Seunghyun watched the girl go, and let the warmth from his hand suffuse the whole of his being.

Her hands were so soft, and so warm and smooth against his. She had very fine bones on her hands.

He felt something like a flower bloom at his chest.

He was dreaming about his grandfather while Seohyun was drinking her mai tai that night at the club. They were in his garden again, in the uplands, where his grandfather kept a variety of flowers and orchids, beauty more accessible and less frustrating than the waves of the beach, or the beach, he had said before. He was tending to his flowers, singing to them (with them, he had insisted) and trying to water them in equal amounts with his pink watering can. He was very light on his feet, his knees didn’t make that horrible sound when he stood up, his white hair and face radiant. He had died when he was 77, seemingly at peace with his death, and was gardening, with great difficulty, the day before he had died.

Seunghyun was 20 then, when he had died, he was 27 now, and he was wearing a nice suit, eschewing the colorful clothes, BAPE hoodies and electric pants, polychromatic caps his grandfather had always seen on him when he was a teenager. He had liked dressing in suits when he was younger and he knew his grandfather was a little bit irritated when he was in his hip-hop clothes phase, eventhough he never outwardly told him so.

He was wearing his eclectic black and white pattern shirt underneath a nice green suit and his favorite pair of shoes and glasses. He was dressed very smartly and his grandfather noticed.

“You look very nice, Seunghyun. You dressed up especially for my beautiful flowers? Very sweet.”

Seunghyun smiled his assymetrical smile, the left side of his mouth automatically twitching upwards like a lever. Even when he was alive, his grandfather had preferred the company of flowers over people. Some people were not just as pleasing to look at, he had said, and sometimes he felt offended when they didn’t.

“I must be presentable in front of your beauties. Harabeoji, you look well. What are you eating these days? You have to share. I think I need looking after my health.”

“Death is good for the health, Seunghyun. And plenty of flowers, exercise and fresh air,” he had said, smiling, patting Seunghyun on his cheek like he used to.

Seunghyun pulled him in a hug. He towered over his grandfather now. He felt shoulders that were narrow, but were strong, and churning somewhat, where they should be still and frail.

“I missed you, Harabeoji.”

He smiled and took Seunghyun’s right hand.

“I feel that you have been lonely. So different when you were young.”

“Grandfather, you know how I’ve always been lonely. Everything was just happening to me then that I felt that I have been robbed of my choice that I just had to surpass these things by experiencing and emerging alive out of them however I could But now everything I do is deliberated and with my conscious choice and for that, I think I have become lonely.”

“Yes. But you were not lonely before Seunghyun. You had your friends who shared your own troubles, shared your own interests and your bad habits, even if everybody was against you. In that kind of captivity, you had sympathy and you had brothers. You had me who you trusted with your thoughts, and expect that I understood them, and keep them secret. You had a girlfriend who you shared intimacy with, who shared your other interests with you and most of all, who you were in love with. But we have all gone now, and you have never replaced us, preferring your memories of us, and you are lonely.”

His grandfather glanced at Seunghyun. He saw that he was very still and was biting his lip in concentration.

“Harabeoji, what you are saying is true, but my relationships with people are a very different kind now, because my profession comes first and affects all of them, and I am okay with it. These days, I am TOP first before I am Choi Seunghyun. Seunghyun maybe lonely and want to pursue these things again, but TOP does not.”

Seunghyun glanced at his grandfather for a brief moment already looking scolded and ashamed, but resolute.

“I hope you would understand.”

His grandfather sighed, thought about how Seunghyun when he was 18 and crying after coming to learn another one of his friends has died in a car accident. Thought about that time when he was 10, sticky in the shade, on a popsicle as the hot sun shines above them, and writing lyrics about hope and death on his journal, asking him, abeoji, why am I not scared of my death? I want to be scared, as much as I am scared for your deaths. He thinks about Seunghyun and fireflies in the summer nights, and him asking why he doesn’t go closer to take a look at them, and Seunghyun saying that they look more beautiful from a distance and that he may harm them when he gets too close.

“I do and I don’t. It is you who knows best what is for yourself, Seunghyun. I only wish your happiness. But I can only tell you this; when the facts change, you change your mind and be courageous,” he takes Seunghyun’s hand and slaps it near the thumb. “Take pleasure in what chance brings to you.”

And then he clutched Seunghyun’s head level to his lips and kissed his hair, and Seunghyun woke up to the muffled sounds of club music, to his weight on the firm and unbouncy sofa, to the disarray of strobe lights and to Seohyun sipping a mai tai.

Seohyun was concentrating on stacking stones at the table, it was 12 AM and she could not go to sleep because she wouldn’t let herself go to sleep. Stacking stones helped her with her thoughts, felt the actual actions of stacking helped for mental organization.

Seohyun knew she didn’t understand him. She didn’t know the objective nor the outcome of this little exercise he played. She didn’t know why he started talking to her. Did he do this thing with people, give them free psychology tests and card shows? He was enigmatic to her; she didn’t know what to make of him, she felt rushed out of breath and dizzy at times when he had looked at her then. She couldn’t judge his character because she doesn’t have a baseline for his actions, but she had liked it when they talked and she trusts him completely, that is usually never the case. She had recipocrated some sort of understanding of him then, and she knew he appreciated her for understanding him then. He frightened her at first, not because of his physical appearance, but the strangeness of his presence and his actions to her, but after they talked, she had become more comfortable but the anxiety did not subside. She was wary, for she found him to be threatening because she trusted him  and she found herself attracted to him almost immediately.

What about the meeting? She felt that the stretch of time from here to there was too long, and most of her mind told her she didn’t want to meet him. He could be a big distraction. She didn’t need that. Not now.

His cellphone number was scribbled on the corner of the card, the firmness and clearness of the way each digit was written emphasized by the even spaces between them.

She sighed. Picked up her phone from the table. Punched on the numbers carefully, double checked, stared at the screen, and dialled before she could further change her mind. She knew what she was going to say, and she was going to say it to him.

He picked up at the third ring and before the 10 second mark where she was going to regret her choice.

“Yoboseoyo?”

Her eyes blurred a little when she heard his voice. It had liquor and sleep thrown over it.

“Yoboseoyo. TOP-sshi, this is Seohyun.” She was very nervous again,  so her eyes searched the walls for something and zeroed on a small crack at the top-left corner, "calling you to ask something very important in the middle