(KWB)

There are things that are always right, and there are things that are always wrong - that was my belief until one day I found I was no longer sure of it. It was the day when I realized my eyes were following him like how a man's eyes would follow a woman.

That was the beginning of my desperate attempt to remain right. It was a tough fight and many times I thought I would fail, just like the night that happened one year ago - that night when he thought I was sleeping.

I had vaguely heard a voice whispering, but my heavy lids refused to lift. Hovering in the borderland of sleep, my mind had partially drifted to the beginning of a dream. A soft, gentle touch on my lips pulled me back from the threshold of consciousness. Half awake, half asleep, as if through a sheer curtain, the cushiony contact filled my senses with a delicate scent... like berry, like champagne. It was a kiss. A light one... still, a kiss. And there was no one else in the apartment but him.

I was shocked. My mind was perplexed by confusion, my heart tangled in emotions. Was I skirting between dream and reality? Was the kiss a manifestation of my secret desire or a truth I was too meek to face? That kiss... it overwhelmed me with happiness... and engulfed me with fear - fear of what was going to become of me. I did not open my eyes. If it was a dream I didn't want it to end, if it was real... if it was real? If it was real... if it was real... did he... like me too? Did he notice that I no longer saw him as a friend? Did he... feel the same? ... But such attractions were wrong. It was not normal.

Because both our IDs boldly state a simple, '1'. A mere number, that clutched me breathless in my fate.*

That night I felt his lips, my painful struggles became a desperate battle. I had to resist pulling him into my arms. I had to stop myself from jumping up and asking him, did he feel the same. But I was not ready for an answer, because I was not prepared to give one.

From that day on, it took everything for me to look away on the few occasions he slept over... each time I ended on the couch while he lay on my bed. I was not able to sleep for the whole night as my eyes kept straying back to him, my mind filled with thoughts that should never be. His innocent eyes and laughters, knowing nothing except his dreams, got sullied when they reached my sinful mind. They became drunken eyes, and honeyed lips... my dearest friend, he had tempted me without realizing it, he had seduced me without any guilt.

I... wanted to wrap him tightly in my arms. But I couldn't.

I poured out all my wrongful desires for him into my paintings, all the while tormenting myself with that kiss on his birthday.

It turned out that I was wrong about that kiss on that night. Dead wrong. Regardless of his reasons for doing it, it was not due to any feelings for me. Because not many months after, he found love. He began to date. I was a pathetic fool for thinking he could have felt the same way I did. That kiss... it was nothing but a dream. Or a reality that meant nothing to him. Men do it. We do it all the time. Because we can attach such acts to nothing. He is, of course, a man. It was the realization that the kiss meant nothing, that made me aware I had truly lost the fight. I téased him about his newfound love, but inside I was burning with jealousy. I was going crazy. I lost the tussle against my feelings just when I came to know he had none for me.

I had told myself that my attraction to him was wrong, that it wasn't love. Yet the moment he had a girl I was crumbling inside. We modeled together, acted together, became famous together, and now he was embarking on a separate path with a girl. The bitterness! How it was eating me! I turned ón my charms to attract a girl many guys had their eyes on. Maybe, that was my last attempt to stay in the right. Maybe, that was to show him I was never too far behind him. As fate would have it, the agency called me in with a proposal - that was how I started seeing Mi Na. It didn't matter if it was real or not. After all, what was real had become fake. In the very least, Mi Na could distract me from him and the other girl.

Dating Mi Na wasn't able to change a thing. I continued painting. I kept fighting until this evening when he found my studio unlocked. Right there and then, the battle was over. I tried to tell him how I felt... only to be taken as a joke. He thought I was messing around with him. He thought I was trying to get him into trouble with his girl. Does he really love her? Does he really love her that much? It was a humiliating defeat. I didn't want to accept my feelings for a man, yet here I am, embroiled in the bitter juices of jealousy.

I should have felt relieved that he didn't suspect me and thought I was only pulling a prank on him. But instead, I was bitter. I was bitter that he only had her in his mind, and my confession was a joke on him. I was not even able to hold him back for another second. He walked out of my place, as fast and sudden as he had appeared at the door of the studio. He was not even ruffled, unlike what's going through the useless skunk between my ears.

I sat in the dark for hours, consumed by an awful feeling as though I'd suddenly lost everything. That moment when he saw my paintings, I thought I would throw caution to the winds and bravely choose the other path - the path that is less trodden, the bladed path that is not acceptable in our society. Now, it's clear I should just continue to be normal. Normal I once was, now I should just go back to one. The choice was taken from my hands. There was never a duet. I mean nothing to him.

Exhausted, I can only lift up the heaviest armor and don my nakéd self with a metal cover.

I reach for the phone that's been smeared with paint and wipe it clean before I dial her number.

"Mi Na, let's get married."