A few days later jenna had her first experience of lying in bed listening to the throbbing of the ship's engines. It was the last sound she heard before she slept, and the first to penetrate her consciousness in the morning.
A large chart of the Pacific between Hawaii and Fiji had been set up in the saloon. Each day their progress was marked on it. During those first days at sea she had several conversations with youngji, and seeing her interest in the chart, he would take a few minutes from his duties to point out a group of islands and tell her about them, sometimes describing an adventure which he and jihoon had had there when they were schoolboys, spending their holidays togother on Captain jung's freighter Tagimoucia.
"what does Tagimoucia mean?" jenna asked him, the first time he mentioned the name of jihoon's father's ship.
"it means 'crying tears of despair'" said the Chief steward.
"what a strange name for a ship!"
"it's also the name of a very rare flower which grows on one of our islands. Not on all of them; only on Taveuni, and not everywhere there. It grows by lake, four thousand feet above the sea, in the crater of a dormant volcano.
"there's a legand about it" he went on.
"there was once a Fijian chief's daughter who was in love with a young man, but her father had decided to marry her to an old one. She ran away into the forest and wandered about for a long time. Eventually, almost exhausted, she came to the shores of a lake where she made herself a bed of vines and lay down to rest. When a search party from her village found her, she was crying in her sleep. As her tears fell on the vines, they changed into crimson flowers. Meanwhile her father had relented, and it was the young man she loved who woke her up."
"what a lovely story," said jenna, smiling.
"have you ever seen the flowers, youngji?"
He nodded. "they're very beautiful. It's a tradition in Fiji that a bouquet of tagimoucia is given to visiting royalty. If you want to see what they're like, ask the Captain to show you the painting of them in his cabin. His mother painted it. She loved flowers. There's a room in the house where the Captain stays when he's in Sydney which is full of her paintings. The last one she ever did was of tagimoucia. Captain jung went to Taveuni specially to get the flowers for her. Soon after that her illness got worse and she couldn't paint any more. It wasn't long before she died. I think, when he was alone, Captain jung spent many hours 'crying tears of despair' " youngji ended, his usually cheerful expression replaced by a sombre one.
As she thought of the spiritual anguish whish Mrs jung must have suffered at knowing her time was running out and she would never see jihoon grow to manhood, jenna's throat tightened.
Youngji saw her eyes film with tears which she blinked away.
He said, "now I've made you sad. Captain jihoon says it isn't long since your father died. I'm sorry to have reminded you of your own loss."
It surprised her that jihoon should have mentioned her father's death to youngji. Several times that day she puzzled over it; wondering how such an unlikely subject had cropped up in the talks the two men had in private.
Joon's conversation with her was something else which had occupied her mind many times since the barbecue ashore. At first she had been annoyed by his uncomplimentary assessment of hana's character and by his suggestion that jenna's objection to their relationship was partially motivated by self-interest.
However, thinking it over, she had come to accept that perhaps his judgment of hana was sounder than her own; and that it was partly because of the feeling that she shared some of hana's discredit, particularly in jihoon's eyes, that she minded her sister's position as the owner's girlfriend.
AN: I'm sorry for the short chapter but I'l try to make it long the next one, but because I'm tired and need to work more so.... I wrote just two chapters today because my break was alittle bit longer than always.... ^_^ and thanks to all the perfume of love readers.... Wish me luck xp and
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The perfume of love (rain-bi)
Romancekim jenna was delighted to be invited on a sailing holiday from the south pacific to Australia with her sister kim Hana and her fiance. but she was horrified when she arrived to join them and found that the fiance was a millionair who wanted a glamo...
