Chris walked outside and realized his hunger had increased like a cold wind pushing through an open door. Across the street numerous restaurants squabbled for attention: big open windows and crowded tables inside, big bright orange signs for kimbab, big bright red signs for dockpoki, big signs all stacked together like sketchbook pages, big nose of garlic and roasting meat and kimchi crowding just outside their doors, waiting just like the cold. Just like hunger. Chris stood on the steps outside his building, coughed, and felt it all wash over him. He pulled his coat tighter and turned to walk home.

At the first stoplight, Chris waited for the pedestrian signal to turn green. Lanes of traffic trickled through the intersection one at a time: green buses with toothpaste advertisements, small black cabs with yellow hats, a spattering of SUVs. They dripped. In Seoul, rush hour ebbs and floods at odd hours, never consistent, always dependent on construction or accidents or how many scooters slip or stumble in the automotive alleyways. As Chris waited, people filed past him, shoes countering engine strokes sound for sound, exhaust and breath clouding between the bumpers. Some Koreans do not wait for traffic lights. Chris edged into the intersection, but his light turned green.

The sidewalks continued the confusion of their nearby buildings’ signage. Bins of cabbage, blue trashcans, and scooters with large metal boxes for carting deliveries splashed out in front of restaurants. 24-hour marts provided tables and chairs for patrons to sit and smoke. Vegetable and fruit shops bulged out under awnings made of plastic and string, where stacks of bananas, potatoes, deep blue grapes, radishes, and cucumbers waited. Chris always walked past one shop that had crates of grapes stacked waist high. He never bought the grapes. Smelled them, thought about buying them, but never felt comfortable enough to do so. As he walked by, they almost overwhelmed him. He slowed his pace and lingered with the fragrance.