What was the newbie’s name again? 

The question came to Noah across several partitions and desks. She stood up and peeked over her own partition, an ambiguous color she couldn’t quite call brown or beige. 

“It’s Lee Noah,” she said. 

The section manager scanned her up and down with his sleepy-dog eyes. “Right . . . ” he said. Then he told her to head out with Assistant Manager Park. Noah nodded and glanced over at the desk farthest down the line. On the other side of that partition was a round, hunched back clad in green. That back belonged to someone with whom Noah had never conversed until now. 

After a moment, Park Nokwon came over. “Bring your things. We’ll head straight home from there.” 

Nokwon drove a white Hyundai Porter, the entire cargo bed of which was carefully covered with a slick, waterproof tarp. Clothes and handbags and years-old file folders were heaped up on the passenger seat. Nokwon gathered them all and shoved them in the back. Inside, the truck smelled of soil and pine resin. 

Some elderly people on a bench near the parking lot watched them get into the truck and take off. Every afternoon, those old folks came wearing only lightweight coats or rain slickers to the township office and walked through the parking lot to get to that bench, where they sat until sundown. Noah wasn’t sure what business they had there. She guessed they must have been idling the hours away. That was, after all, the most popular pastime among the residents of this small town. Letting time slip past them, slowly and relentlessly, while they watched it go by, unfazed. 

The township office was on the western end of town. If you left through the front gate and headed east, you would come upon a bridge that spanned a gray river. If you crossed that bridge, you’d be on the national highway. Both sides of the road were sparsely dotted with pale yellow fields and paddies, greenhouses, and prefabricated buildings with unknown purposes. Noah glanced over at the GPS screen, which said they were about a half hour away from the observatory. 

It had been silent inside the car ever since they left the office. Nokwon didn’t turn on any music or even the radio. It was hard to imagine her listening to either. Careful not to shoot her a sideways glance even by accident, Noah turned toward the window. 

“Noah.” 

Startled, she whipped around and found herself staring at Nokwon’s side profile full-on. Nokwon’s face was dumpy, like it had been shaped out of mud. She looked at once extremely old for her age and like she was just barely out of her teens. 

“Have you heard of the observatory before?” she asked. 

Noah said she had. Several times, in fact. Among all the petty civil complaints that came through the township office, she found the ones about the observatory especially fascinating. The townsfolk had a lot to say about the people living there. They were too noisy, they were as quiet as death, no one knew what they were thinking, they were obviously up to no good . . . According to the townsfolk, even as the people at the observatory cleaned up litter on the mountains, wandered through the forests and fields, sat around in circles and sang songs, painted the exterior of the abandoned building, tore down that old barbed-wire fence, and flashed smiles at passing hikers, there were also times when they would start shouting out of nowhere at the top of their lungs. Get out of here! This is private property! Sometimes, the people filing complaints mimicked the sound of their voices. Their impressions were either low and heavy, or else sharp and pitchy like cracking ice. Either way, not pleasant to hear.

The traffic light shone yellow. As the truck slowed to a stop, Noah shouted. “Ah!” She’d spotted something behind the traffic light pole. A dark brown flock was clamoring in the middle of an open field.

“Eagles,” Noah exclaimed.

“Must be lunchtime,” Nokwon said, peering through the window on the passenger side. “Have you never seen one before?”

“It’s my first time seeing them in the wild.” Noah lowered the window a little. Faint chitters and the smell of bird shit commingled and entered through the crack. The smell reminded Noah of another one of the locals’ complaints. The one about the flock of eagles that lingered around the food manufacturer on the outskirts of town. It seemed that everybody in a small town had something to say about the smell and sound of birds.

Every winter, the eagles flew 3,000 kilometers to the town from Mongolia. They made regular visits to the food plant, scavenging in the early dawn among the discarded scraps and offal of cows and pigs. On weekends, a few citizen groups would come out, cameras in tow, hauling more animal carcasses in their Starex minivans or trucks to scatter the remains across the paddies and fields. Residents who lived near the food plant begged the city to do something about the eagles’ shit and noise. Yet there were others who pleaded for the city to ensure that the eagles would never leave. They said the town generated a good amount of tourism revenue from all the people who traveled there to feed the birds or else to birdwatch and take pictures.

“Goodness, they’re huge,” Noah muttered.

On a few different occasions, she had seen jokes about the eagles of Gangwon-do posted online. They always seemed drawn from the same playbook. Like the one about seeing a little kid or an older person on the street in fur clothes, but when you go up to them and try to start a conversation, they just spread their wings and fly away. Seeing the eagles in real life, Noah could understand where the jokes were coming from. The birds really were shockingly huge, and there was something weirdly human about them. Especially their hunched, rounded shoulders and drooping necks.

The traffic light changed, and the truck peeled off again. Noah felt embarrassed about the sound she’d made just then in her excitement. She shut her mouth and rolled up the window just as Nokwon spoke again.

“This may be a bit of a sensitive question, but I think I should ask.”

The truck traced wide curves along the winding road. Nokwon seemed to be stalling even more than earlier. As if she were waiting for the words to rise slowly to the surface of the water, revealing their distinct shapes.

“Does your name . . . happen to have a religious meaning?”

“Oh. Yes, it does. My mother is a Protestant.”

Nokwon bobbed her head. In the silence that settled over them again, Noah tried to guess what she would say next. With her left hand, she slowly picked at the fingernail on her right thumb. Would Nokwon praise her name or attack it? Noah wasn’t exactly looking forward to either response. Questions about her name had always made her anxious. That uneasiness was one of the reasons she had long wanted a name change.

But what Nokwon said next fell neither on the side of praise nor censure. Instead, she tossed Noah a complete curveball of a question.

“When we get to the observatory and meet the people there, if we have to introduce ourselves by name, could you use an alias? Would that be all right?”

“Oh, sure,” said Noah. “That’s no problem, but . . . ”

“The people there are sensitive about other religions,” Nokwon explained.

A green sign appeared, pointing toward the observatory beyond the guardrail. Noah nodded slowly. At last, she could understand where the anxiety that permeated the voices of all the townsfolk who had filed civil complaints stemmed from.

The truck exited the highway and drove straight along the bypass marked with a road sign. The endlessly winding route soon transformed into a mountain road. The glaring potholes dinting the asphalt suggested the road had long been neglected.

Once they had driven about ten minutes uphill, a cylindrical building emerged between the gaps in the overgrown foliage. At a glance, the building looked like a tall, white lighthouse. When they passed the sign at the parking lot entrance, a domed roof that gleamed like tinfoil and a rectangular building attached to the side of the rounded one also came into view.

Nokwon parked the truck. Yet another sign stood near the stone steps that led inside. At one point, that sign had borne the observatory’s name, but now it was coated in black paint.

“Noah, this is your first time working offsite, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

As soon as they got out of the car, the wind burrowed into the napes of their necks. The air was twice as cold as it had been lower down the mountain and made their hair stand on end. Noah looked behind her. Fierce streaks of white cut across the faces of the mountains that lay beyond the observatory. Her mother’s voice rang in her ears. It always snowed in Gangwon-do starting from October. Remember? Could you really spend the rest of your life in a place like that? You’re so sensitive to the cold as it is.

Nokwon checked once again that the tarp over the cargo bed was secure. “Just think of today as a time to learn the ropes,” she said. “Watch what I do. If someone starts a conversation with you, keep it short.”

“Will do,” Noah said, sniffling. Nokwon handed her a scarf from the backseat. Noah tried to turn it down several times before accepting. The scarf, too, smelled of soil and resin.

Nokwon started up the stairs first. Noah followed close behind. As they drew nearer to the building, they spotted several figures behind the floor-to-ceiling window. Standing in a row, the shadows were watching the two of them. At last, one of them moved, and the door to the main entrance swung open. A woman in a dark fur coat stood in the doorway. She was small in stature with greasy black hair that fell nearly to her waist.

“Park Nokwon!”

Her voice pierced through the two buildings, the staircase, and the mountain itself before landing in front of them. The woman came running toward them with small, quick steps. By the time the echoes died down, she was standing right before their eyes. She clasped Nokwon’s hands in her own. No one had ever treated Nokwon with such uninhibited familiarity, not at the township office or anywhere else. The woman pumped Nokwon’s hands up and down as she spoke.

“It’s been ages. So good to see you. The roads weren’t frozen on your way here, were they? Temperatures have plummeted lately. Aren’t you cold? Come on inside. I’ll fetch you some tea.”

Then she turned to Noah. When Noah took a step back, the woman quickly closed the distance and started in on her, too.

“I believe it’s our first time meeting. Are you a new hire? What’s your name?”

The woman held out her hand. Instantly, the gesture became a handshake. Noah took pains not to stumble over her words. “Pleased to meet you. I joined the township office last month. My name is Jeong Seonhwa.”

It was her mother’s name. Even she wasn’t sure why this was the first name to come to mind, but it seemed fitting. Old-fashioned as it was, her mother’s name was unassuming. Perfect for hiding her true identity, and familiar enough from years of hearing it said that it rolled right off the tongue. Which was why, when she met Nokwon’s eyes over the woman’s shoulder, she was startled. She couldn’t understand what emotion she was seeing in her colleague’s glare. Likewise, she had no idea why the woman in front of her who had initiated the handshake then opened her mouth and let out a long exhale. All Noah knew was that she must have accidentally knocked something over or spilled something out. She felt a chill graze the nape of her neck again.

“How fascinating,” the woman said at last. “What an amazing coincidence. My name is Seonhwa, too.”

Seonhwa ascended the stairs with the two women on either side of her—to be precise, she had one arm locked around one of Nokwon’s arms and the other around one of Noah’s. The glass door to the observatory opened automatically. The warmth inside the building nestled its way in between them. The place smelled of detergent and bleach.

The lobby was divided into two areas: the left side, which boasted a backless bench, and the right side, where a tall desk that had once served as a reception counter was located. Behind the desk was a white staircase that led upstairs. Several people in work clothes were seated on the bench. They were the ones who had been watching Nokwon and Noah through the huge window moments earlier. From a woman with frosty white hair and drooping eyelids to a young man who looked like he’d just graduated high school, they were a group of about six people who appeared to have absolutely nothing in common. All of them sat up ramrod straight, their brows and the corners of their mouths taut and perfectly straight, which made them look like mannequins. Beside them were all sorts of cleaning supplies—a red washbasin with a neat pile of rag mops inside, a bigger mop leaned up against the wall, an industrial vacuum cleaner, the works.

“It’s a bit hectic around here, isn’t it?” Seonhwa said. “Mondays are our big cleaning days.”

She led Nokwon and Noah into a small room between the staircase and the desk. She mentioned that the space had originally been used as a staff lounge. On the middle shelf of the otherwise empty cupboard sat a box of coffee grounds and tea leaves. Seonhwa took a coffeepot out of the cabinet under the sink, chatting nonstop as she boiled water.

“I stocked up on a nice variety while I was in town. And thank goodness I did. Which do you prefer—caffeinated or decaf? If you don’t have a strong preference, I can prepare one of my favorites for you . . . It has an especially nice aroma.”

Noah furtively studied Seonhwa’s face as she accepted the teacup the other woman handed her. Just as with Nokwon, it was hard to guess Seonhwa’s age. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth were deep, but her cheeks and lips were as rosy as a teenager’s. Her unwavering cheeriness made her look like a bright-eyed college first-year.

The tea was suitably warm and smelled strongly of grass. Noah tipped back her teacup and snuck a glance straight ahead. Nokwon was leaning against the cupboard opposite Noah, sipping her own tea. In the truck, she had spouted all those warnings about using an alias and keeping conversations short, but now that they were in the observatory, she looked very much at ease. Noah would even venture to say she was behaving more naturally than she did at the township office.

Nokwon didn’t say a word until Seonhwa had led them back to the lobby. Only when Seonhwa started saying something to the people on the bench did Nokwon sidle up to Noah and hurriedly whisper, “Don’t hold eye contact for too long.”

It was a directive without an obvious subject or object. With whom she was supposed to avoid eye contact, roughly how much time spent looking at someone counted as too long—not one thing about the instructions was clear. And there was no chance to ask follow-up questions because, right then, Seonhwa turned back to them. She pointed at the bench and introduced the people seated there one at a time—men and women, elders and children, straight-backed and tight-lipped in their head towels and aprons. The whole time Seonhwa was speaking, Noah kept her eyes on the ground and merely nodded.

“You all met Park Nokwon last time, didn’t you?”

When the people on the bench answered that they had, Seonhwa gestured to Noah with both hands, beaming.

“And this—this is Jeong Seonhwa. She has the exact same name as me. Isn’t that neat? I was so surprised.”

All eyes in the lobby turned to Noah. She could feel their gazes on her with her entire body. She no longer needed to consciously adhere to Nokwon’s earlier command. She needed to concentrate all her efforts on training her expression and could barely manage that, let alone look anyone in the eye.

Nokwon took a step toward her. The person who seemed so distant and awkward around her at the township office felt like her guardian here. So much so that Noah had to actively resist the urge to grab onto Nokwon’s sleeve or arm.

“Seonhwa,” Nokwon said. “We came today because of some civil complaints. We keep getting them at the township office.”

“Yes, yes, go on.”

Seonhwa’s voice was truly pleasant to listen to. It made Nokwon’s seem pitiful in comparison. In a shrill voice that cracked often, Nokwon relayed the contents of the complaints that had been made. She deftly pruned and trimmed the contradictory parts, and her tone was polite and refined. In sum, residents had complained that in the last several weeks, the group at the observatory had been unusually rowdy, doing things that filled the air with a burning smell as if they were stoking fires, and flashing light beams into the sky. Residents who had come up to the mountains early in the morning to forage for wild vegetables were startled when the people from the observatory appeared wielding scythes or weed trimmers, giving the townspeople such a scare that their hearts dropped to their stomachs. Some of the complainants had even appealed for clarification on the purpose behind the group’s stay at the observatory . . .

With that, Nokwon ended her report and took another sip of tea. Her slurping echoed throughout the lobby. The people from the observatory did not say a word, nor did their expressions change in the slightest; they simply stared at Noah and Nokwon. Noah once again lowered her eyes.

Seonhwa said they would need time to discuss the matter amongst themselves, so Nokwon and Noah returned to the staff lounge to wait. They could hear whispering on the other side of the walls. Noah glanced over at Nokwon several times. She was waiting to hear something that might shed a bit more light on their current situation, but Nokwon said nothing. She merely held her teacup, still faintly steaming, and stared at the little window behind the lounge sink.

Seonhwa returned shortly after. She suggested they all have a quick chat upstairs. Nokwon stood first. Noah followed, glancing over at the window Nokwon had just been staring at mere moments earlier. When she stood directly in front of the sink, she could see down to the parking lot below the mountain woods. In the center of the lot sat Nokwon’s truck, covered in that blue tarp. Someone was approaching the vehicle.

That someone wore a white sweater, a varsity jacket, and a head towel. Noah had seen that outfit earlier in the lobby. The side of the person’s face, scarred from acne, also looked familiar. The boy stood in front of the truck and hawked up spit. He was holding something long and curved in his hand. It looked like a scythe.

“Seonhwa!”

Startled, Noah whipped around. There was Seonhwa, who had called her by their apparently shared name, smiling at her. “This way, please,” she said, gesturing toward the staircase at the end of the lobby. When Noah glanced out the window again, the boy was already gone.

On the walls as they climbed the stairs were photographs that had faded blue. Most of them were pictures of the heavens. The dynamic light of Capella as observed in December, the pale or blue-tinged glow of the Pleiades star cluster, the moon’s craters and Jupiter’s stripes—all the labels and dates beneath each photo were from over a decade earlier. Noah had heard that the people currently living here purchased the observatory and its surrounding land about a year ago. She thought about the complaints from the town’s residents claiming that during that time, the atmosphere in the mountains had grown immensely tumultuous.

“I’m not convinced this so-called tumultuousness is because of us,” Seonhwa said as she made her way up the spiral staircase. “As you know, Nokwon, what we’ve done here is essentially no different from volunteer work. Don’t you remember? How we cleared all the weeds on these grounds, cleaned up the mountains of trash that had piled up, and got rid of the wild animal traps installed here ages ago—all those things? You know it, too, don’t you? We’ve done what any good neighbor would. But if people are complaining that these good deeds have made things tumultuous here, well, we have nothing to say to that.”

She pushed hard against the iron door at the top of the staircase. It opened with the scraping of the hinges. Inside, they were all bathed from head to toe in a clean, white light.

The moment Noah stepped foot into that light, she realized she had never been to an observatory before. She had only seen pictures or videos. The observation deck was much more crowded than she’d imagined and much brighter than anticipated. Light poured in through the tall glass windows that reached up to the domed roof, illuminating the hall, the three of them, and the huge telescope in the center of the room. The body of the telescope gleamed white in the sunlight. The other telescopes all around them had been covered in silver cloth and looked like ghosts in a puppet show.

Seonhwa crossed the room, weaving around the telescopes as she went. She explained all sorts of things to Noah and Nokwon as they trailed after her. She spoke as if she were introducing the trees and shrubs in a garden. This here is a catadioptric telescope, that one is a refracting telescope, that one we mainly use for observing Jupiter, and this one we use to look at star clusters—

Nokwon cut in. “You said you and the others spoke earlier. What did you all conclude?”

“Oh, about that . . . ”

Seonhwa stopped short. Right in front of the telescope in the center of the room. She looked back and forth between Nokwon and Noah. When her gaze landed on Noah again, it lingered for a long time before wandering off into the air. Noah herself couldn’t understand why this felt like such a loss.

“We’re leaving in two weeks,” Seonhwa said. “For those two weeks, we’ll be more careful. But our prayer meetings, cleanups, patrols, and such can’t be helped. That’s what we came here to do, after all. If any more complaints come in, please tell the townspeople that everything will be resolved in two weeks’ time.”

“Why two weeks?” Nokwon asked, and Seonhwa chuckled.

“We always planned to stay here only until then. We have to make our living, too, you know. How could we possibly stay here forever?”

Nokwon nodded. There were no further questions. She left the deck first. Noah followed. As quick as their steps were, Seonhwa soon caught up to them. In one swift motion, like gliding over ice, she caught Noah by the arm.

“Seonhwa,” she said.

“Yes.”

“It feels so strange to keep calling someone else by my name.” Seonhwa laughed again.

Noah said nothing. Seonhwa rubbed her hands up and down Noah’s arm. Unlike her gentle way of speaking and her soft steps, her grip was awfully strong. She brought her face close to Noah’s and whispered.

“Seonhwa, we’re leaving in two weeks. The morning of the thirteenth. You should come by in the evening on the twelfth. We’re planning to hold a big event. It’ll be fun, and so very beautiful. An event unlike any other you’ll ever see. You’ll come by, won’t you?”

The door leading outside was flung wide open. Nokwon had put down the doorstop. Noah hurried out once Seonhwa released her arm. Nokwon stood at the bottom of the staircase looking up at the two of them. Seonhwa had followed Noah out and whispered one more thing to her—“You’ll get the royal treatment if you do come”—before she took off down the stairs. Noah stood frozen in place. Just like when she had first gotten out of the truck and set foot in that parking lot up in the mountains, her entire body shuddered.

When they reached the parking lot again, the sky was already dark. A flock of red-tinged clouds was covering the forest treetops. Beneath the clouds sat the truck. One of the front tires and one of the back tires had been slashed. What stood out was the tattered look of the rubber, as if the tires had been slit several times with a knife, not merely punctured. Seonhwa came up to them and inspected the tires. She swept her long hair up into a bun, squatted in front of one of the tires, and stroked the gashes with her finger. She turned to Nokwon.

“This doesn’t look good,” she said. “How on earth did this happen? I can’t tell if it’s the work of a wild animal or a madman . . . ”

Noah took a step forward. She thought about mentioning the boy she had seen outside the window in the lounge earlier, telling Seonhwa that she had gotten a clear look at his white sweater and the round back of his head, even the scythe in his hand. But Nokwon’s hand shot out in front of her. As Noah faltered, Nokwon went around to the back of the truck. She snatched off the tarp and began rolling it up. Soon, the stack of spare tires tucked into a corner of the cargo bed came into view.

The whole time Nokwon was replacing the tires, the parking lot remained eerily silent. Not even the sound of branches knocking against each other in the wind or the cries of birds could be heard. At some point, all the people from the lobby came to stand around them in the parking lot. They formed a semicircle around the truck. Noah quickly spotted the boy in the white sweater. He had both hands stuffed in his pockets as he watched Nokwon change the tires. His face was perfectly blank.

Meanwhile, Seonhwa looked like she was biting back a laugh. She sat crouched beside the truck, also watching Nokwon work. She didn’t seem to care that her fur coat was dragging on the half-frozen ground. When Nokwon stood up at long last, Seonhwa hurried over to her as if to embrace her.

“Park Nokwon,” she said.

“Yes.”

  “When we leave here, I’ll think of you often. I’m going to miss you.”

Nokwon looked down at her. She drew in several breaths before she said, “Me, too.”

As they got in the truck and the whole time they were leaving the parking lot, Seonhwa didn’t stop waving goodbye. As expected, the people behind her stayed put. They drew closer like a flock of birds, eyes fixed on Noah and Nokwon as if trying to etch the two of them deeply into their memories.

Two weeks went by in a flash. In that time, Noah was slammed with all kinds of complaints, paperwork, and questions. Most of the questions had to do with the business trip she and Park Nokwon had gone on.

Despite the fact that it had been several years since she was appointed to her post, hardly any employees regularly chatted with Nokwon. Even conversations about work were usually kept to the point. Seeing her and Noah sitting side by side and eating together the day after their trip, several people outright gasped in shock and quietly approached Noah later to ask: What was Assistant Manager Park like? Wasn’t it uncomfortable working with her?

Noah always gave more or less the same answer. No, it wasn’t. She was kind. She taught me a lot.

None of it was untrue. That whole time at the observatory, Nokwon had acted as Noah’s caretaker, albeit half-heartedly, and Noah had followed her around, all but clinging to her sleeve. However, there was something odd about what Nokwon had said as they were heading back down the mountain. That conversation was the one part of the story Noah didn’t tell anyone.

That day, Nokwon had asked: Will you go?

Sorry?

I heard Seonhwa earlier. Inviting you up there on the twelfth.

Oh, my. You have excellent hearing, Assistant Manager Park.

Nokwon turned the steering wheel, not a hint of laughter on her face. Only after the mountain road transitioned into the regular road mottled with light and noise did she speak again. If you want to go, I’ll help you. Noah looked over at her blankly. Nokwon went on.

I have no ties to the people at the observatory. That must be why they destroyed my tires, right? So I’m just asking your opinion. Do you want to go?

Nokwon pulled up in front of Noah’s house. She lived in a newer low-rise apartment building about a fifteen-minute walk from the township office. Roughly half the apartments in the building, which was made up of only studios and two-bedrooms, still sat empty. The day Noah and her mother showed up in the moving truck, her mother had taken a look around her apartment, which still smelled of wallpaper glue, and said: Are you really going to live here? That day, too, Noah kept her mouth shut for a long time. But on her move-in day and that day in the car with Nokwon as well, the answer had been clear to her. It lingered, clear as anything, in her ears and eyes and on the tip of her tongue.

Yes, I want to go, Noah said. I’m curious.

Nokwon studied her face. For a moment so brief Noah nearly missed it, Nokwon seemed to flash a smile.

All right, then, she said. I’ll be in touch soon. Have a nice weekend.

But the weekend went by, and Nokwon did not get in touch. The following week was no different. After Noah made several attempts to bring up that day over lunch before stopping herself each time, Nokwon finally gave her a phone number. It was the number of a senior officer at the local precinct. “Who is this?” Noah asked, but all Nokwon said in reply was, “You’ll meet him the day after tomorrow. I’ll go with you, too.”

Where exactly were they going, and why did Noah need a cop’s phone number? Once again, Nokwon failed to share even one proper piece of information. She told Noah she would be around to pick her up in the evening and to dress warmly. That was all. Noah didn’t ask any more questions. She wondered if it might be better to just let herself be swept along.

On Sunday evening, Noah woke to the flash of police lights outside her window. Just before then, she had been dreaming. About birds. The observatory and the national highway, the township office and her apartment building all bled into one image that unfolded before her eyes. The birds flew over the tangled heart of downtown. The sound of their wings beating against the air like winter blankets being dusted off could be heard loud and clear all the way on the ground. The sound grew closer and closer, as if it would soon strike her eardrums.

When Noah opened her eyes to the flash of red and blue lights, her surroundings were utterly silent. She checked her phone and saw that she had three missed calls. All from Nokwon. Noah scrambled to put on a jacket and a scarf and hurried downstairs. Nokwon was standing outside the building. Behind her was a patrol car.

“Were you asleep?”

“Sorry. I didn’t know when you were coming, so . . . ”

“Get in the back.”

There was a man already in the backseat. He looked to be around Noah’s age. The armbands on the shoulders of his thick, light gray jacket stood out starkly. The design consisted of several overlapping images—a yellow sea eagle, a set of scales, a rose of Sharon.

The man held out his hand and said, “I’m Cho Namwook, senior officer.”

The policeman in the driver seat was a bit older. Nokwon got into the passenger seat beside him. The car pulled off as Noah and Namwook shook hands in the back.

On their way to the observatory, Namwook explained the next steps. It turned out, there was hardly anything for the women to do. Nokwon had been to the observatory several times and so was going to inform the officers about the layout and geography of the place, and if they needed to interview witnesses, the officers would request Noah and Nokwon’s cooperation throughout that process.

“What kinds of witnesses?” Noah asked.

“According to what Assistant Manager Park has told us . . . There is a high possibility that the event being held tonight is in violation of the law.”

Noah looked straight ahead. The crown of Nokwon’s head was perfectly still where it peeked over the headrest. Outside the car window, the landscape was much more unmoving and desolate than last time. The snow that had fallen intermittently over the past two weeks sat piled up like cobwebs on the branches and roots of the trees. The patrol car rattled up the mountain road. Even after they had passed the observatory, they drove up a long incline, coming to a stop where the road leveled out again. They were on a shoulder of the road bordering the mountainside. Nokwon turned around in her seat.

“Noah. The sergeant and I will scope out the area around the observatory first. You and Officer Cho can head in together.”

Nokwon and the sergeant got out of the car. They cut off the police lights and started on foot back down the road they had all just come up. Noah absently watched their retreating backs. She felt as if she were still in a dream.

Beside her, Namwook asked, “Should we get going, too?” 

After locking the car door behind them, Namwook cut on his flashlight and shone it on the path ahead. They headed in the opposite direction of Nokwon and the sergeant. The mountains in the dead of night were far colder and darker than they had been two weeks prior. Even the beam from the flashlight looked like it would freeze over in midair. Noah and Namwook made their way up the mountain, hunched into themselves all the while.

Once they were out of the car, Namwook kept his mouth shut. It seemed now that he’d explained the situation, he didn’t have much else to say. Noah, of course, didn’t bother him with questions. She was brimming with things she wanted to know, but she wasn’t sure that she could ask them aloud. She was also afraid of ending up on the receiving end of his questions. Questions like: What was she doing climbing this mountain in the middle of the night? The truth was, there was only one reason. And that was because of what the woman who shared a name with her mother, who had gripped her arm and looked at her with stars in her eyes two weeks ago, had said.

It’ll be fun, and so very beautiful.

Noah’s toes ached like they would soon snap clean off as the two of them hiked up the frozen road. She had already lost sensation in her cheeks and forehead from being barraged with the wind. Even so, she couldn’t stop turning over those words in her mind. Some part of them reminded her of what her mother always said. Every time Noah mentioned wanting to change her name, her mother would suddenly flash her a tender smile, taking Noah’s hands in hers and caressing them gently. All the while, she would repeat the same remarks. Your name is the one that leads everyone toward a better, more beautiful world. In that new world, everyone will be well fed, happy, and warm—

“We’re here.”

Noah’s foot slipped as she came to a sudden stop. Namwook reached for her. She grabbed his hand but fell anyway. The humiliation dawned on her faster than the pain of her knees hitting the ice-hard ground. Namwook helped her up as her face burned red. Not a single streetlamp stood on that road, but the moon shone so bright that their faces were plain to see. Namwook was frowning.

“You’re not here against your will, are you?” he asked. “Did your assistant manager force you to come or . . . ” 

“No, it’s nothing like that at all,” Noah assured him, brushing off the frost that clung to her knees and palms. When she stood again, she could see clearly over the guardrail the gentle slope of the mountain and the observatory at its base. Only then did she realize where they were—on the roadside at a point a little higher in altitude than the observatory.

Noah wiped her nose. “I came because I wanted to. I wanted to see for myself. What sorts of things go on here . . . ”

She trailed off and pressed her body against the guardrail. The dome above the observation deck they had visited last time had been opened up more than halfway, and there were people gathered inside. She couldn’t see anything in detail, but she was certain that something was in full swing down there.

“There they are,” Namwook said.

“Yes.”

“I heard you met them in person. What are they like?”

“You want to know what they’re like?”

“I’ve never met them, not even once. I’ve only heard the rumors.”

Murmurs and movement continued to stir from the half-open deck. Seonhwa would be in there in her long fur coat, as would the people Noah had seen in the lobby in their head towels and the boy who’d snuck out to the truck with the scythe in hand. What were they like? The others at the township office had wondered the same thing. In the same tone of voice they used when asking about Nokwon, they probed Noah to find out what the deal was with the people from the observatory. Every time, Noah skirted the question with a laugh. And when they left and she was all alone, she thought to herself.

They were . . . interesting.

They seemed full of conviction.

It was rare to see such certainty in anybody. Even her mother, who prayed every night, had never shown that degree of steadfastness. For the past two weeks, Noah had thought long and hard about where their devotion stemmed from.

“They just . . . seem like people who live diligent lives.”

Namwook laughed dryly at that. Just as Noah was about to laugh, too, a commotion arose from the observatory. They turned their heads in unison. The first thing they spotted were the bright yellow lights. The lights swelled gradually until they reached the roadside where the two of them were standing. Namwook took out a pocket telescope and brought it to his eye. Noah leaned farther over the guardrail. It looked like a fire had broken out inside the dome. The flames rose from the observation deck, flicking higher and higher upward as the blaze quickly began to swell.

While Namwook radioed someone, Noah took out her phone and started pacing up and down the roadside. When at last she got a signal, several messages from Nokwon came flooding in. Telling her not to move and to wait where she was. Noah tried calling, but no one picked up. She huffed on her fingertips and tapped out a text.

What’s going on?

There was no reply. Instead, Noah got the answers to her question through other means.

The first answer came to her on the wind blowing from the observatory toward the mountains. It was the smell. A fishy odor and the smell of something burning, followed at last by the sour stench of rotten meat being grilled, all intermingling in the air. The smell grew more and more dense and pungent. All the while, the flames were taking on a clearer shape. Dark gray smoke soared up alongside the blaze, and yellow and blue sparks shot out from the dome. Soon after, the second answer landed on Noah’s forehead.

She looked up. Another one of the things that had just grazed her forehead struck her cheek this time. Noah snatched it out of the air and studied it. A feather. A long one with a pointed tip. In the glow of her phone flashlight, she could see that it was a deep chestnut brown. She held it up at eye level.

The birds were overhead. They were mid-flight, their backs to the North Star. Their outstretched wings were long and large enough to completely obscure the star cluster. Noah tipped her head back as far as she could and tried to track the birds’ movements. She recalled the moment she had seen those wings for the first time. How the birds had looked like a group of Buddhist monks wearing black robes and sitting on a bare field after the harvest, how their stooped backs made them easy to mistake for elderly people or children, how they looked thick and soft to the touch. The birds flew toward the observatory with renewed vigor and began to circle the deck. The flames and smoke and stench all continued to rise up in between their massive wings.

The eagles’ cries were higher-pitched and more grating than Noah had expected. The song being sung inside the dome was pitched lower than the birdcalls, but Noah could still hear it all the way out on the roadside. At first, all she heard were murmurs, but soon the lyrics became crystal clear.

When our enemies climb the mountain,

When our enemies climb the mountain . . . 

Noah took out her phone again. She opened the camera app and zoomed in on the dome. There were people inside, dancing. Some lay on their stomachs with both hands raised. Others shoved a lump of meat deeper into the flames. The more Noah zoomed in, the more quickly everything seemed to move. The various colors of the flashing lights and the dancing bodies and the raw meat, entangled into one. When a woman in a dark fur coat appeared onscreen, Noah gripped the phone tighter.

Seonhwa stood before the flames and looked up at the sky. She didn’t react in the slightest, even as sparks flew in all directions. She was focusing all her attention—her heart and soul—on the observatory, the flames, the piece of raw meat that had not yet been tossed into the fire, the birds flying over the heads of the crowd around her.

The cell phone camera couldn’t capture Seonhwa’s expression in any detail. All that showed up on the screen was the outline of her side profile. Noah was about to press the record button after several false starts when Seonhwa suddenly began to turn her head. Her dark face sizzling in low-resolution, she was looking right at Noah. The song continued, the same verse repeating over and over.

When our enemies climb the mountain . . . 

Noah dropped down and crouched on the ground. She stared at the phone she was clutching in her hands, at the face crawling with pitch-blackness on the screen. Noah heard something bubbling inside her skull. The sound of something boiling and thus transforming.

“We should get moving, too.”

Startled by the hand on her shoulder, Noah whipped around. Namwook also must have been surprised because he pulled his hand away and took a few steps back. “Where to?” Noah asked, short of breath. Namwook frowned and said now that they had confirmed there was an arson, they had to get started on making arrests and putting out the blaze. Wildfire relief services were on their way, as was the fire department.

The two of them began walking, their backs to the observatory. Namwook led the way down the road. He glanced back several times. Once, he met Noah’s eyes with a look that asked: Don’t you have something to say? But Noah said nothing. That sound from earlier was still stewing in her ears. It was as if the fire in the observation deck had lit a twin blaze inside her.

By the time they reached the parking lot, the night was already filled with flashing emergency lights and the wail of sirens. An orange firetruck and a wildfire relief vehicle were parked in front of the observation deck. Noah remembered receiving emergency training on wildfires at the township office. If the training modules were correct, soon the volunteers would start spraying water from backpack pumps alongside the firefighters.

“There’s another patrol car in the parking lot,” Namwook said. “Do you want to wait in there for a bit?”

Noah nodded. Namwook regarded her for a few seconds before he took off running toward the firetruck. Noah went the other way, toward the parking lot. As she entered the shadow of the mountains, she turned back and made sure Namwook was out of sight before switching directions. She headed toward the observatory. Her steps were hurried. She thought she heard someone calling her name, but she didn’t stop.

First, she entered the lobby. The sprinklers dotting the ceiling had been activated and were spraying down the hall. At least the smoke detectors appeared to be functioning normally. Noah crossed the lobby, careful to sidestep the water showers. The sprinklers near the stairs had been set off, too, but their effect seemed to have been even more minimal there, as the staircase was filled up halfway with hazy smoke. Noah covered her nose and mouth with her sleeve and climbed the stairs. Her field of vision soon clouded over with smoke, and she lost her footing several times.

The third time she slipped, someone grabbed her. A long-haired woman in a dark fur coat. Seonhwa did not speak. She simply guided Noah, slowly, back down the stairs, maintaining a firm grip on her the whole time. Overhead, the sounds of sirens, birdcalls, and singing mingled and resounded.

Noah shouted, “I lied to you about something.”

Seonhwa did not say a word.

Noah went on, confessing that she had used her mother’s name as an alias and divulging her real name.

Seonhwa remained silent. She grabbed Noah’s hand and continued walking. They passed through the lobby along the edge of the room as water continued to stream down from different spots on the ceiling and exited through the back door. The cold air of a winter night greeted them outside. Only then did Seonhwa let go of Noah’s hand. She leaned down, painstakingly studying every inch of Noah’s face. Hers was an earnest gaze that seemed to be trying hard to recognize someone with whom she had parted ways long ago.

“We gave the observatory a new name,” Seonhwa said.

She revealed the name. It belonged to a very old and famous ship. It was also the name of the wooden boat from the story her mother used to tell her all the time as a child. The Ark. The ship that faced the new world head on, even as fierce storms raged, without capsizing or running aground. That new world was much cleaner and far more beautiful than the world that had come before. Seonhwa stood up straight again and pointed at the observation deck.

“Look over there.”

A spray of white, the water from the firetruck and wildfire relief truck hoses, was streaming into the dome. The eagles flew in and out of the building, beating their wings. Their noisy cries blended into the sounds of rushing water and sirens. Just as Seonhwa had said, it was unlike anything Noah had ever seen. The flock of eagles soaring between the spray of water and the dome seemed trapped in a sort of limbo one moment and in command of everything the next.

“I kept waiting for our enemies in there,” Seonhwa said. At times, she went on, that felt more important to her than any teachings. In every book, salvation came after an enemy air raid. The arrival of the enemy also signified the end of that long and agonizing waiting—a wait that had become a world unto itself. That was why every day, Seonhwa kept a close eye on the people who came by. She waited for the one who would climb the mountain and bring her grueling wait to an end.

“That’s why I believe it was such an incredible stroke of fate that we met. Don’t you agree?”

Noah’s mouth fell open. She stared at Seonhwa. “Well . . . ” she said after a long while. “I . . . I’m not sure. You don’t exactly feel like an enemy to me.”

Seonhwa took a few steps back. She let out a hm and pouted as if the words had wounded her.

“Then why did you come here?” she asked.

Noah could see the birds raging behind Seonhwa, the smoke rising up from the dome, and beyond all that, stars scattered innumerably across the sky. The winter sky in Gangwon-do was indeed high-reaching and full of stars. Suddenly, Noah wondered what sorts of stars she would be able to see through the big telescope in the observation deck that was currently in flames. When she asked the question aloud, Seonhwa frowned. Still, she answered. She said that telescope was custom-made, and in the winter, she often used it to see Saturn. If you brought one eye close to the eyepiece, you could see a ring of stars glittering quietly near the forest.

Once the fire had been quelled, the arrests followed quickly and smoothly. The people from the observatory did not put up much of a fight as they got into the patrol cars. This was after the eagles had already vanished somewhere else.

Namwook dropped Noah off in front of her house. The whole time they drove down the mountain, he’d kept sneaking glances at Noah as if he wanted to ask her something, but in the end, he didn’t. Instead, he told her something about himself. He brought up his experiences at the first post he’d been assigned to. There, he had encountered one colorful character after another. He’d seen it all—students banding together to burn down an abandoned building, neighbors who had lived in harmony for years while constantly stealing from one another as if they were simply swapping belongings. One summer, some people had come in from the city and were roaming the beach stark naked. Namwook confronted them in all their nude glory and convinced them to put on some clothes.

“Now, I don’t try to understand people like that,” he said, slowing the car to a stop.

Outside the window, rows upon rows of low-rise apartment buildings were visible. Noah unfastened her seatbelt, then paused and looked Namwook in the eyes. “So what do you do?”

He shrugged. “I just accept it. The fact that there are people like that in this world.”

Noah stood outside for a while after Namwook drove off. The emergency lights at the front entrance to the building kept flickering on and off. Noah suddenly craved a smoke. But she had neither a cigarette nor a lighter on her, and in fact, she’d never smoked before. Instead, she took out her phone. She had a text from Nokwon.

Did you get home all right?

Noah slipped her phone back into her pocket. She thought about Seonhwa climbing into the patrol car. She’d held Noah’s gaze the entire time. Right up until someone shut the car door. She kept mouthing the same questions. It’s you, isn’t it? Aren’t you the one? Seonhwa asked again and again, but Noah didn’t answer. Now, she wished she had.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was Nokwon. Only after letting it ring several times did Noah pick up. She wanted to ask why in the world Nokwon had brought her to the observatory. But the moment she answered the phone, she found herself blurting out something else entirely.

“Those people saw me as their enemy.”

For a while, all Noah heard on the other end of the line was quiet breathing. She proceeded to spill everything she’d heard at the back entrance to the observatory. Nokwon listened silently until at one point she burst out laughing. It was the first time Noah had ever heard her laugh. She couldn’t even imagine what Nokwon’s face would look like laughing.

Once her laughter petered out, Nokwon said, “How kind of her. To include us in her story.”

When Noah finished speaking, she felt as if she had resurfaced above water. Once she managed to steady her breathing, she asked, “Why did you call?” Nokwon stopped laughing and also paused to catch her breath. She asked if Noah was planning to take off work the next day. When Noah swore she was fine to go in, Nokwon insisted. It was good to rest one’s body and mind after experiencing something like what they had, she said. Only with proper rest could Noah get back to work.

After ending the call, Noah looked around. All at once, she realized it was just like her mother had said—she was truly far from home, in an unfamiliar place. From the new apartment building behind her to the lights from cars and houses glowing in the distance, everything felt both strange and new. “A new world,” Noah muttered. When she looked up, her surroundings had grown immensely brighter. It was the glow from the emergency lights that had decisively flickered on as if they had been waiting for their cue. Noah blinked against the piercing light and looked up at the sky.

The night was as dark and still as ever. The star clusters and nebulae, the planets and satellites, all shone in silence. Between them, birds were flying. Birds that traveled to a new land every winter. They did not seem to be flying toward one place but rather in circles, all facing different directions. As if they had no other destination but right there in the center of everything, they circled around and around in a ring and slowly made their descent.