1
Samsam Island was a good place to live.
Vivid blue waves and golden sand. Black cliffs, striking as a ink-wash painting carved by the wind. A salty, fragrant smell of the sea.
When spring came, wild greens sprouted from the small mountain tucked behind the island, and in the sweltering summer, sky-blue waves kept the heat at bay. When the leaves fell, fat gizzard shad were caught in abundance. When snow came, every household would catch pollock and hang them to dry on the drying racks.
Small as it was, there was a clinic and a pharmacy, and even an elementary school. Though the entire student body amounted to a grand total of three.
The small mountain visible at the top of the alleyway blocked the cold winds, so even the fragile things never froze to death. Cats rolled around the alleyways in winter as if they owned the place.
If there was one — and only one — flaw to point out about this island:
“Ugh, why isn’t it working?”
The internet and phone signal barely worked.
To be precise, calls only barely went through in the uphill houses close to the mountain, and the internet wouldn’t connect anywhere except the village chief’s home. Apparently, when they laid the internet lines ages ago, they hadn’t bothered to consider anyone other than the village chief’s household.
That was why, despite having quite a beautiful landscape, no large corporate condos or resorts had ever managed to set up here.
“There’s no phone signal here.”
The old motorized fishing boat had left the mainland harbor and was steadily drawing closer to the back of beyond.
Haeshin felt the sea breeze tickling his wheat-colored hair as he gave a small nod of greeting to the unfamiliar stranger sitting beside him. The stranger appeared to be a fisherman — he had fishing gear and a bag reeking of fish draped over him like armor.
At the mention of no phone signal, the man’s face flushed red like fingertips frozen stiff in the cold.
“No phone signal? Where in South Korea does that even exist? You can get a signal on Dokdo, you know.”
“Actually, even Dokdo drops calls when the weather’s bad.”
That was genuinely true. The honest reply carried just a slight hint of indifference. The grumbling man jabbed at his phone screen a few times, clicked his tongue with an irritable hey, then shoved it into his pocket.
“The device is domestic, the signal’s domestic — so why the hell won’t it work on Korean soil? I don’t get it. Does this island not do digital, or what?”
It doesn’t. Unfortunately.
“If the weather’s nice, you can get a signal up on higher ground. Try it once you arrive.”
He remained unbothered by the man’s rough complaints and consciously smiled his brightest smile. A pure, boyish grin that shone even through the dead of winter’s cold. The man, who had been radiating irritation, soon clicked his tongue awkwardly and looked away.
Haeshin was used to situations like this. In a South Korea dominated by cutting-edge technology — AI, virtual reality, the metaverse, and whatever else — imagine being told there was a remote corner with no phone or internet. Of course it was disorienting.
He thought back to the first time he’d left the island and gone to the mainland, when he’d realized that phone signal worked across the entire peninsula regardless of the weather. He must have been in middle school.
It had been as shocking as the day he’d first learned that the Korean word siso was also seesaw in English. You could make a phone call even on a stormy day. You could even make calls inside a cave, deep in the mountains!
That day, the moment Haeshin returned to Samsam Island, he’d gone to the village chief and the village elders and suggested they lay new internet and phone lines. But given that more than a decade had passed with no news on the matter, it seemed the idea had either fallen through or simply wasn’t possible.
“Hey, we’re here. Off you go.”
The fishing boat docked at what was both a paradise of waves and a place of exile from civilization.
Haeshin glanced back once at the man, whose face was still sour, and roughly pointed out with a finger the spot where signal tended to be the strongest. It was up the sloping alleyway, near the entrance leading toward the mountain.
The man grumbled, scraped the mud off his feet against the cement, and headed that way.
“Hmph.”
Watching his retreating figure, Haeshin let out a breath through his nose, somewhere between a sigh and a scoff. Whether it was because of the bright sunlight, or because of that finicky fisherman’s attitude — the corners of his eyes crinkled deeply.
“If you don’t like it, why even come. There are plenty of other places to fish.”
Just make sure you take your trash with you when you leave.
He muttered under his breath, low enough that the man couldn’t hear, and made his way toward the drying rack on the hill beside the beach. He didn’t mind at all that his mud-caked shoes were leaving prints across the sand.
***
The people who boarded boats headed for Samsam Island generally fell into one of three categories.
First, fishermen who’d heard rumors of a great catch and boarded on a whim.
Second, outsiders with family on Samsam Island.
Third, film crews for nature healing variety shows.
Up until now, whenever Haeshin had watched an outsider fuss and fume, he’d privately guessed one of the three — and he’d always been right.
Even then, the third type would typically confirm there was no internet, feel disappointed, and head back. Not long ago, there had been someone from that famous show — Three Meals a Day, was it? Anyway, the location scout for that well-known program had visited Samsam Island after seeing it on satellite photos.
In the end, they’d been let down by the fatal fact that neither phone calls nor internet worked, so they’d just tossed a bunch of shrimp crackers to the seagulls and gone home.
“Hey, Haeshin! Come on over!”
And island young man Lee Haeshin fell outside those rankings entirely.
Fourth. Samsam Island’s errand boy.
He was the only man in his twenties born and raised on Samsam Island, and he was the errand runner for the elders who traveled back and forth between the mainland and the island. Anything not sold at the tiny corner shop — which only carried soju, rice, snacks, and cigarettes — Haeshin almost always had to go out and buy himself.
He had no complaints. After all, complaints were something that belonged to unfamiliar environments. He’d been running errands since before he hit double digits in age — it was second nature by now.
Haeshin had adapted to the island. He knew exactly which wild greens and fish were in season and when, and he could climb up and down Samsam Island’s rugged mountain paths and rocky shores as easily as walking through his own living room.
He cared more about how to dry pollock just right — crispy and firm — than about whatever trending idol challenge or dating show was going around. More familiar with ocean swimming than YouTube. In love with the sea to the point where he genuinely wanted to live there, rooted like a stone that had sunken into its place — that was the kind of young man Haeshin was.
“Oh my, you didn’t have to bring all this! It must’ve been heavy.”
“It’s red ginseng. Good for you.”
The clock read nine in the morning. Thanks to having boarded the boat in the early hours before dawn, it was still morning even though he’d been up for hours.
Haeshin handed out red ginseng energy supplements to the elders who had worn themselves out preparing for kimchi-making season. It was a product he’d seen advertised on TV every time the morning drama ended.
“The pork belly’s in the kitchen.”
The pork belly — heavy enough to make the black plastic bag go smooth and taut — he’d set on top of the kitchen counter at the village chief’s home. Along with snacks he’d bought for the three little kids in the village.
“Oh, my dear. You worked so hard riding the boat since the crack of dawn.”
Sooni, the island’s oldest grandmother, patted Haeshin on the rear and laughed. He wasn’t actually her dear, but ever since he was born, she’d been fussing over him like a son.
Haeshin grinned and rubbed the dark fatigue under his eyes with the back of his hand.
“I’ll take thirty minutes to rest and be back.”
But the place he headed to was not the cozy inner room of his home — it was the drying rack down by the shore where the pollock hung.
The stale smell of fish and the salty scent of the sea breeze tickled the tip of his nose. He’d been anxious the whole time he was away that the pollock might have gone bad, but they were drying out so nicely and crisply that his worry felt laughable. Not one had fallen to the ground, not one had spoiled.
“This year the snow fell just right, and the wind’s been gentle too. You’ll dry well, won’t you?”
He was patting and brushing the fish with a fond expression, like tending to his own children — when, from somewhere amid the salty sea breeze, a scent drifted over that was neither the fishy smell of the pollock nor the smell of salt.
A cool, refreshing, breeze-like fragrance. At first whiff it almost seemed like the scent of pine — yet somehow it didn’t feel like a natural scent. There were canola fields on Samsam Island, but no coastal pines.
He looked around, and spotted a sleek fishing boat that had arrived trailing after the one he’d come in on. In front of it, for some reason, the village chief had come out to receive someone.
“Go say hello, quickly.”
“Why bother with a hello. You’ve already told them all about me, haven’t you.”
“This kid, so rude.”
As Haeshin stood there wrinkling his nose at the strange, unfamiliar scent, the owner of that strangeness strode over and came to stand before him — right where he’d been poking at the pollock. He was tall. Tall enough that Haeshin had to tilt his head up slightly, along with his gaze, to meet his eyes.
In that moment, Haeshin quietly debated to himself. If he were to greet this young man — should he say “Hey” or “Hello”?
