Hansu picked up a smooth, flat stone by her foot-black with thin gray striations. From his pocket, he took out a piece of white chalk that he used to mark the wholesale containers of hish, and he made an X on the bottom of the stone. He crouched and felt about the enormous rocks that surrounded them and found a dry crevice in a medium-sized rock, the height of a bench.
"If I come here and you're not her yet, but I have to go back to work, I'll leave this stone in the hollow of this rock so you'll know that I came. If you're here and I'm not, I want you to leave this stone in the same spot, so I can know that you came to see me."
He patted her arm and smiled at her.
"Sunja-ya, I better go now. Let's see each other later, okay?"
She watched him walk away, and as soon as he was gone, she squatted and opened the bundle to begin the wash. She took a dirty shirt and soaked it it the cool water. Everything had changed.
Three days later, she saw him. It took nothing to convince the sisters to let her do the wash by herself. Again, he was waiting by the rocks, reading the paper. He wore a light-colored hat with a black hatband. He looked elegant. He acted as if meeting her by the rocks was normal, though Sunja was terrified that they might be discovered. She felt guilty that she had not told her mother, or Bokhee and Dokhee, about him. Seated on the black rocks, Hansu and Junja spoke for half an hour or so, and he asked her odd questions: "What do you think when it's quiet and you're not doing much?"
There was never a time when she wan't doing anything. The boarding house required so much work; Sunja could hardly remember her mother ever being idle. After she told him she was always busy, she realized she was wrong. There were times when she was working when it felt like the work was nothing at all, because it was something she knew how to do without paying much attention. She could peel potatoes or wipe down the floors without thinking, and when she had this quiet in her mind, lately, she had been thinking of him, but how could she say this? Right before he had to go, he asked her what she thought a good friend, and she answered he was, because he had helped her when she was in trouble.