Bridger Bradford was in love. Not with South Korea, although certain of its charms were growing on him, and certainly not with that lanky cock-tease Travis, the not-so-hot pursuit of whom had flung him there. But he had indeed found love in Korea, and it mattered little to him that it was imaginary.

As the cornerstone of his plan to seduce the chocolate-eyed leader of a campus church group, Bridger had traveled abroad for the first time. Affable and good-looking in the manner of the best friend on a fifties sitcom, with only a thin layer of chub in those days to keep his muscles warm, he was accustomed to having his amorous advances returned with gusto, and didn’t like having to take no for an answer from this particular tall drink of water. Having joined the church group’s choir in the nick of time, he tagged along on their trip to minister through song in South Korea. Bridger figured that, jet-lagged and far from home, Travis might relax and enjoy himself. And, hopefully, let Bridger enjoy him, too.

After an embarrassing incident their first night in Seoul, during which the brown-eyed handsome man had made it crystal clear that he faithfully adhered to his church’s teachings against homosexual behavior, Bridger pretty much lost his enthusiasm for contemporary Christian choral music and followed the choir around the Korean peninsula playing the role of Younger Brother in the Backseat; his constant refrain of “Can we go home now?” testing the patience and Christian charity of even the most devout members of the group. Tipping his hand early in the trip had earned him permanent Single Room status, and he divided his time between buying giant bottles of Hite beer at the ubiquitous Mini Stop convenience stores and flipping through the Korean-language channels on the hotel TV. That was where, so recently jilted by Travis, he first fell in love with Kai.

At least he fell in love with the idea of Kai. After Bridger saw him in that first TV commercial, Kai’s striking face and soulful eyes suddenly seemed to gaze out at him from every television, magazine, and billboard in the country. He appeared at least once during every commercial break on TV, in the kind of oddly black-and-white-seeming ad in which a sharp-dressed man in a suit and overly-stylish eyeglasses stares off into the near-distance and contemplates the sheer luxury of a given 5-star hotel or inhales the intoxicating aroma of a delicious instant coffee. Bridger was utterly smitten. Who was this ridiculously alluring man with this exotic career? He obviously appreciated nothing but the finest things in life. In one ad he was seen poolside in loosely rolled linen pants, in another he was dining in a world-class restaurant in a $500 silk shirt. Bridger found himself buying every Korean magazine he could get his hands on and obsessively tearing out every ad that even might have featured this mysterious beauty, including ads for shoes, which could have been anybody’s feet, and ads for watches which only featured hands, none of them Kai’s.