ON THE SECOND LEG, he was seated beside a man who introduced himself in a way that offered function without identity.

Late sixties. Hair cut short, grey at the temples, the rest still black. A navy suit, not recent, the jacket buttoned. A watch on the inside of the left wrist. The fingernails cut to the same length.

The face did not announce itself. Jae-won had seen the type before, in other institutional corridors. He had not met this man.

“I work with the Arctic Council,” the man said. “Sustainable development working group.”

His English was precise, deliberate, each word placed with care, as though language itself required calibration before use. Jae assumed he has spent years outside Russia.

“What kind of work?” Jae-won asked.

“Birds,” the man said.

The answer sat for a moment, complete in its simplicity.

Then: “Migratory pathways. East Kamchatka coast. Stopover sites. Hunting pressure. Climate shift.”

He rested his hands on the tray table, aligning them unconsciously, fingertips parallel, confirming the edges of the space.

“The birds do not recognise borders,” he said. “We insist on them anyway.”

Jae-won allowed the corner of his mouth to move slightly.

“Do the birds care?”

“No,” the man said. “They adjust.” A pause. “Humans are less efficient.”

The conversation unfolded in intervals. It did not require continuity to remain intact.

“My grandmother was Nivkh,” the man said. “Indigenous.”

“From Sakhalin?” Jae-won asked.

“Yes.” The man looked out the window. “An island,” he said. “Long. Cold. Between Russia and Japan.” A pause. “Close enough to see. Far enough to matter.”

Jae-won nodded. He could feel the distance in it—not as measurement but as condition, water that separated even when land could still be imagined on the other side.

“Eastern side,” the man said. “Before relocation here.”

His hands remained aligned. “It was not useful to mention.”

“And now?”

“Now it can be mentioned.” A pause. “Not the same as being known.”

Jae-won let that settle.

“My parents are Korean,” he said. “South Korean.” He paused. “They went down in the Antonov plane crash here in 1994. Never found. The government closed the case.”

The man glanced at him. “Mine fled the Ainu invaders from Japan,” he said.

Jae-won met his gaze. “Yes.”

The man shifted slightly.

“North of Japan,” he said. “Hokkaido. Sakhalin. Kurils.” A pause. “Before the borders.”

He did not look at Jae-won when he continued.

“Japan made them into something else,” he said. “Farmers. Subjects. Took the language out of the mouth.”

A breath.

“Russia did it differently.”

Jae-won waited.

“Changed the names,” the man said. “Moved people. Folded them into other categories.” A pause. “Easier to disappear them that way.”

The sentence held. Jae-won felt it land. Not the same. Never the same. But adjacent.

“Yes,” he said.

The man looked out the window again.

“Same edge of the world,” he said. “Different methods.”

Jae-won did not answer.

He did not need to.

“Language follows power,” the man said. “In my family, Russian. Before that, Japanese in some places.” His fingers shifted once. “Nivkh stayed inside.”

Inside.

Jae-won felt the word register in his body before he thought it.

“Sometimes it does,” he said.

The man inclined his head once.

They did not return to the subject, but the conversation did not end. It continued under another name, or perhaps beneath the names it had already used. Outside the window the cloud held its shape without revealing the land beneath, and Jae-won found himself thinking that the most consequential things in a life were often like that: not absent, only withheld, present in pressure and contour before they became visible.