Shelved Love

Chapter Nine

"Hi, Bin. I haven't see you in a while", she said looking at him and blatantly ignoring Yejin.

"Hello, Young-mi", he said with a serious tone. "Let me introduce you to Son Ye Jin".

Ye-jin genuinely smiled and waved at her, in return, she received the most fake smile she had ever seen, a smile full of contempt.

After gave Ye-jin an up and down look, Young-mi turned back to Bin.

"I need a book. It's called The Power of Nunchi", she told him.

"It should be at the last shelf on the right".

"Could you help me to find it?"

Bin looked at Yejin as saying he was sorry for the woman attitude, she nodded back at him as saying there was nothing he had to apologize for, so Bin proceed to lead Young-mi to where the book must be.

At that moment, her cellphone rang. It was her father.

Her relationship with her father had been like a roller coaster during all those years, its ups when she was a little girl and admired him above everything and its downs when she was a teenager and discovered him cheating.

At this time, after she left Seoul to live at Hongdo, they finally seemed to be in peaceful phase, but since her arrived at the island they had just talked by the phone twice: the day she arrived, to let him know she was safe, and one day, about two weeks ago, to let him know she was still ok.

It was being hard for both of them to reconnect, they barely had a common topic to talk about and the distance was making the process more difficult.

"Hi, dad", she answered the phone and walked to the front window of the bookstore.

"Hi, sweetheart. How are you doing? How is everything at Hongdo and at the school?", Man-young, her father, asked over the phone.

"Everything is doing fine, dad. This week I'm going to be really busy since we had two observance days' festivals coming, so we have a lot of things to prepare. It's going to be tough week, but really we all are excited".

"That's great. I like to hear you talk about your plans, Yejin", he said with nostalgia. "Next week is going to be Teacher's day, your first Teacher's day, are you excited?"

"Very much".

"Do you have any plans to celebrate?"

"Not yet, I assume we'll plan something over the course of the week, but if we don't, I happily can stay at home with a good book and a cup of coffee", she said on a cheerful tone.

By then, she could hear Bin and Young-mi behind her back, near the register cashier.

"You really like being there, don't you?", her father asked.

She kept quiet for a second.

"Pretty much, yes", she said with a little smile on her face.

"Is it because of a man?", he asked jokingly.

"What? NO, course not", she said defensively.

"Ok, ok, I was just kidding"

She heard Young-min leaving Author Attic.

"So, what is so special about that place?"

She thought over it.

"Well, everything is cheaper that in Seoul", she said with a little giggle, then she added in a more serious tone "And, the people are so warm and friendly, you can really connect with them, besides it is so calm and beautiful. I just have to look through my bedroom window to see how the ocean stretches to infinity and to listen to the waves' whispers".