“Yah, isn’t Lee Jeno seriously the best ballet dancer in the program?” A crowd of giggling girls rush through the theatre department corridor.

“Should we go get an autograph? He always rushes off after the curtain closes so it’s so hard to catch him,” One of them whispers excitedly.

“Are you crazy!?” Another one exclaims. “I heard even his colleagues don’t interfere with his practice time. He’s notoriously known for being strict about boundaries.”

“That’s a shame. But, it’s kinda cute when he looks into the audience and smiles a little bit after his performance ends.”

In the practice room, everything is deafeningly silent except for the heaving pants of the shame faced first-years who shrivel under Lee Jeno’s steely pupils.

His cutting, cool gaze bore into them ruthlessly. “Your jumps were way off — no height, no fluidity, and poor landing. Aren’t you embarrassed that your hard work amounts to only this much? Do you think I can stand on the same stage as you and be associated with such lousy dancing? Seeing you dance and call it ballet to me is the biggest sign of disrespect.” His stance is lithe like a little child, but his voice is menacing. “. . . Do you feel like I’m being unfair?”

“No,” They all clumsily chorus their timid disagreements, heads bowing in humiliation.

His menacing glare deepens. “Oh? You should feel that it’s unfair. I’d rather you feel it’s unfair because you poured your blood, sweat, and tears into practicing really hard, and because you were too nervous to show the fruits of your labor is why I’m giving such harsh feedback.” Laziness is unacceptable, one who doesn’t work doesn’t deserve to eat. He’s considered the department’s crème de la crème, he prepared everything and all these cheeky imbeciles had to do was set their spoon on the table. Is even that too much to ask for? “When I was a freshman I locked myself in practice rooms all night and wouldn’t dare go home without perfecting the routines. Even if it meant constant nosebleeds and headaches, I threw away my body so that I would give everyone a dazzling performance. Ballet is my everything, so I wouldn’t even dare take it lightly or betray it, but what about you guys? . . Without desperation, can you honestly say you’re a dancer?”

His intimidating aura looms over the practice room like rumbling rainy clouds and heinous moments before a guillotine chops down. Rolling his black jade eyes in chilly irritation he sighs and orders them to rehearse the routine — “When I come back and find you’re not dancing, it should be because your ankles are broken and you’re physically unable to move anymore” — before storming out. He’s intense like this with other people, in regards to work, and gruff strangers. But in her bedroom, Karina concludes that he’s only misunderstood and beautiful. Beautiful is scary and dangerous. It’s veering off the deep end, gunmetal and dried petals, wearing your heart on the sleeve then retracting into recluse monologues. Beautiful is Lee Jeno, and she’s burning too close to the orbit of his sun. He’s surveying her from his spot on her study chair, long fingers playing with a silver Zippo lighter but he doesn’t light up because her mother would freak out about the offensive cigarette stench stinking up the apartment. Karina mentally rolls her eyes replaying her mother’s disgusted face when she saw Jeno at her front door. She then shot her daughter a disapproving glance before shaking her head and disappearing into the kitchen. Possessed by emerald envy, Karina can’t help but scoff.

Does that woman know he’s here with me? Of course not, there’s so much she doesn’t know.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Jeno’s lambent voice glows through her darkening concerns. She shakes her head, feigning a dulcet smile. Don’t call me baby, you shouldn’t do that to me. He pats his thighs and she can’t help but giggle as she pushes herself off her bed and climbs onto his lap.

Admiring his gorgeous features this close makes her want to mark his neck in marooned love bites. Let that other woman deal with it, question him as to why some unfamiliar perfume keeps clinging to his clothes. Karina wants her candied, sensual sorbet perfume to embrace him even when he’s embracing Son Wendy, wants the delicate notes of vanilla and peach to spread deeply in his nostrils and mouth, leaving him high on sugar pop catharsis. They’d get drunk and nasty, greedily drinking each other up in her scented sheets like violent savages, oversensitive to feather light touches and trailing hands that have no manners. He’d imprint every crevice of her bare skin in the camera lens of his eye, all in playing with her zipper while she amuses herself making smoke rings of menthol just to piss off her mother. She predicts him blushing while watching her apply her favorite translucent rom&nd water gloss. Oh, how funny he is about lipgloss. .

Heart fluttering in expectation, the world basks away in gentle sweetness and poetic quality time. Winter’s voice from Karina’s world beyond her bedroom drifts from next door in an overly obnoxious conversation on the phone, but she find it that she doesn’t really mind her younger sister’s immature gossip sessions. It just feels nice to spend this time with Jeno in her room. Again, delving in the paradise of her world. Teaching him chess. Back hugs and cheek kisses. Waiting for pizza to be delivered. Nonsensical, aimless chatter and recapping campus episodes about uptight professors and scandalous frat parties. Dissolving like molten sugar in his sweet mouth; words that fall like aphrodisiac off the lips, glittering crystal daylight, shards of chemistry. Everything is coming up roses until he suddenly turns to her with that uncanny, suspecting smile. All glass-eyed and ice-hearted. Wet lightening streaks down her spine.

“I bet when you were a child you stole things that didn’t belong to you,” Jeno says lightly, but there’s hundreds upon hundreds of connotations Karina could pick up on. “Like toys and candy from other kids.”

If she had a knife she’d stab it right through his heart. “Why would you say that?”

He frowns at her for a second, almost disappointed as if saying to play nice.

“Yah,” She grits through clenched teeth, accusatory eyes narrowing. “What do you know about me? Are you interested? You never asked me any questions before, so why are you thoughtlessly giving your opinion now?”

Aloof, he watches as she slips off his lap and paces heatedly around her room. He has a face of all deviously handsome heartbreakers in tragic romance films and it has her absolutely livid.

“My childhood, dreams, pet-peeves, or hobbies. You never asked about these things because you didn’t care. Or maybe you wanted to keep me mysterious so I could be more interesting to you.”

“Why are you getting defensive?” His pretty mouth curves in a mollifying grin, running both hands through his platinum blonde hair.

“Why?” She hisses. “Am I overreacting? Are you gonna apologize so easily as if I’m the bad guy?”

First his jaw twitches, then unspoken sentiments vanishes into a frustrated sigh. “Forget it.”

“Don’t sigh as if you’re letting something unforgivable slide!”

“Say clearly what you’re angry about so we can talk about it. If you just get swayed by your emotions and say things you don’t mean it’ll only get toxic.”

“Toxic? You’re toxic. Everything you do to me is toxic!”

“Then should we stop here?”

“Is quitting that simple for you?”

“It is when you keep fighting against me,” He responds softly, quietly.

She lets out an irritated groan and points a finger towards him. “You see— cut that crap out! You’re like gaslighting me and turning me into the unreasonable, overdramatic villain!”

“How?” He stands up from her study chair, raising a brow. “By choosing not to entertain you in a meaningless fight?”

“Lee Jeno—”

“Look at me straight and say it. Do you actually care about me?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re the one getting upset out of nowhere and shunning me out. Then you start self-victimizing yourself and accuse me of never taking any interest in you. Aren’t you insinuating I’m cheap because I’m only into you physically?”

“You use love to make up instead of communicating and resolving the problem. You do want me because you don’t have to worry about the problems that usually come in a relationship, but technically aren’t we dating? Or do you buy flowers and spend birthdays with every woman you become romantically involved with?”

His simmering silence only encourages her.

“Yah, Lee Jeno,” She starts, poisoned apples lacing her tone, “As a child, you must’ve hated being compared to other kids. Or foamed at the mouth with jealousy when other dancers got more attention and spotlight than you. Is that why you’re such an egotistical jerk now? Because you can’t stand not being the main character?”

“Karina. . . Just exactly what kind of person did you see me as?” His face contorts in a conflicted, pained expression. “I. . . Didn’t think you could take it this far.”

“Well now you know,” She icily finishes, avalanching the room into an aura of expanding terror and silent chaos. He wonders if she means it, she wonders if he fights with his girlfriend like this. Was she being unreasonable? Maybe. Was she blowing things out of proportion? Well. . . Yes. But sometimes his lack of emotion and teasing remarks mean everything to her, it reminds her of their complicated status, remind her that the person who Jeno is really tied to is not her but Son Wendy. And then he has the audacity to look at her like she’s the one clogging his heart full of sorrow and hatred and aurora fire. Paralyzing him in fear and panic. A part of her knows she doesn’t spellbound him to that extent — shouldn’t, not with the sporadic way he casually withdraws into himself every now and then —, there’s no way he’s infatuated with her the way she is with him. So how could he choose to be wrecked by her anger than rampant, instead? Her sharpened gaze lingers on his black eye. Or did he aim that invisible anger at himself?

“Are we any different?” His dull voice shatters her out of her reverie. She observes as his finger lightly traces along her vanity’s edge. He looks like a stranger in her room. “I like pretty things, enjoy art, and winning competitions like you do. We’re both eerily similar. The same in fact.”

Maybe he’s not just only out of place in her room. “Enjoying each other’s company because we’re lonely doesn’t make us the same.”

His eyes alert with coldness. “Who said I was lonely?”

“I’m lonely,” She snaps. “But you have a girlfriend who loves you and you’re cheating on her with me. What holes am I filling in that she isn’t? Does being with someone as bright and sunny as her feel so terribly lonely that you come to me? To feel better about yourself?”

Saying it aloud causes something to break within herself. A resounding sound of glass smashes against the floor.

“Well, I’m not here to fill in the gaps for anybody,” She resumes tiredly, “Even if you don’t know my worth, I know my own. Jeno, we should stop it here. If you drag me further along this road I can’t guarantee how I’ll react.”

Jeno drags his pupils pensively over her as if mulling over the bitterness of her declaration. “What was all that talk about not letting anyone else have me? Was it just empty lip service?”

Karina thinks back to the mornings where she drew his face everyday in her mind. It was a foolish habit. “All self-destructive people say empty promises they can’t keep. You should know that.”

“You don’t mean that,” He crosses the oppressive space between them and warmly caresses the side of her cheek. It’s a hell-like cycle. Shaking her head, she pushes his hand away.

“I do. Besides, you’ll be fine. Sure, it’s one less audience member — but you’ll be okay.”

Sometimes, he gazed upon her as if burning photographs of her face into his brain. With the utmost attention, he’d study every bone in her slender body, calves, knees, thighs, fingers, and eyelashes. Whether it was dyed in love or arousal, he’d explore the ripple of her flexing muscles that flowered like white magnolias swaying through the wind in slow adoration. He would watch her glossy lips form a smile and his dilated pupils would flourish in mischief at the mole stretching across her pale chin. She had blossomed under those laser focus glances. Now, he stares at her with nothing but foreign contempt. Yeah, maybe that was the same face he was making when he visited her before he overdosed. Or maybe it was his true colors showing; a battered and bruised heartthrob who took rejection to the bone. She hates him for shrinking her into a spineless and shameless thing, but she’s proud she won with self-respect.

Don’t be funny, Karina. Can you even call what you’ve been doing self-respect? What do I keep hopelessly expecting? Even now I want to forgive him and forget this even happened, the thought of him going back to that woman makes my skin crawl. . . Even thinking about him being in her bed gives me the creeps. . . No, snap out of it. The one who intruded their world was me.

“You should leave,” She whispers defeatedly, burnt black and charcoaled. Belatedly, he nods and steps away to collect his discarded black leather jacket from the floor. Watching his hollow movements project images of his parents’ enormous condo through her mind; spacious white walls that resembled a museum rather than a home, mute grey furniture propped like fashion pieces throughout, no family pictures in sight, his skylit bedroom where they littered the floor in opened wine bottles, cocktail glasses, empty jewelry boxes, and vinyl jackets of Bing Crosby. Expensive, Italian colognes lined his dresser and framed vintage Playboy magazine covers decorated his walls. After waking up on Saturday mornings, he would simply daze out the windowed wall nursing a glass of Moët, sometimes he drank Dom Pérignon, or an occasional bourbon old-fashioned. Watching him watch the sun rise was like watching a movie for her. He was very still and quiet, unmoving, as if meditating. Then and even now as she watches his retreating back exiting her room, there’s not the slightest idea in her mind of what he could possibly be thinking about.

“I have a girlfriend.”

They say the first kiss taste like lemons.

“That has nothing to do with me.”

It doesn’t. It tastes like sugar-coated cherries. Like wine against his lips.

It’s a shining memory that crosses Karina’s mind when her lowered pupils drag musingly over the crystal-embellished Prada mini skirt hanging in her closet. She had just gotten off the phone with Jeno — hence the wet mascara tracking down her morose cheeks —, and all it did was rip her apart and infatuate her more in an uncontrollable spiral down accelerating insecurities. The mirror tells her she’s stunning but emptiness brews a livid hurricane in her lurching stomach. Subconsciously, a pale hand rubs over her bruised floral nape. A vicious scowl etches her face echoing their previous argument.

I bet when you were a child you stole things that didn’t belong to you.

These days she feels more of a walking corpse blessed with beauty and rage rather than a functioning human being. She doesn’t spare her untouched chessboard or piling homework a single glance as she grabs the skirt off the hanger in determination. Apologies should of been filling her voicemail box by now — it’s been over a damn week — and if he wasn’t busy stressing over their quarrel, was he too busy pandering to that Son Wendy? She refuses to lose to anyone, especially her, at least not without a fight. If Jeno wasn’t going to come crawling then she’d force him to. And no one could judge her for it because she’s her own biggest critic. Knows that her actions have been despicable and deplorable, that it’s costing her relationship with her disappointed mother but shouldn’t it be a testament to how much she loves Jeno? The pedestal of her world, the brightest star in the universe, the gravity that pulls her down to this Earth and allows her to breathe. The true name of happiness has to be his name. It wouldn’t make sense for her to be apart from him. People always say how love is everything and not to underestimate the powers of love, was she not abiding to that law? Did she not deserve love? Love, to her, justifies ugliness like hypocrisies and irrationalities. Who could possibly think straight from the heartache of cupid’s arrows? It hurts. And hurts and hurts and hurts. Life without Jeno isn’t something she’s interested in, it would be like depriving her of the very oxygen that she needs to live. And there’s no one who could understand that terrifying feeling — not her mother, not her sister, and not even that Son Wendy. How dare he shun her and seek refuge in that ignorant woman? How dare he. . .

You lied to me. You don’t love me, you don’t love her either. You don’t know love. Because if you did, you would know not to mess with it—

“Hey, I got us drinks!” Giselle’s boisterous cackles snaps Karina out of her wintry daze. Jaemin and the rest of their friends gleefully exclaim while passing around colorful concoctions under the club strobe lights. The swirling purples and reds casts a mysteriousness to Karina’s glamorously blank face as she stoically takes a sip from her gold leaf martini. Smiling wryly, she reaches in her black rhinestone Balenciaga hourglass bag with her free hand, fishing out her leopard print encased iPhone. The many videos she uploads to her Instagram stories are mesmerizing and provocative; glasses clinking in a liquor sloshing toast, blurred bodies dancing up against one another to pulsating EDM, and one a closeup of her skimpy mesh skirt. A flurry of incoming texts inflate her alcohol-addled ego, smirk deepening as his contact name incessantly pops up on the glass screen.

babe 💘💍💑 🌎🔒: i know you’re reading my messages

babe 💘💍💑 🌎🔒: you better not be flirting w other guys

babe 💘💍💑 🌎🔒: come to my place

babe 💘💍💑 🌎🔒: pls

babe 💘💍💑 🌎🔒: i miss you

“Damn girl, who got you cheesing like that?” Giselle shouts over the loud music. Pocketing her phone, Karina laughingly shakes her head, glittering eyes flickering to an unknowing Jaemin who was chatting with some friends by the bar. She thinks about jealousy, how it twists into the heart like a poisoned dagger.

“I’ll be right back,” She’s already heading in his direction, shoving through sweaty nobodies, wisps of her intoxicating perfume passing by. The brunette notices her first by the smothering scents of sensual orange blossoms hypnotizing him in an enchanted trance.

“Now this is a surprise,” He brushes his friends off immediately as she slides into the seat next to him. It almost makes her laugh.

“Is it?” Her lipsticked mouth tugs in a lopsided grin.

“It is,” He confirms, his lips before taking a sip of his neon mint cocktail. “I only ever knew you as a mutual through G, but you and me. . . We never really had a proper conversation before.”

“Ah, I guess you’re right,” She folds a knee over her leg, the crystals of her skirt scintillating as they shift up. He visibly gulps at the flashy display. She resists rolling her eyes. Too easy. “Now we have all the time in the world. Buy me a drink?”

“Aight, bet. What we having?”

She thinks back to all the times Jeno wouldn’t let her have dark liquor. “Hennessy.”

“Damn, you’re tryna get drunk drunk, huh?”

“It’s fine. I have you here to take care of me.”

He flushes a pretty shade of red but flags down the bartender anyways. “Y-Yah, you’re just making fun of me at this point.”

“Why?” She smirks into the remnants of her martini, preying eyes completely trained on him. “Isn’t it nice drinking with someone as beautiful as me?”

“How shameless. I guess you don’t need me hyping you up — you already know how fine you are.”

Karina’s observant gaze has him swelling with excitement. “Do you think I find compliments boring because I hear them all the time?”

“I do, it just makes me wonder what kind of girl you are.”

Without a care she knocks the glass of cognac down, a thin stream of warm brown liquid trickling over her succulent thigh. Jaemin follows the full blood roses blooming suspiciously across her cheeks to the topaz droplets dewing her honey skin. She smiles salaciously. “Jaemin, why don’t you find out what kind of girl I am?”

Jeno knows exactly what kind of girl Karina is. And maybe that’s why half an hour later when he’s ascending LED stairs in some rowdy Hongdae nightclub, he’s not surprised to see Na Jaemin on his knees in front of the mentioned girl in a secluded corner. His smoldering midnight pupils zeroes in on Jaemin’s veiny hands roaming her ribcage, waist, and hips. And of course, in between hazy boredom and disinterest, Karina stares right at Jeno and has the nerve to smile.

“Jaemin-ah,” She calls affectionately, smug gaze still remaining on Jeno. “Hold on, can you go fetch my handbag? I think I left it downstairs by the bar.”

“A-Ah, really?” His face pulls away from her skirt in a daze. “Stay right here, I’ll go get it!”

The poor sophomore almost catches a heart attack when he turns around to an unmoving Jeno. “Aish! How long were you standing there?” He squeaks in embarrassment, huffing as Jeno doesn’t spare him a single glance. “Ugh, whatever. You better be gone by the time I come back!”

And then there’s two.

Calm and contained, Jeno sustains a calloused glare. “Are you everybody’s girlfriend?”

She exchanges a crooked smirk for an intimidating snarl. “You’re pathetic.”

“That’s rich coming from the one acting like an attention on Instagram,” He slightly his head to the side, indifferent to the way she harshly flinches in response. “Yeah, I would say you’re pretty familiar with being pathetic.”

“How funny. You avoided me for days and yet you’re here in front of me.” She can’t tell if her fastening heart is burning or breaking. “You stink. You smell just like that bit—”

He’s closing the space between them in seconds, fingers possessing and shoving her up against wall. A gasp dies in her anemone sprouting lungs, pupils widening up at his searing expression. “Don’t you dare. Don’t say such nasty things with those pretty lips.” And he’s everywhere, nosing down her jawline, igniting her senses in bittersweet bliss. And damn it, she’s so desperate for his touch — for his lips on hers.

“Why are you doing this to me?” She whimpers, swarovski tears filling her eyes.

“Because you’re my love,” He answers, rolling his tongue over her ear and peppering kisses down her neck. He alternates between and harshly along her jaw, nipping slightly at her collarbones.

A breathy sigh of pleasure slips past her ruby lips as she entangles her fingers in his unruly, snowy hair. “I love it when you get jealous. It proves you really care about me.”

“Did you wear this for me?” He murmurs against her lips, palms sweeping up the back of her thighs. His fiery touch teases beneath the hem of her micro miniskirt.

She nods mindlessly, eyes fluttering shut. “Do you remember? I wore it when we shared our first kiss.”

“Did you let Jaemin kiss you?” He sweetly presses a chaste peck to her lips, opposite of the harsh way his curling fingers has her melting.

Spots of dazzling white dot her vision, eyes rolling back in pleasured fantasia. “No. I’d never do that to you.”

They end up back at Jeno’s condo where their disheveled clothes lay strewn across his bedroom floor. They make love, smoke, drink, and do it all over again until they’re dozing off into slumber.

“Babe,” Her heart squeezes at how cutely his droopy eyes upturn in moon crescents when he smiles. “Speak to me in French?”

His hand grips her neck as he brings her further on top of him, and the sweet way he tongues down like feeding her a confection has her whining into his mouth. She lightly pushes him into his pillow, an obscene string of saliva connecting their lips as they pull apart. He greets her scandalized bashfulness with faux innocence.

“What?” He beams at her and if falling for his childish tricks means seeing that lovable expression, she’d fall a hundred more times.

“Not that kind of French, you ert. Tell me something — I don’t know — profound.”

He hums lowly, twinkling eyes wandering towards the ceiling as he pulls her closer to his chest. A hint of recluse blues overcomes his candlelit face. “Sur l’onde calme et noire où dorment les étoiles. La blanche Ophélia flotte comme un grand lys…” (On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping. White Ophelia floats like a great lily…)

Karina’s too scared to ask if he recites Rimbaud to Wendy, too. The mere thought of it nearly drives her mad.

“O pâle Ophélia! belle comme la neige! Oui, tu mourus, enfant, par un fleuve emporté!” (O pale Ophelia ! beautiful as snow ! Yes child, you died, carried off by a river !)

Maybe she shares with him interests that have nothing to do with Wendy at all. Being in his bed is one thing, but owning a part of Jeno no one knows about elevates her to the point of no return.

“Ciel! Amour! Liberté! Quel rêve, ô pauvre Folle! Tu te fondais à lui comme une neige au feu.” (Heaven ! Love ! Freedom ! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl ! You melted to him as snow does to a fire.)

Why am I doing this? No matter what he does, I want him even more. I don’t care about being a good person or what anyone thinks of me. If he understands me then that’s enough. Everything else is useless.

“— Et le Poète dit qu’aux rayons des étoiles. Tu viens chercher, la nuit, les fleurs que tu cueillis, et qu’il a vu sur l’eau, couchée en ses longs voiles, la blanche Ophélia flotter, comme un grand lys.” (— And the poet says that by starlight. You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked, and that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils, White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.)

Usually, she falls asleep peacefully in his arms. But on this night she stays up thinking of all the times they spent together. Ephemeral times that are too brief to sink in and too precious to remain as only memories. Sharing him with another woman is no longer an option.

An awakened thirst permeates her senses and rises up.