It was raining outside. Jinyoung paused to listen from time to time as he worked his way through the house, the hardwood floors he’d mopped the day before creaking under his feet. It was one of those slanting rains that made music against the windowpanes and made the house seem fuller, but at the same time gave it a sense of being distinctly empty and alone. And it was; if Jinyoung looked out the window, he wouldn’t see any other houses in the distance, or neighbors peeking out their own windows to watch the rain. It was just him. Exactly as it should be.

He picked up one of his lists and pinned it to the wall along with the dozen others he’d already arranged. Over the years, he’d mastered a system, and it was almost mindless work remapping his plan of attack. He’d start in Goseong, hug his way along the villages and cities near the border with the North, then work his way south. It would take years to hit every bookseller, warehouse, university, historical society, and religious institution on his lists, but if there was one thing he had, it was years.

Little by little, a map began to form on his walls of his coming journeys. It held no excitement, but as always, it was something to do. If he did it well, maybe it would be the end. That was the eternal hope. One day, he would successfully erase himself, and it would at long, long last be over.

As he sorted through his lists, he heard a knock at the door. His head snapped up, his body freezing like a deer hearing a coming engine. There was no reason anyone should be knocking on his door whatsoever. No one lived in close proximity, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be out in the rain to visit their new neighbor. Maybe it was the caretaker he’d recently released from their duties coming by to see if they could wheedle more cash out of him. If he just ignored it, maybe they’d go away.

But there was another knock, and then two more as Jinyoung continued to ignore them. Jinyoung grumbled lowly and finally went to the front door to see what manner of obnoxiously persistent visitor was on his doorstep. He slid it open to reveal Mark standing on his porch, a cheap, transparent convenience store umbrella held over his head.

It wasn’t truly a surprise. Jinyoung had almost been expecting it, as a consequence of having been so misguided as to give Mark his address. He sighed in exasperation, taking in his slouching figure and cow-eyed expression. What did this boy want so badly from him? Didn’t he know you couldn’t just go through life demanding things of strangers who had absolutely nothing to do with you?

“I thought I specified ‘emergency’?” Jinyoung said in a cool voice. “What did you manage to do in the three days since I last saw you?”

Mark lifted his chin. “Can I come in? It’s raining.”

“You’re under the overhang. And an umbrella.”

“I felt alone.”

“Find someone else to fix that.”

Mark stared at him with those needy eyes of his. Jinyoung didn’t understand where the need even came from. He was aware from experience that beautiful people like Mark had it easier when it came to companionship; he could walk into a bar with those wanting eyes, and he’d be surrounded in no time by women and men to fill the space, drawing people to him naturally liked simplistically pretty paintings attracted admirers. If he felt alone, someone like Jinyoung who was eager to see the last of him was hardly a good solution.

But here he was. Staring up at Jinyoung expectantly. Needing something from someone with nothing to give.

“Where are you staying?” Jinyoung asked finally.

“Sokcho.”

That was about an hour train ride. It would truly be a cold move to send Mark immediately packing without giving him at least a second inside from the rain. But being cold would be a good way to assure Mark would never want to come back and bother him again. Better that than give him a false sense that this house and Jinyoung himself was a reliable source of consolation and comfort. 

“I won’t bother you,” Mark said. “I just needed to go somewhere quiet…to orient myself. Get used to this whole being here thing.”

“It would make sense for you to do that in Sokcho, where you’ll actually be living. There are quiet places there. Have you bothered to look for them?”

“But I wanted to be here,” Mark said firmly. “That’s what I felt.”

“You wanted to go to Inje?”

“I wanted to see you.”

Jinyoung snorted in disbelief. Mark shrugged as if he didn’t really have an explanation for it either. “Can I come in?” he asked again. “I need to use the restroom.”

“You’re a real pain. Did you know that? Is this American entitlement, going all the way out to a near-stranger’s house to intrude on their hospitality and use them as a public restroom? I don’t owe you anything. No one does. You chose to come to Korea by yourself, and if you can’t take care of yourself, you can’t expect other people to do it for you.”

“I know,” Mark said.

“And yet here you are.”

“Yes.”

Jinyoung wondered if this was the most infuriating person he’d ever met. He also realized it was likely going to be a greater exhaustion to rail against the unmovable Mark than to give in and let him inside.

Jinyoung slid the door open a smidgen wider. “You can stay one hour,” he said. “Then you’re on your own.”

Mark nodded, finally lowering his umbrella, sending droplets of water sprinkling onto the porch. “Can I leave this under the overhang?” he asked.

Jinyoung nodded, then turned to walk the rest of the way back inside. Mark followed him, sliding the door shut behind him.

They went into the main room. “Bathroom’s down there,” Jinyoung said, pointing down the hallway.

Mark glanced around him, at the pages upon pages of lists burying the wall. “Working on a conspiracy theory?” he asked. He walked closer to the pages, laboriously reading off the Korean characters. “These are the names of libraries and book shops?”

“I collect old books,” Jinyoung said.

Mark looked at him doubtfully. “I don’t see any books in this room.”

“They’re in my bedroom,” Jinyoung said, gesturing towards the door. Mark peeked in. Sure enough, Jinyoung did have several shelves filled inside of musty old books that he’d acquired in the last lifetime he’d spent in this house. They weren’t the books he hunted down, but the ones he picked up along the way, as a kind of repayment for all the books he damaged and destroyed.

Mark whistled lowly. “Impressive,” he said.

“Didn’t you need to use the bathroom?”

“Right.”

Mark finally went into the small hallway bathroom, and Jinyoung went to the kitchen to pour some of the coffee he’d made earlier. When he’d finished, Mark was back in the main room, studying the papers on the walls.

“Do you maybe think you’re a little too obsessed with books?” Mark asked, taking the coffee cup and saucer Jinyoung handed him.

“No,” Jinyoung said. He sat down on the ground, legs folded beneath him. “But please continue to make a commentary of my life. I’m sure I’ve been asking for it.”

“Sorry.” Mark sat down across from him, his knees pressed against his chest. “Forgive me my American rudeness.”

“At least you’re finally acknowledging it.” Jinyoung took a sip of his coffee. “I take it you’re not settling in well?”

“I actually think I’m doing fine, considering. It’s a big change. I know it will take a while to get used to. And people have mainly been nice.”

“Really? I thought you were bothering me because you were upset or alone or whatever it was.”

“I’m not upset. But yes, I felt alone.”

“Why, if people were so nice?”

“I don’t know. Because I felt like a fraud? It felt like the person they were being so nice to wasn’t me. Because they don’t know the real me, since I feel like I have to be a certain way to be liked and fit in here.” He wrapped his arms around his knees and pulled them closer against him. “I don’t feel like that, with you. It feels like you’ll be annoyed with me, no matter what I say or who I am. I like that.”

“That’s an odd thing to like.”

“Is it? At least I don’t have to feel like a fraud.”

“I don’t understand why you came here if you felt like you couldn’t be honest about yourself here.”

“Because I’m supposed to be here.”

Jinyoung stared at him hard. “Don’t start spouting that fate bull on me now.”

“But I think it may be. It’s like there was a big cosmic sign pointing me in this direction. I’d have dreams about Korea. I’d think about it for no reason. When I read about the study abroad opportunity, it would pop up in my head incessantly. It really felt like I had an unbearable itch all over me until I filled out the application.”

“You were inventing fate for yourself, Mark. People do that. You were interested in coming here, so you invented reasons why you felt like you had to come. That doesn’t mean it was fate.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Mark rested his chin on his knees. “Still, I want to figure it out.”

“I’d love it if you didn’t involve me.”

“But don’t you think our stories are kind of woven together now?”

“No. I don’t. You could walk out of my life and never come back, and nothing will have changed,” he said, a bit harshly. “And the reverse is also true.”

“I don’t think that’s true at all.”

“That’s because you have a warped sense of reality.”

“Says the guy living like a hermit in the middle of nowhere with walls covered in the names of bookstores. Do you actually have a job, or is someone paying you to visit every bookseller in the country?” Mark smiled. “And don’t tell me not to judge you and that my opinion is unsolicited. Because you have a thing for judging me. Just returning the favor.”

Jinyoung had nothing to say to that. It was fair. Not that it didn’t rankle; hubris was a hard fatal flaw to overcome.

“I don’t have a problem with any of it,” Mark said, possibly interpreting Jinyoung’s silence as anger. “Actually, it just makes me curious. Who are you? What are you doing?” He laughed before Jinyoung could say anything. “You’ll just say it’s none of my business. Which it isn’t. But I’m still allowed to wonder.”

“And what’s your guess?” Jinyoung asked.

“Hmm?”

“Who do you think I am, and what do you think I’m doing?”

Mark was silent for a moment, slowly gazing around the room. The wind and rain were howling outside, rattling and whistling against the windowpanes. The pages stirred lightly on the walls, briefly showing the white paint underneath.

“I think you’re lonely and trying to find meaning,” Mark said at length. “Just like me.”

They went silent again. Jinyoung felt the exact opposite of lonely. He felt an almost oppressive desire to be alone, in his comfortable, default state. It felt like Mark’s every word was disrupting his long-established rhythm, jarring it with screeching dissonance.

Jinyoung looked at him through narrowed eyes. What the hell was this person’s agenda? What did he want? If he was looking for meaning, why would he assume someone like Jinyoung had it?

The wind blew again, and Mark shivered. He picked up his coffee cup, cupping it in his hands as if to warm them.

“So what are you going to do?” Jinyoung asked.

“About what?” Mark asked.

“To find your meaning. What’s your big plan here?”

“I’m not sure yet. But you know something? I think it might have something to do with you.”

Jinyoung choked on his coffee. “NO.”

“It would make sense.”

“How?” Jinyoung leaned forward. “Mark. Let me be clear about something. I am not a project. I am not a mystery to solve. I am not someone who comes into people’s lives and does anything miraculous or altering. I am outside that narrative. I am outside every narrative except my own. You can’t bring me into yours. It won’t work.”

Mark shrugged. Jinyoung felt his temper rising again. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand. But there was no way to explain to a temporary human existence what it meant to live as he did. And even if there was, he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t tell the world what he was and what he had once done. There was no technical rule against it, but he knew what the result would be.

Oh bringer of calamity, oh wellspring of injustice…

“I know you’re not a project or a mystery,” Mark said. “Because you’re a person. But because you’re a person, you can’t just choose not to interact with the world outside yourself. It won’t work. That’s not what being a person is.”

“Then maybe I’m not one,” Jinyoung said quietly. Mark didn’t seem to hear him, because he didn’t respond. It had been a stupid thing to say, anyways; it was too confessional for someone who was in no place to tell the truth.

“And the thing you said,” Mark continued. “About not coming into people’s lives and doing anything altering. That’s automatically wrong.”

“Oh?” Jinyoung said, louder this time. “Then enlighten me.”

“We met on the threshold of the biggest journey of my life. You were a part of forming the path that journey will take. Because I met you, there are certain things that I know that I didn’t know otherwise. I tried things I may not have tried otherwise because you suggested them to me, no matter how offhand. And I came here to see you rather than going somewhere else. The universe has already changed.” Mark looked at him solemnly. “Because of you.”

“The universe? A handful of actions by one person hardly impacts the universe.”

“Do you honestly believe that?” There was a slight twinkle in Mark’s eyes, though his expression was still serious. “And here I thought you were as wise as your world-weary way of speaking makes you sound.”

“I never claimed I was wise,” Jinyoung grumbled.

“Good. Someone who thinks themselves above the world can’t be wise. You have to see the world to know it. Maybe you should forget about books for a bit.” He waved his hand towards the papers on the walls. “Live a little.”

No one has lived more than me, Jinyoung thought crossly. Or seen more of the world than me. No one. You know nothing, ignorant child.

Mark suddenly rose to his feet, leaving his empty coffee cup on the floor. He walked to the sliding doors looking out into the back garden. “It’s not raining so much,” he said. “Just in time.”

“In time for what?” Jinyoung asked.

Mark pointed to his watch. “I’m only allowed to stay one hour, right?”

Jinyoung felt oddly annoyed that he didn’t realize the hour had run up. He’d thought he’d be practically counting down the seconds until Mark was gone. How had the time escaped him? Why did it seem as if only a few brief minutes had passed?

“Thank you for the drink,” Mark said. “And the company. I had fun.”

“Fun,” Jinyoung echoed faintly.

Mark walked back towards the front doorway and slid it open, retrieving his umbrella from under the overhang. He shook it a little, and a few stray droplets fell at his feet.

“I’m going to visit again,” Mark informed him as he opened the umbrella.

“I haven’t invited you.”

“It’s already inevitable. I have an itch for you. Just like with Korea. I’m going to want to see you again. So I will.”

A breeze whipped past, and Jinyoung shivered to what felt like his core. It felt like every hair on his body was standing up. He didn’t know what to say. What was one supposed to say to I have an itch for you?

Mark apparently didn’t need a response. He was already turning to walk towards the train station.

“Mark!” Jinyoung called out suddenly, before he was gone.

Mark turned to look over his shoulder.

“You can’t just show up whenever. I’m not always here. It would be a waste of your time.”

“Then I’ll call to tell you when I’m coming. If you’ll give me your new number.”

Jinyoung bit his lip. What was the alternative? Would Mark show up at his place and lock pick his way in, hunting for secrets? He wouldn’t put it past him. He clearly didn’t believe in playing by any normal rules.

Jinyoung lifted his hands and one by one gestured his number with his fingers. Mark nodded. “Got it,” he said. “Goodbye.” He walked away, raindrops bouncing off the top of his umbrella. Jinyoung watched him go until he turned down a lane and went out of sight. The rain was slowing, the sky opening up to reveal patches of light. The grass glistened, swaying in a steadier breeze.

After a moment, Jinyoung went back inside to the main room with all of its papers. He stared at them blankly as if he no longer knew what they were and why he had put them there. His eyes slowly traveled to the coffee cup on the floor. He bent over to pick it up. It still felt warm. He cupped it in his hands, the same way Mark had, and stared into its empty insides for so long that by time he snapped himself out of it, the cup was cold in his hands and the light outside had again changed.

Without the rain, the house felt even more empty and silent.

Jinyoung didn’t like going to libraries. Librarians cared about books in a way many retail booksellers didn’t, and they wanted you to care about them in the same way. Defacing one of their collection was akin to committing a capital offense. If they caught you in the act, you would likely be strung up by your heels and pelted with copies of Shakespeare.

Jinyoung had only been caught once before, in a library. Not actually in the act of defacing a book, but after the fact. He’d made the mistake of asking the librarian where to find the book he was looking for, and she’d gone into it enthusiastically, peppering him with questions on his interest in Korean mythology and whether the old legends were still taught to children in Korean households. She’d apparently been so engaged in the conversation that she made a note to herself to look into the book when Jinyoung was done with it. That was when she noticed that there had been a page cut out.

She’d found his number in the database and called him. “How could you do such a thing?” she’d asked in a watery voice, as if she were calling during a funeral. “You acted like you understood how important those stories are. How could you just remove one of the stories from a book meant for everyone to share? How could you steal those words from all the people who could have read them?”

Jinyoung had mailed in a fine for his defacing of public property. He also never asked a librarian for help finding books again.

He found his target this time easily enough. It was a book on Christianity, written by a particularly dedicated Christian. There was just the one page referencing the old myths, and how they were fundamentally wrong. Even in the name of history, the text said, we should not cling to the old stories our ancestors created from ignorant imaginations. Mireuk is not the Creator; God is. Seokga is not the originator of evil; the sin of woman committed by Eve in the Garden of Eden under the temptation of Satan is the source of man’s wrongdoing.

“Good to know,” Jinyoung muttered under his breath. “So why exactly am I being punished, here?”

He slipped his precision cutting knife out of his pocket. He was just about to remove the page when his cell phone went off.

Immediately, everyone in the room turned to glare at him. Jinyoung fumbled his knife, and a girl pointed and gasped—that was the kind of world it was now, where people had to worry about a maniac stabbing them in the library. Jinyoung quickly grabbed the knife and shoved it back into his pocket. “It’s a letter opener,” he mumbled as he simultaneously grappled with his phone, trying to switch it to silent.

Mark was the name flashing on the screen. Unable to find the way to switch the phone to silent, Jinyoung took the call. “What?” he hissed.

“I’m coming over.”

“You called me in a library.”

“Oh, was your phone not on silent? Sounds like a you problem.”

“Stay home.”

“I’m already on the train.” He yawned. “Meet me at your place. Bye.”

Jinyoung was fuming, and everyone was staring at him, so there was no way he could take out the page now. He slammed the book back onto the shelf. He’d have to come back later. With his luck, the librarian would probably remember him and have him surveilled.

Jinyoung stormed back home, but since Mark wasn’t there yet, there was no one to release his temper on. He went into the kitchen, furiously ripping his tea kettle out from under the sink and very angrily setting it to boil on the stove. He could very much relate to its heated whistling.

Mark showed up about five minutes later, a bookbag slung over his back. Jinyoung looked at him with narrowed eyes, but Mark just smiled and shrugged.

“School’s going well,” he announced. “In case you care, which you don’t. Don’t you have any furniture around here? I was going to do my homework.”

“Do it on the floor,” Jinyoung said. “Just go ahead and treat my house like your personal hotel. That’s what it exists for. I’m just an unpaid concierge you can demand to do whatever you want.”

“You’re mad about me calling you at the library,” Mark said. “Tell me, if you’re at libraries and book stores 24/7, when exactly is anyone supposed to call you without causing a disruption?”

“You could just not call me to begin with.”

“You gave me your number. Silent mode is a beautiful thing.” Mark pulled out a textbook on Middle Eastern religious history and cracked it open on the floor. “Learning about world religions is more interesting in Asia, I think. There’s such a gap between what the separate nations believe. You go to Japan, and most of the churches just exist for weddings and foreigners, and you come to Korea, and there’s a church on every block. Then you have China where the traditional religions still manage to exist alongside the atheist Communist Party, Islam growing in Southeast Asia, and then the Middle East and the divisions there…of course, America has a lot of religions, but you forget it sometimes. All gods come secondary to capitalism there when it comes down to it.”

“And which one do you believe in?” Jinyoung asked.

“I’m from a Christian family,” Mark said. “But even Christians don’t believe in the same god. There’s the wrathful god, the judgmental god, the all-loving god, the indifferent observer god…that’s the one you believe in, right, the indifferent observer? I personally like to believe in an adapting god. One who evolves along with people. But I don’t know. I think it’s impossible to really, truly know. I guess that’s where faith comes from.”

Jinyoung could only imagine how much Mark would love picking his brain if he ever figured out that Jinyoung did, in fact, know quite a bit about the subject. Not everything, of course—gods operated within regions, just as human rulers did. During his short tenure in the realm of the gods, Jinyoung had met very few of his fellows, but he knew of most by reputation.    

 “I met a guy,” Mark said suddenly.

Jinyoung’s head jerked up. “Already?”

“It’s not hard to meet guys, Jinyoung. They’re everywhere.” Mark played with his pencil. “I thought it would be a little hard to meet that kind of guy, though. But he’s not Korean, so he’s a bit more open about it.”

“So. You have a boyfriend. Why aren’t you bothering him right now, then?”

Mark shook his head. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

 “So it’s…casual intimate relations?”

Mark burst out laughing. “Casual intimate relations? You sound like a priest allergic to saying the word . Might as well go for carnal union of flesh, it has a funnier ring to it.” He shook his head. “No, I’m not engaging in casual intimate relations with him either. One, I just met him. Two, I turned him down.”

“Why would you?”

“Because I don’t want casual intimate relations with someone I’m not in love with, I want solemn intimate connection with someone I am.”

“What? Did Free Love Movement end already?”

Mark snorted. “Jinyoung. That was in the 60s. Or was it the 70s? Whichever. You weren’t even alive.”

On the contrary… Jinyoung had been very much alive at that time. It wasn’t a particularly enjoyable era to be living in America in, what with the war protests and assassinations. He’d liked the music, though, and still listened to it.

“I just know what I want,” Mark said. “And while Jackson is nice and all, it’s not what I’m in the market for.”

“It didn’t seem to me when I talked to you last time that you knew what you were looking for. Not that matters. People fall in love for the exact same reason you ended up coming to Korea. Inventing signs and excuses and calling it fate.”

Mark flipped through the pages of his textbook, not looking up. “I’m 100% you’ve never loved someone, Jinyoung.”

Jinyoung blinked. “Because I said ‘casual intimate relations’?”

“No, because you treat people like they’re your enemies.”

This was true, but Jinyoung still bristled. “You’ve only ever seen me interact with you.”

“And you tried to shut me out from the first moment.”

“Maybe because I just don’t like you in particular.”

“If you really hated me, you would have packed up and moved to another version of the middle of nowhere just to get rid of me for good. You are 100% a ghoster.”

“Maybe I’ve been heartbroken before. Maybe that’s why I don’t like people and have no interest in getting close to someone.”

Mark shook his head. “You don’t really see people. I watched you in the airport, you know. Your eyes skated over everyone. The stewardess, the guy sitting in front of us, the little kid who kept getting up to go to the bathroom, the girl snoring two rows behind. You only looked at me because I made you. You don’t care about people, and the only way you could be capable of that extent of not caring was if you’ve never loved someone.” His expression, almost always either solemn or mild, turned a bit fierce. “And you can’t pretend to know what heartbreak is, either, if you’ve never loved.”

Try having the universe break your heart, and break you, Jinyoung thought, jaw tightening. Try comparing any of your petty heartbreaks over juvenile boys to that.

“Why are you lecturing me about this?” Jinyoung asked tightly.

“Because the sooner you realize it, the sooner you’ll stop thinking of me as someone pathetic.”

“I’ve never called you pathetic.” Jinyoung paused. “At least not that I remember.”

“You look at me like I am. If your eyes spoke for you, they’d be saying every other sentence, You know nothing, you childish brat. You’re just inventing excuses for everything you believe in.” Mark looked at him, head tilted. “OK, so maybe I am? So what? Is that somehow worse than believing in nothing? Than not caring about other people?” There was no malice in his voice. It was genuinely as if he wanted these things explained to him. But as it so often did with Mark, Jinyoung’s voice was coming up short.

“I want you to really look at me,” Mark said. “And see me as a person, and not just an annoyance or an enemy. But I don’t think you’ll ever be able to do that unless you learn how to love first. So hurry up and fall in love with me, Park Jinyoung.”

Jinyoung stared at him, mouth dropping a little. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“I did, but you can’t be serious, right?” Jinyoung shook his head. “You’re pulling one of those ‘I’m going to make you and your cold heart fall in love, but it’ll be too late by time you do and you’ll finally know what it means to experience heartbreak and play too lightly with people’s emotions’ scenarios on me. You want me to learn something. And you want to prove yourself by teaching it to me.” He lifted his chin. “OK, maybe I do think you’re pathetic.”

“For now,” Mark said.

“Go ahead and try, Mark. I’m not stupid enough to fall in love.” And haven’t been since the beginning of time. How’s that for a track record? Just try me.

“Noted,” Mark said. He shut his textbook. “But when you do, I’ll remember that line and remind you of how stupid you actually are.”

“And you wonder why my internal monologue calls you a childish brat.”

“I don’t care about the childish brat part. It’s the ‘you know nothing’ part I take issue with.”

“Well. Feel free to stagger me with your twenty years of knowledge. I look forward to it.”

“It’s not the years, but what you make of them.”

Good, because you only have sixty or so left in you, Jinyoung thought. It was something he often thought about humans, but for the first time, he regretted it. A sick feeling filled his stomach. He thought of the fly in the library, how one moment it had been weaving its inconsequential paths, and the next it had been dead. He turned his face away sharply.

“Jinyoung?” Mark asked, his voice suddenly gentle. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m tired,” Jinyoung said. “Talking to you is exhausting. Do you ever talk about normal things?”

“All right. Tell me about yourself. Outside of books, what are you interested in? Do you have any hobbies?”

Jinyoung’s ears turned pink. Again, he’d taunted Mark with the wrong thing. There were so many ‘normal things’ he didn’t have—family, friends, a job—and a whole list of things he didn’t partake in due to being single-mindedly focused on his mission. He genuinely didn’t have any real hobbies. Any downtime he had was spent on hunting down books and cutting out pages. Should he just make something up?

“I like music,” Jinyoung said, because he did, though not devotedly enough for it be a hobby. “And…history. And drinking. Not to get drunk, but I like trying different spirits from around the world.”

“Spirits?”

“Alcohol.” Was spirits an archaic word now, or something?

“Interesting.” Mark leaned in. “We should go out sometime. Do karaoke. Have some drinks.”

“You’re underage.”

“Not in Korea, I’m not.”

There hadn’t been official restrictions on drinking the last time Jinyoung had been to Korea, so he didn’t know if this was true or not. He just knew that he had a feeling that drinking with Mark would be trouble.

“Is this going to be part of your plot to steal my heart?” Jinyoung asked drily.

“I’m not plotting anything with that. It’s just going to happen naturally.”

“What about you? Aren’t you worried that you’re going to accidentally fall in love with me along the way of proving your little point and that I’ll turn the tables on you?”

Mark reached out, pressing his finger on the spot of his cheek near Jinyoung’s lips. There was no laughter anywhere in his expression. “If you opened up a part of you that I would be able to love,” he said quietly, “I wouldn’t care anything about having any tables me.”

He dropped his hand and returned it to his closed textbook, his thumb absently tracing the minarets on the cover. “Now, I thought this was my personal hotel,” he said. “Could you be quiet so I can finish my homework?”