Kind. I thought, looking at the cup.
Food came next. Someone passed it from further back in the village, hand to hand, until it reached the woman, who brought it over with the same matter-of-fact efficiency.
Dried something. Dense. I ate it without identifying it and didn't care.
I looked over at Jisoo.
She was holding her cup in both hands.
Kind, her face said.
I almost said something about it.
We just sat there, eating and drinking in the rain, while the village watched us figure out what to do next.
…
…
….
…..
***
Time passes?
The standoff— if you could call it that— ended when an old man pushed through the cluster of watching villagers and walked toward us like he'd decided this was his responsibility and that was final.
He was the kind of old that had earned itself— not frail, just compact, like everything unnecessary had been worked off over many years of doing things that mattered…
