Sooyoung POV

She was a ball of fire: full of life and excitement and passion for so many different things, exuding it in her devilish smile and her loud laugh and the spark behind her eyes. She was so intense, so spontaneous and exuberant and alive.

She was a ball of fire, and I was a tattoo artist afraid of commitment and needles. She thought that was so stupid. I was supposed to “be my own canvas,” as she said, but I couldn’t, so instead she offered to be. She’d come in whenever she could, after her graveyard shifts, when I was still the only one left in my shop.

She’d walk through the door, and the whole shop would seem to brighten. All of her life and happiness and fire would light the place up after it felt cold and dull. She’d sit in my chair and brace herself during all the tattoos, even when they were in the most painful places. If she ever flinched or winced, she’d curse about it for hours after, like it was a personal failure. Sometimes she’d cling to my shirt with tight fists, but refuse to show anything on her face. She was stubborn. Beautifully stubborn.

I tattooed her ribcage once, probably the most painful spot on the body. She’d told me not to look when she peeled off her shirt, and I hadn’t, but then she grabbed my chin and turned my head back to face her. And I couldn’t help but look at her curves, the way her bra hugged her body and the red piercing she’d gotten in her belly button. I tried to be as quick as I could during the tattoo - one of an owl. I gave her a break after an hour or so, and gave her a beer from the fridge in the break room. She sipped it, and when I asked her how she was holding up, she pulled me to her and kissed me. She kissed me hard, with that same passion she put in everything she did. She was a ball of fire, and she was burning me up.

She moved away, out of our small town to the city for a job offer she needed to take. She’d told me the news after I’d finished a small piece on the back of her hand. Right before I closed up the shop, she kissed me longer than she’d ever kissed me before and told me she was leaving. I didn’t kiss her after that. Instead, I held her against me as tightly as I could for what must’ve been twenty minutes, and I never wanted to let her go. She wrapped me in her arms, hiding her face in my shoulder, and for a few moments she wasn’t a ball of fire. She was a dim, small thing that needed to be held and warmed and I tried so hard to make her light again. She left me that night with a little spark, a spark that I kept in my heart for the longest time.

She moved, but she didn’t leave my life. Every weekend she’d drive all the way back down, from her urban skylines to our rural fields, and she’d come into the shop and get more tattoos. When she ran out of space on her beautiful, soft skin, she brought a friend. After work she’d drag me to clubs, spend the night out with me until it was almost 4 AM. I’d let her sleep at my place and then she’d drive back in the morning.

On one of those mornings I walked her, bleary eyed, to her car, and I’d held her close and asked what we were. She told me she cared about me, a lot more than she’d ever cared about anyone before, and that she’d love to be my girlfriend but she’d miss me too much. I understood. I’d miss her too. Hell, I already missed her, every day I didn’t see her. But I didn’t care. I kissed her, and I told her softly that I needed to be with her. That I would do anything if it meant I could be with her. She smiled, a small, sad thing, and said no. No, that just wouldn’t work.

I pushed her away. It hurt too badly to see her. When she’d drive all the way up to visit, I’d have someone else do whatever tattoo she requested. It hurt too badly to be so close to her, to feel her soft skin and to catch glimpses of her warm eyes staring deeply into mine, knowing that we couldn’t be together that way. She came for a few more weeks, but then I didn’t see her anymore. And it hurt. After having such a bright, strong, passionate ball of fire in my life for so long, I’d gotten used to the warmth and the comfort, and now everything felt cold and dark and so impossibly lonely. I pushed her away. I was an idiot, and I pushed her away.

Months passed like this. Dreary, empty months. Nothing felt right anymore, not even my work, which I’d been so passionate about. I didn’t even care about the shop anymore. I’d come in late, changed the work schedule so other people would open because I didn’t have it in me to drag myself out of bed that early. I took solace in drinks. Late nights on the town, in those same clubs she used to drag me to. I’d find the hardest alcohol that made my chest burn because the warmth reminded me of her and how she used to make me feel.

It must’ve been four months before I saw her again. It was the dead of winter, and the cold I always felt inside of me only got worse with the frigid weather. I ducked inside a dive bar in town to take shelter from the snow, my mind clouded with thoughts of her as always. So when I saw familiar long, blond hair at the counter, I thought I was hallucinating. But I hadn’t had any drinks yet.

No, that was her. She was there, she was really there, looking gorgeous and bright as she always did. She was there, and she was all over some guy. She pulled him to the dance floor. I felt my stomach tie itself into knots of disgust when his hands roamed on her body, feeling absolutely sick. She was smiling and laughing her beautiful laugh, and I could tell from the way she walked that she was tipsy. She saw me. She must’ve felt my eyes on her. She saw, and she didn’t stop, she didn’t even flinch, but her face fell.

I felt warm again, but it was different. It was burning, a deep scorching fire of envy and longing and passion and it was going to melt me away if I didn’t do something about it. I parted through the crowd on the dance floor and I grabbed her wrist, tugging her away from the guy and into the cramped, one-stall bathroom. She didn’t protest in the slightest as I led her, as I shut and locked the door behind us, as I shoved her against the wall and kissed her so hard her teeth accidentally snagged my lip. She kissed me back with a fervor and a need I hadn’t expected.

She was a ball of fire and I could barely handle her heat. It made me sweat when her hot fingers slipped beneath my shirt and made me wince when she scraped her teeth against my neck.

I sold my shop to my senior employee, packed up my small apartment into two boxes, and made the three hour drive to move my stuff in with hers. Her place was unlike her. It was bland and without decoration, and she didn’t even have proper heating. We had to huddle under blankets and drink cocoa with each other, but the way my heart would beat at twice the speed whenever her arms were around me was more than enough to keep me warm.

My reputation got me a job easily at a tattoo place in the city, and her new job gave her more hours. She pushed herself a lot, it was a competitive field, and she wasn’t home too often. More times than I wished, I’d come home after a long shift to an empty apartment, be too sleepy to wait up for her, and she’d already be gone when I woke up in the morning. I missed her.

One day when I’d forced myself to stay awake, she came home and I tried to hug her. She pushed me off, saying she needed space, and I couldn’t help but tell her she’d had more than enough space. I missed her. I hadn’t moved all the way out there to catch a glimpse of her before she went to her shift in the morning. She snapped at me, she raised her voice and said things I won’t repeat, and the ball of fire I’d fallen in love with left singes on me that never went away. I stormed out and stayed at a motel, feeling lonely but not cold. If anything, I felt burnt.

We didn’t see each other anymore after that. I still went to work. Eventually I found a new roommate and split the rent on a small place on the other side of the city. Once he asked why I’d moved there, and all I knew to say was that I did it for a girl. He asked what had happened to the girl and I didn’t know what to tell him.

I still spotted her sometimes. When my coworkers and I would all go out for drinks after my shift was done. It was only on Sundays - the one day she had off. She’d sit at the bar, hunched over a drink, not looking at or talking to anyone. She pretended not to notice me. Even when I sat at her side one night, and stared at her, too worried to actually speak up. Her gaze flitted to me and I felt that spark in my chest again, if only for a fleeting moment. But I also felt those burns. The lingering burns that she’d left on my heart. I wondered if she even knew they were there, if she could see through the flames surrounding her at all times and if she cared what debris she left in her scorched path.

One night, when I was fixing my hair in the bathroom, the door was cautiously pushed open and she stepped inside. I froze. There were a few other girls in the bathroom, filtering in and out, washing their hands, trying to get their bearings after drinking too much too fast. But the two of us didn’t even notice them. We just stared at each other, not saying a word, although so much was somehow said with just our eyes. It was only then that hers started to glisten. And her lip quivered. And I saw her just... crumbling.

I clasped her hand and I brought her outside. As soon as we were away from other people, she fell apart. Her face buried into my shoulder, her tears stained my jacket, and her body felt fragile and weak and so unfamiliar.

She was a ball of fire and she burned herself out. I barely even recognized her when she was like this, so bleak and dim and soulless. Between the sobs, she told me. Opened up about things she never had before. About the pressure she put on herself to work as hard as she could, about how hard it was to admit how weak and vulnerable she really was, about how she almost couldn’t afford her apartment anymore and was worried she’d get evicted. I asked about the money problems, wondering where they’d come from, and felt my heart shatter when she told me it was because she’d spent too much on tattoos.

I told her that I loved her and she kissed me until I couldn’t think a single thought anymore. I wasn’t gonna let her go again.

That same night she dragged me to the only tattoo place that was open and held my hand as I got my first one. Her fire spread to me for those lingering hours, and I didn’t care about the consequences or the riskiness, I just did it. I got a flame - a small, tiny thing right along my hip. She brought me back to her apartment and kissed all around the sensitive skin there.

She was a ball of fire that took time to reignite. She needed patience and comfort and unconditional affection, all of which i was more than ready to give. Eventually she seemed more like her old self, more like that girl who wandered into my tattoo shop on a whim and changed everything for me. The more time I spent with her, the more of her fire I felt in my own life. It made me lively and excitable, it drew people to me, it made everything brighter - even the most dull and average of things. It made me appreciate life more than I ever had before, made me cherish every moment I spent at her side, every moment I knew she was only a phone call away.

She was a ball of fire and she didn’t tend to think things through. So when she barged into my work in what should’ve been the middle of her shift, got down on one knee, and asked me to marry her, I could hardly believe it. I asked her if she was serious, not knowing what else to say. And she told me with utmost honesty that I was the light of her life, and she just couldn’t imagine her future without me in it.

She was an unforgettable, chaotic, beautiful ball of fire, and she was mine.

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