Night had fallen over Nami Island and we had retired back to the pension, cooking dinner together, and then found ourselves curled up on the sofa in a comfortable silence. Leo was looking through his new phone; making me smile as he appreciated everything with the excitement I remembered feeling when I got my first mobile device. His reaction was pure and it made my heart sing for him, looking over his arm as he went into the photo gallery and began scrolling through the photos he had taken.

Earlier, he had demanded we go to the gardens again, to the patch where the flowers had been blooming wildly. I wasn’t sure if he had noticed how much I had liked them the first time around or not, but he had taken his first photo there, capturing all the bright colours of the wildflowers within the single frame. And then from there, he had mimicked my own haste in taking photos of the two of us together, filling his phone with a good amount of memories already.

Still scrolling through them, he stopped on one in particular, his lips curling up into a grin. “This is my favourite.”

“Really?” I asked, wondering what was so special about the photo. He had taken it in front of the wildflowers as I was in mid-movement, so my hair was floating out around my face, somewhat hiding my eyes from the view. To me, it would be a photo I deleted.

Leo, however, thumbed the screen affectionately before setting it as his wallpaper. I groaned and reached for the device.

“Leo, that’s not a good picture of me!”

“It’s perfect,” he insisted, holding the phone away from me. “It’s my phone; I’ll have whatever I want as my picture.”

“You need to delete it!” I continued, trying to reach up his long arm to the height where his phone was.

He shook his head firmly. “Your hair made me think of the flowers. How wild and lively it is, just like them. They were beautiful and made me think of you.”

I had half-stood up to reach for the phone and fell back to my knees awkwardly at his words, landing right in his lap.

His hand slowly fell as we both stared at one another in fright of our current predicament. My brain tried to rationalise. I had sat on his lap plenty of times, it reminded me, but the difference was it was never like this.

I was straddling over his lap. It was not like any of the other times. And because of this, I was frozen there, not sure whether to get off or not. Leo’s hands hovered just out from either side of my waist in a similar limbo, both of us not understanding what to do in this situation. My skin burned, I was certain the heat from my body was hotter than it had ever been. And yet I shivered, the action making my eyes shift a little.

Enough to break the spell.

We separated with haste, Leo getting up off the sofa and heading to the front door. “I uh, I think I left something in the car.”

And then he was gone. I glanced over at the small table where my bag sat, the car keys next to it. I didn’t register it entirely, focusing on in deep breaths of air instead.

“What was that?” I murmured to myself, even though I knew all too well. I was attracted to Leo, that wasn’t anything new. But this morning I had been so embarrassed by the mere thought of our relationship heading any further than how it was right now.

“It’s the environment, this place must have placed a spell on us,” I told myself with a nod to my head, getting up to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. Untwisting the cap, I gulped down the cool liquid in relish, almost downing the whole thing when the door opened again, Leo finding my eyes across the room instantly.

He panted a little in our stare. Unable to tear my eyes away, I swallowed the mouthful I had roughly, wincing as my throat felt the burden of my action. Leo panted again, his eyes on my lips. I tried to hide them, pressing them together in a firm line but my tongue had other ideas, sneakily along them. I cursed inwardly at the action, not sure why it had involuntarily happened.

Leo stepped forward and I pressed into the refrigerator with a jolt, blinking rapidly. I then pointed to the keys on the table. “You forgot the keys, right?!”

“Uh, right.” The intensity in his gaze shifted to a feebler one and he snatched them up off the table, heading back out the door again.

I gasped for air, not aware I had been holding my breath and stared at the closed door wide-eyed. Why was I so worked up? I knew my lack of experience had a lot to answer for in that moment, but I had never felt this type of surge through my body before. Everything in our relationship had been so natural, so welcomed by me.

Until now.

The rest of the night was awkward. Leo had little to say but would open his mouth often, either choosing to say something that I could tell wasn’t on his mind, or nothing at all. It was as frustrating as my own reaction was. Internally, I was screaming to get a hold of myself. I was a grown woman. I could do more than just kiss Leo now.

My ears burned at the mere thought, making me feel like a child with her first high school crush. Groaning, I rolled over in the bed, forgetting since I had been so invested in my thoughts, that Leo was right there. My connection with his side made both of us jolt, his eyes snapping to find mine in the dim lighting.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course,” I squeaked, clamping my eyes shut. There was nothing okay with how my voice just sounded.

“Okay,” he accepted a little too easily, darting his eyes back to the ceiling. I did the same and we both lay there rigidly, staring at the same spot, our minds racing so hard that I swore I could hear the whizzing from inside his head. I wanted to say something, anything that would ease the charged atmosphere between us. But nothing came to mind except how much I wanted to feel his lips on mine.

I silenced the desire, clamping my eyes shut again but it was moot. Leo’s perfect face had followed behind my eyelids too. I knew I wasn’t going to get a single moment’s rest tonight.

Not in this state anyway.

I sat up with a bolt and Leo shifted quickly too, staring at me to see what my next move would be. I glanced at him briefly and then threw the blankets back. “Do you want to watch something?”

He nodded too enthusiastically. “I was just thinking of asking the same thing.”

We headed out to the living area of the pension again, turning on all the lights and the television before sitting down. Unlike earlier, there was visible space between us, enough for another person to sit there. It felt like if either of us crossed over the space it would only make things worse and we both maintained our positions at either end of the sofa, Leo’s hands resting in his lap in neat little fists, whilst I gripped at a cushion with one. My other hand held the remote control, flicking through the channels for something to watch.

There were a lot of romantic movies tonight so it seemed and I groaned, wanting something to capture my attention and not remind me of why we were not in bed yet. As I went to flick to the next channel Leo’s voice crackled, stopping my actions.

I glanced over at him and he repeated his sentence. “I want to watch this one.”

Looking back at the screen, my eyes recognised the drama rerun, shaking my head lightly. “We shouldn’t.”

“Why not? It’s like us,” he said, gesturing to the screen. He smirked. “Except the other way around.”

I sighed, watching Yoo Seongho’s character in I’m Not A Robot opening up the box to his own robot tentatively. I had watched this drama with Sohyun when it had aired, and admittedly, I had loved it because of his ability to befriend and fall in love with her, whilst thinking she was an actual robot. It had given me a lot to think over as a psychology student and a human who worked in the field of robotics. Now that I sat there watching the unfolding of his first time in Aji’s company, I felt a sense of hopelessness. Unlike in the drama, my robot wasn’t being played by an actual human. Leo was himself and I loved him that way. For the first time since falling in love with him though, I was worried. I wanted everything that had happened for the two of them in the drama to happen for us, but I was concerned about the scientific team’s approach to our love, much like how the drama’s disapproved. Would Doctor Jung accept this development between us? He had noticed my feelings change towards Leo, he had mentioned it himself. And that had eased me initially.

But would he keep allowing us this after the trial was over? Leo was meant to be studied and his AI placed into the other Kboys if this was successful. All the same, it wasn’t like they’d need Leo full time for that, surely. My eyes blurred over and I started imagining all the scenarios that could occur.

I hadn’t noticed I was crying until Leo’s hand gently touched my cheek.

“Yerin? It’s not that sad is it?” he asked softly and I blinked through my emotions, staring at him deeply. The space was still there, he had just leaned over it to reach me.

I became scared that the space could exist forever between us if something went wrong. Scooting immediately over to Leo’s side, I buried in as far as I could go.

There was no way I would let go now.