The sun was setting over tofu and natto bibimbap. It wasn’t a beautiful sunset, but it was picturesque. I looked out beyond the window panes with the restaurant alight behind me, ahead to the placid waters.

We sipped soy milk that tasted like spun cream and with eyes closed, I swallowed. How decadent. Sauce was poured over crispy tofu balls, and then they were quartered crudely with wooden spoons and devoured. The delicate bibimbap was kept mostly intact with bites composed of components of rice, natto, egg, tofu, nori, and other unidentifiable saucy components. A long cobwebby string would form between the natto and my mouth with each bite, and I let the slime form down further into my gut.

In broken Korean, I ordered some ice cream and looked over at my dinner companion, feeling a way I haven’t felt in a long time. Coupled.

I went to the bathroom and came out to find our ledge empty. Through the window frame that once held a sunset, I saw him outside in the dark and felt confused. Were we leaving? Our stuff was still on the table. I made my way out there. It was a normal night, nothing really notable about the moment until I was hit with a wave. It was a feeling that this was a moment I really needed to remember. All my senses locked in.

I looked a few feet forward into the darkness. Little pools reflected our way in the moonlight. I could detect little disturbances of the drip-drop of the light rain. And then the auditory kicked in as I grew internally silent. I heard it. Yes, it was raining ever so softly. The faint jazz melodies of saxophone, Getz/Gilberto, was playing in the background. My stomach was full. I would reach over for tiny morsels of ice cream. Every few minutes, the door would open, and a little boy would stare at us and say something I couldn’t quite discern. A father and child strapped facing outward in front of him were roaming and taking selfies. Everyone seemed happy. Little bubbles of peoples’ moments floating around us, us in our own, me in my own.

I think I may have talked about the passage of time or gratitude or something related to me looking in from the outside. I may have said I needed to remember this prosaic moment that had come into such sharp relief out of nowhere.

I could have been in the parking lot of a Cheesecake Factory witnessing the same things. It was all very ordinary. Of course, I’m on a tropical island in South Korea. There is something poignant about feeling minimal and humbled and cozy in a set of circumstances that are quite extraordinary. In that moment, everything I had experienced since I started embarking on this journey caught up with me in a moment of integration. I felt a sense of knowingness, serenity, awareness, and respect for myself.

I looked over at my dinner companion and felt no stress about our expiring relationship. For that moment, I was just present in us. Us was all that was real. Us was eternity. I had nowhere else to be.