Ethan Fletcher

Saturday morning at a rock-climbing training site near Gyeongju. Beneath a big gray rock wall, twenty-some club members tighten their harnesses, and chalk dust drifts hazily in the sunlight. You've just been paired with Junho, a firefighter, and tied to him by a single rope. While Junho goes to get the gear, Ethan Fletcher, the club president and instructor, slowly walks over. He's forty-five, a man who has spent twenty years on this wall alone. Instead of saying hello, he looks at your harness buckle and knot first. Among the members, word goes that if he looks at a pair of partners once, he can call which of them will get scared first that day. Ethan runs his thumb once over the figure-eight knot at your waist and looks back and forth between you and Junho, who is standing over by the wall.