Translation of Love

38

Roadtrip

"So how long does it take?" I ask while putting my seatbelt on.

"About three and a half hours," he replies.

"That's it?!" I exclaim in shock. Daegu is on the opposite end of South Korea, and it only takes three and a half hours by car?

"Sohee, remember that Korea is like the size of a teardrop in comparison to Canada."

"True," I fade off into the thought of back home, or what used to be home.

I quickly put those thoughts aside. My legs start to shake with excitement, a smile plastered on my face.

"You good?" He asks me with a raised eyebrow.

"Splendid." I smile back at him, closing my eyes as well.

"I didn't think you'd be this excited."

"I love road trips. Plus I've only seen Seoul, and that's it. I want to see the landscapes of Korea."

He chuckles at my excitement. We go off onto the roads, and it takes a while to fight through the early morning city Seoul traffic before we get onto a good stretch of highway. Once the car is in a nice continuous rhythm, vibrations humming and scenery cascading past us, I grow at ease.

"Put on some music that you listen to," I tell Taeyoung.

"Oh? Why? You can put on what you want."

"I want to hear what a producer in the making listens to, " I boast.

He snickers at me and clicks a few buttons on the car's display. Bluetooth comes on and a song I don't recognize begins playing. The beat is smooth, with a jazz-influence, and the vocals are soft and airy. I don't understand everything that the singer says, but there was no denying that the song is good.

The next hour is like this, a nice peaceful silence between us as his music plays. My foot taps to the songs, adjusting the tempo with each new beat. Taeyoung hums to a few of them, his low voice fluctuating, and sometimes I reach my fingers out and place them against his Adam's apple so that I can feel his vocal chords shake. He laughs at me every time I do this.

"It's not my fault your deep voice is sexy," I tell him.

"Not mine either," he replies.

After a while, my thoughts begin to drift, and I become worried about where we are going, and why. What if his parents don't like me? What if I can't understand their dialect and they scold the fact that I'm not fluent in Korean? I know that he and his dad are on bad terms, will this make this whole experience awkward?

"What's wrong?" Taeyoung's words wake me up from the rabbit hole I was going down into.

"Huh?"

"You're staring out the window, but you're not looking at anything, you're zoning out."

So observant.

"What if your parents don't like me?" I mutter, still looking out the window.

"Of course they will. Or at least my mother will."

I gulp in nervousness.

"Even if they didn't, I don't care. I love you Sohee, that's all I care about and if I love you they're going to have to love you too."

He looks at me so seriously that I feel my throat constrict—as if I'm being scolded like a child. I nod my head in understanding. He pulls into a rest-stop in the middle of nowhere.

"Let's get something to eat."

Still a bit anxious, I just nod and get out of the car. As soon as I'm freed I reach my hands up to the sky. I try to lift my body up as high as gravity allows me, feeling the stretch go up my entire body. I groan from the feeling. Then I feel Taeyoung wrap his arms around me.

"Look at my baby, reaching for the sky," he coos, nuzzling into my neck.

I squeal from the sudden contact. Then he reaches up in a stretch as well, mocking my shrinking height in comparison to his. I stretch up again, trying to reach higher even though I know it's impossible to ever reach the distance that Taeyoung's fingers are at. I start jumping, seeing if my fingers can fly higher; of course they don't, but just trying gets me giggling—the worry from before disappearing with each hop.

He laughs at my attempt. "Such a little nugget." He pokes my nose and wraps his arms around me.

"Don't call me that," I groan as I try to pull away from him.

He catches me off guard when he faces me and kisses me passionately—in the middle of the parking lot.

"What was that for?" I gasp when he pulls away breathlessly.

"It sucks having to drive when you're sitting there beside me. I just want to touch you."

He holds onto me, placing small kisses on my scarf-covered neck.

"I think—" he lifts the scarf so that his lips hit my exposed skin, "that I have an addiction," another kiss, "to touching you." He ends with a nibble on my nape. I squeal at him and push him away. I turn on my heel and begin stomping towards the rest-stop. He follows after me with an open-mouthed smile. After catching me again, he moves to walk beside me, taking my hand in his.

"That looks yummy, I want that," I point to a picture of ramen at a Japanese food stand. He orders the food and we take a seat. The ramen is surprisingly decent for a rest-stop fast food place.

"You know what would taste great after this?" Taeyoung says after slurping some of the soup.

"What?" I say, thinking of the ice cream stand that I see across from us. Despite it being winter, I am always down for ice cream.

"너 [you]," he says with a mischevious smile.

"Yah!" I tsk at him. "Stop being such a h—a man," I stumble over my words. I look around us to see if anyone is watching us.

"Were you about to call me a hoe?" An expression of pure shock is on his face.

I guffaw at him. "No! You're horny, always horny, stop it," I whisper, looking around again.

He begins to laugh very loudly, tears forming in his eyes. "I'm sorry baby, I can't help it. You make it so difficult for me."

We leave the rest-stop, hand in hand. And while it's easy to match Taeyoung's carefree energy, I can't help but start to feel nervous about what's to come.