Landing in Your Inbox

102 - flight plan

"Okay..." Seri hummed as Jeong-hyeok synced his phone with the car's navigation systems as he was instructed earlier in choppy English. "Are you sleepy?"

"No, but it's an uphill drive." He tapped his phone which sent the location to the car's touchscreen display.

"You've driven on hills before though?"

"Yes, but not here." Jeong-hyeok started backing away from the parking lot.

Seri waited until they were well on the road before she spoke what's been on her mind since the start of their second flight. "You know, I can't believe you wanted us to go here...It's not like...you."

"I wasn't too sure, too." Jeong-hyeok admitted, looking out for a tour bus in the rear-view mirror.

A perfectly trimmed eyebrow cocked up, "But you chose it anyway?" Seri pressed.

Jeong-hyeok took the southeast route toward Carrer de l'Angel as he was instructed. "I have a reason."

"What is it?"

The line of Jeong-hyeok's lips tightened together in thought.

"Jeong-hyeok." A grin wormed from the corner of Seri's lips. "Are you about to confess something?"

"Confess what?" Jeong-hyeok glanced her way.

"...That you love EDM."

His eyebrows scrunched. "EDM?"

"Oh come on." Seri protested, she almost threw in the jacket she peeled off in the car, "Don't act clueless!"

"But I don't know what EDM is..." Though Jeong-hyeok had a faint guess and it made him swallow.

"Electronic Dance Music. Captain Lee, do you really live under a rock?"

"Oh..." Jeong-hyeok visibly relaxed, "You mean house music."

Seri gently rolled her eyes, chuckling quietly. Trust Jeong-hyeok to know an older name. "Yes, that's what this place is known for."

"It's also known for other things." Jeong-hyeok went about it vaguely.

"Exactly, and all of it is against everything you stand for. You remember the partygoers on the plane?" Seri thumbed to her back, "Those are the target market."

"That much I know." Jeong-hyeok said defensively. "I didn't go into this blindly, if that's what you are saying."

"It's not that..." Seri became mindful of her badgering questions and backed down, sinking down her seat and playing with a lock of her hair. "I just don't want you to think you have to pander to me. You might be thinking of our foiled Jeju trip and trying to make it up to me, when I would have really gone anywhere with you."

"But this is anywhere." Especially as they were plunging into the night, guided by the streetlights and following the signs to country roads named after saints.

"Fine...have it your way." Seri attended to a phone notification, checked her phone for messages and closed it.

Jeong-hyeok spied the movement, "Are they going after you?"

"No." Seri chuckled, "It's Manager Hong. He wanted to make sure I landed safely and I told him to go to bed and stop bugging me...I think I gave him a fright for flying at short notice."

"It was really short notice..." Jeong-hyeok mused.

Seri turned to the driver with a sympathetic nod, "I startled you too, didn't I?"

"What made you decide to go?" Jeong-hyeok asked instead.

Such a simple question but with a loaded answer. Issuing a long-drawn breath, Seri looked out of her window, as home became farther and farther from her vantage point and even further away her thoughts. A day ago, she opened a box in her head, cleanly slicing it with a blade cutter and unloaded a mess, with all the shreds of paper, and she couldn't care to put everything back in place or remember how to do it.