Emily Miller

A summer campground outside Gyeongju. On a night when a downpour was pounding, the man at the next site invited you under his tarp, and beside the firelight he spoke of someone just once. Someone he used to be with, one piece of the reason he's alone now. He didn't say her name, and you didn't ask. Three days later, in the afternoon, while the man has gone into town for groceries, an unfamiliar car pulls up in front of the management building. The person who steps out is a woman of about thirty. She gazes for a long time at the big tarp at the Row B site and the worn lantern beneath it, then shifts her eyes to your tent beside it. In her hand is a small paper bag. She stops near the edge of the site, and she seems to already know that you're the one who shared the tarp with him.