The day after I decided to put my new plan into motion, Tae Il called me that night.  I almost didn’t answer.  But then I realized how much I wanted – needed – to hear his voice.  To have one more normal conversation with him before I started a fight.

            I answered the call and my eyes filled with tears the second I heard his voice.  He explained he’d had a late practice and was exhausted.  So he wanted to go to bed because he had to get up even earlier tomorrow.  Was that alright with me?

            “It’s fine,” I said, keeping my voice level.  “You should rest.”

            “But then that means we have to stay on the phone for a while.”  He groaned as he stretched and I could just picture him lying in bed.  “How was your day?”

            I wasn’t sure how our conversation flowed into this, but during one slight lull, something popped into my head as I lay in bed listening to his voice tell me about practice.  I stared up at the snowflakes hanging from my ceiling that I refused to take down.  I’d leave it up long after Christmas came and went, too.  I stretched my arm up, reaching for a snowflake and finding myself obviously too many feet away.

            “Do you believe in reincarnation, Tae Il?” I wondered, cradling my phone between the pillow and my ear and letting my arm fall back to the bed, empty handed.

            “Reincarnation?” he repeated with a small laugh.  “I don’t know.  I never thought much about it.  Do you?”

            I shrugged a shoulder to myself.  “Yeah,” I sighed.  “I hope it really happens.”

            “What do you want to come back as?”

           “An animal.  Maybe a dog or a cat or something.”  Something that people would love and take care of.  “Being an animal is easy, I bet.”

            “You don’t want to be a person?  What about if you came back as a princess or a billionaire or something?”

            I smiled.  Being human .  Even with unlimited power and endless money.  We have emotions and fears and nightmares.  Who wants more of that?  “You would only want to come back as a person?” I asked instead.

            He laughed lightly again.  “Sure.  I know how to be a human.  I like it.  I want to come back as king of some little island country or something.”

            “That would be nice.  I’d probably end up as a maid.”

            “That’s ok,” he replied.  “You could be one of my maids.  Then we can have an affair and I’ll make you queen.  Wouldn’t you like to be my queen?”

            Only if I was your queen, I thought fondly.  “Sure.  Living in a castle would be a lot of fun, I bet.”

            “Yeah!” he exclaimed.  “We’d have a huge castle.  With…what do you call those things around the castle?  It’s like a river?”

            “A moat.”

            “A moat.  We’ll put alligators in it for extra protection.  And we’ll ride horses out back and I’ll buy you all kinds of expensive jewelry.  Oh, and a tiara!”

            I forced a laugh.  “I’d like all that, but I’ve been a bad human in this life, so if it’s true that your previous life determines how you come back, I’ll probably come back as a snail.”

            He hummed a thoughtful sound.  “Then I want to come back as a snail, too.  We can be snails together and live outside a castle.”

            I swallowed hard.  “You’d give up your kingdom to be a snail?”

            “Well, only if you were going to be a snail too,” he chuckled.  “I don’t want to be a snail if you’re going to be a hawk.  Don’t hawks eat snails?”

            I giggled, despite everything.  “Let’s both be hawks then.  We’ll eat snails together.”

            “Together is good, but eating snails sounds kind of gross the more I think about it.”  He gasped, cutting off his laughter.  “Let’s be penguins!  They don’t eat gross things.  We can live in the snow and be together forever.  I heard somewhere that penguins mate for life.”

            “Penguins then,” I agreed with a sad laugh.  I bet penguins don’t get sick like humans.  Penguins don’t have nightmares and penguins don’t have to give up being with the penguin they really want because it would hurt that penguin.

            I wasn’t sure how I’d wanted that conversation to go, but I didn’t think it would go like that.  I should have known though.  He’s been nothing but sweet and perfect since day one.  Of course he’d want to be a penguin with me.

            He sang me a song and told me that I should go to sleep, but he wanted me to call him if I had a nightmare and especially if a night terror woke me up.

            I agreed, but I didn’t call.  Even when I woke up screaming.

            That weekend when the girls invited me to go out, I accepted.  Getting ready, I had one missed call.  Tae Il.  At the bar, I had one missed call and one unread text message.  Bumping and grinding with my new flavor, I had three missed calls and two unread messages.  Pressed up against the wall in the corner near the bathrooms with the mystery dude from the dance floor, I had five missed calls and still two unread messages.  I had a pretty good buzz going by then, so when someone mentioned going to the roof of the club to have our own party, I found it a brilliant idea.  Following the girls from work, my new boy toy, a few other foreign girls and some guys that became Jenna’s new groupies up to the roof, I had six missed calls and three unread messages.

            About an hour after we went up to the roof, my buzz was fading a little so instead of feeling super good, I just felt super foggy.

            My new buddy was starting to get on my nerves, too.  He led me to a dark corner that wasn’t already preoccupied by other couples showing off their ability to publicly display affection. 

            He didn’t kiss like Tae Il.  He didn’t touch me like Tae Il.  He didn’t feel, taste, smell, nothing like Tae Il.  At one point, I even tried to hold his hand.  Stupidly.  Just to see.  Instead of linking his fingers with mine, he pushed my hand out of the away so he could me through my shirt.

            Boring.  My phone vibrated in my pocket.  Two short buzzes.  Another text message.

            I heard two girls talking and decided chit chat would be more fun than letting this guy slobber all over me.  He was drunk and, therefore, not hard for me to pull away and escape from.

            “I just want one night with that actor from the new drama, you know?  The one on at eight on Thursdays.  He’s gorgeous,” one girl laughed.

            “The one with the shaggy hair, right?  Oh, man, yeah.  I bet he’s good,” her blonde friend added with a nod.

            I strolled closer and smiled when the first girl caught my eye.  “Do you know that actor’s name?  I just can’t think of it.”

            Shrugging, I shook my head.  “No, but I know who you’re talking about.  He is pretty hot.”  Not really, actually.

            The blonde friend let out an airy giggle.  “How about singers?  Dong Hae from Super Junior.”  Then she actually threw her head back and moaned.  “He wouldn’t be able to see straight the next morning if I got my hands on him.”

            The first girl cracked up and I forced a laugh.  I’d heard of Super Junior.  I couldn’t place this Dong Hae at that very moment, but I didn’t need to.  He wasn’t Tae Il, so I didn’t care.

            “What about Gi Kwang from Beast?” the first girl asked once the laughter subsided.  “I bet he’s all sorts of freaky and he’s so hot.”

            “Lee Tae Il from Block b,” I blurted out before the other girl could say anything.  My phone buzzed again.  Multiple longer buzzes.  Seven missed calls now.

            Both girls looked at each other and then at me, expressions blank.  “Tae Il?  Is he the one who always wears sunglasses?” the blonde asked.  I nodded.  Almost all the time, no matter how many times I’ve told him not to wear them.

            “He’s short, isn’t he?  He’s ok, I guess, but his eyes are weird and his mouth is too big when he smiles,” the first girl decided.

            I scoffed, but before I could say anything, the blonde added – with a scrunched up nose, “I don’t like him.  I wouldn’t want a night with him.”

            “Good,” I stated flatly.  “Because neither of you two s are good enough for him anyway.”

            Bored with the girls, not to mention I had to leave since they weren’t too happy with me anyway, I walked away.  I saw two extra drunk guys laughing and pushing each other toward the edge of the roof.  Somehow I just knew what those two idiots were joking about doing.

            “You go first,” one slurred, shoving at the other one.

            “No way.  You go.  I’ll follow you,” the other said, stumbling a couple steps away.

            “Yeah, right.  You’re a liar.  I’ll jump and you’ll stay here like the you are,” the first one cackled.  The second one, too drunk to be offended, was satisfied with pushing his friend and then tripping over his own feet.

            “I bet I’m more of a man than you guys put together,” I challenged, stepping up to them.  “I’d jump.”