Koi No Yokan.
On the Path.Him : the night before.
Koi No Yokan (n); Japanese. The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love.
He haphazardly, whimsically segments his life into two sorts in the way one would pin the tail on a crooked donkey blindfolded and deaf. Routine and not-routine.
Routine is mundane. Predictably boring. He could close his eyes tightly shut and sticks his earphones in—his life would carry on unimpeded smoothly without carving erratic-patterned potholes in his path.
Then, there is his love life.
Romance—unfortunately, as he stares dumbfounded at the too-many notifications of a date he held so dearly in his cupping hands—is a routine beneath the glossy heart-shaped, love-tinged rhythm wounded tautly to every second he has.
He doesn’t mind.
He absolutely, wonderfully doesn’t.
That part of his life is simple. She is a delightfully sunshine-rained comfort.
He has it all planned. A series of errors and trials over teenage clumsiness and passionate adolescence forged a blueprint dictating, forming the backbone of their romance.
Candlelight dinner for two, against the skyline of New York bathed in smoky, warm-lit dusk. The brightly splendid pink azalea bouquet nestled in one arm. The other firmly holding onto the flimsy handle of a polka-dotted cake box.
The blue-ribboned box rests hotly inside his pocket. There is nothing particular about the box. It’s octagonal, with lilac velvet covers and her initials, J.S.H, monogrammed to its lid. Yet, there is still some amazement he could eke out when she’s left to guess its content.
Nine birthdays passed. He hasn’t cease to surprise her yet.
It is always, always, always a trinket, a piece of a filigree jewellery set her heart desires. She could afford them. They’re never priceless enough to break her wallet. But there is pride in the restrain she shows in the things she wants—and Lee Hyun worships her for that.
This routine he had memorised, ingrained, imprinted into his soul.
“It’s a three-month backpacking trip in Canada with my friends,” she says, over steel knife slicing into bloody veal.
But she does that thing—curves her lower lip partly over her teeth, a sign of the anxiety gnawing her nights—and admonishing bells screaming warning gloom in his ears.
She’s quick to add, nonchalance forced into one terse word, “Girlfriends.”
They have never been apart longer than a week.
It stuns him stupidly into silence.
Are you breaking up with me sits traitorously on his tongue. His throat tightens, swallowing the bitterness in. Claustrophobic tension settles on his chest, restricting each breath.
The words are swirling in his mind. His attempts to grasp one and sounding them with his lips remains slippery like fine-grained sand through his avaricious fingers.
“I still love you. That won’t change. I just—,” her sweet voice nearly cracks, but all he could think is, her unspoken words are talon-like fingernails scrapping against the blackboard, “—time to figure what I want in life. God, I’m 25 and I’m still lost.” That sounds rehearsed, lines she’d gone over many times in front of the mirror, fracturing at odd syllables.
He wants to—has to—say something, anything. Before the silence burrows between them, twisting into too palpable to feign ignorance and stretching this relationship into red strings too fragile, too reedy to mend.
“Take many pictures. I want to see you smiling in all of them,” he says at last. The ends of his lips quirking to a hollow, manufactured smile. “When you come back, I might not be handsome anymore.”
She scoffs.
“Vanity, thy name is Hyun,” she says, throws a honest, sardonic laugh into the air.
He is glad for that glow to return—even if he feels the ache in his heart deepens, anxiety warrens in the cavity of his lungs.
Wretched salty tears pool at the corner of her eyes. They do not fall. Her cheery-pink lips curling into that oh-so charming smile he can’t resist to smile for.
“And let’s see where the next three months bring us,” she tells him, taking his calloused hands in her delicate ones, and her thumb caressing his fingers.
“It’s only three months,” he retorts haughtily.
“Wait for me.”
“I will always wait for you.”
The ache in his heart swirls, gliding along his ribcage, scrabbling deep and misery burns him like salt to an open, gashing wound. He misses her terribly and Shin, he determines, is the proverbial alcohol numbing his senses.
Fourteen calls go unanswered.
He cuts the next call short, chucking his phone at his bed. Irritated.
The bond of pledged brotherhood is falling short of its promises to support a brother in need.
The next hour is lost to absentminded viewing of variety show reruns. Boredom begins to chafe underneath his hoodie. There is only so much senseless watching he can take before he throttles the TV with his bare hands.
He retrieves his phone. A thumb hovering over his best mate’s name half a second, before a thought blooms.
“Go meet other people, man. It’s not a cool look to mope around,” Shin insisted, in one of their countable-in-one hand phone calls.
He thinks to Live a little, Shin’s favourite mantra, pinned to his Instagram profile and takes the plunge.
Without further thought, he books a one-way ticket to France. Darts through the checkpoints with the clothes on his body—and the octagonal lilac box with blue ribbons in his jeans’ pocket—and boards the last airplane destined for European skies.
Jo Shin is a costly miscalculation.
He stares at the increasingly wrinkled map a kindly elderly couple gave him—the wife circled a lodging in blank sharpie ink not far away. Their directions, heavily accented and a glorious mixture of French vowels, are helpful as his cell-phone’s dead battery.
He walks away, with the moth-bitten, yellowed map held in front of him. Turns it up and down, then sideways every twenty steps. His sense of direction deteriorating into asinine frustration.
He’s so careful to stick to the sidewalk, right under the streetlamp when the last of sunlight recedes farther into the horizon, leaving darkened orange skies in its wake. He squints hard, with one eye closed, and begging, as though the longer he stares, the map would force to give up its wonderous riddles and the elusive lodging would appear in front of his eyes.
Fat droplets splotch furiously against the map. A scurrying scooter tears through the map. A stray dog maims the map into a mulch.
“What the !” comes out first.
He hurls a string of creative insults at every single direction, cursing everything—and anything—into eternal damnation in junkyard hell.
It’s a while when he’s out of words, breath and pure resignation, he stops to bend over, collecting what’s left of the ruined map. His resolve to try again already burgeoning.
He sighs. Dramatic. So theatrical.
The rain pours, hissing and ungodly loud, every noise into the music of water braying against the sandstone pavement.
Yet her voice, soft and lyrical, cuts through. “Do you like coffee?”
He thinks, he answers ‘yes’.
But his mouth is open and there isn’t any intelligent reply.
“Good, me too.”
He’s definitely, rapidly, dumbly blinking.
She offers a hand—ashen and veined—and pulls him to his feet. “I know a place,” she says.
He notices the smile first.
Her lips, a lighter shade of ruby pink, curling into an infectious congenial smile. The kind that makes him to want to trot over a flower shop, bunches pretty flowers in plastic wrapper and beaming aimlessly, randomly at ecstatic dogs.
She’s pleasantly attractive. Dark-haired, tall and willowy, high cheekbones and an enigmatic smile that reads like open arms. The oversized, wayfarer-framed glasses adds a hint of rustic appeal to her list of growing charms.
“What do you want? Is hot chocolate okay?” she asks, one dark brow half-rising. Her English, while flawless, is dotted in oriental tilt intertwined with vaguely British diction.
“Yes.”
He’s aware of the paleness last.
Only when she guides him into the corner café, and she inclines over the white marbled counter, almost blending seamlessly into the furniture—only her jet-black ponytail valiantly preventing the perfect assimilation.
It’s comical—it should be. The sight alone was a blunder of common fashion sense.
“Tourist?”
He frowns. “Is it that obvious?”
“Not exactly. You don’t have a suitcase,” she points out, waving her long-nailed fingers over imaginary luggage. “But you’re overly attached to that map. Too distraught over its untimely demise.”
“I was?”
She nods.
“Well, I am—did.” He takes a deep breath, sighs into the mug. “Wanted to surprise my friend. We don’t see each other like we used to. He’s working in Europe. But that son of a moved to London, didn’t even mention it in our last chat.”
She smiles. Brilliantly.
He grins.
“Too bad.”
His stomach growls—a brassy protest for nourishment—but the café’s live band thankfully masks it. He takes another sip, air and embarrassment. “The only flight available is tomorrow afternoon,” he continues, electing to forget he’s one meal away from achieving second-degree starvation.
“The food’s here expensive,” she announces, rising to her feet.
Oh, she heard him.
“I know a place where the meal is cheap and you can even charge your phone.”
He trails after her wordlessly, weaving in and out through the crowded café, never taking his eyes off from her ponytail swaying in the dimmed room like a lifeline.
She leads him through a series of turns, art-lined corridor to a burgundy door with flaking paints on its corners. He nearly trips, face first, over the narrow steps of a swirling stairs.
“Careful, the light’s busted,” she states, pushing the door open. “Management promised to get it fix by tomorrow.”
“It’s fine.”
The room is shrouded in shadows. There’s just enough light, so utterly dull and grimy yellow, from the streets to sporadically illuminate the room, highlighting the outlines of serviceable furniture.
She peels off her jacket, revealing the translucent white, billowy blouse adorning her slender frame. Unfastens her sandals, tossing them under the writing desk. She frees her ponytail; eloquent fingers combing, untangling her tresses.
Goosebumps pockmark his skin, from the damp fabric of his shirt and his sodden socks—not from that. He’s sure of it. It’s the sudden drop of temperature that sets his nerves tingling. Must be that.
He hesitates.
“Don’t just stand there. Come in,” she beckons.
He pokes one foot first. Cautiously. Almost like he’s testing the waters for, for—for something. Then the other foot enters. Nothing. Even without the lights, the mess—there’s a plethora of things, multicoloured suitcases, Converse sneakers, leather-bound books piling on the chair, and it could take a while for him to list them all—is evident. Either she doesn’t notice or cares little for such matter.
“Give me a sec.”
“Take your time.”
She rummages through the nightstand’s double drawers. “Aha,” she squeals, holding the charger victoriously in the air. “I noticed we used the same phone. There’s an outlet there near the table.”
He plugs the charger into his phone; the battery emoticon flickering in neon red. The signal bar, on the other hand, is appallingly non-existent. Great. No cell service.
“Sit,” she orders.
The wooden chair by the balcony seems like a safe choice. The balcony overlooks the cobble-lined roads, trailing ivy hung over the weathered walls and a patch of dense forests that stretches into the distance.
“Dinner is served,” she singsongs, handing him a steaming cup of shrimp-flavoured noodles.
“Ah, the food of champions.” He breathes in the aromatic tamarind scent. “My father used to say ‘You can take the Asian out of Asia but you can’t—”
“—take the Asia out of the Asian,” she finishes. And laughs.
“It doesn’t really makes sense, but it’s still true anyway.” He slurps the noodles, barely chewing them and singes his tongue. Hunger erodes his ability to care or question the unrecognisable red-and-yellow label—his famed pickiness is absent.
“It’s an Asian thing.”
He shrugs. And nods.
He’s down to his last noodle strand when the rain pounces, unexpectedly, and brisk wind whipping frost against their skin. He stands up—all six foot plus of him—in cavalier haste, and spreads his arms over her.
She runs in first. Her stray, blithe giggle reasserts itself in the chaos.
He slams the green, shaky wooden shutters behind him close, nearly taking them off from its rusted hinges. “Oh ,” he blurts, the edges of his lips quirk upwards.
“This place is falling apart,” she affectionately mocks.
“If it really falls off, I can pay,” he offers—actually, declares.
She dismisses his concern with a wave. “Don’t worry about it. After all, it’s what makes this place so enchanting in the first place.” Her smile doesn’t diminish a bit.
“I swear, it’s like the rain hates me,” he groans, wringing the excess water from his hoodie. Water dripping from his wet, frizzed hair saturating his waterlogged shirt. More rainwater begin to pool under his soaked woolly socks.
“I don’t think the rain is sentient enough to hate or plays favourites,” she counters, grinning. “Dry your clothes at the radiator.”
“Well, it clearly has something against me,” he mutters, stripping down to his lined boxers. Decorum drilled into his head has him seeking a towel to wrap around his waist for the want of modesty.
She whistles, startling him. “Not bad. Are you an athlete? No, wait. A model,” she decides, flitting an appreciative gaze over his body. Two fingers pushing her glasses upwards over a coquettish smirk.
He turns his attention to her, immediate and astonished. “You know me?”
“Runway or editorial?”
“Mostly runway.”
She her head to a side, both eyebrows dipping. “I thought I recognised that jawline from somewhere.”
“You’re a regular to fashion shows? Which fashion show you like? Got a favourite?”
She shakes her head, supressing a chuckle. Fails miserably. “Nah, I was just messing with you. Never been to any fashion week. But you do have that model look.”
“Thanks, I guess,” he says, dryly.
He thinks there is some disappointment, but it is fleeting. Her praise fills his chest with the tiniest bit of pride, carving a thrilled smile onto his lips and adds a touch of hot blush to his ears.
Her bed is noticeably less cluttered; her clothes now found a new home on the desk. She pats the empty space by the foot of the bed. There’s nothing seductive about the gesture—only honest-to-god friendliness.
The bed creaks, when he sits. Abruptly, he sees—picks up details—acutely in the stark shadows veiling the room. Seol-hee’s cheeks are rounded, apple-like. Hers are diamanté sharp, and he wonders, would his fingers bleed if he grazes them against her cheekbones.
He shudders.
At the blasphemed thought.
At his senses heightened to an unexplainable crescendo.
At the surge of excitement skimming across his skin.
At his heart drumming to the stomps of a thousand wildebeests on the savannah plains.
His throat is agonisingly dry. He tries to rub away the heat flaming his neck.
“You need beer,” she suddenly declares, “It will keep you warm.”
He chugs down the lukewarm Kronenbourg, hoping, wishing, feeling his overreactive wits whirring into a little sluggish pace. He searches his memories for the sonatas he composed over stolen lunch kisses, late night karaoke, acne-woes, and giddy movie dates. The constant warbling of his Seol-hee sonatinas—the same ones that plagued his sunsets, his sunrises, his every being—is uncomfortably, uncharacteristically quiet.
Rain dwindles into a pitter-patter sprinkle; mellow jazz glides through the window slits, lingering in the air. It’s magical, dreamy and placid.
She cracks the windows open. The music is light-hearted, resounding crisp-clear, a jaunty tune stirring limbs for a dance-along or engulfing its listener in a cocoon of tranquillity.
“The Marceaux. They lived on this street for forty years,” she supplies, directing a pallid finger at the bottom-floor apartment. “She is a self-taught painter and he is a former prison warden,” she whispers, there’s a sparkle in her eyes that feels like an admission of sorts.
His eyes dart to her lips, less ruby-pink in the dimmed room, more peach in hue. Quite chapped on the upper lip. His gaze lingers. A tad too long. His thought straying to a contemplation—ponders if her lips taste like the familiar popped bubble-gum or something more exotic, like grapefruit pomegranate.
He coughs into his fist.
She stares at him, puzzled, expecting for a reply.
“Oh?” he splutters, unintelligently. Clears his throat. “W-what kind of paintings?”
“Cats.”
“Cats.”
“Cats,” she repeats, another chuckle echoes in the room, and takes a sip from her beer bottle.
“Cats are cute. Horses are better.”
Inwardly, he wants to jam the heel of his palm against his eye socket. He opts for a pinch on the bridge of his nose. “You think there’s any lodging around here still empty? Air B&B? Motel? Hotel? A tent for rent?”
She clucks her tongue. “You chose a bad timing. It’s peak tourist season. Every lodging is filled.”
He sighs. “Just my luck.”
“Sleep here then. It’s only for a night,” she casually says, gestures at the mattress. “The bed is big enough for three.”
It’s a modest-sized bed for honeymooning couple. The blankets are homespun, though some threads are unscrambling, one strand at a time. The mattress dips under their collective weights.
“It’s—no, I can’t.” The refusal comes easily. There are lines he’d crossed, trampled, crushed—both as a gentleman and a taken man—in the span of one unlucky night, but he’s not really taken, is he?
“Why not?” she says, measuredly in a question and a demand.
“I snore.”
She meets his gaze, dark eyes narrowing, studying him behind those oversized glasses. “I don’t sleep either.”
Her reply is a double-edged sword, he thinks, and it’s both cryptic and revealing. This-this feels like a secret confessed.
His forehead wrinkles. “Everyone has to sleep.”
“I can not sleep just for tonight.” She shrugs her dainty shoulders. “You can take the bed. Just leave me the blanket and a pillow.” A coy smile spreads the corner of her lips wide, and her eyes mischievously, jestingly flicker and she negotiates, “You can keep that towel.”
He’s one desperate gentleman. Leaves the invitation hanging. Not yet. He snorts, squinting at her in his attempts to deflect. “What brings you to the City of Love?”
She fetches them both another Kronenbourg bottle each. Takes a swig from hers. Keeps her sight firmly on the Marceaux dancing in their living room.
He tries not to think—when the ghostly, radiant moonshine glimmers on the curve of her cheekbones just right, and he leans slightly, catches the freckles so unreservedly faint right beneath her eyes, like a clusters of waning stars—and that rings like another secret earned.
“I thought I’d visit places I didn’t have the time for. Try on things I’ve denied myself before,” she mumbles, beer bottle tipping beneath her chin. “Maybe kiss a y stranger.” The last sentence has an unspoken, cheeky wink attached to it.
He raises an eyebrow.
“It was somewhere on my bucket list,” she trails off and smirks, then breaks into that unrestrained laugh, so unabashedly musical and his heart misses a beat. “When I was 16, I think.”
Time is a blurry line, marked by the ads in the radio programme and its music. He spares a glance at the cloudless, coal skies and it looks ten, but it feels much closer to midnight, with uncertainty, valour and elation melding into a confection of illicit mystery.
She’s an enigma, magnetic and half-belting the chorus of an indie song he’s never heard of, waves the empty bottle in the air like it’s a glowstick and she’s in a rave party of one.
There’s a lid over his curiosity and he feels all senselessly hot and fuzzy—it must be the beer, she’s only given him two bottles—or was it one. Tracking his alcohol consumption is thoroughly futile when he needs it to combat the thoughts of phantom betrayal spinning in his mind.
“Drink up,” she urges.
Then she adds, an afterthought, “There’s more in the mini fridge.” Her glasses are sluggishly slithering lower, lower down her nose as she tosses her sideways to the catchy pop song, chortling, beaming.
His eyes, now accustom to the dark, notices everything. She’s porcelain in the dark, a natural contrast, cloaked in alluring silhouettes.
What a marvel of sharp lines and angles she is. Downright to that cut-glass jawline and the razor-edged collarbone peeking from the white blouse.
Hell, even the hollow of is delectably enticing and he’s quickly running out of adjectives to describe all of her. Because, because there’s nothing sensual to pen sonnets about someone’s jaw, another person’s clavicle, cheekbones that could wound skin.
But.
Even so.
“Do you drink this much on normal nights?” he teases, slurring.
“Maybe,” she purrs, tucking a stray inky swirl—that hangs just above pointed hinge of milky jaw, an elegance in such ordinariness, and he’s exhausted the dictionary and thesaurus to compare—behind her almost-fawnish ear.
Somehow, in the fits of giggles and snorts, he thinks—no, he imagines Shin’s ludicrously handsome face would radiate with pride, arrogance and mouthing ‘I told you so’ with a flourish.
Curiosity builds.
And builds.
And ridiculously builds.
Then.
Just then.
It overflows.
She tastes nothing like he’d imagined. Neither sweet nor sour. It doesn’t even bear a hint of semblance to the bubble-gum of another lips. She is the odd blend of peppermint lip balm, faint expresso, sinful chocolate, spicy noodles, and fizzy, sugary malt.
The heat rises to his ears, scorching every inch of skin. Butterflies rage a thunderstorm, a mutiny of muted loyalty, in the pit of his stomach. His brain shatters into jigsaw pieces ill fitted on its frame.
He knows he’s close—too close in fact. There’s a whiff of dizzying lavender, heady mist and peculiar sage, invading his nostrils. This is new, and subtle, and criminal.
Her lips light a ravenous fire on the terrain that is his lungs, heart and belly, turns his insides into mush, his nerves fraying, waiting to be undone.
He is sixteen again. His juvenile legs wobble, bony knees buckle and there is not enough air in his constricted lungs and his heart hammering ferociously against the fishbone of his ribcage.
He pulls back in horror, in indignity. Horrendous mortification binds him, frozen, to his seat. He is a marionette at the mercy of the puppet master.
He wants to look away. But he doesn’t.
He really can’t.
Morbid fascination of her ensnares him, his breath, and there’s a lump taking root in his throat. And yet, consent has been disciplined into his mind, with a stick to his sweaty palms and a strip of leather belt on his thighs. His apologies stumble, ungracefully, incoherently from his clumsy mouth.
She brushes her lips against his neck, lightly teasing, baiting him for the next move. Takes charge, just as before—she’s the white rabbit guiding Alice in Wonderland, more of a John Mayer’s song than a child’s storybook.
He’s a fool, painfully oblivious, and it happens, when one’s used to romance that speaks, walks like a routine. Piles one apology after the other, and slips a backhanded compliment in somewhere.
She tells him to shut up.
He is instantly silent. His breath hitches. Hopeful, eagerly anticipating.
She kisses him back, so fiercely, fervently with hunger and splits her lower lip on his teeth. Closes her eyes, presses herself against his chest. She interlaces her exquisite, waxen fingers, rests them on the base of his neck, hallmarks her fingerprints on his flesh, and pulls him closer. Her breath, so deliriously warm, prickling his lower jaw, culls all despairing, protesting thoughts from his mind.
He’s flat on his back. Her thick hair, sable and wavy, falls on his face, as she looms over him. She s her blouse, armed with a tickled chuckle. He unfastens her belt expertly with one hand, the other steadying her hips and he’s actually, absolutely giggling too.
He hears “want, want, want” in every tremor that blazes through his body, in her exploring touches as he deepens the kiss, moans onto the underside of her chin, nuzzles her collarbone.
She’s no Seol-hee. Seol-hee is comfortable, constant, safe. She is something fresh. Thrilling personified. Perhaps, a novelty. But one that sparks sizzling curiosity and intense itch.
He does not remember the rest.
They are fragmented, broken in sensations, strewn all over his mind and being.
His spine piquantly shivers, his skin brazenly tingles, his pulse frantically throbs, and all of him lusts for more, more.
The taste of peppermint, expresso, chocolate and malt is seared into his marrows and he cannot say if that’s a blessing or a curse.
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