I Will Find You - Chapter Three

He’d promised to find her no matter what, but it was proving more difficult than he had imagined. He had the help of Song-jae and Su-hyeok—he shook his head. It was difficult using the two men’s modern-era names; the resemblance to their ancestors was uncanny, but it was the least he could do. Small thanks for all they were doing for him.

While they were trying to find Cook Yeon, Steve and Jae-hyeok had insisted that he had to ‘acklemate’. Get to know the future; get used to all the changes. He’d scoffed, of course—it hadn’t looked like much had changed there in the middle of what they were calling the Bukhansan National Park, which he’d surmised was the northern border of Hanseong.

But once they’d made it out of the brush and to the first viewing point, the first, most obvious change hit home. He most definitely was no longer in Joseon, and Hanseong had turned into Seoul, a vast, sprawling ‘metroplease’ with wide streets, towering buildings, and more than nine million inhabitants.

Dejection had hit hard and fast.

How do you find a woman—no matter how special she might be—among a mass of nine million?

And in the days and weeks that followed, the true scope of the changes during the 500 years of history he’d skipped emerged, and he was finally realizing why Ji-young had acted the way she had when she’d ended up in Joseon and just why she’d refused to believe where she was. If her shock had been one-tenth of what he was feeling, it must’ve been enormous.

In his 16th-century mind, Joseon was the peak of civilization, sophistication, and progress, surpassed only by the Ming. But after just a few days spent in the future, he could see just how primitive it must’ve been for her. In everyday life, customs, kitchen, and beyond.

Korea was not a monarchy but a republic—the intricacies of it eluding him; no wonder she didn’t believe him about being king and was indeed ignorant of the customs revolving around the Joseon royalty and appropriate manners.

But what most boggled the mind were the vast, incredible, unbelievable changes and advancements in...everything. Things he couldn’t conjure in his wildest imaginings.

While in his time, the horse was the fastest mode of transportation available, in the future there were cars, ‘autobases’, trains traveling at the speed of hundreds of horses on smooth, black-paved streets and tracks crossing long bridges over deep chasms, even going under the earth and water. There were ‘eroplans’ capable of transporting people across the seas to other ‘coneteenents’. He was yet to see such ‘eroplan’ up close—he’d seen them up in the sky, sharing space with birds—but even the simplest car Steve and Jae-hyeok used to get him from the slopes of the Bukhansan to Steve’s ‘apartamont’ proved to be the height of ‘tetchnology’ as far as he was concerned.

But that was only the beginning. The two men had introduced him to a vast array of astonishments. Starting with electricity. Which, to him, was akin to magic. You pushed a switch, and the room became light or dark. There was no more need for candles. ‘Televishin’ was also a thing of wonder, with tiny people inside a thin, flat box, with images, people, and music changing at the push of a button.

The first day they’d taken off his manggeon and taken him to the ‘hederesser’ where they cut off his sangtu, which had taken a lot of convincing, but the man holding the scissors comparing his reaction to that of a woman cutting her hair did the trick. He’d been given a new ‘wadrob’, clothes that fit much tighter to his frame than the robes he’d been used to, trousers that cupped everything, clinging tightly to his legs, ‘sharts’ with sleeves buttoned tightly to his wrists—the people of the future kept their belongings in ‘poketso’, not in the sleeves—’jacketso’ instead of a dallyeong.

Steve and Jae-hyeok were attired quite similarly, telling him it was customary not to wear the manggeon and gat when in public, though he was feeling rather naked without them. But he did want to blend in, and the clothing materials were light and airy, much less stifling than the silks and velvets of his era. He particularly liked the butter-like material of ‘geens’.

The two had also taken him to a physician for an examination, which also had floored him. Instead of the rather perfunctory examination from his era, the doctor had been thorough, listening to his heart and lungs, poking and prodding, attaching strangely wired discs to his chest to check his heart more thoroughly, and even going so far as to draw his blood.

The later explanation of advancements in medicine and sciences only confused him further. During history, people had abandoned acupuncture, tinctures, and occasional bloodletting for advanced medical procedures like organ screening and blood tests to determine possible illnesses. They went so far as to transplant organs from one human to another in life-saving operations. People were no longer dying young, Steve said, with preventable diseases that had killed so many in the past under control with modern medicaments and ‘vassins’.

Which he’d also gotten after the doctor had determined there was nothing wrong with his blood. The man had looked at him funny when Steve and Jae-hyeok had explained he’d never gotten any of the usual ‘vassins’ because he’d been in what they called a cult. Heon didn’t understand a word and didn’t much care. As long as they didn’t kill him, they could do whatever they wanted. The doctor had poked him some more, with Heon scoffing at the man questioning whether he was afraid of needles. He’d grown up in the era of acupuncture; why would he be afraid of needles?

With a clean bill of health and filled with the magical power of medicine, they returned to Steve’s home, where the two men presented him with a ‘smartafon’, a smaller portable version of the ‘compoter’, on which one could make calls—whatever that meant—and gave him a ‘crasscoores’ on how to use it so he could explore the futuristic changes alone and in detail. Which sounded and worked much better.

He’d had to brush up on his hangeul first, but muscle memory kicked in pretty fast. The first thing he searched for was himself, prompting a laugh from Steve and Jae-hyeok, telling him he was just like everybody else, ‘gugling’ himself. He had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t sound nice, so he’d told them both where to go in a very crude and explicit way he’d learned from Gong-gil and went to Steve’s guest bedroom to read.

He’d almost hurled the gifted ‘smartafon’ out of the window when he read the supposed truth about the Gapshin purge and its aftermath. Dear Uncle Jesan had truly managed to rewrite history, but at least his brother Jinmyeong had ruled peacefully and unperturbed.

Then he’d searched for her, fingers trembling, insides in turmoil. He believed Steve and Jae-hyeok when they told him they couldn’t find her and that it would be nearly impossible to do so; he just needed to see for himself.

And there she was, the inscription dated to a few months ago, about her winning a cooking competition—of course, she won it—in France, Europe. Nothing newer, but the most important feature in the cooking competition inscription was her image. Her eyes were alight, and her smile was big and bright. She looked so vivid, so alive, he could almost reach out and touch her...Yet the only thing he could touch was the cold surface of the ‘smartafon’.

Longing hit hard and fast, visceral.

He missed her. He missed her so much it felt like there was a pulsating, festering wound inside him that only she could seal. He missed her smile, her eyes, her touch, and her voice. And he needed her. He needed to touch her, hold her, talk to her...She was the only one who could bring him calm. Respite.

In this alien, foreign future, where everything was so very different, loud, noisy, too bright, and too colorful, he knew she was the only one who could quiet everything and slow down this crazy world he’d ended up in. Her soothing voice, tentatively gentle touch, and smile would calm his racing heart, quiet his clamoring mind, and smooth the raw, jagged edges inside him.

Heavens, how he needed her.