Episode 1. Unromantic Summer
Summer isn’t a season of many colors.
Light green, olive, teal—no matter how you look at it, it’s mostly green. And yet, that monotony of summer somehow felt better than seasons painted with a riot of colors.
At first glance, the shades might seem the same, but over time, each carries its own nuance, giving summer a depth worth savoring.
Seim was looking out at the view through the classroom’s old window, framed like a picture, when a sharp voice jolted her out of her reverie.
“Teacher, I’m done!”
Startled, Seim dropped her chin from her hand and picked up a red pencil. The words the small, delicate hand had written crookedly were wrong again. She drew a red line under it and wrote the correction beside it.
“Hye-yul, it’s ‘dog.’ Not ‘ge,’ it’s ‘dog,’ alright?”
The child laughed, and Seim couldn’t understand why.
“Yes, dog! Teacher!”
Even that clear, cheerful laughter grated on her nerves, and she realized her disdain wasn’t directed at the child but at herself—at the weariness of endless studying, the repeated failures of the teacher certification exams, and the disillusionment with it all.
It was self-reproach, too, for not being able to endure life in Noryangjin and being pushed back to this small island town, her hometown, months ago.
Seim forced a small smile and patted the child’s plump cheeks.
“Shall we stop here for today?”
“Yay!”
After the after-school class ended, the classroom emptied quickly. By the time she finished the lesson log and stood up, even the older students who had been playing soccer outside had gone home.
Finally, her part-time shift was over, though it didn’t excite her much. Spending the summer solstice in this rural village felt cruel—the days were long and there wasn’t much to do.
Seim slung her backpack, zipped tightly, over her shoulders. She hadn’t packed much: a book of classical literature and her habitually carried Korean Language Education book.
Pushing open the glass door, a warm, humid summer breeze hit her. The cicadas, tireless as always, droned their “maem-maem” in the trees.
Seim walked past the flagpole bearing the Mangwol Elementary School flag, passing the assembly stand. For a moment, she recalled the local education office’s plan to gradually dismantle the stand.
It seemed like a relentless obsession.
The ground under her feet was soft. She had heard the turf was artificial, installed by the Hoemok Group. The cafeteria in the back had been rebuilt as well. It all made sense—the former chairman, Cha Cheolmok, had gone to this school and was from this island. It was a seemingly plausible excuse for the sponsorship.
Yet she knew the real reason behind the long effort to win favor.
Recently, she had heard news: Hoemok, after gradually purchasing land over the years, had finally received permission to build a resort.
Plans for the “Hoemok Resort” had even been distributed to every household on Mangwol Island. That morning, as she walked to work, she had seen elderly villagers sitting in the pavilions, laughing over the pamphlets in hand.
She didn’t understand why people were impressed by the words “job creation” or “tourism promotion.” Those were just empty words.
At their core, they were destroyers. They turned Mangwol Island, a place whose only wealth was nature, into their personal quarry.
Seim lifted her eyes from the turf she had been staring at and froze. She had collided with a gaze.
“….”
Her heart sank.
A man, leading a group of suited men, strolled casually across the elementary school playground—an image that didn’t belong there.
Yet no matter how many times she blinked, it didn’t change.
The body beneath the suit was larger than average, and beneath perfectly groomed hair were unusually sharp features. An appearance impossible to mistake for anyone else.
Her long-buried heart began to race. A feeling she thought had passed was revived simply because of him.
The man striding across the playground was indeed him.
Cha Taemok.
His face bore the weight of years that had passed, more so than she remembered. The boyish features of the past were gone, replaced by the maturity of a fully grown man.
Seim deliberately turned her head, avoiding his gaze. If she ignored the intensity of his stare, it would be fine. She intended to pass by without acknowledgment.
But the path had shifted, leaving her no choice but to meet him toe-to-toe. She didn’t meet his eyes, only letting her eyelashes flutter in slight annoyance, and a low chuckle came from nearby.
“Even a teacher teaching manners at school should not ignore someone they see. What are the children supposed to learn?”
This reunion felt hollow. All those years, and this was how it began. His first words, delivered as if no past existed, made the moment strangely empty.
Seim swallowed a sigh and glanced sideways. Even a quick look at the people behind him revealed his position.
The way Cha Taemok spoke to her while the Hoemok Group’s personnel stood in line behind him was so typical of him. She had no choice but to respond politely.
“All the students have left. And… I’m not a teacher here.”
“Someone leaving school is either a teacher or a student. Oh, a student?”
His tone, with the last part veiled in mockery, made Seim frown. She found herself staring at him, though she knew the gaze was not pleasant. Cha Taemok just smiled faintly.
“Even if I dislike your face, at least look at it.”
Seim exhaled sharply and narrowed her eyes. She had foreseen this meeting once the resort plans were confirmed, and had wanted to avoid it if possible. If meeting him was inevitable, she had hoped she wouldn’t be carrying her worn-out backpack…
Was it his fault for coming to wipe out this island, or hers for still feeling inadequate at twenty-eight?
The attention pouring from those behind him only made her feel smaller. She gripped her backpack straps theatrically and muttered a brief greeting.
“Then I’ll be going.”
She stepped forward and brushed past him swiftly. Only after passing the line of men behind him did she let out a breath she had been holding.
There was no reason to feel so uneasy about Cha Taemok’s presence. Their shared history was brief—just a fleeting acquaintance in school. The hands they had first held that summer when she was twenty had been buried in memory.
He was like one of the luxurious ships that docked at the rundown pier every summer—a fragment of an old memory, nothing more.
The journey home was arduous. Walking down the hill brought her to a mid-slope, and from there, she had to climb a steep set of stairs to reach home.
On the highest ground of Mangwol Island stood only two houses. Strictly speaking, two worlds existed. Both perched high, yet ironically, one was a shanty in a hillside neighborhood and the other the Hoemok family villa.
The immense gap between them was bridged only by a single wall.
Once, following her father who tended to the villa, Seim had gone inside. Seeing Mangwol Island framed by the villa’s expansive living room windows felt like a shock at her young age. The island was her whole world, but to them, it was just scenery.
Why she recalled it now, she didn’t know.
The villa gate was unusually open. Aunt, wearing an apron, came out, wiping her hands.
“You’re back?”
“Yeah.”
Seim approached, but her aunt waved her off. She knew it was to avoid dust sticking to her freshly cleaned clothes.
“I just finished cleaning. Suddenly, Taemok came down from Seoul today…”
Her aunt’s gaze lingered.
“So… the Executive Director is here. Seems like he’s inspecting things ahead of a big event.”
“I already saw him.”
Seim clicked her tongue deliberately.
“At school, earlier.”
It had been a long time since he came up in conversation, and it made her uncomfortable.
“Oh really? He even stopped there, huh.”
For a moment, they exchanged only glances. To fill the silence, her aunt gave an awkward smile.
“He said he’ll be staying about three months.”
Three months.
Seim swallowed hard, calculating the length of that time.
“I’ll stay in the lower house. The one that used to be your home.”
“No, it’s been empty for a while. And the surrounding houses too… It’s not safe.”
At that moment, several luxury sedans came up the paved back road, kicking up dust. She stepped back instinctively.
Watching the red taillights pass the gate, she muttered to herself:
“Still better than here, I guess.”
The stream of red lights felt like warning signals—alerts of impending trouble.
Even so, she had no intention of being deceived by the unusually long summer days this season again.
