"You came all the way here by yourself?" asked Sang Huin. "I'm blind but I'm not ignorant of how to tell a taxi driver an address," said Saeng Seob. "Sure, come in," said Sang Huin indifferently. He paused. "Where have you been? I didn't know what happened to you. I didn't know if you were hurt. I didn't have a telephone number to call anyone and ask about you. I didn't-" "I was busy," said Saeng Seob. Sang Huin thought about leaving this idea alone. He thought about just letting such a topic of discourse die there without comment. The wisp of air and the positioning of the tongue to begin, "So, what do you want with me" was at the roof of his mouth. "Maybe we should move in together," said Saeng Seob. "Here?" asked Sang Huin. "I don't know. Somewhere." "My job here means that I have to live here alone." "You have a college education from America. You shouldn't be wasting yourself working at a convenience store. Go back to what you were doing before. I can get you private lessons. It is Seoul. There is gold in them there hills." Sang Huin laughed. He felt at home within this American Hillbilly colloquialism. "All right," he said; and so this was what they did. They stayed together that night and then looked for an apartment the next morning. And then a year passed in living together: Seong Seob finding jobs for him as one might find errands for schoolboys. There wasn't gold in the hills but there was plenty of silver and paper to come into such wealthy homes bringing to families and sometimes their businesses pure American English in the mouth of a Korean. And each morning, exuded from the little time not consumed in a personal life, a quasi-professional life, sleep, and various bodily mandates, he worked on Gabriele. He found it interesting that their two worlds were now converging in the respect that she was taking care of a baby at the time of the first Gulf War with Iraq and he seemed to be living at the inception of the second one that had even more of a chance of exploding into something quite large and horrid within the presence or ghost of Osama Bin Laden. One day they went to visit a boy of one of those families, who also had the name of Seong Seob. He was suffering at Soul's Yonsei University Hospital. The boy's mother, who was in the hallway, grabbed Sang Huin's hand and enthusiastically took him into the room. The boy's legs and feet were in casts and elevated. His face, bored and withdrawn, brightened slightly as he said his first English word of the visit: "Toy." Sang Huin laughed as he walked further into the room presenting the board game to the boy. The hospital room looked almost the same as an American hospital room except that there were four beds; no curtain partitions; and cushioned benches next to each bed.