There was Taejoon, facedown on the floor, his head on the rug next to eomma's bed, his legs splayed so I had to step over them on my way out of the bathroom.

There was Shinhye, standing over him, her tennis racket dangling casually from her right hand like she'd just finished a match.

And there was Jaehwan, kneeling, holding Taejoon's wrists up behind his back so he couldn't move. Blood was trickling out of Taejoon's ear. I guess Shinhye had hit him with the full strength of her serve.

Taejoon twisted his neck to try to look up. "Shinhye?" he said. "Are you there?"

"Get down," Jaehwan said to him, his voice fierce but clipped, as if he didn't want to waste his energy on someone as unworthy as Taejoon. Taejoon put his head down. "I've already called 911," Jaehwan said to me. "We just have to watch him for, like, one minute, and then the police will be here."

"Shinhye," I said. I think I was whispering. "He had a big knife."

"It wasn't a knife," she said. "It was this." She held up a flashlight. A silver one.

"You thought I had a knife?" Taejoon's voice was muffled.

"No one is talking to you," Shinhye said.

"How did you know I was here?" Taejoon asked.

"Because you're a moron," Jaehwan said.

"And because when I called my house to say I'd got to Suzy's all safe and sound, my mom said Hyun Bin had called looking for me," Shinhye added.

"And you guessed it was me? See, you do think about me."

"I haven't spoken to Hyun Bin since grade one. I happen to know that he is terrified of me. He would never call."

"Maybe he would," Taejoon said.

"Well, he didn't say so when I asked him," she went on. "So I drove on over to check things out. And I found Jaehwan in front yard."

"You've been following me around for days," Jaehwan said. "So when I saw your car parked around the corner from Suzy's, I was like, Nope, not good."

"You're the new boyfriend," Taejoon said. 

Shinhye and Jaehwan both said, simultaneously, "Shut up."

"I just wanted to talk to you," Taejoon said, straining to lift his head again to address Shinhye directly.

Jaehwan pulled Taejoon's arm up a little higher. "She didn't say you could speak."

Shinhye looked at me over Jaehwan's shoulders and Taejoon's sprawled body, something about the insanity of the moment cutting through the wall that had risen between us. She looked down at her racket. Then back up at me. "I'm really sorry," she said.

The police arrived. Two men in uniform took Taejoon out of the room, and a female cop and a male cop with red hair asked Shinhye, Jaehwan, and me all sorts of questions about who lived here, where our parents were, how we knew taejoon, what had happened. Jaehwan's parents were the first to come, and the cops took Jaehwan with them into another room.

Alone with Shinhye, I started to cry. I just stood there, sobbing, my arms at my sides, the tears streaming down my face, the hiccups following unchecked.

Shinhye took me by the shoulders and held me still. And I finally told her. I told her everything. About Jin. About the roof, the kiss, the dance, the headaches, the dreams. I honestly don't know if she understood a single word. I was blubbering. I was talking fast. I was shaking. I was going out of order. I was skipping important parts,

But she was nodding. She was looking at me with her calm, even gaze.

"I don't know what to do," I said when I'd reached the end. "I've lost you. I've lost myself. I had a chance to make a call." I was whispering now. "When Taejoon was here. And do you know what I did? I called Jin. Not 911."

"Oh, wow," Shinhye said. "That was really dumb."

"Yeah," I said. "It was."

"Look," she said. I'd sat on eomma's bed and Shinhye bent down so she could look into my eyes. "I'm sorry. This was my fault. This whole year -" She paused, then sat down too. "I wish it had never happened."

"Taejoon was scary" was all I could say. "He scared me."

"We shouldn't have lied to each other, or hidden things." She set her jaw, letting me know she meant it. I believed her. She wrapped me into a hug until the shaking stopped.

"Where's Woobin?" I said, wondering if she'd left him waiting in the car outside.

"Woobin is over," she said. She looked around the room. There was blood on the carpet from taejoon's ear - a stain about the size of a quarter. She stood her racket up so the bottom grip covered the stain. "Now just stand like this," she said, gesturing for me to take the racket from her, to lean on it like cane. "Can you hold this position for, like, ever?" she asked.

And for some reason, we both found that to be totally funny. We laughed together so hard we ended up having to sit down on eomma's bedroom floor, waiting for our shared hysteria to die down. It took a very long time.

˭̡̞(◞⁎˃ᆺ˂)◞*✰

Shinhye's parents arrived, shaking hands with the female cop. We were all in the living room, and Shinhye and I were drinking juice boxes that the cop had brought with her.

Shinhye was being interviewed by the officer when Jin burst in. I watched him looked around worriedly, taking in the flashing lights of the cop car coming through the windows, the radio static emitted from the walkie-talkie of the officer interviewing Shinhye.

"Suzy?" he said wonderingly when our eyes met.

I could only shake my head.

"What's going on?"

And I explained, watching his face tighten as I told the story. At the end, I thought of a question that had been hovering in the back of my head since he'd arrived: I hadn't called him yet to explain all of this, so what was he doing here?

"You did call me," he said. "About forty-five minutes ago."

"But the line went dead," I said.

"Yeah," he said. "But I guess I knew it was you."

I gave him a questioning look. "No one else ever calls me that late," he added.

Which was true. We both slept with phones in our rooms, the phone next to our pillows in case the other called late.

but still. "You knew to come?"

He hung his head, looking embarrassed of all things. And then he admitted that he didn't know something was wrong. It was more like he felt it. "It made no sense," he explained, shrugging. "But I just didn't feel right."

"Really?" said the cop interviewing Shinhye, who had taken a break from questioning in order to listen to Jin's story. "That's all it took for you to decide your girlfriend was in danger? Sounds like you could get work as a psychic."

Jin didn't say anything. But he sat with me while I told the police about seeing Taejoon at 7-Eleven, about the phone calls, the jewelry.

The whole time they were talking to me, Jin was jiggling his left leg in a way that reminded me of the Jin from before - anxious, impatient. Was the part of him I missed the part of him that understood danger? That was afraid?"

"Jeez, Suzy," he said when we were alone in the living room, waiting for eomma and Vivian, the cop filling out paperwork in the kitchen. He ran his hand through his hair. "Think of what could have happened. I can't believe I didn't kick the crap out of that guy months ago."

"I never thought he'd come here," I said. My teeth were chattering again. The blanket eomma had knit a long time ago lay on the back of the sofa. I wanted it, but somehow the idea of reaching all the across the couch seemed overwhelming. The cop had told Jin to look for signs of shock. I couldn't remember what they were.

"Can I -" I couldn't remember the name of the thing I wanted. I pointed. "Can I -" I said again.

Jin looked behind him. He pointed. "This blanket?"

I nodded. Nodding seemed to be the only way to make the chattering of my teeth stop. Or maybe it made the chattering worse. I couldn't tell.

Jin picked up the blanket. He took one look at me and, instead of passing it over, stood, unfolded it, and wrapped it around me like you would wrap a towel around a little kid just out of the bath. He turned me into a blanket burrito.

"I feel like you, that time when you were nine, after you got out of the ice and climbed into bed in your wet underwear."

"Yeah, and you know I got sick after that. It didn't occur to me to take off my underwear."

"You'd know better now," I said. My teeth were chattering so much I had to repeat myself twice to make him understand me, let alone get the joke.

Once he finally did understand, he raised his brows twice, in quick succession, the equivalent of a wink, acknowledging my lame attempt at humor. It was his gesture that made me laugh even through my chattering teeth.

"I know a lot better now," he said.

"Ooh, baby, tell me." I bit down and pressed my lips closed. "Tell me more about your nine-year-old underwear."

Jin laughed, the kind of laugh where the person isn't just being nice to you, or friendly - it wasn't a social laugh. It was the laugh of someone who can't help it, who you have caught off guard with a joke.

And there was something about the fact that I could make him laugh that undid me.

"Soo?" he said. "Suzy?" He was holding my face in his hands. I'd started crying again, and he wiped away my tears with his thumbs. "What's wrong? Why are you crying?" he said. "Are you scared?"

"No," I answered. "I'm crying because it's so perfect."

"Huh?"

I couldn't explain. As with the blanket, I couldn't think of the words for the things."

"I don't want it to end."

"it won't," he promised. He pulled my face toward his. He kissed me on the forehead, then on the lips. Then we leaned toward each other, our foreheads touching, the tip of my nose grazing the tip of his. Like the time before, the time Jin no longer remembered.

"We don't need to let it end," he said, and I tried to believe him. I tried to believed that Jin was Jin. That he was mine in just the way I wanted him to be.

"Promise it will never changed," I said, and Jin promised it never would.

But then, of course, it did.