That might have been the first time Umji has ever made a mistake, because I wasn’t falling.

“Umji-yah, I’ve fallen.”

“Hmmm… Figuratively and literally, I guess.”

* * *

Another week has passed and the closest I’ve gotten to Yerin was when all of us ate together. She barely went to trainings and workouts, neither did she join us during lag or leisure times. I’ve tried distracting myself and so, I went with Yuju and Eunha to their work a few times and visited the café more often than scheduled. I’ve spent more time out so I could leave the apartment and restrain myself from thinking about Yerin’s nearness that I could not bear to ignore anymore.

Two days before the first trial mission, Umji and I spent the whole afternoon drafting a plan of action. With all her fascination and proficiency with computers, she had this strange habit of using a sketchbook and a pencil when trying to organize her ideas. And that included mission strategies, training schedules, grocery lists, and a few pages dedicated to Eunha’s cocktail formulary. It’s amazing how the two actually enjoy tinkering with liquor; Eunha with the flavor and Umji with the chemical composition.

“SinB-yah, I have a sharpener in our room. Mind if you get it? It’s in a Mason jar by Yerin-eonnie’s bookshelf.”

I didn’t even wait for Umji to finish. Knowing that it might be my only chance to enter their room with an actual justifiable purpose, I almost jumped my way to the second floor. It was just my luck that Yerin was in the shower. I hoped she takes her time, so I could muse longer at her personal space.

I opened the door and spotted the bookcase immediately. If there was one thing that could instantly catch anyone’s attention, it was that shelf, not even her bed, which, if I may add, looked barely used.

I couldn’t help but be drawn toward the odd variety of her book collection. Unsurprisingly, there were books on Lymphoma and other malignancies, zoology, pharmacology, pathology and a bunch of other thick medical books. One may carelessly assume that she’s taking up a medical degree until they realize that also in the same shelf were references about the Korean constitution, ICC, CIA, FBI, forensics, criminology, political science and ballistics, and so, one starts questioning the initial supposition. And on the bottom shelves was an interesting plethora of widely varying fiction genre.

There’s mythology and some ancient literature. Hmm... That could explain her supernatural old maiden aura.

There’s Stoker, Poe and Plath which probably relates to her inner pandemonium and unsettling savagery.

Note to self: She has a weird selection of books.

But I was surprised she read Austen. I didn’t think she was the type who would dig Mr. Darcy.

There were old children’s books which I supposed were from when she was still learning how to read. And there was a few classical and contemporary fiction I’ve only heard of but not read.

Seeing The Little Prince made my hand automatically retract it from the neatly organized stack. In a second, I was already scanning the pages of familiar colorful illustration.

For Yennie. Saranghae. 1973.

1973?! This is probably among the first Korean translations of the book. She’d kill me if I damaged it. But who’s Yennie?

“I’m sure the apartment isn’t too big for you to get lost.”

. She showers damn fast. Yerin’s voice was like a pump of espresso and a gush of epinephrine, it really jumpstarts all my cells. I tried hard to keep calm and prevented myself from scurrying out of the room and hide behind Umji. With her tone, I couldn’t tell if she was upset, all I knew was that the last thing I wanted to witness was her going berserk about finding me there. Another shooting stint would probably give me a heart attack. That’s if I’m even lucky to not get shot.

Similar to a movie scene, she entered the room in her pink bathrobe, partially drying her hair with a matching-color towel and there I was caressing the spines of her books. My jaw dropped to the lovely sight. Of course, my mouth hung open without my prior knowledge. I can’t even control my own body parts when she’s around, her presence is causing them to rebel against me.

I swear I could hear even the pulsations in my brain but I was determined not to panic... and stutter.

“And if you’re looking for some vampire-themed literature, I’m not the, type who reads those.” I knew it was an inside joke since they called me the vampire behind my back because I always wore black and hid myself when we were outside during daytime. But I wasn’t sure if I should laugh.

“Ahh… I can see that. You’re just the type who reads nursery rhymes and do-it-yourself handguns.”

I was prepared to see her raise an eyebrow to my answer, but instead, she smiled for half a second and shook her head. Alright, I wasn’t sure about the smile. But I swear I saw the corner of her lips move up a millimeter or two. I’d take that any day for a smile.

However, my elated mood suddenly turned to panic when I saw her pull the sash of her robe. Is she going to disrobe in front of me? Has hell finally closed its doors and heaven is about to open?? I wasn’t fast enough to turn around or bury my head in the small book in my hand but I was quick enough to shut my eyes tightly but my hormone-swarmed mind still managed to imagine what I wasn’t seeing.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Ah… Uhh… ‘Coz you’re dressing up?” I answered.

“I’m already dressed up.” Her voice felt like she found my gentlemanly behavior weird.

“Oh…” I slowly opened my eyes. So slowly that I was prepared to close them again if ever I just misheard her. But she was right, she was dressed. “Ah, you were dressed under the robe?”

“You have a problem with that?”

“Ah... No! No! It’s just-” I could not believe we were having a conversation, an actual human conversation. I learned later on that she even brings a gun to shower just in case something happened and she was inside the washroom, which I didn’t find completely odd, considering her line of work.

I wasn’t aware of my hanging sentence and after a full minute of just standing there unconsciously watching her walk across the room back and forth while fixing herself,

“Are you going to finish your sentence?”

“Oh… I…” I had a small window of time to remember where I left off before it would all become awkward, so I blurted my first thought. “… like this book.” So. Freaking. Lame.

She turned to me with the same questioning look she had in the kitchen when I called her peculiar. “I can’t see how that relates to being dressed under a bathrobe.”

Mental facepalm. At that moment, I remembered what I was supposed to say but it was too late. “Not related but I like this book.” I just had to push it, no turning back. “I’m sorry I took it from the shelf. I was-” Wait, what was I doing in their room again? My mind was going through an on-and-off black out but fortunately, she cut me off.

“That’s fine, just don’t start talking about the fox or the rose.”

But I wasn’t.

“I was actually thinking about the boa constrictor.” As a matter of fact, I was, and that is my favorite part. I think I relate to that scene so much. “I just like the conflict about adults just not getting it sometimes.”

Yerin chortled but immediately stopped like she didn’t want to admit that she was amused by my weird choice. I was sure this time that I made her laugh and it was the best thing that happened to me in the past thirteen years.

* * *

Thirty minutes after SinB’s exile from the first floor, “It only takes a blind man to miss that Mason jar.” Umji thought as she made her way to their room only to halt by the door to the sound of SinB and her roommate talking. She smirked and walked slowly away just to sprint down the stairs when she heard Sowon’s impatient rollcall.

“Yah! Yerin! Eunha! SinB! Umji-yah! Dinner!”

“Hush, eonnie.”

“Why?”

“The two are making out.”

“WHAAAAT?!”

“Sowon-ah, what part of ‘hush’ needed explanation? All she meant was that the two are talking about books.” Eunha came down and grabbed a seat beside her ex-lover.

“Oh… I thought. But WOW, the vampire is finally having an actual conversation with Yerin?”

“Uh-huh, I heard through the walls, without the stuttering and all.”

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t culminate with a gunshot. I’d hate to scrub splatter off the walls and wash bloody bedsheets.”

* * *

I realized the next day that I unconsciously sat on Yerin’s bed while she remained seated on a stool by Umji’s bed. I don’t know where the audacity to have done that came from, all I know is that it wouldn't come by too often.

“Eonnie, besides your textbooks, why do all the other books look new?” I was certain she read all the books, she’s not the type who would collect just to display them. I glanced at her hands and thought maybe she just delicately held them as she read. But I didn’t miss to notice that even the thick ones didn’t have a single crease visible on their spines, which I surmised was impossible to prevent.

“Ah…” Her voice lingered. For a second, I held my breath to her tentative reply and I started thinking of another topic to open. “I buy books after reading them in the library or as e-books.”

“Oh.” I wanted to say it was a little bizarre but I didn’t want to be caught in another peculiar exchange.

“Weird, right?”

But I guess she knew what I was thinking.

“Depends on why you do that…?” Wow, I was starting to feel proud of how I was handling our conversation.

“I buy them if I liked them.” Her gaze drifted to her bookshelf and my eyes were suddenly drawn to her celestial face. The round tip of her nose, the small but conspicuous moles of her face, her lovely jaw line, and her lips I still couldn’t find the right word to describe with- I was definitely, unquestionably staring.

She continued slowly, “I mean because you only completely realize something after the fact. For books, it’s after the ending. It’s rare that I come to a conclusion of liking it while I’m still on it…”

All I could do was nod and hope that she doesn’t stop talking.

“… You may be enjoying it at the moment, the emotions it makes you feel, the mood and excitement, but you have to get to the end of it or at least reach the before you could say that you indeed liked it…”

My nodding stopped and I started swallowing the lump of saliva that kept forming at the back of my throat.

I fell silent and I guess my hormones took over my consciousness that I kept relating her innocent theory about book-buying with something intimate, ual even. Something you may be enjoying while it’s happening but the ending is the ultimate reason for liking it. It was coming to a point where everything she said .

“… And if I do, I buy it so I can go back to it… over and… over… Are you… okay?”

All of a sudden, I wanted to be a book.

I hope she buys me in the end.

I want her over and… over… me.

I didn’t know I was capable of thinking these things until Yerin. I shook off the heat to control the impending, inappropriate carnal uproar. “Oh, ah yeah, I’m okay. I was just thinking why I never thought of it that way.”

Actually, I kept on thinking what was causing my unusual thoughts. Was it the scent of her shampoo? The feel of her sheets? Or was it the time of the month where one’s raging hormones take centerstage?

“Ah… peculiar, right?”

“Now that I know why, it doesn’t seem like it is.”

“But there was one book I bought at the middle of reading it...” Yerin stood up and walked casually to snatch a book from the shelf. When she bent forward, with the hem of her shorts slightly rising up around her thighs, I almost stood up to the sight. “… I read a paragraph and fell in love with it.”

God, let me be that book!

She flipped it open to an assuredly memorized page, her spellbinding voice resonated in my mind as she unceremoniously started reading.

“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”⁺

Weight.

Definitely weight.

Your weight.

“It was just so beautifully written.”

"It really was...” It didn’t help that the passage had an intimate tone. My mind had ten thousand things after she finished reading, but one thought stood out. It was too intoxicating, and too eager to be heard that it escaped my mouth. “… Your voice is so beautiful…”

I bit my tongue after realizing the colossal madness that overcame me.

⁺ Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”

A/N: This is actually my favorite book.