A month later...

It didn’t take very long for him to notice her standing beside him. He instinctly wanted to get closer to her, to hold something of hers just so he could feel one inch of her skin against an inch of his own, but something was stopping him. He didn’t know what so he just took another smoke from the cigarette he held limply in one hand.

She continued to not say anything.

He sneaked a peek, subtle as he may with them standing just a few steps away and noticed first how the space between her eyebrows were scrunched up. He didn’t comment on it but he knew something was on her mind. Instead, he gave himself the pleasure of just staring at her face. She looked beautiful, as usual, but even more so under the lighting of the streetlamp beside him.

“How many people would give limbs and organs to be able to do this,” he wondered to himself as he let his gaze slide down the bridge of her nose to her lips and then just stop and lodged his gaze there. His brain starts to supplied him with some colorful  imaginations.

“My eyes are up here.” She lifted her eyelids, barely, but didn’t bother to turn around to acknowledge him. The frown on her face deepened but still she doesn't give off any signs of a further elaboration on the subject.

And so they waited.

Patience really wasn’t his strong suit but he tried anyway. You get an A for effort, right? He supported the weight of his body next to the streetlamp but this was made harder with his jellifying legs. He probably had too much to drink already. Although in his mind, he didn’t quite remember much except for a hell lot of random dancing and alright, maybe a few drops of soju, but that’s all.

“Hey, you-“

The sentence ended with her holding him under his armpits to keep him from falling head first onto the cold, hard pavement. He felt it then, the alcoholic rush in his system, clearly proving once again that he thought too highly of his own alcohol tolerance. Everything was a blur but he thought he heard someone say something and then a piercing nothingness.

‘I am moving, yet still motionless.’

He realized he was being oxymoronic the same time a nanosecond-flash of a memory passed through his brain. A memory of someone saying: “I am constantly moving, its just that I don’t get anywhere……” It was a guy who said that to him but he couldn’t remember exactly who. Perhaps it was plainly his subconscious giving him a sticky note reminder on the state of his life. 

It didn’t matter, not really. His head hurt too much for anything to matter honestly.

All the while this happened, Yoona carefully combed through his hair. Feeling her fingers in his hair, sweeping them ever so gently across his forehead, some of the baseless anxiety inside of her dissolved. She  then noticed how the root of his hair had already turned back to black, close to the crown of his head. “What are you thinking of?”

“The dichotomy of good and evil.” The reply slipped out carelessly-as always, something unexpectedly insightful but completely off topic when his mind was on something else- as he turned his head around to get a good look of the surrounding space. Black leather seats and weird odour. They were in taxi. And his head was in her lap. He turned back around to look at her, staring into her eyes this time because he knew how important that was to her, "And the resolution on world peace, you?”

She played along nicely. “I was just thinking about how there are purple bananas in Africa.”

It took him a second longer than needed to process the information. The alcoholic daze not yet a distant memory for him. “That’s not true,” he raised one eyebrow skillfully, daring her to oppose him.

 “Yeah, that’s why I didn’t say it out loud. Duh.” The tone of her voice was carefully measured so as to not let anything else seeped through. But still she couldn’t control the feeling slowly crawling itself up her oesophagus- something slippery and all-encompassing. She pulled back her hand.

The quiet buzzing noise from the radio played on in its own mindless symphony while the taxi engine let out a sound of distress every other minute. It was these white noises that accompanied the quiet silence that drew out between them.

Soundlessly, he grabbed hold of her hands and she let him. He played with her fingers mindlessly-testing their stretchability, their flexibility-all the while, making weird, goofy faces at her. She knew what he was aiming at but she decidedly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of achieving his goal.

She averted her gaze to the window, though she didn’t demand her hand back.

She thought he had given up after a moment of inaction from his side but then she felt him. He’s hands trailing up the sides of her body. Palms down, skin burning. She saw the the gleam in his eyes and then- uncontrollable laughter.

Within a minute, she returned the attack. Her fingers easily finding his weak spot-on the base of his neck.

“What-are you-“

“You little-“

“Madam, where in the world are you touching-“

“Stop it-“

  Her stomach hurt from laughing so much and having his elbow jabbed her a few times-incidentally or maybe, probably, not-and she couldn’t feel her legs. Both of their limbs were tangled up in the limited space as the tickle fight goes on. She felt his breath close to her face, smelling of alcohol and looked up to see his head hovering just a few inches above hers.

He was laughing and she felt his hand slithered alongside the length of her body and ultimately, it came into contact with bare skin. Just under the hemline of her shirt, near her hipbones. He grabbed hold of her, stilling her body.

Everything turned quiet; fragile. She didn’t know how to tell the difference.

Slowly like a simmering pot of boiling water, she felt this nameless urgency inside her. As she slowly examined every corners of his face, the memories from a few hours earlier flooded her. He, dancing to the music, losing his mind to alcohol, climbing up onto a table with a confidence of rock star, the swooping leap and then even more memories. From nights similar to this one.

“Hey,” he was whispering, his fingers splayed out on one side of her face, “hey,   what’s wrong?”

What’s wrong? I am revoltingly in love with you.

“Thinking,” she had to look away, “one of human’s greater accomplishment.”  

Like a kite in the wind; more a sort of need than actual wanting at times but always, always desperate and unattainable.

“Jeez, stop thinking so much women.” He flicked her on her forehead. He was trying to change the somber atmosphere, knowing well enough he couldn’t.

I need him like air, but air is an element of freedom and so…

I breathe in harder.  

He had to try. He kissed her, on the lips, near her collarbone, on the side of her neck. Forceful and aggressive.

This triggered the restless frenzy in her again. She imagined herself in a race and seeing the other competitors ran pass her, the urgent feeling strikingly similar to the one she’s feeling right now. For a split second she let herself imagined it hanging in the air, slowly solidifying between them, not anymore a mere thought but something either side could weaponized against the other. She had to say it, those three words.

 Always,  she thought, the most important of things, always, ride on three words.

It should be a cliché.

 “Let’s-“ he kissed her on her lips, “break up.”