though I wanted to give him the answer he wanted, I couldn’t make myself say something that wasn’t necessarily true.

“I would be proud to stand next to you in an airport,” I said instead. “But another time. Not now. The important thing is getting out of the country. Nothing else matters right now.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but I reached up to cup his jaw.

“Joon, while you may be willing to stand in the fire next to me, your family didn’t ask for the kind of attention that would bring. This isn’t about us. This is not the time.” Gently, I ran my thumb across his cheekbone, holding his gaze as he stared down at me.

His phone was ringing, the shrill cry demanding attention, and while I was tempted to pick it up and take this burden for him, doing so would help nothing and harm everything.

Jihoon squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before he spun around and picked up the phone. “What?” he barked. “Fine. Send me the details.”

And then he tossed his phone back on the bed.

“They’ve booked me a flight for this evening,” he said, sounding so exhausted now that the fight had drained out of him.

“Okay, good. I’ll try to get on the same flight.”

It didn’t take long for the email to come through, and while Joon continued packing, I searched for a ticket. It turned out flights from Warsaw to Incheon weren’t selling very quickly, and I was able to book myself a seat on Jihoon’s plane with relative ease. Economy, obviously. I already knew the travel team would never approve a first class seat. Jihoon tried to argue that he’d pay the difference for my upgrade, but I cut him off. The argument of why we couldn’t hadn’t changed just because our travel plans had. Because the tour was officially paused, I didn’t have to ask for leave from the travel coordinator. I simply emailed them to let them know I’d be arranging my own travel between now and the start of the final leg. And that was that.

We were driven to the airport together and for a brief time we walked through the airport together. Silent, but side by side and seemingly unobserved. We parted ways at security. His first class ticket granted him access to a priority line that was separate from mine, and through the thin gap between his face mask and cap, I held his eyes until the crowd separated us.

He went to the first class lounge to wait, although I’d needed to convince him on the drive to the airport to do so. It was safer than waiting in the normal departures lounge, and eventually he’d agreed.

It was a special kind of agony, waiting in the airport on my own and knowing he was so close and in so much pain, but I couldn’t see him. Not even when we boarded. I’d never been so aware of another person as I was of Jihoon, sitting at the front of the plane, separated by curtains and watchful flight attendants. Once again, a world apart.

Chapter 41

We couldn’t fly direct to Busan from Warsaw. We'd had to change at Incheon. The transfer was a rotating door of collecting bags, wheeling them through the terminal, sitting in another chair, watching another flight board, getting on another plane, and all of it done separately, but always together.

Going between airports and countries had a curious way of absorbing time like a sponge absorbs water. It was still technically there, it had weight, but it was out of sight while still in plain view. A little like us.

We disembarked the plane in Busan and in a carefully neutral dance, we gravitated towards each other at the baggage reclaim carousel. He picked both our suitcases off the belt and put them on the luggage trolley I had wheeled over, and together, without even so much as a word, or a look, we left the airport and no one had apparently looked twice, because people didn’t look for what they didn’t expect to see.

Somewhere between Poland and Busan, ENT had organised a car for us. An agent was waiting for us at the rental desk to discreetly hand over a set of keys without the need for us to sign anything or do anything else.

It wasn’t until I buckled my seatbelt that it even occurred to me to ask where we were going. Every effort up until now had been to get here, to get to Busan. But Busan was just a place. It was where his family lived. It was where the funeral was being held. I felt foolish admitting even to myself that none of these factors had crossed my mind.

Jihoon’s hands gripped the wheel so tightly I heard the leather creak.

“I have booked a hotel, but I need to stay at my family’s house. It would be expected.” His voice was rough from some combination of more than half-a-day of travel and grief so sharp I felt like I could see it cutting his throat every time he spoke.

We stopped at a red light, and he turned to look at me. The weight of the past day seemed etched into the unhappy lines of his face and the shadows under his eyes.

“Kaiya, I’m sorry,” He trailed off. He didn’t need to tell me I wouldn’t be staying with him.

I reached out a hand and placed it on his arm, rubbing my thumb gently over the fabric of his shirt.

“I understand,” I reassured him.

And I did. Of course I did. Frankly, I was relieved. A hotel allowed me a measure of detachment. Not from Jihoon, or from his grief, but from a private, family matter I had no right to be in the middle of. I was here for Jihoon, but I’d felt uncomfortable since the moment we’d left Poland.

We drove the rest of the way to the hotel in silence, and I forced myself to push down my insecurities, because nothing about this was about me.

Jihoon walked me up to my hotel room, pushing my luggage inside, neatly arranging it against the wall, and then moving it to the wardrobe before hesitating, like he was trying to figure out if we’d be here long enough for me to want to unpack. I could see the thought on his face as clearly as I could hear it in my own head.

Eventually, he left it and came to stand in front of me, reaching for my waist and pulling me towards him with a heavy exhale.