Crooked young love.

What is it?

Obsession.

Why?

Bedroom eyes, twirling diamond, sandalwood scent.

Art drawn by entangled legs, filthy trapsoul playlist

Dior rouge, martini blue, disco ball collar

House of love                                                Heartbreak hotel

The blood orange-lavender sunset that spills through the slatted blinds casts beautifully across your sleeping expression. Every word you’ve said to me tattoos my inky bones. I miss you even when I’m with you, I don’t want no one else to have you.

Oneiric fantasia.

You live in a beautiful place. With burnt out cigarettes, renoir paintings, romantic literature, classic poetry. You live in a couture oblivion, black mannequins, ivory marble. You love the glitter of my lipgloss, love the fragrant pages of my soliloquies. Love how I bend like a rose in the silver moonlight and pierce you with my thorns when you least expect it. In this beautiful place, you don’t know pain but only pleasure, a flowery veil covers your vision. You live in a beautiful place. You live in my mind.

       Corrupting lace                                

                                            satin     blindfold              

purple    teeth     mark

I only know jealousy because of all the bad things you taught me. I only know bad things because of your hot, wet kisses. You make me the villain. You make me the psycho. I cut myself off the black glass of your steely gaze. You ask me why I’m bleeding then look down at your blood covered hands. You make me dreamy, you make me happy, you make me delirious. I ruin your pillowcases, you ruin me. Blooming wine stained madness, fuchsia teardrops, amethyst moonbeams, headless greek statues, flashing city lights, scorpion envy. You make me into you.

Taint me. Punish me. Break me. Crimson my mind. Violet my eyes. Blue my soul. Embroider the borders of my ideas with your insatiable rules. Blur my everything with turbulent darkness, dripping passion, and fierce desire. Polaroid laced bathwater, dried rose petals, and chrome hearts cross. I’m the prettiest in crinkled bedsheets right under you.

When you told me you loved me I drowned in the ocean named you

                                                                                                             you

                                                                                                                        you.

“Do you know what it means to consume someone? It’s not about occupying their thoughts or taking up all the space in their heart. Real consumption is madness. It’s greed, territorialism, and dominance,” Ice bullets of rain plummet down her shivering body in a wet, dark forest. The gold lunar sand of a dazzling, luminous desert coats her radiant skin. Suddenly, she’s face to face with marble statues, hearts chiseled in their ivory pupils and bronze arrows in their stagnant limbs. Blinking, she melts in his faded, heavy-lidded gaze across the tub where she’s back to reality in his spacious bathroom. Steamy air of honey, citrus, and smoke permeates sweetly in her lungs, drops of scented water drip from her fingertips as she skims over the petal laced bathwater.

The labyrinth in Jeno’s iris excludes allure and mystery. “It’s lust.”

She’s sensuous, deliberately tilting her wine glass until dark cherry liquid spills across the pearlescent bubbles. “Lust is greed. It’s a power over the mind — over the body.”

“Love is worse, it’s sadistic.”

A languorous smile lines her pink lips. “It’s sadistic if you make it so. Yes, lust knows no pain but pain is what makes love free. It makes love beautiful.”

“What do you think we have? Is it lust or love?”

“At first it was lust. . . Well, for you it was. I fell in love with you at first sight.”

A slow, dawning realization splits his face in half. “And then I became consumed by your love.”

Their bodies don’t need to make love because their eyes do.

“If I ever left, would you beg me back?” He quietly asks after a moment, scorched and lovesick.

“Yes.” and vulnerable, it’s yes. Out in public among murmuring strangers it’s still yes. Under him, on top of him, it’s yes over and over again. He notices she’s shading jealousy at the rose blunt kissing his mouth. An affectionate smile crosses his bitten lips.

“Come kiss me. Steal my breath away, my love.”

My love.

Mine.

That’s right, I’m yours. It’s so nice that you know my place.

She steals more than just his breath.

“Ahjumma, can we get another bottle of bokbunja, please?” Giselle calls over the noisy cacophony of the crowded Korean bbq restaurant. The smell of sizzling meat and spicy rice cakes fill the air.

“Yah, we already have so many drinks!” Jaemin halfheartedly scolds while she waves him off.

“Our seniors are treating so it’s only right that we drink like a fish all night!”

“That’s right, that’s the spirit,” Irene — fourth-year business major at Jangmi University — lifelessly agrees, raising her half empty glass in toast to her weeping wallet. “But if you brats get unmanageable I’ll seriously abandon you all in the streets.”

“Understood!” Giselle and Jaemin chant in unison, causing everyone at their table to laugh. Karina laughs with an effort. Gatherings aren’t really much of her thing, the upperclassmen always act so power-hungry and authoritative but constantly bailing would be publicly ostracizing herself. Plus, Jeno is here too, not that it matters. He’s too busy constantly checking his phone to give her the attention she’s desperately craving. He hasn’t thrown one secretive glance her way and it drives her crazy. She washes down her distaste with Kloud beer.

“Isn’t Jeno so shy?” Another senior — Joy, who flips slabs of pork belly on the grill — chimes in, playful grin deepening as he looks up like a deer caught in headlights. “What’s wrong? Are ya bored without your girlfriend around?”

“. . It’s not like that,” He answers, timidly scratching behind his reddening ear. Karina’s gem pupils flick in a signature eye roll.

“Oh, there she goes!” A vibrant Seulgi ecstatically waves her hand over her head. “Wendy! Over here!”

They all turn to Son Wendy who notices them with a beaming grin before wedging past boisterous tables in their direction. The way Jeno tunnel visions in on Wendy slashes down on Karina’s neck like a guillotine. A mix of indulgence and adoration blossoms on his gorgeous face. There’s no way Wendy doesn’t feel like a butterfly struggling in sticky syrup with that romantic gaze. The finishing blow is when Jeno greets the elder with a full kiss on the lips, uncaring to the watching eyes and wolf-whistles. Uncaring to the jagged pieces of Karina’s broken heart on the floor.

“Get a room you lovey dovey idiots,” Irene sighs in exasperation.

“Sorry, we’ll knock it off,” Wendy apologetically smiles while keeping a pouty, touch-starved Jeno at bay. “Ah, I’m starving like crazy. It’s been so long since I last had barbecue with everyone.”

“Sunbae, you’ve gotten prettier since the previous time we gathered,” Jaemin comments which causes Jeno to shoot him a frown.

“Yah,” Giselle whacks the yelping brunette upside his head, “How could you flirt with his girlfriend in front of him? Mad inappropriate!”

“I was giving a harmless compliment!”

Wendy laughs nevertheless, slightly faltering noticing Karina. “Oh, aren’t you the chess prodigy of our campus? I think I’ve seen you in the school paper. What’s your name?”

Ugh, how could she be this nice when she doesn’t even know me? It makes me uncomfortable when she smiles at me like this. . . Karina hesitantly watches for Jeno who doesn’t even flinch, nor spares her a single look. She resists a hateful scoff.

“K-Karina,” She tries a friendly smile despite the guilt multiplying in her stomach. “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a prodigy. I’m not that good. .”

“Don’t be humble, sis!” Giselle aggressively elbows Karina much to her dismay. “You’re an undefeated, reigning champion!”

“Really? That’s amazing!” Wendy exclaims in awe, admiration shines in her warm brown eyes. “I’m wishing you good luck on all your upcoming matches!”

Please stop, don’t smile at me. Don’t cheer for me. You’ll only make me feel more awful. I can’t give up Jeno for your sake so don’t be nice to me. I’m a bad person. “T. . Thank-you.”

“Jeno-yah, what do you like the best about our Wendy?” Seulgi’s sudden question has everyone buzzing and excitedly drumrolling against the table — all except for a rigid Karina who masks a look of disinterest and calculated boredom.

Jeno hums as he teasingly meets Wendy’s oblivious gaze. “Hmm, when noona catches me staring she doesn’t look away. I like the energy I feel when she simply stares at me for a long time.”

“What energy?” Joy wiggles her brows suggestively. “?”

“Hush!” A scandalized Wendy playfully swats a chuckling Jeno’s shoulder, flushing furiously as everyone starts making innuendos and cheering. “Y-Yah, it’s not like that. Really, get your dirty minds out of the gutter!”

“Sunbae, then why are you blushing so hard?” Giselle giggles in light-hearted teasing. Not in the mood for jokes, Karina hides her scowl in a frothy draft beer. She meets Jeno’s gaze all the time in unabashed flirtation — whether it’s across a crowded room, after a long shower where he dries her hair for her, or when he sheds the last article of clothing from her body. She never shied away from the intensity gleaming in his endeared eyes, so how come he loved it so much from Wendy and not her? Why is he only looking at Wendy right now like some whipped puppy, as if no one else exists? Is she not in the room too? Irritated beyond belief, she scoots her chair back which has everyone craning their necks at the piercing, screeching noise.

“Yah, where are you going?” Giselle frowns up at her poker faced friend.

“I’m going out for a smoke,” She snips coldly, pausing as Jeno only raises a brow at her before resuming back to lovingly pour Wendy a new shot of raspberry wine. Words can’t described how pissed she is as she storms out to the alleyway and begins chain-smoking Marlboro Beyonds in iced vengeance. She hates Wendy’s friends, hates Giselle, too. All their annoying, meddlesome questions ruined her night that was already going crappy.

And that damn Lee Jeno. All performers love attention, without any reason or sincerity, they all flitter to anyone who’ll view them prettily and pamper them in endless praise. Nothing ever lasts forever so she’d rather him get lost or screw off permanently. There’s no point in cursing Wendy’s name or hurting her with words, if anything she’s the one who should be cursing — her boyfriend is cheating on her with the girl she complimented. Karina busts into a fit of coughs, glinting tears leak at the corners of her eyes as the peppermint smoke goes down the wrong pipe.

“Karina, are you okay?” Her head lifts up at Jeno approaching, her inner feelings palpitate frantically.

“I’m fine,” She snarls through suffocated breathing. His comforting hand comes anyways to pat her on the back, the temptation inside his fatal scent snagging on the strings of her shaking heart. She moves from his touch as if he burned her. “What are you doing here? Go back in before your girlfriend sees us.”

He smirks slightly as he leans against the brick wall. “If I do go, you’ll get mad —but if I stay here, you’ll still get mad. Either way, I don’t win.”

“. . .”

“Isn’t it tiring being jealous all the time?” He grins with a voice dipped in poisoned mockery.

Is this what they call love? “How am I supposed to act then?”

“Like a secret,” Instead of nicotine permeating deeply inside of her, covering her senses, it’s his mesmerizing eye gaze. His hypnotic voice. That hint of a cold smile that’s not really all the way there. “Rather then walking away, you should caress my leg with your foot under the table. You should ask what I like about you the most.”

She swears he’s insane. “In front of everyone?”

“Say it like a joke,” He murmurs, thumb coming up to press against her plush bottom lip. The hot tip of his tongue from the beauty mark dotted against her chin to her quivering mouth where he greedily steals needy kisses for himself. Gasping, she drops her diminishing cigarette to bunch her fingers in the rough denim of his black jacket.

“You’re sick,” She’s sick too, tangled up in ropes of aching need and obsidian pupils expanding, “You were acting like a fool in love for your pitiful girlfriend only to kiss me five minutes later? It’s scary how you switch up like that. You’re twisted in the head—”

“It’s love and lust, no?” He says lowly, cupping her face in his big hands. “I love her and I lust for you.”

Karina, this is a bad idea. Get away from him. “. . . What happened to you loving me?”

“I still do. Want me to show you?” His ravenous eyes are eating her alive with dark satisfaction that has her nodding feverishly — pathetically, and she’s hating herself all over again. His smirk widens. “My pretty, pretty love, open your mouth for me, hm?”

She obeys, sticking her tongue out as he works his jaw for a moment before letting a glob of purple-hued spit drip into . He tastes like the traditional raspberry wine they had, and she swallows before he gently rests his forehead against hers.

“See? Doesn’t my love taste good?” He swirls his tongue around hers, delving in yet another kiss full of too much saliva and sweet dominance. Drunk in him, she relishes in this hazy, intoxicating feeling. Surrenders to this exhilarating rollercoaster of emotions where right and wrong don’t seem that much different. Love.

It’s all love. Everything about him is love.