Careful

The project is six weeks in when Karina suggests a working lunch.

Not unusual. There’s a campaign direction decision that’s been going back and forth over email for three days and neither of you has managed to get Director Park on a call long enough to settle it. Easier to just sit down, she says. You agree. You pick a place that’s halfway between Studio Sora and Maison Haru’s office. The kind of restaurant that’s quiet enough to actually talk in.

She’s already there when you arrive, which you’ve come to expect. She has the campaign direction deck open on her laptop and a coffee she’s apparently already halfway through.

“I ordered for myself,” she says. “I didn’t know what you wanted.”

“That’s fine.” You sit down, flag the server, order something quickly. “What are we working with?”

She turns the laptop toward you. You go through it. The campaign direction issue is actually simpler than three days of email made it seem. Two options, both defensible, one of which is clearly better once you’re looking at it in person rather than described in writing. You settle it in about twenty minutes, which leaves the rest of lunch with nowhere particular to be.

The food comes. You eat. The conversation moves the way it sometimes does when the work is done and you’re still sitting there: sideways, into other things.

“How did you end up at Studio Sora?” she asks.

“Previous job, a colleague left to join it. Asked me to come along.”

“How long ago?”

“Five years.”

“Do you like it?”

You think about it for a second. It’s not a question people ask that directly.

“Yeah,” you say. “I do. It’s small enough that the work actually matters. Big enough that the work is interesting.”

“That’s a good answer.”

“What about you? How did you end up at Maison Haru?”

“Nayeon,” she says simply.

“Right.”

“We grew up in the same neighborhood. She’s known my family since I was young.” She picks up her coffee. “She knew someone at Maison Haru and put my name in. I’d just graduated so the timing worked. It’s a good first job. I’m learning a lot.”

“First job out of university?”

“Is it that obvious?”

You almost say something. You stop yourself.

“No,” you say. “You’re good at it.”

She looks at you for a second like she’s deciding whether you mean it. In the meeting rooms you’ve shared she always has the overhead light on her, the flat even brightness of a conference room. Here the window is behind her and the light is different. Warmer, less managed. You notice this and file it away without examining why. Apparently, you pass.

“Thank you,” she says.

The conversation moves on. She asks about the Seochon bookstore campaign, the one from the portfolio wall. She apparently looked it up. You tell her about it. The client was a woman in her sixties who had run the shop for thirty years and had very specific opinions and no budget. And somehow that combination produced the best work you’ve done.

“How did you find her?” Karina asks.

“Someone pointed me toward it. Said I’d regret it if I didn’t at least go see the space.”

“Who?”

A small pause.

“Someone I was close to at the time.” You pick up your coffee. “They were right.”

Karina doesn’t ask who. She just nods slightly, the way she nods when she’s received something knows not to push further. You appreciate that about her more than you’ve said.

“Are you still in touch with the owner?” she pivots.

“Occasionally. She sends me a message when she gets new stock in. Thinks I’ll want to know.”

“Do you?”

“Not really,” you say. “But I like that she tells me.”

Karina is quiet for a moment, turning her cup. “I have a friend like that. Winter. She just… notices things and doesn’t always say them out loud but somehow you know she has.” She pauses. “I think that’s its own kind of caring.”