“Where?” She should have asked why, she realized.
“I’ll come to the beach behind your house. Near the large black rocks where the tide is low. You do the wash there by the cove.” He wanted her to know that he knew a little about her life. “Can you come alone?”
Sunja looked down at her shopping baskets. She didn’t know what to tell him, but she wanted to speak with him some more. Her mother would never allow it, however.
“Can you get away tomorrow morning? Around this time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is afternoon better?”
“After the men leave for the day, I think,” she found herself saying, her voice trailing off.
He was waiting for her by the black rocks, reading a newspaper. The sea was bluer than she had remembered, and the long, thin clouds seemed paler—everything seemed more vibrant with him here. The corners of his newspaper fluttered with the breeze, and he grasped them firmly, but when he saw her approaching, he folded the paper and put it under his arm. He didn’t move toward her, but let her come to him. She continued to walk steadily, a large wrapped bundle of dirty clothes balanced on her head.
“Sir,” she said, trying not to sound afraid. She couldn’t bow, so she put her hands around the bundle to remove it, but Hansu quickly reached over to lift the load from her head, and she straightened her back as he laid the wash on the dry rocks.
“Sir, thank you.”
“You should call me Oppa. You don’t have a brother, and I don’t have a sister. You can be mine.”
Sunja said nothing.
“This is nice.” Hansu’s eyes searched the cluster of low waves in the middle of the sea and settled on the horizon. “It’s not as beautiful as Jeju, but it has a similar feeling. You and I are from islands. One day, you’ll understand that people from islands are different. We have more freedom.”
She liked his voice—it was a masculine, knowing voice with a trace of melancholy.
“You’ll probably spend your entire life here.”
“Yes,” she said. “This is my home.”
“Home,” he said thoughtfully. “My father was an orange farmer in Jeju. My father and I moved to Osaka when I was twelve; I don’t think of Jeju as my home. My mother died when I was very young.” He didn’t tell her then that she looked like someone on his mother’s side of the family. It was the eyes and the open brow.
“That’s a great deal of laundry. I used to do laundry for my father and me. I hated it. One of the greatest things about being rich is having someone else wash your clothes and cook your meals.”
Sunja had washed clothes almost since she could walk. She didn’t mind doing laundry at all. Ironing was more difficult.
“What do you think about when you do the laundry?”
Hansu already knew what there was to know about the girl, but that was different from knowing her thoughts. It was his way to ask many questions when he wanted to know someone’s mind. Most people told you their thoughts in words and later confirmed them in actions. There were more people who told the truth than those who lied. Very few people lied well. What was most disappointing to him was when a person turned out to be no different than the next. He preferred clever women over dumb ones and hardworking women over lazy ones who knew only how to lie on their backs.
“When I was a boy, my father and I each owned only one suit of clothes, so when I washed our things, we would try to have them dry overnight and wore them still damp in the morning. Once—I think I was ten or eleven—I put the wet clothes near the stove to speed up the drying, and I went to cook our supper. We were having barley gruel, and I had to stir it in this cheap pot, otherwise the bottom would burn right away, and as I was stirring, I smelled something awful, and it turned out that I had burned a large hole in my father’s jacket sleeve. I was scolded for that severely.” Hansu laughed at the memory of the thrashing he got from his father. “A head like an empty gourd! A worthless idiot for a son!” His father, who had drunk all his earnings, had never blamed himself for being unable to support them and had been hard on his son, who was keeping them alive through foraging, hunting, and petty theft.
Sunja had not imagined that a person like Koh Hansu could do his own laundry. His clothes were so fine and beautifully tailored. She had already seen him wear several different white suits and white shoes. No one dressed like he did.
She had something to say.
“When I wash clothes, I think about doing it well. It’s one of the chores I like because I can make something better than it was. It isn’t like a broken pot that you have to throw away.”
He smiled at her. “I have wanted to be with you for a long time.”
Again, she wanted to ask why, but it didn’t matter in a way.