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the promise of the tea-gods
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and apologize to her right now.” He looked at his watch. “Seeing as I’ve
been here for almost a half-hour and she hasn’t moved from that rock,
I’m sure that’s what she’s expecting me to do.”
“She’s not expecting you to do anything,” said Binnie. “She doesn’t
even know you’re here. I didn’t tell her you were coming today—it was
better for her not to know.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, if I had told her you were coming, and you didn’t show up,
she might have felt like she was being deleted again—and I think once
is enough. Don’t you?”
“Geez, Binnie, you and I have been friends for a long time, and it’s
a little hard for me to believe she didn’t know that telling you about that
card was going to cause a rift between us. It all seems a little underhanded to me.”
“First of all, there is no rift between us, and there never will be—
unless you choose to create one. Secondly, K didn’t know you and I
were friends—and she still doesn’t know. And, thirdly, you deleting her
caused her to believe she had done something wrong—and I’m sure
you’d like her to know that being kind to someone is never wrong.”
Soo-kang put his elbows on the table and rubbed his forehead. His
thoughts looked like black paint thrown into the sky . . . Why didn’t I
make a different choice? One that wasn’t going to come back to haunt
me . . .
Binnie waited a minute before saying, “We all make choices we wish
we hadn’t made. But there isn’t a thing in this world that can’t be fixed
if you truly want to fix it. And I think after you spend a few minutes
with her, and get to know her a little, you’ll be glad you had an opportunity to make things right.”
Suddenly getting up, he took a bottle out of the small refrigerator in
the outdoor kitchen—a space right next to them that was completely
hidden, not by walls but by perfectly placed rocks and trees—then he
grabbed two glasses and set everything on the table in front of Soo-kang.
“Take this with you,” he said. “One should never greet a discarded
friend without a gift in their hands.”
