Interlude: the HIM who belongs to HER.

"Jeon Jungkook, you are mine."

Perhaps in his twenty-seven years of life, there was not a single living thing that could stare Jeon Jungkook in the eye and utter such an outrageous statement. And yet—there I had stood that night, eyebrows knitted into a slight frown as my lips moved against his shirt, my smaller body bound by my own force against his as I said such a thing.

Who was I, that I could so unwaveringly claim to own Jeon Jungkook? That, having heard my claim, even Jungkook himself would not move to refute me?

I later worried that I had overstepped myself greatly.

I knew that Jungkook disliked more than anything the idea of being restricted and controlled, because I remember quite clearly the day Jungkook and I first sat in this house together, a marked paper between us, a purple ballpoint in my hand and a black executive in his. To the both of us at the time, marriage was a contract—an exchange of convenience, and a legal agreement much more than it was an emotional one—of which a bolded rule among others regarded personal freedoms. While some issues—such as and conception, family responsibilities and outward status—required the two of us to work consensually with an agreed plan of action, it was made evident that anything pertaining to strictly personal matters would be respected as such, and therefore continue to remain at individual disposal even after marriage.

I brought myself to apologize to Jungkook for my conduct one evening, when he had come home earlier than usual, having undertaken a week's worth of a break from laboratory tests to oversee the progress of some of his corporate projects. His latest research efforts had taken him away from home frequently in the past month, and though I responded by busying myself with my own matters, such as a few renovations to my father's older developments and the like, I had felt his frequent absence settle strangely in my chest, and I was glad to see his face beside me in the early mornings again, tracing that familiar slope of his nose with my finger before he would awake.

"Why are you sorry?" had been Jungkook's reply as he sat across from me at the dinner table. Then, seeing my shocked silence, he clears his throat and uses his chopsticks to place a piece of meat in my bowl, adding pointedly, "Yerim, there's nothing wrong with what you said that night."

I always liked to eat my meals in a vague order that always began with meat, a quirk which Jungkook had adeptly learned to take advantage of when he'd announced he was determined to induce in me the habit of a healthy diet. He often added to my plate on his own accord what he thought I lacked, so much that sometimes I would not have to extend my chopsticks past my own bowl. In my own right, I wasn't a picky eater—I just didn't grow up caring for the concept of a balanced meal, though I could see Jungkook's doctorate, despite being nowhere near dietetics, had internalized in him a stubborn motto of Bradbury's The Illustrated Man: "Too much of anything isn't good for anyone", and neither is too little of it.

"It's how the body functions." Jungkook had said, "The cell lives on a plane of balance and order, wherein everything from osmolarity to its demise—apoptosis—is essential to the wellbeing of the tissue and in turn the organism..."

"Okay, I just don't want you to get the wrong idea." I say, picking up the meat with my chopsticks. "Like I said, I respect your own decisions and choices. That night, I just meant to say that you can open up to me sometimes. You're mine in the sense that you're my fiancé and my best friend—I want to have a decent part in your life, and that really just means I need to know what's going on, even though I won't go farther than give you advice—and only then, it's if you ask for it."

Jungkook seems amused as he watches me eat, his own rice untouched. "Actually, when you fell asleep that night, I called my mother to ask her for advice—" he admits, interrupting into laughter when he sees my expression morph into a horrified scowl.

My eyes widen as I sputter, "Jeon Jungkook, what in the world did you tell her?" I point my chopsticks at him threateningly, inwardly withering like a plant in saltwater.

Jungkook shrugs. "I asked her what I should do if you were ever upset again. My mother said, 'Jungkook-ah, when a woman gifts you with the rest of her life, do not take her for granted. From what I can see, Yerim is a brave girl. Sometimes she can be very strong, but there are times where she will also be hurt and tired. You must give her yourself to the best of your ability, protecting her—not because she needs you to protect her, but because you are a part of each other. From now on, everything that has to do with her also concerns you.'" he recites to me patiently, while serving me a chopstick's full of soybean sprouts. "So, Yerim—you're right. I am yours, because everything about me belongs to you, just like you also belong to me."

My mouth falls open before I self-consciously shut it again, mumbling vaguely to myself: "Kim Yerim, Kim Yerim...look what you've done..."

—

Speaking of Bradbury, it was inevitable in my college years that I would come to read Fahrenheit 451, in which was written, "books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Caeser's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, 'Remember, Caeser, thou art mortal.' Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, knowing all the cities of the world; we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for...are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book."

During my time with Jungkook, I had slowly begun to neglect my usual genre of thriller mysteries and philosophical fiction—the last of which I had read being Jung Yoojung's The Origin of Species—and set out to read novels concerning marriage and romance. What Is Your Wish? by Yuko Ohnari joined my shelf, along with a myriad of other romantic titles—5 Centimeters Per Second by Makoto Shinkai, We'll Meet One Day by Chae Sajang, and The Waxing and Waning of the Moon by Shogo Sato among them, wedged between The Notebook and Jane Eyre.

Whether or not Jungkook took notice of such a shift I'm not sure, but I suspect one or the other when he shows up at my office on Thursday, unannounced.

"The lobby is in a crisis." Joohyun informs me through the phone, which I balance on my shoulder as I type single-handedly at my keyboard.

"A crisis?" I frown, speaking through the pen clutched in between my teeth. I switch tabs with a click of my mouse, expanding the calendar at the bottom of my screen. "I don't see any event scheduled for the lobby today. HR's job fair isn't until next week."

"Well," Joohyun begins, seemingly out of breath as she explains, "Um, Mr. Jeon is here."

Oh.

"Why didn't the front desk bring him up?" I ask, logging off of my computer and tossing my pen inside its container behind my placard.

"They said he insisted on waiting until you finished work." Joohyun says, sounding a bit flustered.

"I see." I smooth down my skirt as I stand, grabbing my purse and walking out of my office in swift, long steps.

Jungkook appears before me as soon as the elevator doors open, scrolling through his phone as he sits in one of the blue sofas of Morpheus's extravagant front lobby. Despite the fact that he'd told me he wasn't going to work today, he was still dressed formally, white collared shirt slimming to the thin circumference of his waist—a measurement solely obscured by the handsome jacket of his pinstriped black suit—and raven hair parted to show a sliver of his forehead, black tie around his neck.

"Jungkook?" I call out to him as I step out of the elevator briskly. "Is something wrong?"

He grins as I make my way towards him, watching the way I examine him from top to bottom with thorough amusement. I was adamant I would find a hint of disarray, a telling sign of just what strange wind had blown Jungkook into my office today, more bewildered than anything else.

"Nothing's wrong." he assures me gently as he stands from his seat, tall stature looming over me so suddenly that it almost makes me dizzy.

"You're not hurt? Nobody's hurt? The house is okay?" I question, still dubious as I eye him first in suspicion, then eye myself in the same manner.

Even though we had gotten engaged two months ago, Jungkook had never once stepped foot in Morpheus, mostly because I got off work earlier than he did, and was already home by the time he left his laboratory. I drove myself to work as well, meaning that there was little need for him, if at all, to be present at my family's corporate headquarters.

I check the date on my phone again. "Is there something I'm forgetting?" I ask him as I stand in front of him awkwardly, blinking in utter confusion.

"No, you're not forgetting anything." he chuckles, to my greater perplexity. "I just had the day off, and figured we could have a date today."

I stare at him blankly for a moment, utter confusion spread across the lines of my face. "So, a date." I repeat numbly, failing to register a single word of his.

"Yerim, you seem surprised." he observes as I tap my foot in a faze.

Surprised was an understatement.

"No—" I shake my head, "It's just, you've—ah—caused quite the commotion among my interns." I glance pointedly over at the ever-growing crowd of young men and women mingling about the lobby, whispering to each other in frenzied clusters. They all turn their backs suspiciously as soon as they see me look over, pretending to be preoccupied.

Jungkook grins sheepishly, two dimples finally surfacing near the corners of his lips.

I resist the urge to cover my face in my hands when I hear a flurry of squeals in the distance.

"Wanna know how long it took my entire company to figure out about us?" I sigh.

Jungkook raises an eyebrow. "It took my employees a day or two." he divulges.

"It took mine forty-five minutes." I say, before tugging his sleeve twice with a giddy wink. "C'mon, let's go have that date then. I assume you'll be paying."

—

Jungkook's explanation is quite simple: we had barely seen each other when he was busy, and with our parents recently having met and approved of an auspicious wedding date, there were a few points to be discussed where a fancy dinner and champagne couldn't hurt.

"I want a small wedding." I say as we walk beside each other afterwards, light gusts of wind weaving through my hair. "The private kind, in someone's backyard, maybe. Nothing too expensive, you know."

The grandeur of Seoul spread before us in the distance beyond Dongdaemun Gate, the small, winding path before us as much a part of the city as the roaring, busy roads in the distance. Sometimes I think it takes a view like this to understand that we are one, a patchwork of a seamless quilt, from Itaewon to Gangnam, eclectic as we are—we build upon what the generation before us build today; below us hum the ancestor's bones, half-asleep.

"The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time," wrote Samuel Beckett, "but takes place every day."

"I wouldn't mind that." Jungkook nods, the dim lighting of the evening obscuring a bit of his face in muted shadows. "Honeymoon?" he then asks, as I thread my hand through his. He frowns at how cold my hand is, taking our conjoined hands and placing it into his pocket, warming it for me.

"I'm not sure." I murmur, "Somewhere peaceful, like Switzerland, I think. Or, I know most couples head for the beach, but our wedding is in December, and that means we'd have to go to the Southern hemisphere—Australia? I heard koalas can scream really loudly..."

Jungkook reaches over and pinches my nose in response. "We don't need to go to Australia to hear a koala scream. We have one right here..."

I can barely bring myself to glare at him through my laughter, and that's when I hear it—he begins to laugh with me, a sound that bubbles a warm feeling through my veins, up my throat and into the evening sky. It reaches far beyond the Heunginjimun Gate, into the streets dipped with red by the sunset; it disturbs the beetle on the leaf on the tree miles and miles away, as it dries its wings for the last hour. The modernist poet, T.S. Eliot wrote:

"Do I dare 
Disturb the universe? 
In a minute there is time 
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

Do I dare?

"I'll be happy anywhere with you, Kookie." I tell him quietly. "Maybe you don't see it, but I don't have that many wishes...This world is so big and lonely, I think I'm just grateful to have met you, to be close with you like this."

We reach Ogansugyo bridge, colorful walls of every nameable hue stretching down the path like the scales of a fish.

Jungkook falls silent beside me, and that's when I know I need to tell him. At a place like this, at a time like this, when my heart swells, as if through its steady beat it has told me where it belongs—like a seashell when you hold it to your ear, and it whispers of the ocean.

"Jungkook, I know what you're scared of..."

Something flashes over his eyes, when he hears my words. He knows, too.

"You're afraid that you might lose someone again, and how much it'll hurt to lose them. You don't believe that anything good can come out of it, so you refuse to believe that whenever it happens, it's anything more than chemicals and coincidence." I say, my voice shaking slightly. But I am strong. I continue. "That's why you asked me not to love you. But more importantly, that's why you asked yourself not to love me."

Our steps stop on the pavement. Everything is still, still but not silent, roaring in my ears from all directions, blood and traffic and words and night. Two people pass us, another lifetime, another fate.

"But look at me, Jungkook...I'm right here." I plead, "Touch me, hold me, I'm not going away. Can you hear me breathing at night beside you? Can you see my chest rising and falling, this face right in front of you? Can you imagine that breathing labored, this face full of wrinkles and freckles and framed by white hair? I can't promise you I'll be with you until that image of old age becomes a reality, but I can promise you I'm here, right now, living and real. You said it yourself—we belong to each other, you to me and I to you, and if that's the case, have you ever thought about giving it a chance?"

The wind is colder than I remember now. It hurts my eyes because somewhere along my hushed words of passion, tears have cornered my sight, blurring the cityscape into spilled watercolor.

"I thought about it." he says, after a moment. His voice is soft as he turns to face me, eyes full of an emotion I can't read, the last rays of sunlight spilling across his face. He takes his hand and places it on my cheek, the warm contact of his palm seeping into my skin as he stares at me, conflicted.

"The truth is, I don't know how I feel right now. There are things that I feel that make sense and don't make sense," he confesses, his hand falling back to his side. "I'm happy whenever I'm with you. I miss you when I'm busy, and it hurts me whenever you're upset because of me. You're right, I'm scared, Yerim, but if it's what you want, I'm willing to try." He doesn't waver as his gaze meets mine. "But we have to promise each other, to trust each other through all of this."

This isn't victory that fills me now, every crevice of my soul and body. Victory is oftentimes empty and inseparable from sacrifice—this is hope, this is sheer elation that courses through me as I blink back my tears: "Okay." I say, bravely. "If one of us breaks this promise, then the other has the choice to separate."

Jungkook nods.

"Then, this can be our first date." I wipe the corners of my eyes before stepping back and extending my hand. "Nice to meet you, Jeon Jungkook. Let's get to know each other again, on different terms."

—

The conversation about travel, later, reminds me of an important detail.

"Oh, my college roommate is coming back to Seoul in three days." I recall with a joyful clap of my hands on way back home. "I'm picking her up from the airport when her flight lands."

"I'll still be on a break by that time—I can go with you, that way there'll be an extra hand to carry bags." he offers as he parks the car.

I accept, and we walk together up towards the front door, where Jungkook and I both seem to pause uneasily.

"Jungkook," I say as I wave my hand at him, gesturing for him to bend down.

"Lower?" he asks with a frown when I continue to flap my hand, his legs already waning slightly to my instruction. Obediently, he lowers his body again when I nod, so that on my tippy-toes, my face is level with his.

I don't completely understand the feeling in my gut at the moment.

I just know that it's there, and that my heart wants the same thing my body does, too.

Even if it doesn't change things—even if I'll regret it in hindsight.

As I lean forward slowly, our faces become closer centimeter by centimeter, until even in my peripheral vision the world is a jarring blur. All I can see is him, those dark, dark eyes of his shadowed by my reflection, which stare back at me in curiosity.

But before I can tilt my head—before I can close my eyes and feel my eyelashes flutter shut, he closes the short gap between us.

His lips are soft and warm as they touch mine briefly and firmly, with just the right amount of gentleness, purposeful and tentative all the same. His eyes are closed, his sparse eyelashes visible against his cheeks.

"Jungkook..." I murmur his name when he steps back from me slowly, confusion and exhilaration combining strangely in my voice.

"It was our first date, Yerim." he smiles down at me shyly. "Don't first dates usually end with a goodnight kiss?"

I gasp. "You...you read my romantic novels, didn't you?"

Jungkook reaches into his inner suit pocket, then, and takes out a small, leather-bound notebook. "I took notes." he announces, quite seriously.

I laugh, a ringing sound that becomes muffled as I gently pull him back down by the tie, my eyes closing as our lips connect again, innocently, playfully, I kiss him twice.

"Here's something to jot down," I say as we part, "Women do everything better."