The first gulp of tea soothes his teeming mind and puts the thoughts to rest. He closes his eyes and takes two more swigs from his cup before setting it down on seat next to his on the fairly small bench, turning his attention to the led screen on his camera, legs stretched comfortably.
The first few pictures of the day are frankly horrible – he remembers he’d been trying out different settings and messing around with the aperture, figuring he was allowed a few experiments since that wasn’t a commissioned work. Time was in his favor. So he passes them quickly, deciding to study the results later at home and hopefully turn the failure into more variety to his technique.
Then he catches the better ones, coming across his favorite series this far – a little girl, big brown eyes peeking curiously at his lens, her tiny hand reaching out for it. Later into the succession of pictures, her parents, a Korean man and a French woman, would appear behind her as she finished eating a steamed dumpling with a panda face drawn over its back. Jinki spoke briefly with them, the man kindly offering translations between his wife and him when needed, and it had been enough to let him know a little about their story, how they’d met in an airport when the woman was on a business trip, and also about their bubbly five year old, Nami.
Then encounter had left a smile on Jinki’s face as he proceeded to wander through narrow passages in the street market, capturing a few more faces of noticeable non-Korean ancestry in his pictures, keeping conversations in a rusty mixture of Korean and English with people to learn few things about how they’re settling in the country, for how long, and what their impressions and hopes are.
He’d been sporadically working on this project for a few months now, photographing moments of the lives foreigners had travelled the seas to seek in Korea. He still has very little material for it as his days had been rushing by between commissions, and the last time he’d had time to work on it was a little over two weeks. It’s not even definite if he’ll finish it eventually, but for now, he enjoys meeting people through it and hearing a little about them.
Looking up to take another sip of tea, he rests the camera back on his lap, fixing the support strap around his neck. His eyes dart across the street to the opposite sidewalk, where they fall over a woman of blonde hair. Blinking, he follows, with his gaze, the path she traces, noticing something so oddly familiar about the way the golden strands move at each step she takes.
Then it clicks, he remembers the girl in the Itaewon station, the blonde hair and wide curious eyes. It had been a work day, but as soon as he caught sight of her, he remembered the project and damned his hands for not carrying a camera at the moment. He can barely believe it, picking himself up from the bench to cross the street, hasty leaps leading to her oblivious figure.
He remembered how he’d made his mind up to talk to her about the project and at least let her know of his interest in having her pictures for it, but she slipped through his unprepared fingers, disappearing right after he turned around.
And now, even as he mumbles a sloppy “excuse me” in his less than perfect English pronunciation, his standard mean of approaching subjects, he’s a little afraid she’ll somehow manage to vanish into thin air right before his eyes, resisting the urge to lay a hand on her shoulder to keep her in place.