Bridge Between Two Worlds

Step Two... Back to the end

All Cadence could think about when she got home was how similar and yet somehow different Alex and her ex-husband, Tae In Kim are. She knew that was heading down to the wrong path, but so many things went wrong in her marriage, which was also her first relationship, and she wants to do things differently this time. 

When she got to South Korea, she thought it would be like in the dramas, and in all fairness, in a lot of cases, it was. She exited the airport excited at the possibilities ahead. The company had sent her a driver, they passed through all the famous districts she saw in the films, brought her to a complex and a studio that was smaller than her college dorm room and she spent her orientation week trying all the foods she saw on TV. That's how she learned she was allergic to blood sausages. Her ER trip led her to the man of her dreams. 

The wailing sound of a woman in grief drew her from the restroom of the ER, where she had gone to freshen up after her discharge. The medication made her a little dizzy, but she knew she would be fine. When she got to the sound, a fashionable woman with low cut hair and very expensive clothes was being consoled by a tall, attractive man who was as slim and beautiful as the leads in the dramas she loved. She was stunned to silence when his kind eyes drifted from the older woman he was consoling to hers. They locked together for a few seconds and his attention was back on the woman, just as another fashionably, expensively dressed woman rushed in with a suit clad young man following from a professional distance. The first woman let go of the man and rushed to woman number two and embraced her in a hug as they both sobbed. Handsome stranger turned his attention back to Cadence who felt as if she was in a live action filming. 

She somehow managed to pull her attention from the scene, explaining to her subconscious that not everything she will see in her new home country, at least for the next two years, will be plot for a drama. She looked back at the two women who were now seated in the uncomfortable blue chairs along the corridor leading to one of the surgery rooms and the handsome stranger was no longer standing there. She spun on her heel and made her way to the exit. 

"Excuse me," Someone called out to her in a very thick Korean accent. 

Cadence stopped and turned to face the handsome stranger. Her heart rushed a few footsteps. 

"Hello," she managed rather smoothly, as nervousness took a tighter grip around her throat. 

"I noticed you inside. Are you new to South Korea?" He asked very calculatedly. 

"Fairly. I'm Cadence Hall," She said and stretched out her hand. 

"I'm Tae In Kim," he says shaking her hand and smiling. 

Coffee in the cafeteria was date number one and she provided him with an escape from the scene of mourning, which he does not handle well. His grandfather had passed away and his mother was the wailer. Her aunt had arrived in time for him to pursue Cadence, having been intrigued by her rapture of the moment of grief. Throughout their marriage, she remained an escape for him and that was one of few things that she loved that never changed. 

He was a kind, gently person but from the very first night in that hospital cafeteria she saw there was something else to him, and though she couldn't put her finger on it, it intrigued her. Four dates later he dropped a bombshell on her. 

"Cadence, this is my son Yong," he said as the toddler, of no more than three wrapped his little arms tightly around Tae In's long legs and looked up at Cadence with first a shy, then the brightest smile. He let go his father's leg and bowed to her. 

"Hello, it's nice to meet you." 

That was when she fell in love.