After I was left alone, I lost track of how long I kept sketching. The last time I checked, it was eleven, and after that my sense of time went fuzzy. When I actually set the pencil moving, I changed plans a few times; in the end I narrowed it to three drafts, then got the rough underdrawing of the chosen draft onto the canvas—and was completely wiped out.
I barely managed to wash up, change, and crawl onto the bed; the moment I buried my face in the pillow, the light pinging of rain from outside finally reached my ears. It wasn’t a heavy rain.
Even though my body and mind felt emptied out, a lazy fullness rose instead—a boneless slackness coexisting with satisfaction—and I fought my eyelids so I could send him a message.
Late Friday night. What was he doing with his time?
Whatever he was doing, just being aware that he existed somewhere in this house tugged the corners of my mouth soft. My whole body loosened as if I’d sunk into hot water. With relief, I could slip into deep sleep. Feeling secure about my own state and the environment around me was a sensation I had not had in a long time.
I’d felt something similar when I was holding him on the roof. If I felt like I’d become the king of the world up there, it wasn’t because of the vantage point, as if everything were spread beneath my feet.
I didn’t even know when I fell asleep. One moment my consciousness blacked out; a long while later, someone adjusted my pillow, steadied my body, and curled an arm around my shoulders—those sensations lightly rippled the still surface of sleep.
Inside the studio the preset humidity and temperature stay constant, so even in midsummer your body heat can drop if you don’t keep the blanket on. The warmth of a bare chest pressing to my cooled skin felt so good that I curled up and burrowed into the firm chest right in front of me.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar, strange touch. The scent and heat I knew so well made me feel safe. I didn’t even need to open my eyes to check who it was.
It might be a dream, I thought, even as I nuzzled my forehead into the nape of his neck to find the most comfortable position.
But even if it was a dream, it didn’t matter anymore. Even if this was a dream, in the real world there was someone who gave me this much fondness and ease waiting for me. An arm circled me from behind, carefully holding me. Lips touched the crown of my head. Sleep well. As if I’d been waiting for just that one line, my consciousness sank back down beneath the waterline of sleep after the low whisper.
■ ■ ■
Waking from a motionless, deep sleep always felt abrupt. As if I’d been shoved in an instant from that world to this one, I needed a moment right after waking to collect my thoughts about where I was.
“Did you sleep well?”
“......”
Lying on my side with my eyelids lowered toward my chest, I blinked slowly, then at the voice from above my head I raised my face off the pillow as I was.
“Mm....”
My throat was still cinched tight with sleep, so I couldn’t get a smooth sound out. My eyes, rolling around in a daze, were standing in for a question about how he happened to be here.
I was clearly waking in my bed downstairs—and at the same time, in his naked arms.
He’d stacked two pillows high, added his folded arm on top as a rest, and lay facing me; with his other arm he lightly draped over my shoulder and stroked my cheek with the back of his hand.
“You kept burrowing in like a little mole. I was debating whether I ought to stick a nipple in your mouth.”
Curled one level above me, looking down and smiling, he really wasn’t exaggerating this time, judging by how tightly my upper body was pressed to him.
“When did you get here... how....”
I still couldn’t quite get a grip on the situation; my questions broke off before forming proper sentences.
“Why didn’t you send me a message?”
“I swear I sent one before I went to sleep....”
I rolled over onto my stomach and propped myself on my elbows. I raked together my hair, surely a mess, and groped near the pillow for my phone. It was hanging by a thread on the edge of the bed; I grabbed it, unlocked it, and the messaging app popped up at once on the screen.
[Today I’ll stop work here and thn doje ahhhh phew]
Apparently I’d fallen asleep with the phone in my hand; the typo-riddled line hadn’t even been sent and was just sitting in the input field.
“Ah....”
With a mortified little exhale, I swept my fallen hair back and caught it behind my ear. He took the phone from my hand, read the line on the screen, and burst out laughing.
My head was finally starting to clear. Bathed in natural morning light, the sight of him smiling on the bed gradually came into focus. A moment ago, waking to find him there had startled me so much I hadn’t really registered the person in front of me. This was the first time I’d seen him on the bed when we weren’t in foreplay, afterplay, or in the middle of sex.
“Huh? Why are you—don’t send that.”
It looked like his finger was about to send the half-written, typo-stuffed message. I reached to stop him, but he easily twisted his body away from me.
“It’d be a waste to just delete it. Something this cute needs to be archived.”
He lay on his back facing the ceiling, gave me my phone back with a satisfied look, then idly played with the rim of my ear as I lay on my stomach beside him.
“Still feels like a waste, though. I should’ve seen Seo Ihyeon struggling to text me even when he was dead on his feet.”
All that affection—which you couldn’t call anything but love—made a ticklish line run down my spine first thing in the morning. Starting the day in this kind of tenderness the second I opened my eyes felt... not great for my heart.
“Did we... sleep together? Or did you come in just now?”
I laid my hand over the fingers toying with my ear and asked gently.
“The lights went off around three, I think, but even after that you didn’t message me for ages, so I came down to check.”
So the feeling I had in the night—that someone had straightened my bedding and gathered me into their arms—wasn’t a dream, but the sign of him getting into the bed. I slid my hand down from his to the clearly defined muscle of his arm and stroked it, my voice edged with regret.
“You should’ve woken me....”
“How was I supposed to wake up someone who worked until he dropped?”
“Still... what a waste.”
“......”
The hand at my ear shifted to cup my cheek wide, asking with his eyes what exactly was a waste. His palm was big enough to cover my whole face, and it always felt so good that I rubbed my cheek into it like a well-behaved cat or dog.
“It was the first time we slept together, and I didn’t even know....”
His mouth softened. I could read the feeling in his eyes, looking at me with such fondness. For someone like me, that kind of expression was maybe easier to understand than words—and easier to trust.
He lightly rubbed the pad of his thumb over my lips.
“I appreciate you thinking of it that way, but if you wake up, the chances go way up that we’ll fail at sleeping together again.”
Last weekend, on our way home after drinking sake, he’d suggested we just sleep without sex—but in the end, we hadn’t kept that promise.
It had been a doomed plan from the start. That night we’d had more special conversations than usual and a great time; to lie there side by side and pretend not to notice bare skin and body heat when the fizzy, dirty tension that had been skimming between us since the izakaya was at a maximum—that was asking too much.
It was as if the promise had never existed; the moment we stepped inside we lunged for each other and started kissing deep, as if the mischievous kisses we’d shared behind the car in the alley hadn’t satisfied us at all.
He had me half undressed right there in the entryway. I wanted his naked body too, reached under his shirt, and mussed my way over his shoulders and chest.
If someone had watched us, they’d have laughed and asked why we’d made such a doomed resolution when we were going to break before we even reached the bedroom. That’s how quick our surrender was that night.
As my certainty about his feelings grew, I got bolder in bed. Shyness from my basic temperament still lingered, but even so, I kissed him first without hesitation, put my arms around him, opened my legs, and stopped hesitating to let him see me shaking with pleasure.
Another change: sex with him, which had been wild, intense, and overloaded with stimulus, had now turned sweet as well.
The exchange of feeling has real power; it seemed to lend legitimacy to everything we did together. Once it carried the meaning of expressing affection and not just venting lust, even a single kiss felt different than before.
It wasn’t that my body just happened to be aroused with a person nearby. It was a concrete arousal that arose because of the person in front of me; that day too, we joined bodies until the pale blue of early summer brightened into morning.
The next day I woke, as usual, in his bed, but the space beside me was empty. A note on his pillow said he’d gone to a brunch at a VIP client’s invitation. In the end, this was our first time actually greeting a morning together.
“In your sleep you were mumbling and burrowing into my arms... For a second I thought I should wake you up ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) on purpose.”
He laughed, tapping my nose with the thumb that had been rubbing my lips. If he had, I probably would’ve been too keyed up to sleep properly, but even so, I kept feeling the regret of not having been conscious for the stretch when we lay down together.
“If we have sex... does that really mean we can’t be together until morning?”
“......”
When I saw the tiny shift of his eyelids, the delayed realization of how dumb my question was made me want to bury my face in the pillow. Sure enough, a moment later he let out a low laugh. Then this time he took my face in both hands.
“Of course not. As you know, I’ve been pretty busy lately... I often have to head out early. I may have iron stamina, but considering how often we’ve been at it, I do need to mind my sleep a little.”
His gentle explanation only made my face burn hotter.
“I guess... I’m not fully awake yet. Sorry for asking something weird.”
He gave my face an exaggerated scrunch with his hands, then sat up and brushed a light kiss to my forehead. After that he leaned his upper body over my back and nuzzled my ear with the tip of his nose.
“I’ll make breakfast. Want to look after the garden in the meantime?”
Truly—what a heart-taxing way to start a day.
■ ■ ■
I want to remember August’s heat as it really was: time in August running slower and lazier than ever, and yet leaving sharper tracks than ever, like a melted, sticky ice bar. I want to remember August’s time that way.
The garden under the August sun. The rainbow arc hanging over the stream spraying from the hose’s trigger. The cicadas crying from the oaks, as if they embodied summer itself. The awareness of being alive that came from the beads of sweat slowly seeping across my bare skin where I’d stripped off my T-shirt.
Just as he’d said, the rain in the night must have been very light; when I came out to the garden, the fierce sun had already baked the ground dry. It was mid-August now, but the heat was still relentless.
With enough light and water, the plants’ leaves were vigorous even as the daily heat wave turned people limp. The weeds, too, surged with life; after I pulled the new shoots that had poked up in the last few days, I ran the hose to the spigot in one corner of the garden.
[whooshhhh]
Even the sound of the spray made it feel like the air had dropped a degree or two. I aimed the stream at the sweetbox I’d clumsily trimmed and brought my left hand up to the mouth of the spray gun. The water was cold. The sun beating down on my bare shoulders and back was hot enough to feel like it would burn me.
In the haze of cicadas and water, I lifted my cooled left hand to my lips.
With thumb and forefinger I gathered the flesh of my lower lip and toyed with it. In an instant, a wanton feeling skimmed over my skin. Even with sunglasses on, the light was so fierce it bleached the world white; under that glare I pictured his lips.
The kind of strong suction that bordered on pain—that was the depth of his hunger for me. Remembering the way he drew me in, hard enough to feel like he’d bite and swallow me whole, I twisted my thumb and forefinger tight. The cicadas’ drone pulled my awareness into a lollipop’s colored spiral. I twisted until it felt like the flesh might pop and bleed. I thought I might get hard.
Ahem. Hm.
At the deliberately staged cough meant to make his presence known, I slowly turned around.
He was leaning in the open doorway with his arms folded, head tipped, looking my way.
Oddly, I didn’t feel shame. For some reason, I wasn’t embarrassed. I kept the spray gun running and didn’t take my eyes off him up on the steps.
With a faint smile, he stepped down out of that white light, unfolding his arms. From behind he wrapped me up, stroked the sheen of sweat on my chest and stomach, and rubbed his lips to my ear.
My summer got a little hotter.
“Since when... do you pinch your lips like that when you’re alone?”
You really do give people a fright sometimes, he added, and there was a sweet syrupy scent on him. I remembered him saying he’d make pancakes with fruit for breakfast.
“If you wanted a kiss, you should’ve come out and pounced on me.”
I tilted my head to take his mouth on the back of my neck. Two small birds I didn’t know the names of shot past the top of the tall oak. His hands fondling my chest and his lips kissing my nape felt like the sun.
“Have you always been out in the garden with your shirt off like this?”
I laced my hand over his as it slid from shoulder to upper arm and nodded.
“From now on, give me a heads-up. It kills me that I’ve missed something this good till now.”
He kissed the point where the shoulder slides into the arm, then came to my side and gently kneaded the back of my neck.
“The sunglasses look great on you. Then again, what wouldn’t.”
I smiled back at him tapping at his own cheekbone and swung the hose from the sweetbox toward the spirea. The farther-reaching arc of water drew a bigger rainbow. The sound where it hit the spirea was a little different from the sweetbox.
“I... think I should go to the hospital.”
“......”
His fingers working lightly at my neck and shoulders gradually stilled.
“I figured it was a mild gastritis, or that I just don’t handle heat well, so it would pass... The boss seems really worried too, and honestly there’s no sign it’s improving, so... I’m going to get checked. It’s nothing major, but trying to tough it out with no change just feels silly.”
No one had ever worried this much just because my appetite was off or the smell of food made me a little nauseous, and since I’ve never been the type to enjoy eating, I’d never taken loss of appetite very seriously. This time, too, habit made me want to let it pass without doing anything.
But even when I didn’t say anything, he noticed; and the fact that I was neglecting a body someone else valued that much—it felt discourteous to the person who cherished it.
Besides, even if it still doesn’t feel real, if I’m going to keep working steadily as a full-time writer, I need to accept that maintaining a certain baseline of stamina and health is part of looking after myself.
“I’ll carve out a little time next week and... go during the day.”
He’d been quiet for a while; when I looked back, his hand still on my shoulder, he’d drifted into thought. His profile, so motionless he seemed to forget to blink, looked even more like a carved figure. Elegant and delicate, like something tinted with ivory—yet beneath that thin layer, the rough, feral nature that showed through gave him an irresistible tension and sexiness.
To express that wildness under the elegance—or that elegance sheathing the wildness—was impossible with ordinary skill. He was like a masterpiece born under a master’s fingers. At least, that’s how he looked to me.
Maybe he noticed the awe in my gaze, or maybe he finished his train of thought. He started a little, came back to himself, and turned his face to me.
“All right... That’s a good idea. If you don’t feel well, you see a doctor. I’ll book it so Choi Inwoo can take you.”
I hadn’t expected him to suggest Inwoo, so my eyes widened before I knew it.
“He doesn’t look it, but he’s very thorough.”
He smiled briefly without showing teeth. Then, with a sudden sober look, he turned his body toward me and stepped in close. His big figure threw a shadow over half my face.
Even after pulling out of his thoughts, his expression was still like it had been—a little distant, as if time itself had stopped. But it wasn’t that he wasn’t looking at me. If it sounds grand, forgive me, but his face looked like he wanted to pull me into his world and lock me there.
He lowered his head and set his lips on my shoulder. His hands slid from my shoulders down my sides; the head of the spray gun wobbled. My other thoughts wobbled apart with it. Haa... a breath like a sigh slipped out thin.
His hands traveled from my sides to my back and clasped my waist hard. His mouth that had come up from my shoulder to my nape slid along my jawline, and I closed my eyes in anticipation and parted my lips.
“Mm, m. Mmm.”
With the first deep press of the kiss I dropped the spray gun. The hose thrashed and writhed like a long eel dragged onto land, then calmed, laying its head quietly on the grass and letting the water run.
I want to remember August’s heat—the way his kiss layered sensations onto my lips and tongue I hadn’t known before, each step of it—and I want to remember every sweet, sour, hot, and sometimes startlingly strange taste of a summer day when my first feeling for another person ripened carefully.
They say that in a person’s history, the first falling-for becomes the yardstick for all relationships that follow, and the one you can never forget. For me, that was—and will be—Lau Weikun.
