Chapter 143
While the clerk was printing out the documents, Arin toddled over to my side.
Then she went, “Nnngh-,” and rose onto her tiptoes.
“Me too! I wanna try saying hi!”
“Okaaay.”
Arin barely peeked over the counter and called out very bravely.
“Nice to meetchu! I’m Arin Yoo!”
The clerk stopped flipping through the documents, looked up, and gave Arin a broad smile.
“Haha, nice to meet you too, Arin!”
“Woohoo-!”
Arin grinned from ear to ear, grabbed my arm, and shook it.
“Unni! It worked! I did it!”
“Yep! You did great!”
Clap-.
Arin and I slapped our palms together—smack-smack-.
✒️✒️✒️
We signed the documents, had our international driver’s licenses and credit cards checked,
and received two child car seats, which we loaded onto the cart.
“Here are your keys. Level two, spot B-14. Blue SUV. (Here are your keys. Level two, spot B-14. Blue SUV.)”
“Thank you!”
“Have a nice trip!”
“Thank you!”
“Thank youuu-!”
Dad and Arin said goodbye to him side by side.
Then we took the car keys and headed for the parking garage.
“Whoa… It’s huge.”
Cars in the continental United States were much larger than I expected.
There was still room after we put all four suitcases in the trunk, and there was plenty of space even with two child seats installed side by side in the back.
If Korean cars felt like teenagers still growing, American cars felt like fully grown adults.
If the two of them got into a shoulder-bumping match, the American car would smash everything to pieces—crash-crash—while the Korean car would clutch its shoulder and sob, “Waaah-.”
“American cars really are big.”
Dad muttered as he sat down in the driver’s seat.
“All right, then. We’re heading out.”
Vroom-.
The engine started.
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It was a two-hour drive from New York to Philadelphia.
By distance alone, it wasn’t much of a journey.
The problem was that we’d just gotten off a fourteen-hour flight.
About twenty minutes after we set off,
I turned to look beside me.
“…Zzz.”
Arin was already fast asleep in her car seat, her head drooping forward.
When I looked ahead, Mom had her eyes closed in the passenger seat, too.
“Dad, are you okay?”
“Huh? Dad?”
Dad shot me a glance in the rearview mirror.
“Of course. Dad’s a good driver, you know.”
“…But your eyes are red.”
“…I am a little tired.”
Dad admitted it honestly.
It was understandable.
Our bodies probably hadn’t gotten any proper rest after being cramped up in a narrow airplane for fourteen hours.
On top of that, he was dealing with road signs he’d never seen before.
“Dad, that sign over there. It says Exit 4.”
“Okay.”
“And the speed limit here is 65 miles per hour. That’s about 105 kilometers per hour, right?”
“Oh, that’s my girl. I can count on you.”
“Heheh-. Leave the unit conversions to me!”
I read the signs one by one from the back seat, looking out the window.
The least I could do was this much for my tired dad.
After we’d been driving for about an hour, Dad pulled into a rest area.
I called out to Mom and woke her up.
“Mom, wake up!”
“…Huh? Oh, are we there already?”
Mom sat up, rubbing her eyes.
“No, we’re about halfway there. But Dad’s reaching his limit.”
“Oh, really?”
Mom turned to look at Dad, then let out a startled gasp.
“Honey, your eyes are completely red.”
“Are they?”
“Let’s switch. I’ll drive.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
Mom was utterly determined.
In the end, Dad moved to the passenger seat, and Mom took the wheel.
Mom drove the remaining half of the journey.
Dad fell asleep less than five minutes after sitting in the passenger seat.
Snoooore-.
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We arrived at our hotel in the afternoon.
After checking in and going up to our room, we were greeted by a room with two bedrooms.
The plan was to spend ten days of the month here, then move to New York for the rest of our trip.
“Wooooow-!”
The moment the door opened, Arin ran inside and flung herself onto the bed with a little bounce-.
“It’s so soft! Unni, look! It’s super soft!”
“Ooh!”
I hopped onto the other bed and bounced up and down a few times, too.
Throwing yourself onto the bed every time you enter a hotel is practically the law.
Anyone who can resist it, step forward!
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But the problem came that night.
The time difference between Korea and the eastern United States was about thirteen hours.
When it was 10 p.m. here, it was 11 a.m. in Korea.
Our bodies still remembered Korean time.
I was pretty sure that before I became a professor, I used to sleep soundly at this hour.
But after officially becoming a professor at Seoul National University, my body seemed to have registered this as working time.
So what did that mean…
I simply couldn’t sleep.
“Unni.”
“Yeah.”
Right then, Arin, who was lying beside me, asked in a small voice,
“…You’re not sleeping?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“…Me neither.”
The two of us sisters lay there in the darkness, our eyes wide open.
The principle behind adjusting to jet lag is actually very simple.
Our bodies have something called a biological clock, which runs on an approximately twenty-four-hour cycle.
The strongest signal that sets that clock is light.
Sunlight in the morning shifts the biological clock forward, while darkness at night causes the body to release melatonin, which makes you sleepy.
So, theoretically, it’s very simple.
Get some sunlight in the morning according to the local time, turn off the lights, and lie down at night, and your body clock will adjust after a few days.
But the first few days are always fairly difficult.
Clunk-.
Just then, we heard the door to the next room open.
Two in the morning.
All four members of our family were gathered together on the living-room sofa.
“…Nobody sleeping?”
Dad asked, scratching his head.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“My eyes are wide awake too.”
Dad let out a sigh.
“This is bad.”
“There’s no point lying down when sleep isn’t going to come anyway.”
Mom said this as she poured a glass of water.
“We might as well play a little and go to bed when we get tired.”
“Ooh!”
The moment Arin heard that, she toddled over to the suitcases.
She unzipped one with a zrrrip- and pulled out a four-player board game we used to play all the time.
“Let’s all play a board game!”
“…But it’s three in the morning?”
“Yep!”
Dad thought about it for a moment, took the board game from Arin, and began setting up the table.
“I suppose this is okay once in a while.”
At three in the morning, our family became completely absorbed in a board game in our hotel room.
“Dad, that’s not fair! You can’t hoard all the wheat for yourself!”
“Heh heh heh… If I can’t win, I’ll make sure to get in everyone’s way!”
“Time to take advantage of the situation!”
“Eek-!”
Then, around five-thirty in the morning, sleepiness came for us one by one.
“…Ah, I’m starting to get sleepy.”
“Me too.”
“Yaaawn… I’m gonna go night-night now.”
We all trooped into bed.
Our first day passed in a complete chaotic blur.
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The next morning,
we went downstairs to demolish the hotel breakfast.
“Woooow…”
Arin gasped in amazement the moment we entered the dining area.
Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, hash browns, pancakes, waffles, muffins, fruit, and so on…
A typical American breakfast was lined up across a long table.
It was piled up like a mountain—a veritable mountain of food!
This really was America. Even the servings were huge.
“Girls, eat plenty.”
“Yeees-!”
“Mhm!”
Arin and I held our plates in both hands and toddled to the back of the line.
✒️✒️✒️
I sat down, poked a piece of bacon with my fork, and took a huge bite—chomp-.
Crunch-.
“…!”
It was salty.
And crispy.
This bacon was much saltier and much crispier than the bacon we ate in Korea.
It had been cooked until all the fat had rendered out, giving it a texture that crumbled like a cracker when chewed.
“Unni, this is good!”
Nom nom smack-smack-.
Arin stuffed herself with bacon until her cheeks puffed up.
I also scooped up a spoonful of scrambled eggs.
Munch-munch-.
When I put the soft eggs and salty bacon together, the salty and nutty flavors mingled in my mouth.
“Heehee-.”
But…
The salty, savory flavor was delicious for the first bite, but by the third bite, it had gradually become harder and harder to get down my throat.
Chew… chew… nom nom… smack smack…
‘I already miss Korean food…’
My taste buds, which had spent about five years happily eating Korean food since I was weaned, were crying out that they couldn’t handle this thoroughly American flavor.
“Unni, you’re thinking the same thing as me right now, aren’t you?”
Arin said this with a pained expression.
At least it was fortunate that we had small mouths, so we’d only put a tiny bit of bacon on our plates.
If we’d gotten greedy and piled our plates high, we might have had to throw it all away without finishing it.
Sneak peek-.
When I glanced over, Mom and Dad were eating mostly fruit, apparently finding all the salty, greasy food too heavy.
They’d known this would happen and had chosen only light foods from the start.
“Heh heh heh… This is what you call the wisdom of adults.”
Dad said this with an irritatingly smug expression.
“Ugh…”
This time, even super-genius A-yeon Yoo had to admit defeat.