Through all these weeks, what have I learned about Hyukjae? He smokes a lot of grass. He only watches Netflix on Friday nights, alone. He’s stood me up three times in two weeks. Hyukjae always has that beautiful smell, a mix of nicotine with some essential oil, so delicious I can’t even tell what it is. He likes to wear fur earflap hats and damn, he looks like an expensively bred animal, with an elegant nose that is like a ual warning, a carnal threat. And he looks as if he might throw away from me, slip out of my grip, jump to someone else like a fickle cat. He’s interesting in everything that doesn’t interest me when I’m with him, like little events in the street, what other people are wearing or how other people look. He dates everything, he’s obsessed with defining this minute, this hour, this era, he savors details and tiny things, his fixation with the inessential, he knows about what are the latest TV shows and all the new movies and every song that’s played on the radio. Also he makes me feel he’ll slink off to someone else, almost unconsciously, to whatever offers to him momentary pleasure without obligations. I pretend and interest in his interests, I really try so hard but all this junk he likes, in fact, bores me silly.

Now that we’re becoming closer, I need to keep him by my side, but I need money too, of course. The editor who hired me at the magazine offered an advance of ₩400,00, which I took. We’ve been friends for a long time, before this, long enough for him to say “Just imagine Lee, this time you know you can pay me back”. In a city like Seoul, this amount of money is not enough to try to conquer a heart like Lee Hyukjae’s.

I call Hyuk at home, on a day he doesn’t have to work.

“Let me take you out to a dinner”

“I’m dead, I need to be alone. I’m so ing tired from work” He tells me with a withdrawn voice, not exactly irritated but not that friendly.

“I didn’t mean to bother you” I say, so coolly.

“Please don’t be like that, don’t get such an attitude just because I’m exhausted” His voice sounds like it’s wrapped in flannel, but it suddenly turns gentle and clear. “I really can’t see you tonight. Try to understand, I always need a day or two completely alone, just to stop my nerves jumping all over my skin. I’m so sorry, Donghae”.

I don’t dare say “I could help you”. After all, Jieun thought she could calm him down by opening her legs to him, and she was obviously wrong. I don't want to screw things with him. But why has it always to be me the one who is worried about screwing it.

Then he starts to tell me stories about the job, what happened last night, which costumers insult him, Yunho’s latest outrages… We talk for an hour, about everything and nothing. He throws himself into amusing me as if this will compensate the fact that he can’t see me tonight. I wonder if he’s seeing someone else, but as always, he reads my thoughts.

“If I could be with anybody right now, I’d be with you” he says.

I try not to get confuse.  There are so many thoughts and fears in my mind right now. At this point I don’t know if he is showing his real feelings, that maybe he changed his mind and now he’s feeling something else that just a friendship for me. Who knows.

Days and days go by without seeing him, I know he’s thinking about me, for sure, but he doesn’t want to show me his real feelings. Maybe there’s something about me he’s afraid of.

We make a lunch date and, as always, he does show up forty-five minutes late. Somehow my irritation starts to disappear just with the sound of his voice, saying that he feels intimidated by me, that I’m a celebrity and he feels like nothing in comparison, a ing lousy waiter in a crappy restaurant. He’s afraid I’ll find him boring, or stupid, maybe a loser. He’s terrified because the job makes him so depressed, he’s even sure he’ll make me sick by complaining about it. He wants to give me the best of himself that’s why he on