“Here we are” Sung Gyu grunted as he opened the front door to his apartment. It was on the ground floor of a three storey apartment with a rooftop and a measly rooftop house. He at least had a garden, which he was happy about, Although the entire apartment was a huge downgrading from the one he had before.

Gaeul entered after him, looking around with wide, fascinated eyes. “It’s much smaller than I thought” She commented, taking in her surroundings. Gaeul  had only seen the house through their video calls before, and he’d always made sure to have them in the garden during the day and living room in the night as they were the much bigger parts of the house. What she did not know was that it was mostly open planned, which meant the kitchen and the living room were one and the same. He turned the lights on and the house, for a moment looked like a lonely solo den. He hadn’t planned on bringing her home tonight, so the fact that he hadn’t gotten around to clean it up had completely skipped his mind.

“It’s a bit messy,” He said laughing awkwardly as he tried to tidy up, starting from his shoes which were all over the place by the front door.

“Oh don’t bother” She replied nonchalantly as she took off her boots. “We’re all mud clad here, we’ll mess it more anyway”

“Oh, right” Sung Gyu scratched his head. “Well, come through then. I’ll throw your clothes in the dryer while you change”

“Do you have anything for me to change into? Or am I going to sit in my towel while you’re done?”

“A change of clothes too” He put in awkwardly.

Sung Gyu didn’t really have any women’s clothes with him. He was the only child in his family and nobody really visited him either, not to the point of staying over. So he dug through his cupboard, located some sweatpants, T-shirts and hoodies, which he all left on his bed for her to choose from.

“Bathroom is, er...that way” He told her as he handed her extra towels. “I do have conditioner, but you know, it’s-,”

“That’s fine” She smiled as she took the towels from him. “I do like to smell like men’s body wash time to time”

He could only give her an awkward laughter before he left the room, his cheeks heating up. He hadn’t brought a woman to his house in ages, and not once since he moved into this apartment six months ago. Sung Gyu had had an odd girlfriend or two back then, someone from the company, a fellow musical actress, someone that he met through a mutual friend. And he’d bring them home, indulging one night in bed from time to time. But never had he felt this so awkward and embarrassed around a woman before. While Gaeul was in shower, he walked around the house, trying to find something to do until his own round in the shower came. He tidied the kitchen a little, put a pot of water to boil, just in case, opened the windows to let the night air in and sat on the floor, deep in his thoughts. It was a while later that Gaeul yelled from his bedroom, her voice so loud in his otherwise extremely quiet house.

“Sung Gyu!” She yelled and stuck her head out the door. “How does the drier work!?!”

“The drier” He hopped up on his feet, for a moment lost in his own house. “Hold on” He said, walking towards his bedroom. “You, err...can leave them in bathroom, I’ll do it”

Sung Gyu half expected her to protest, unwilling to let him touch her lady garments. But she was completely nonchalant about it as she left the room. 

“It’s not everyday that a guy would offer to wash your clothes” She said and trudged her way down the narrow corridor past him. 

“The clothes” He asked, avoiding her gaze. “Do they fit alright?” Although they were about six feet away from each other, Sung Gyu still felt incredibly awkward in her presence. She looked up at him, and she appeared so small in his too large hoodie and pants that gathered by her feet. She was shorter than he imagined. “I’m in a tent, but that’s fine” She shrugged. He nodded back, turning away, trying not to think about anything else when she called him back.

“Yeah?”

“When you put them in the washer…” She started, and she too, for once shyly fidgeted with her hands. “Seperate the reds...They can stain a bit”

After a shower and two rounds of washing the clothes, Sung Gyu finally entered the living room, only to hear a small voice baby talking to someone. For a moment, he forgot he had a visitor  in the house. He stopped in the dark, quietly listening into the conversation, trying to make sense of their words. When he finally peaked out from behind the wall, he witnessed Gaeul petting the cat like a child.

“You’ve found another victim for your smouldering, I see” He commented as he made his way towards the kitchen cabinet.

“You didn’t tell me that you had a cat,” She said.

“I don’t” He replied as he took the cans of beer and snacks from their bags. “It’s not mine. Just a neighbourhood cat who thinks he pays the rent”

“So does he?” She asked him but before he could even form a response, she quickly diverted to talking to the cat in her baby voice. “Do you? Do you pay the rent, baby? Do you?”

“He doesn’t do ” Sung Gyu said, finally traversing the hall to where she sat. He had a single sofa, a coffee table both of which were kept on a carpet which he diligently vacuumed every day. The sofa faced the french windows which were opened to his small garden, through the grills of which the cat crept in. On spring days, the small garden was always stained with dew and cherry blossoms from the tree next door, and the wind that came in carried their sweetest scent.

Tonight, with the scent of rain and lights seeping in from the street, it created the perfect atmosphere. He the lamp beside the sofa and laid the bottles and snacks on the coffee table.

“Right,” He said. “It’s time for the beer bombs”

Gaeul looked over at the spread on the table and sighed. “I’m hungry,” She said. 

In the end, Sung Gyu made a piping hot pot of spicy Ramyun, no floating egg as she despised it and laid it on the table for her. The aroma of chives and soup took over the scent of the spring, and as Sung Gyu handed a pair of chopsticks to her, the cat comfortably laid down by the window and its face.

Sung Gyu picked up two glasses, cracked open a can of beer, followed by a bottle of Soju and proceeded to make his legendary beer bomb.

“Now watch closely, Korean-none-Korean lady. This is what a beer bomb is” He explained to her.

“Neat” She said, hardly paying attention to him. She was busy swallowing half the bowl of noodles he’d made for her. Gaeul really had a great appetite for a girl; she ate like someone who had starved for years. As he watched her, he couldn’t help the smile forming on his lips.

“What?” she asked him, her voice muffled by her full mouth.

“Nothing” He shrugged, reached out and wiped the corner of with his thumb. “Just...eat slowly”

She blinked.

“Nobody’s going to take it away”

An entire pot of Ramyun later, Gaeul had her first ever Beer bomb, which resulted in her demanding for more. In her very honest, unbiased opinion, she said, she hadn’t tasted a better rendition of beer her entire life, and that was after having tasted beer of its origin itself. Sung Gyu felt a flicker of pride, although he knew it was kind of silly to think making beer bombs was actually a talent to be proud about. He taught her how to put one together, which she did quite clumsily, spilling half a can of beer all over the carpet he adored. Sung Gyu ended up downing about three glassfulls of beer bombs that she made for him, and at some point, they found themselves abandoning them for once and for all, swigging soju right from the bottle itself. Mildly drunk, they both spoke among each other for hours. It was her who spoke the most, telling him about all her little adventures in everywhere she’d bean to. She told him about the snowy mountain peaks in Switzerland, that time she got lost in Austria and met a professor called Abracadabra which had made her laugh right in his face. Then about her three months in India where her skin got tanned and she developed hives, about the goats and chickens on the road and how they treated bulls like god. He loved listening to her speak; the gentle tone of her voice, eloquence of her words. This is what they’ve done for the past few years over the phone; she spoke, he listened, he answered all the questions that she asked, and he’d never be more comfortable with her. It was just natural for them, this exchange. Not many words were needed to express how they felt. If anything, they just knew, and they just acknowledged them in the subtlest ways.

As the night grew darker and as they ran out of things to talk about, the two of them fell into a comfortable silence. This was natural too, until Gaeul found something else of interest.

And it didn’t take her long.

“Is that yours?” Gaeul, later into that night, pointed at the pale brown Gibson that stood in a corner of his room and asked.

“Can’t be anybody else’s surely” He replied as he sipped from his can of beer.

“” Gaeul smacked him on his thigh and smiled. “Play for me”

“Play for you?” He reiterated in response.

“Mmhm...Sing me a song”

“Which song?”

He expected her to ask for the Spring’s Song again, and for the first time in his life, he felt no hesitation to sing it again. Gaeul, much to his surprise, shook her head. “A song that you’ve never sung before”

Sung Gyu nodded, climbed up on his feet and fetched the guitar before he returned to her. She cleared up a side of the coffee table and beckoned him to sit there before her. He had a dozen songs that he'd never sung before. Songs that he’d written on long quiet nights, when his sole company were his thoughts and fine tunes that strummed in his heart. He’d composed them in hopes of releasing them, singing them upon a stage one day, and making one of them the next Spring’s Song. Thinking back to that shattered dream, his heart still constricted. But an opportunity was still an opportunity. At this point, nothing could be better than singing one of them for her.

He strummed a G major before he started, and the sound echoed throughout the empty apartment. “I haven’t named this song yet. So I’ll call it untitled” He said.

“Perfect” Gaeul clapped her hands.

He closed her eyes, trying to recall its words again. He could remember vividly when he actually composed it. It had to be in the fall, a couple of years back. He’d just gotten off a call with his mother who’d asked him for the umpeteenth time if he had considered marrying yet. He’d said that he hadn’t and that he never would, and livid after their conversation he had tried to call the sole comfort he had in his life. It wasn’t a great time for them. With work and inevitable circumstances in life, Gaeul and Sung Gyu had naturally drifted apart. He’d call her occasionally, and many times his calls and even messages would go unreplied, unnoticed. He’d ignored her responses then and there, leaving them on ‘seen’, not replying to voice mails. He’d spend more time with his girlfriend of that time, one that he didn’t sincerely love. He’d be sleeping with her after work at times, going on dates which didn’t even mean anything. At a time like that, Sung Gyu couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to be much closer to Kim Gaeul than he was at that time.

And now, sitting so much closer to Gaeul than he had at the time of writing this song for her, it felt surreal to sing it again. As the guitar strung, its melody echoing throughout the quiet apartment, melting along with his voice, he felt as if they were being transported years back in time. He wouldn’t have thought, even once, that tonight would be possible back then. He wasn’t sure how things changed, or where they did or even why. But things certainly did shift significantly to the point where they nearly lost each other. He wasn’t sure how their paths collided and moved parallel to each other again. Nonetheless, whenever he thought back to those few dark months of their lives, he would always remember this song.

After he had sung out the last key, the entire room fell into utter silence. Sung Gyu finally opened his eyes, the guitar still held securely in his lap and her seated on the floor before him, a significant gap between them. Gaeul gazed up at him, and for some reason, her eyes seemed to be teary, they were gleaming like glass in the moonlight.

“Hey” He called her, his voice a mere whisper. She appeared to be in some kind of a trance and he hated to be the one breaking it. 

“Gaeullie...are you okay?” He asked her.

“I...I love you,” Gaeul muttered in response. 

Sung Gyu blinked, his heart slowly picking up pace, and his fingers wrapped harder around the fretboard. All this time, he had thought that he would be the first one to say it.

But Gaeul, as always, did not fail to surprise him.

“W-what?” 

“I love you” Gaeul repeated unhesitantly, her eyes b with tears. She sobbed hard, lowered her head and wiped her eyes with her sleeves. “Oh god, I’m sorry...I wasn’t supposed to say it out loud…”

Sung Gyu kept holding onto the guitar in his hands, speechless, perplexed, somewhat terrified.

“No” Gaeul continued, now more firmly than before. “Wait. I’m not sorry...I should have said it out loud ages ago”

“G-Gaeul…”

“I’m not sorry, because that’s the truth, Sung Gyu. I love you”

Sung Gyu was quiet for a long time, staring at her, unable to find his words. It’s been an unspoken truth between them, that their relationship was something more than friendship, yet with the constriction of becoming something even more. Their distance always kept them apart, although their words and actions, in every sense, carried the very same disposition. He loved her. Sung Gyu knew this too. He loved her more than anything else in the world. And she too, although she’d never said it in many words, although she never acknowledged it, probably did so too. Their distance, their inability to connect further than through a measly cyber line had somehow made them believe and accept that they were nothing more than the friends they pretended to be.

And that terrified him.

That terrified him because he was perhaps also afraid to become something more.

“Aren’t you going to...aren’t you going to say anything?” Gaeul finally filled in the silence between them. 

Sung Gyu let out a heavy sigh, ran a hand down his face and kept the guitar aside. He still remained on the coffee table before her.

“But why? Suddenly?” He asked the last thing that came to his mind.

“Why? Suddenly?” Gaeul resonated incredulously. “It’s...it’s not very sudden….I have liked you since I was thirteen” 

Since she was thirteen, perhaps since the first time he kissed her in the school playground to stop her from leaving him, to stop her pulling them apart. Sung Gyu thought he started liking her a lot before then; when they climbed down the lake bank to dip their feet in the cold water, when they made paper boats and watched them disappear down the stream. Whenever she came over during the football season and sulked the whole time until fried chicken and salad arrived. He’d liked her from the very beginning, and the beginning, he didn’t know when. With time, it has only grown, become stronger.

“Me too” Sung Gyu found himself telling her. 

He was surprised by his own bluntness, to be able to admit the truth without hesitation. Gaeul stared up at him, and her eyes started shining again and her lips trembled a little. Gaeul was someone who showed many vivid emotions; she would never hold back. But tearing up, like this, she rarely did; and that itself gave him the strength to continue.

“Me too...I-I liked you….I think…” he lifted his gaze up at her “since forever”

“Then-?” Gaeul seemed to quickly calculate her next move in her mind. All of a sudden, she sat up on her knees and without question, she moved towards him. Recklessly, boldly, Gaeul tried to kiss him.

“Wait” He whispered, immediately stopping her as he laid his hands on her shoulders. His heart was beating so hard that he thought he would die.

“Why?” She asked, her voice smaller than ever before.

With a deep sigh, the weight of the world upon his shoulders, Sung Gyu finally found the courage to look up at her.

“Gaeul, we never really talked about it,” He said.

“About what?”

“About us”

Gaeul fell on her back in defeat. “What is there to talk about?”

“So much more than you think,” he said.

If anything, Sung Gyu did acknowledge his feelings for her; it had been long since he understood how he felt. But one thing that kept him from telling her the truth was this one question that had haunted him since then. He remembered how he’d felt the day he returned home nineteen years ago, when he’d kissed her and still felt that he failed. He kissed her, he showed his love to her, yet that couldn’t keep her from leaving him. People came, people left; that was life. But the pain that parting would leave behind was significant, indescribable. He had wondered myriad times if he should tell her, admit his feelings, write her a song, seal his love for her. But then what? He would wonder, thinking back to Kim Gaeul who would be miles and continents away. Kim Gaeul never stayed in one place, couldn’t be with one person. Although she would promise herself to remain at one place at a time, her heart would eventually wander like sails of a ship in the wind. He would tell her that he loved her; but then what? What would they do? What would he do? What would she do?

“It’s not something we can suddenly jump into, is it?” Sung Gyu told her quietly when it was evident that he had broken her heart. “We’re two different people, Gaeul, from polar opposites of life. We can’t change everything in one night, can we?”

It had started raining outside, and it drizzled heavily through the opened windows. In the moonlight, he could see, for the first time, that tears had stained her cheeks.

“Why not?” She asked him. “Why would it be so hard? Why can’t we just try?”

“Maybe we can” He replied and slid off the table as if the proximity could make any difference. “But then what if it doesn’t work out? Are we going to risk everything for that?”

“What do you mean not work out?” Gaeul went on. “There is nothing to work out, Sung Gyu, people fall in love all the time, and they care enough to make things work”

“People fall out of love too” He told her.

People fell out of love, and they did for the most ridiculous reasons. He’d seen that happen, how reasons piled up, one after the other; it's either that they couldn’t find time for each other, or that they didn’t like the same things anymore, or that they didn’t feel ready for that challenge anymore. At the end of the day, they will be mere excuses while the truth would haunt their lives like a ghost. They simply weren’t in love anymore. What appeared to be the best decision would hence become their biggest mistake, and everything that they’ve been before would disappear in a heartbeat until they become strangers again.

In a relationship like theirs, Sung Gyu knew; that fall-out, if it happens, would be the end of it all. They were delicate, these feelings. They were as fragile as glass. 

“People fall out of love…” Gaeul started, her voice firm, somehow more solemn than before. “Because they started too early, because they didn’t understand each other, because they just didn’t know better-,”

“And do we?” Sung Gyu intervened. “Do we, Gaeul?”

“We’ve known each other for our whole lives, Sung Gyu” She returned desperately. “I don’t even know where we started, it’s been that long”

“And that’s why I don’t want to take a risk” He made his case.

Gaeul gazed at him for a long time after that, her eyes hopeful, her lips forming the saddest smile. Sung Gyu despised being the one to break her heart, for he had never, for the many years that he had known her. In a life like his where nothing seemed to work out, where everything he did seemed to stand on the edge of a knife, threatening to fall, what he feared the most was losing the most significant person in his life. They’ve been together for so long that he couldn’t imagine his life without her. He’d heard of friendships that lasted forever, lovers that fell apart in matter of days. What if, god forbid, but what if changing the shape of their arrangement altered everything? And what if that would eventually lead them to drift apart?

“I don’t want to lose you,” He told her eventually, taking her hand. “I’ve liked you too, for this long. I don’t know where it started, or when, or how, but I knew that it did-,”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” She pushed on, becoming even more hopeful.

“Because it was much easier that way” He replied. “It was easier to love you that way. Time didn’t matter, the distance didn’t matter...and most importantly, the shape of our relationship didn’t matter. Do you get what I mean? Being distant, being different, none of that mattered when we loved without acknowledging that. And I’d rather keep it that way”

“But why do you think you’d lose me?” Gaeul, her voice so low, barely audible, asked him. 

Sung Gyu refused to respond.

Gaeul, at this point, arranged herself on his favorite carpet so that she sat comfortably and much, much closer to him. “Sung Gyu...I told you didn’t I? I dated many people, many of them, I’ve seen different sides of them, and they’ve seen different sides of me. What I realised at that time was that none of them had what I was looking for. I’m not sure what that is; it’s still a mystery to me. But what I do know is that, whatever I was looking for, I have found it in you…” 

Sung Gyu held his breath, and Gaeul bit her lip as she played with his hand in hers.

“Perhaps…” She continued, lifting her gaze. “Perhaps, now that I think of it, what I was trying to find within them was you. Your words, your smile, the way that you carried yourself; your worries and fears and how you made me feel…”

The rain had dispersed by then, and they could feel the occasional drizzle from leaves, rustle of trees; and from a far, the sound of the city, still breathing and alive. Sung Gyu gazed into the eyes of the one woman that he loved with his whole heart as he fears held him back, wishing, quietly, that things weren’t the way that they were, that he too, could love her without restrictions, with his whole heart.

“Sung Gyu, If I am to be honest, I’ve thought about it a lot…” Gaeul went on, still holding his hands. “I realise...that I’ve been running all this time. I’ve never been in one place, never done one thing for long, and frankly, I am tired too. I want to stop at some point. Settle down, fall in love, get married, have children and a dog and a house and just...be happy...and whenever I think about these things, I will only and always think about you. Because you’re the one person who’d been with me, this entire time, no matter how much I changed. And so you’re the only way that things make sense to me. If I am to ever stop and settle down in my life, I want to do them with you…”

“Gaeul” He sighed, dragging a hand down his face tiredly. He remained quiet for a while, trying to gather his thoughts. He truthfully didn’t know what he wanted either. Settle down? Marriage? Family? The rate that his life was going now, falling apart with every step he made, all of these things just seemed surreal for him.

“Look at me” He said finally, lifting his hands. “Look at my life. Do you think I’m anywhere close to settling down? I don’t have a job, I don't have a home. My life is in ruins, Gaeul, you deserve so much better than that”

Gaeul stared back at him, stunned, disappointed. “We are not settling down right now, Sung Gyu, at least a start-,”

“I can’t give you hopes of something that would never work out” Sung Gyu reasoned tiredly. “Marriage, a house, stability. They’re never going to be a part of my life. I’ve failed, don’t you see?”

“SungGyu-,”

He finally climbed up on his feet. “I make bad decisions, left and right. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m doing. Everything I did was timed wrong. My success didn’t go beyond one song that I don't even own anymore and an unstable job that didn’t last five years. I’ve been unemployed for six months, and I don’t even know what to do anymore…” 

He walked towards the french windows, allowed the gentle drizzle to welcome him, cool down the burn in his heart. Now that he thought about it, his life couldn’t get any worse. He couldn’t even sincerely love the woman that he cared about. 

“I make bad decisions, Gaeul. So many of them...and I just don’t want us to be one of them”

Gaeul, herself had climbed up on her feet behind him. “You don’t even know what’s coming, Sung Gyu. Why don’t you give yourself a break? Give it another chance? Life is not easy for anyone and-,”

“Things just don’t work that way,” He said.

Gaeul was quiet for a moment, during which, all they could hear was the wind outside. 

“Perhaps, it would help if you left all this negativity behind” She told him in the end.

Sung Gyu somehow knew that she would say that. He just knew. 

“Gaeul” He started, his voice somewhat heavier than before. “It isn’t negativity. It’s the reality. Its as real as it can be-,”

“No, you’re just backing away without even trying” Gaeul exclaimed in return. “You are just accepting defeat and walking away. Sung Gyu, people lose jobs, contracts end, dreams will become nightmares, but does it mean you should stop living? Right, you have no job now, but should it stop you from finding another? Did you do anything wrong to not find another? Fine, you lost your song. But is that the only song in this whole world that you could write? Why do you think you can’t write the next Spring’s Song? Why do you think everything ended there?”

“Maybe because they did, okay?” Sung Gyu fired in return. “Maybe they did not for you. But for me, they certainly did”

“Jesus” Gaeul hissed under her breath. Her voice was low, yet unrelenting. It was the first time he was seeing her this way, for it was the first time they were arguing like this. Sung Gyu couldn’t believe that their first fight ever started with confessing their love for each other. Perhaps, that itself just showed...as lovers, they just weren’t meant to be. 

“You know what?” Gaeul said, in the end with a note of finality. “I’m tired of arguing about this. Your negativity is exhausting me, Sung Gyu. If you ever, ever think about getting that off your mind, only then come back to me”

Sung Gyu gave it a beat of silence, trying to make sense of her words.

“G-Gaeul?” He then slowly spun around, only to see Gaeul traversing the narrow hall towards the front door. Something broke and ripped open in his heart, and seeing her going away like that, he suddenly couldn’t breathe anymore.

“Gaeul...where are you going?”

“Home, where else?” She replied coldly, trying to pull her shoes on underneath the too large sweats she wore.

“Like this? Right now?”

“Yes” She sighed, still struggling with her shoes. “I just can't stand you”

Sung Gyu went quiet at that, his heart constricting and in so much pain. He must have hurt her, he must have hurt her so much to the point that she wanted to flee.

“But it's late,” He said. “You should...you should just stay...tonight”

“Stay?” She breezed out, stern and in disbelief. “You just rejected me and now you want me to stay?”

“I didn’t” He unhesitantly replied. “I just said...I didn’t want to change anything”

“I don’t understand Sung Gyu…I don’t understand what you even want anymore” She had somehow pulled both her shoes on, and she looked kind of ridiculous to be walking outside in ill fitting clothes, her hair still wet and her hands hidden beneath sleeves too long. But Gaeul wasn’t someone that could be stopped easily once she had set her mind onto something.

Just like it was in trying to make her stop acknowledging her feelings for him, just like it was to change her mind. 

“You don’t have to,” he told her, stepping over the threshold towards her. “We...we had a tough night, tonight. So just stay. I’ll be out of your hair for a while and then maybe we can...maybe we can regroup”

“Is there even a point?”

“There probably isn’t”

“There’s your answer” Gaeul replied, now in a final, final note, and reached for the door,

“Gaeul, don’t go like that” He called after her. As he stepped closer and closer towards her, uncertainty started to grow. Something had indefinitely shifted within him at that moment. For the second time in his life, Gaeul was about to go away. And it felt eerily similar to the very first time from nineteen years ago. The previous conversations began to make no sense at that point, because Sung Gyu, more than anything, wanted Kim Gaeul to stay with him. 

Gaeul opened the door, and a cold rush of spring wind seeped in.

“Gaeul, please” He pleaded as his heart completely changed. Gaeul paused by the door, her back to him, her hand keeping the door open, perhaps contemplating her next move.

“Just stay for tonight” He said, and paused, just a few feet away from her. Gaeul didn’t respond this time, quietly allowing the time to pass between them. Memories from their last parting flashed through his mind, and he closed his eyes as his heart started to beat harder than ever before. 

“Is there anything...anything that I could do to make you stay?”

Gaeul turned her head the slightest, and for a moment, he thought he saw a ghost of a smile on her lips.

“Anything?” She asked him.

“Anything,” He replied.

He could see her clearly now. Gaeul was smiling, this mysterious little smile that spoke louder than her words would.

“Then...you know what to do”

That was the truth, as outrageous that it may be right now. Sung gyu knew exactly what he should do. He closed his eyes and counted to three in his mind, mentally preparing himself. It was much easier when he was only thirteen. Now he felt like he was walking on eggshells. Within seconds, Sung Gyu closed the few steps of the gap between them, and boldly, unhesitantly, naturally as ever, he turned her around, cupped her face in his hands, moved closer and kissed her on her lips.