“Can you see and hear me OK?” I said for at least the eighth time that day.
I was talking into my laptop. This was in Thailand, where I had moved after college to teach schoolchildren during the day and, for extra money, teach English online to Japanese and Korean adults in the evening.
I had hoped my student would cancel, but here he was. He looked to be about my age, 23, with a handsome, gentle face. Soon he was talking excitedly about his master’s degree in corn. “Corn is everywhere,” he said. “It’s part of everything. Even your clothes!”
I was expecting to have to fake laugh a lot during the 25-minute lesson, which I do to ensure good ratings, but he was genuinely making me smile. Most of my students were Japanese businessmen in expensive suits who said mundane things like, “My hobby is watching movies.”
“Can I ask you something personal?” he said.
“Sure.” I assumed he would ask if I was married, a common question in these conversational lessons.
Instead, he said, “What is love?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Do you?”
“I have a theory,” he said. “Did you know that the instant corn stops growing it will die? Every day it must grow, even if it’s only a fraction of a centimeter. When it stops, there is no reviving it.”
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Ignoring the confusion on my face, he kept going: “People are like corn. We have to harvest and give attention to our love every day in order to improve or it will die just like the corn. So I think love is about effort.”
His question opened our lesson into a world I had never entered with my students; we strayed beyond suitable topics into real life. It was the first time I dropped the fake smiles and professional reserve and was simply myself.
A few hours after the lesson, I received a message from him: “You have a beautiful soul.” This wasn’t the first flirtatious message I had received from a student, but it was the only one that was about my soul.
I decided it wasn’t appropriate to respond to his message. Not only because it is explicitly against my company’s policies to talk in this way with students, but also because I wanted to play the cool card. Instead I waited eagerly for him to take my lesson again.
One week passed, and still I had not seen him. I worried he had stopped taking the course, which was inevitable for most students at his advanced level.
Another week passed, and still no sign of him. I tried to bring that kind of excitement to my other students, but the conversations fell flat. Once I tried asking a student what he thought the meaning of love was, prompting a confused stare. I didn’t ask again.
After three weeks, my student reappeared, seeming feverishly happy. He had been checking every day for open slots in my schedule, but I had been booked.
I laughed. His openness was so refreshing, especially compared with American men I had known who wouldn’t dare overtly express their interest in someone. He was the most unashamed, truthful person I had ever met. Our lesson flew by and I could see the time was almost finished. In three minutes, the call would automatically disconnect. I felt sad to say goodbye, but I knew he would take my lesson again.
“I can’t take your lesson again,” he said. The clock was at two minutes and forty seconds. I knew I needed to see him again, but also, being a rule follower, I was anxious about breaking my company’s policy.
“My yearly subscription ended,” he said. “I saved the last lesson for you, but now I’m stopping the course.” He looked down. Two minutes left.
“You can’t stop,” I said. “Your English isn’t good enough.”
He smiled. We both looked disappointed.
One minute left. I felt a crushing feeling in my stomach. This one minute could change my life. “Do you have Facebook?” I said, knowing I could be fired for asking. Every session was recorded.
“Yes, I do.”
When the session expired, I checked my Facebook. Nothing. I checked again after 30 minutes; still no new friend requests. I tried to distract myself, but every 10 minutes I reopened the app to check. At midnight, I gave up and went to sleep.
The next morning — still nothing. Our connection was so intense, he must have felt it. No way he agreed to add me on Facebook out of politeness.
After a busy afternoon of teaching (checking Facebook during every break), I went for a run. A few minutes in, my phone buzzed.
“Hello,” he had written with a smiley emoji. “It’s your new Korean friend. Nice to meet you.”
His writing was so shy and formal, something I wasn’t used to. “Hi!” I wrote. “It’s your new American friend. What are you doing?”
We exchanged niceties until he asked if he could call me. Normally, the guys I’d known shied away from calls, especially on the first day of messaging, but I accepted and was happy he seemed interested in me.
Our video call lasted for three hours. I felt like I needed to share my whole life with him. The craziest part was that we had no common interests and no similar hobbies, but it didn’t matter. Our minds were synchronized. He said, “Maybe we were learning the meaning of love together.”
During these weeks of constant talking, the distance between us felt unbearable. He said he could come visit me in Thailand in February during his school break, which was two months away. I couldn’t do this for two months. I needed to find out now if our relationship was just as perfect face-to-face as online.
New Year’s was a week away and the only long break I had from work. The price for a last-minute flight to Incheon during New Year’s was $640, more than half of my monthly salary. I booked it anyway.
The six-hour trip allowed me plenty of time to consider how I would explain to my parents doing something so risky and impulsive. After all, I hardly knew this man. And I had no alternate plan, not even a hotel reservation, if things went wrong. But rushing off to see him was the only option I could see in my situation.
Love isn’t about logic anyway. I would tell my parents the truth: I met the love of my life and we were going on a date. Simple.
When I got off the plane in Incheon, I felt even more confident about coming. I looked around the airport at all of the people. When I finally saw him, he was exactly as I knew him to be.
We met eyes and smiled.
We did not hug.
I imagined that we would run to each other and I would jump into his arms, but the reality was not as cinematic. We talked briefly and hurried to a taxi.
At dinner, I felt calm but awkward. He seemed nervous. On the phone, he buzzed with confidence, but now he was hesitant. He carefully served me my food and talked about his day at school. Our phone conversations had been deep, but now we talked only about surface-level topics.
I felt disappointed. Was this a Korean style of dating? Was I being too American to assume he should be touching me if he liked me? I wanted to stop acting like we were still stuck behind phone screens and embrace each other. I wanted my hasty, bold action to be validated.
After dinner, we walked the chilly streets, maintaining a space between us as our conversation finally began to ease and the outgoing student from our first lesson returned.
“I have some more corn wisdom if you’d like to hear it,” he said.
Nothing like vegetable talk to ignite romance.
“Corn needs other corn to survive,” he said. “One corn alone in a field will not grow. The wind blows pollen from each one and through this process they bloom.” He grabbed my hand. Now, without slipping, we walked the same path, in the same direction, holding each other for support.
That night our love became clear.
Over a year later, we are living together in Florida, where he has a research position, and we would like to marry. Our love has become more like corn every day. We tend to it, water it and keep growing toward the sun. On days when we have storms, we reflect on how far we have come and how lucky we were to have met across countries. All because he was bold enough to ask, “What is love?”
Now we know. Love is like corn. Making love grow requires farming.
Mackenzie Scibetta lives in Gainesville, Fla., where she teaches English language online.
Modern Love can be reached at modernlove@nytimes.com.
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