Nine Hours Ahead: A Short Story About Long Distance

The call dropped at the worst possible moment, right after Elena said, "I don't know if I can keep doing this."

In London it was 11:40 p.m. In Seoul, where Jae was, it was 7:40 in the morning and he was standing on a crowded platform with one earbud in, staring at a frozen picture of her face.

By the time the line came back, the moment had gone. She said she was just tired. He said okay. They talked about the weather and his train, and then she said goodnight and he said good morning, the way they always did, and that was that.

They'd met at a friend's wedding in Lisbon fourteen months earlier, two strangers stuck at the same table because they were the only ones who didn't know anyone. By the end of the night they'd swapped numbers. By the end of the month they were video-calling every day. Jae's company had sent him to Seoul for two years, and they had agreed, a bit recklessly, to try.

The first six months had been easy. Everything was new. They had endless things to talk about: childhoods, favorite books, terrible ex-partners, the weird food in each other's cities. Elena would fall asleep with the call still on and wake up to find Jae had sent her a photo of the sunrise from his balcony.

Then, slowly, the calls got shorter and more tired. How was your day? Fine. You? Fine. She'd be winding down, he'd be rushing out. He'd be exhausted, she'd be on her lunch break. They started talking at each other instead of with each other. And because they couldn't hug or sit in silence or share a meal, there was nothing to fill the space when the words ran out.

Two days after the dropped call, Elena got a parcel. Inside was a deck of plain white index cards held together with a rubber band, and a note in Jae's handwriting.

I heard what you said before the call cut out. I don't want to do this badly. Can we try something? One card each call. No skipping. — J

The first card said: What's a smell that takes you straight back to being a kid?

She laughed out loud in her hallway.

That night she called him at his breakfast time and read the card. He'd made his own copy of the deck so they'd have the same questions. She told him about her grandmother's kitchen in Valencia, orange peel and bleach, and he told her about the smell of rain on hot concrete outside his school. They talked for an hour. When she hung up, she realized she'd learned three things about him she hadn't known before.

The cards weren't magic. Some were silly (What's the weirdest thing in your fridge right now?) and some were hard (What's the hardest part of being apart for you?). That second one took them two calls to get through.

"The hardest part," Elena said finally, "is that I never feel like I'm the first thing you think about. I'm always fitted around your train or your meetings."

Jae was quiet. Then he said, "The hardest part for me is that by the time you call, I've already had my whole day without you. And I'm scared one day you'll realize you have a whole life there that I'm not in."

It wasn't comfortable, but it was the most honest they'd been in months.

They made some changes after that.

They agreed on two "real" calls a week, when neither of them was rushing. Sunday morning for her, Sunday evening for him. Long, unhurried, sometimes two hours. On those calls, they'd cook the same recipe at the same time, or watch a film in sync, counting down "three, two, one, play" and laughing when one of them was a few seconds behind.

The other days could be short. A voice note on the way to work. A photo of something that made them think of each other. No pressure for every call to be meaningful.

Jae started recording little voice messages before he went to sleep, so Elena had something waiting for her when she woke up. Elena started sending him postcards of terrible London tourist attractions with long, rambling messages on the back.

And they bought a cheap paper calendar and drew a big red circle around the date of his next visit home, so they could both see it getting closer.

The cards kept coming, a new small batch every month or so, each of them adding their own. Some were a little flirty, and those calls ended with both of them grinning at their screens like idiots. Some were about the future, which they'd both been avoiding.

Where do you see us in five years?

"Same city," Elena said. "Honestly, I don't care which one."

"Same city," Jae said. "Same sofa. And a dog that's better behaved than your sister's."

When he finally flew home that spring, she met him at Heathrow with a card held up like a taxi driver's sign. It said: What's the first thing you want to do now that we're in the same place?

He didn't answer it. He just dropped his bag and hugged her for a very long time, right in the middle of arrivals, and that was answer enough.

The takeaway

Long-distance couples don't usually drift because they stop caring. They drift because conversation gets stuck on autopilot. What helped Elena and Jae was naming the hard feelings, choosing a few unhurried calls over many rushed ones, sharing small rituals, and asking new questions so they kept discovering each other. Try our free list of 100 long-distance relationship questions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and events are invented.