Top Posts Tagged with #jay au

hometown, part one - pjs (m)

pairing. jay x fem!reader

synopsis. Tired of his life in the big city, Jay moves to a small town by the Korean seaside and renovates an old bookstore to turn into a café. Fate would have it that you work at the restaurant right across the street from him—quickly, memories from your time at culinary school together float back up to the surface, accompanied by old feelings.

genre+warnings. exes to lovers, small town au, slightly aged up characters, dual timeline, maximal angst in this one i'm sorry guys... but a lot of fluff too dw, smut (MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!), deceased parent, sick grandparent

word count. 28,773

a/n. here we fucking finally are lmaoo if you were wondering why i haven't posted in 10 months, this is why !!!!!!! this is a very very long time in the making, i def had my ups and downs writing this, so i hope it will be worth it and you guys will enjoy lol pls pls pls let me know what u think, it would mean even more than usual !!!!!! and as always massive thanks to @zreamy for freaking out over hometown jay with me and for betareading this behemoth... ur such a ride or wtv it is british people say!

part two

small playlist here !

“De ceux qu’on aime, de ceux qu’on a aimés, il reste toujours quelque chose. Une sensation sur la peau, un petit rien qui palpite. L’amour est un oiseau, aussi fragile que capable de s’élever jusqu’aux astres. De ceux qu’on aime, de ceux qu’on a aimés, demeure toujours une lumière, pareille au soleil qui persiste sous les paupières quand on ferme les yeux.”

“Of those we love, of those we have loved, something always remains. A sensation on the skin, a barely-there fluttering. Love is a bird, as fragile as it is capable of reaching the stars. Of those we love, of those we have loved, remains always a light, akin to the sun that perseveres under the lids when you close your eyes.”

Laurine Roux, Le souffle du puma [rough translation]

.

Watching the scenery flash by as he drives down the highway, Jay wonders if it’s normal to feel so little sadness about leaving one’s hometown behind. Oh well. It isn’t like there’s anything left for him in Seoul.

He’s still surprised his father insisted on helping him pack. He didn’t bother when Jay, 20 years old back then, moved all the way to France, but then again, his mother had been around to do it. Still, this is a four-hour drive down the country, and Jay has already hired a mover to bring down his bigger pieces of furniture, so the silent, tense afternoon they spent in each other’s company packing up Jay’s clothes, books, and all sorts of stuff really could’ve been avoided.

He supposes he should be grateful for the attention, but after twenty-five years of not receiving any and resigning himself to that fact, it’s hard to suddenly backtrack and welcome it with open arms. Not even his mother’s death managed to change things—why would they change now?

After the last of his things found a place in the overflowing trunk of Jay’s BMW, he and his father stand next to the car, avoiding each other’s eyes and saying nothing. Jay doesn’t even know what he’s waiting for. Some words of encouragement? A sign of affection, no matter how meager?

“Guess you should go now. I don’t think this is an actual parking spot,” his father offers instead after thirty excruciating seconds, gesturing to the general area in front of Jay’s apartment.

“Right. Well, thanks for helping.”

His father nods rapidly. Jay has never seen him do that. “Of course.” He crosses the distance separating them in a few steps, and places a heavy hand on his son’s shoulder. “Take care, Jay.”

Tears prick at the back of Jay’s eyes, but he is used to not letting it show. “I will. You too, dad.”

His father looks at him then, and again in his eyes there is a glint of something unfamiliar to Jay. He can’t figure out what it means, or maybe he doesn’t want to. “Alright. See you around,” he says, like his son is an acquaintance he might or might not meet again.

Jay’s feet stay planted on the pavement as he watches his dad walk back to his own car a few meters down and drive away, thinking, Isn’t he the one who should be watching me go away?

He’s on his way now, and it might just be due to the speed of his car, but his heart feels light. He left Seoul for the first time five years ago, and he is leaving again today. The city he loved so dearly his entire childhood and adolescence is now full of reminders of things he’d rather leave behind. Despite its impressive size, he feels as though something is out to get him at every street corner. Here is the tteokbokki and sundae restaurant at which he always used to eat with the middle school friends he hasn’t contacted in years; here is the bus stop at which he’d wait after every hospital visit to his mother; here is the fountain at which the two of you agreed to meet for your first date.

It’s a very spontaneous, borderline irrational decision that Jay’s made, but he can’t handle living in Seoul anymore. Not just the constant whiplash from memories he’s been experiencing lately, but everything that comes with city-living has been getting on his nerves. The relentless honking, the crowded streets and public transport at every hour of the day, the god-awful odors wafting from the sewers, the list could go on and on. He used to be indifferent to it all; now he wants nothing more to escape it.

This will be his second time ever in Sojuk-ri. The first time was just over six months ago, when his mother asked him to take her there. They’d driven there and back in the same day because her cancer had already reached a stage that meant she couldn’t leave the hospital for too long. The doctors had only agreed to let go because having reached that stage also meant that it wouldn't make such a difference.

He doesn’t have much of a plan. The idea of owning his own café has been in the works for a few years now, ever since he moved to Paris, really, but it wasn’t meant to happen so soon, and it certainly wasn’t meant to happen in a town he barely knew. There might not even be a proper unit for a café in Sojuk-ri, and he’ll have to look around other villages. He’s already got five visits lined up with a real estate agent tomorrow morning. But maybe that’s why it feels so right—he can’t stress over the details if he hasn’t thought about them extensively.

The few friends he has left in Seoul tried to reason with him. You don’t know anyone there, you don’t know if they’re the kind of people who’d visit a café. Everything you want to do, you can do here, and it’ll be easier and more stable. But he feels like he can’t breathe in the city. Maybe he’s running away. And so what if he is? Cliché as it may sound, he likes to think he’s running towards his future rather than away from his past. Clichés exist for a reason. Jay finds comfort in them sometimes, like so many people have had this experience before him, and he isn’t alone. Or worse, weird.

The brightness of the clouds is blinding through the windshield. Jay has a good feeling about this.

.

“Two tofu bibimbaps and one kimchi stew!”

“Got it,” you say, taking the handwritten kitchen order ticket from Yeonju’s hands and clipping it above the stove. She usually walks right back into the front of house, but you feel her lingering at the doorway, her gaze heavy on the back of your head. “What?” You’re usually one to mind your manners, but manning a kitchen alone during rush hour is reason enough to let politeness slip slightly.

“They’re not happy about the all-vegetarian menu.”

“Who’s they?”

“Everyone, Y/N! I’ve been asked four times why there’s no pork in the kimchi stew.”

It’s a good thing you’re not facing her—if your sister-in-law-slash-waitress saw the smile on your lips, the knife resting on the counter might be used to cut something other than carrots.

“That’s what they get for getting so drunk and breaking a chair last week.”

“That was just that one group of old men. I already told off Mr. Kim and Mr. Choi when they came in yesterday. You’re punishing our entire clientele for five stupid drunkards.”

You stir the soup base, pretending to ponder her words. “Let them think of it as a group project. If one party does poorly, everyone’s grade goes down.”

She groans. “Is that how I’m supposed to explain it to our customers? This isn’t Seoul. The people here need their meat. Actually, I’m not even sure this would fly in Seoul.”

“Sounds like their problem,” you say, shrugging. Yeonju groans again but finally walks back out.

From her seat on an overturned crate at the other side of the kitchen, cooling herself down with a paper fan, your grandmother chuckles and you exchange smiles. “You tell ‘em, honey. Back in the day, I’d ban them for a month if they got too rowdy. This is more fun.”

You sigh. “I’m just tired of this happening. No matter how often we tell them this isn’t a drinking place, there’ll be people going overboard once every few weeks. The bar is just a few doors down, I don’t know why it’s so hard to go there after eating.”

“Mmh.” You glance at your grandmother. Her eyes are closed, and that unsettling serenity has made its way back to her features. You’ve lost her, it seems. But that doesn’t keep you from rambling away.

“I guess we could stop selling soju altogether, but that would make us lose a pretty significant part of our revenue. And after work, Yeonju and I would have to actually go to the convenience store to buy it instead of grabbing it from the fridge here, so that’s out of the question. Have you ever seen Mrs. Kang’s face when you buy alcohol from her? She looks at you like a criminal as if she isn’t the one selling it. She’d be an awful drug dealer. Anyways, I’m glad there isn’t anyone here handing out drugs. Not that I know of, at least.”

Your grandmother’s smile stretches ever-so-slightly, so you take it she might be listening after all.

“I also thought we could close a little earlier. No one comes in at nine thirty to eat. Rush happens at what, six, seven p.m.? If we closed around nine rather than ten, Yeonju and I would have more free time and it wouldn’t make a big difference financially. How does that sound, Grandma?”

Yeonju walks in at that time, empty dishes stacked on her arms. “That’s a good idea, actually,” she says. “Your brother has been saying he wishes I was around more.” For some reason, she thinks it’s funny to punctuate her words with a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows.

“Gross. Can you not refer to him as my brother when you’re talking about your sex life, please?”

“We’ve been married two years. You’ll have to get used to it at some point.”

“I won’t be used to it even when you’re celebrating your twentieth anniversary.”

“I’m glad you have that much faith in us,” she says, grabbing side dishes from the fridge and walking back out into the front of house. You wait for her to be gone to chuckle so she can’t hear that her joke made you laugh.

Today’s lunch rush ends earlier than usual, probably due to a smaller amount of customers. Fine, you’ll put meat back on the menu. Starting tomorrow. They can suffer a little longer.

After cleaning the kitchen and taking count of your stock, you close up store. The three of you walk the short way back to your family’s house, your grandmother in the middle, you and Yeonju flanked on her sides, each holding one of her arms. Your legs ache, and you’re immensely grateful for the few hours of rest ahead of you.

Once in a while, it happens that when you reach your bedroom, you feel inexplicably pulled to your bookshelf. There, you take out a familiar novel, and let it open naturally onto the page bookmarked by a picture, its edges frayed and worn with time. You don’t know how long you stand there, staring at the two happy faces immortalized by one of your friends’ phone camera, a sad smile on your lips. With your thumb, you trace the outline of the man standing by your side, a beer in his hand, his other arm around your waist, rosy cheeks visible even in the dimness of the room.

In the silence of your own room, you whisper, “How are you now?”

.

It happens in the blink of an eye.

Chef Lee, today’s mentor, has already started her presentation. No time to lose here—no ice-breakers or long welcome speech or going around the classroom introducing themselves one by one. Lee gave two introductory sentences and went straight into the first lesson of the year, a basic overview of the different cuts they’ll have to master for every dish. Everyone is giving their undivided attention. If it wasn’t for Chef Lee's monotonous drawl, a pin could be heard in the large, white room. That is, until the door suddenly opens and you barge in, out-of-breath like you were just running, eyes wide, not unlike those of a deer caught in headlights, Jay thinks.

You’re unbelievably pretty.

But you’re also late, and judging by the look on Chef Lee’s face, that is a barely tolerable offense.

“And who are you?” she says.

“I’m Y/L/N Y/N, Chef. I’m so sorry for being late, I got lost in the subway.”

A few snickers are heard around the room, undoubtedly a reaction to your countryside dialect—based on the conversations he had with his new classmates before Chef Lee arrived, Jay gathered that most people here were from Seoul. Thankfully, their teacher seems to feel the same way about mockery as tardiness, and gives the culprits a harsh glare.

“Please familiarise yourself with Seoul’s public transport as soon as you can, Miss Y/L/N,” Lee says, clearly already bored with this interaction. “You might find that it will come in handy.”

“Yes, Chef,” you say in a quiet voice and head to the nearest — and only — available station. Jay isn’t aware he is still staring at you until your eyes meet. From across the room, you smile at him, and it sends his heart into a frenzy.

Until this exact moment, he was readying himself to spend a year in a cutthroat, competitive environment. And he still is—but he thinks he’s found something that’ll keep him going.

.

Jay looks around the bleak room. It clearly hasn’t welcomed a human being in a while now. Yellowing paperbacks fill dusty bookshelves, the ones that have fallen to the floor open at random pages. He’s been told that since the sudden passing of the previous owner, no one has come to clean the place up—he’d been a widow for years already, and his two children lived abroad. Ignoring the real estate agent’s worried glances, Jay picks one up and brushes the dust off. He’s hoping for serendipitous words, confirmation that he’s doing the right thing, some good omen—anything will do.

The book is in Russian. Jay does not know Russian. He’s not sure what kind of sign this is supposed to be, and so puts the book back down and resumes his tour of the room.

“I know it’s not in great shape right now,” the agent says as Jay inspects the tubes of unknown function that run up one of the walls between two old bookshelves. This place seems to be all bookshelves. “But I promise it’s all just clutter. One good sweep, and it’ll look good as new,” he adds with an unconvincing chuckle.

Jay walks to the one window that isn’t hidden behind a piece of furniture. The room is dark now, but with some rearranging, it could become very lively. Warm, golden sunlight filters through the white-paneled window, making visible the dust that floats in the air. He’d appreciate its beauty more if it wasn’t making the agent sneeze so much.

At the back of this main room, an archway leads to a kitchen. Some tiles on the floor and on the walls are broken, and the oven looks like something Jay’s great-grandmother would’ve owned. There’s an awkward empty spot where the fridge should be, mold staining the ceiling, no corner that hasn’t been claimed by spiders and cobwebs. Jay wonders whether this room even has access to running water and electricity. Its only real attribute is its size, spacious enough to hold a few more kitchen appliances and for two or three people to work in.

“I’ll take it,” he announces.

“Really?” the agent exclaims, eyes almost bulging out of their sockets. But he remembers his job here, and quickly regains his composure. “I mean, that’s fantastic to hear, Mr. Park. Did you want to see the apartment upstairs?”

Jay smiles genuinely for the first time today and acquiesces.

The stairs lead directly from the kitchen into a one-bedroom apartment that’s about as rundown as the rest of the place. Fully furnished, too, although Jay suspects he’ll have to change out the sofa and the bed frame that look about a century old.

“I told you this one was a bit of a fixer-upper,” the agent says, eyeing Jay nervously as if he might suddenly go back on his words.

The young man bites back a laugh—talk about a euphemism. He doubted that in its current state, this place was at all inhabitable. But he didn’t mind, it meant he could truly redo it to his whimsy. “That’s alright,” he reassures the agent. “Do I sign the papers now?”

A few minutes later, the two men stand outside, shaking hands. “Pleasure to have done business with you, Mr. Park.” Jay wonders if the relief on his face has anything to do with the fact that this sale comes after seven unsuccessful visits. What can he say? He has standards.

“Call me Jay, please. We’ll be neighbors, after all,” he says, nodding his head to the real estate agency a few storefronts down the street.

“Right,” the agent says, smiling. “I’ll see you around, then, Jay. Let me know if you need help with the renovations, I know a guy.” Checking his watch, he adds, “Oh, and since it’s lunchtime, I highly recommend you try this restaurant right here. The true gem of our small town. The best japchae you’ll eat in your life.”

The mere mention of the dish tugs at Jay’s heartstrings, and a smile that only he understands the meaning of appears on his lips. He doesn’t say, I doubt that. Instead, he says, “Thank you. I’ll try it out.”

With a last nod of his head, the agent heads back to his office. Jay turns to the restaurant, and upon seeing its name in big, red LED letters — either turned off during the day, or broken — has to squash his hopes down. A restaurant called Kim’s Kitchen that serves japchae in a small seaside town, what are the odds? But the Korean coastline runs for thousands of kilometers, Kim is the most common name in the country, and japchae is practically the national dish.

The smell of soy sauce, sizzling meat and burnt sugar hit his nose as soon as he walks into the tiny, homey place, as well as the cheerful noises of businessmen off on their lunch break, clinking glasses of beer and soju at 12:30 p.m.. Lucky for him, there’s one spare table in the corner, where he sits and waits for someone to notice him. It only takes a minute for a woman to approach him, black hair tied in a low ponytail — just like you used to wear, he thinks despite himself — and white stained apron over a pink t-shirt. She smiles at him in that polite but tired way that restaurateurs have about them before wiping his table and setting down cutlery and a plastic jug of water.

“You’re a new face,” she says matter-of-factly.

Jay’s eyebrows shoot up. Does she usually recognize every face that walks through here? “I am, yes.”

“But you’re not a tourist.” She speaks in such a strong dialect that Jay wonders, perhaps naively, whether she’s exaggerating it. The chatter at the tables around him has dwindled down, other clients shamelessly eavesdropping on their conversation and staring at him.

He clears his throat, a blush creeping up his neck. “Um, I’m not, no.” His words hang in the air for a few unbearable seconds during which he debates adding more—that he’s just bought the old bookstore across the street, that he plans to turn it into a café, that he is staying at the only Airbnb in town that remains available after summer. But he stays silent, and the waitress smiles again, more sincerely this time.

“Well, welcome to Sojuk-ri,” she says. The chatter picks back up; he must have been deemed not interesting enough by the curious eyes and ears around him. “And welcome to Kim’s Kitchen. We always serve japchae and bibimbap with beef or with the seafood catch of the morning. This week’s specialty is abalone porridge, because my husband got sick, again, and we thought we might as well make some for everyone,” she says, sighing. “Our side dishes today are cucumber kimchi, soybean sprouts and steamed eggs.”

“Could I get one serving of japchae and one of porridge, please?”

“Coming right up.”

As she walks away, Jay goes to retrieve his phone from his coat pocket. “One japchae and one porridge, Y/N,” he hears the waitress shout in the direction of the kitchen, and he freezes.

“On it,” a voice shouts back. The wind is knocked out of him.

To hear your voice again after five years is like waking up and realizing that the terrible nightmare he was having was just that—a terrible nightmare.

He whips his head up in the direction of your voice, although he’s not sure he could handle the sight of you right now. Knowing you were in the next room, breathing the same air, hearing the same sounds, was already a lot. Too much, even. He has half a mind to slip his coat back on and feel the harsh September wind on his face, but his brain and his legs seem to have stopped cooperating. His feet stay planted on the ground as if glued there. The noise in the restaurant has faded away. All he can hear is his deafening heartbeat.

There’s a screen made of thin wooden slats that hides the kitchen from view. He catches a glimpse of someone — you? — wearing blue jeans and the same apron as the waitress when she steps into the kitchen. What would you do if you saw him?

Scratch that, Jay thinks. What will you do when you see him, your new neighbor, your old friend?

The only way to escape this now is to annul the contract he signed five minutes ago and to flee Sojuk-ri, never to come back again.

Jay’s mind goes through every possible outcome as he waits for his meal. He could march up to you and demand an explanation. He could march up to you, fall to his knees, wrap his arms around your hips, and cry. He could pretend not to have seen you. He could pretend he’s forgotten all about you. He could tell you not a single day has passed without you haunting his thoughts. He could ask if you still think things really are better off this way. He could ask if you, too, have not had a moment’s peace since you last saw each other.

The waitress walks back out, holding a tray full of steaming food, and he gets another glorious glimpse of you. Because it really is you—your hair falling in a braid down your back, something he’s never seen before, holding up a spoon to your lips, your left hand ready to catch any drop that might fall.

Do you regret it?

Jay stares at the screen in front of him as the waitress sets down his plate and bowl, lightly saying, “Enjoy.”

Tears prick at his eyes as he chews on the glass noodles. If he wasn’t one hundred percent sure that it was you behind that screen before, he is now.

The agent was right—today and five years ago, it really is the best japchae he’s ever had.

.

Tears muddle your vision as you pack your belongings—well, “packing” is a pretty word for something that looks more like frantically stuffing things into your one large suitcase, backpack and tote bag. In September, you’d sulked at your family for not driving you up to Seoul; now, you’re grateful there were only so many things you could bring on the train with you.

Just yesterday, you were laughing and eating delicious jjajjangmyeon, tangsuyuk and fried pork dumplings at a Korean-Chinese restaurant with your friends and boyfriend. There were many things to be happy about—the end of your mock exams, Jay’s upcoming birthday, Jaemin finally getting a text back from the girl he had a crush on in high school, the nearing results for the numerous internships and stages your school offers worldwide.

You think of the concentration on Sumin’s face (and the annoyance on everyone else’s) as she takes precise photos of your food for her Instagram account, claiming the camera eats first; of the dramatic expressions and sounds Jake makes whenever he bites into something he likes; of Jaemin’s voice, louder than everyone else, as you sing Happy Birthday to Jay, joined by all the other restaurant-goers and the waiters who bring out pandan cake, two candles forming the number 20 alight.

You think of Jay’s hand squeezing yours under the table, of all the not-so-discreet glances throughout dinner, of the food he places on your plate instead of focusing on his, of the silent but comfortable walk back home in the chilly April weather, his jacket on your shoulders.

All it took was one frantic phone call for it to feel like a lifetime ago. Your mother’s words on the other side of your cell (“Your grandma fell— She’s in the hospital now— The doctors can’t tell us when she’ll wake up”) created a gap between the life you led up until 7 am this morning and the life you lead now. The girl who imagined travelling the world to visit her friends at their high-end, starred workplaces sometime in the near future isn’t the same girl drafting an email to her school to inform them she’s dropping out of the course and therefore withdrawing her application for a stage in one of the most reputed fine-dining restaurants in Paris, and therefore, in the whole world. The girl who watched her boyfriend blow his candles last night and thought, “This is the first of many birthdays we’ll be celebrating together,” isn’t the same girl bursting into tears at the sight of a hoodie he purposefully left on her bed for her to cuddle on the rare nights they spent apart. Now, she has to deal with the heartbreak of wondering whether it’s better to take it with her as a keepsake or to give it back to its rightful owner.

If your entire life wasn’t being heaved upside-down, you’d perhaps feel some pride at how efficiently you’ve managed your departure, all things considered. In just a few hours, aside from emailing your school, you’ve talked to your landlady, telling her you’ll pay your rent for as long as you’re legally obliged, giving her Sumin’s number to arrange a time to go over inventory and the state of the apartment—you’re still procrastinating calling Sumin to explain everything to her, but you know she’ll agree to help. You’ve cleared out your fridge and cupboards, preparing yourself a couple of snacks for the journey home, giving the rest to the nice lady in the apartment across from yours who once told you having a culinary student “as generous as you” as her neighbor was the best thing that’s happened to her in recent years. She’s one of the many people you feel impossibly sad leaving behind, but you have no choice. Your decision was taken rapidly, more reflex than thought. Your brother called shortly after your mother this morning, letting you know he and his fiancée would move back home from Busan in a few weeks if it turned out to be necessary.

You’ve even remembered to change the reservation at a fancy restaurant in Seoul for Jay’s birthday from a party of two people to four—he’ll celebrate with Sumin, Jake and Jaemin rather than with you. Another thing you hope Sumin will agree to take care of in your stead.

Perhaps the hardest part will be telling Jay. You have to, if only because there are things in his apartment you need to collect—although, truth be told, it’s not like your life depends on having any of them. But even if you’re leaving in a rush, you can’t not see him before leaving at all, it’s just the idea of sitting him down and letting him know what’s going on is too much. So, once you’re done here, you’ll head over to his, pick up everything you need, get him up to speed in a couple of sentences, and leave. You won’t kiss him, or hug him, or even look at him, because if you do, there’s a high chance you won’t be able to leave at all.

You can’t think about what you’re doing right now. You can only do, do, do. You’ll take the time to think once the damage is done, once you’ve hit that no-return point that leaves you with no possibility to fix changes, only regret.

Because you know part of you has been regretting this since you’ve decided to do it. Part of you pictures being back home, taking care of your grandmother, running her restaurant, daydreaming of Paris and sleek kitchens and Michelin stars and all the people you left behind.

Of the one person you left behind.

.

Nothing should come as naturally to a grown adult as breathing. And yet, as Jay stands outside your restaurant the next day, he can hardly remember how it goes. Inhale, exhale. With a trembling hand, he opens the door. A bell resounds through the empty room. We’re not open yet! a voice, yours, calls from the kitchen. Inhale, exhale.

The screen is drawn back. He has no time to steady himself as you appear in the doorway, beautiful as ever. Your mouth opens, your eyes widen. What was it again? Right. Inhale, exhale, but his breathing is unstable, embarrassingly shaky.

He can’t breathe and think and talk at the same time. So he stands there, barely breathing.

“Jay?”

You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Maybe he is, to you.

But you also look as unbelievably beautiful as you always have. You look just as you do in Jay’s memories of you, and yet entirely different. Five years aren’t quite enough to say you’ve aged, but there is still something new in your features, something Jay only notices because he wasn’t there to witness the years gradually leave their mark on your face. Seeing you like this is a brutal reminder of the time since he last saw you, five years, four months and nine days to be exact. Three days before his twentieth birthday.

Yesterday, he fled before you could notice him scarfing down the food he’d ordered. Something about the blend of spices, the chewiness of the noodles, the crunch of the vegetables—it was all so distinctly you. Jay is usually one to savour every bite of his food, but in that moment, he felt like a starved man. He ate quickly and on the table left two ten-thousand won bills that more than covered for his meal.

Walking into the restaurant again, he knows what to expect. You, on the other hand… You’re surprised, that much is clear. Jay is scared to find out whether he’s a good or bad surprise.

“Hi,” he says, but his voice comes out strangled. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hi.”

“Hi,” you reply. Neither of you speaks for a few moments. It’s not until your gaze drops to the glass Tupperware in his hands that he remembers what he came here for—or rather, what his excuse is for coming here.

“I, uh, I’m moving into the old bookstore across the street. I’m going around giving rice cakes to, you know, introduce myself to the neighborhood, so, yeah, here…” Step by step, he bridges the distance between the two of you until he’s close enough to hand you the Tupperware. When you take it from him, you look down at it and scratch your ear like you’ve never seen rice cakes in your life, while he lets his arms hang limply by his side, too painfully aware of himself, of you, of your shared surroundings.

“Thanks,” you simply say, staring some more at the container before setting it down on the table next to you. You finally look at him again, and the confusion on your face is clear, but there’s a lingering sadness there that Jay feels deep in his bones. You haven’t gotten any better at hiding your emotions, he notices. “The old bookstore, you said?”

Jay amazes himself with the steadiness of his voice and his ability to keep his knees from buckling. This is a normal conversation between two people, he has to remind himself continuously, just a normal conversation. Although it doesn’t really help—standing in front of you after all this time, he feels like a tearful reunion or grand declaration of feelings should be occurring, not a normal, almost banal conversation.

“Yeah. I’m turning it into a café,” he says.

Slowly, a smile makes its way across your lips, and he almost melts into a puddle right then and there. “A café?” you repeat. “That’s surprising.”

He mirrors your smile to the best of abilities. “I fell in love with scones in London. No turning back since then…”

Your eyebrows shoot up. “You were in London?”

For a moment, Jay forgot that he lives in a world where you aren’t aware of something as crucial as his place of residence for the past two years.

“Yeah. After Paris,” he explains, unable to hide the guilt in his voice, especially as the gray cloud of a bad memory passes through your eyes.

You nod, and he thinks that’s the end of that. But then, you ask, “Did you see the Queen?”

“Oh, of course,” he says after a pause—he’d needed a second to realize you were joking with him. As if you were friends on good terms. As if being in the same room after five years of distance and no-contact was normal. “I was on a first-name basis with all the Buckingham Palace residents.”

You scrunch your nose, your way of biting back a smile at a stupid joke. Jay is thrown back to a time when the two of you barely knew each other, and you still hadn’t admitted to yourself — or to anyone, for that matter — that you found him funny.

“How cool.”

“I know,” he says, smiling too widely.

You nod to the tupperware, filled to the brim with square rice cakes. “Can I have one of those?” you ask, as if only now that the ice has been somewhat broken, you could eat food made from his hands.

“Of course, they’re all yours,” he replies immediately. “I sprinkled powdered sugar, cinnamon and crushed hazelnuts on top.”

“Of course you did.”

Jay is vaguely aware that it is odd to be staring at someone this intensely, but he can’t help himself. His heart beats uncontrollably as he stands a few feet away from you, watching as you take a bite into the rice cake and smile. Your expression turns flustered when you notice his staring, and he remembers himself enough to take a step back and focus his gaze on something else.

“Jay?”

There’s white sugar at the corner of your lips. He discards the thought that he could wipe it away with his thumb.

“How come you’re not surprised to see me?”

His gaze snaps from your lips to your eyes. All of a sudden, they’re glossy, your eyebrows furrowed. Jay isn’t sure what he’d do if you started crying. Cry too, probably.

“I mean, you walked in here like it’s just another day. I don’t remember ever telling you I was from here. Did you-”

“I didn’t know. I ate here yesterday and saw you, but before that, I had no idea.” He wants to reach out to you, feel the warmth of your hands against his. He wants to tell you that he always knew the universe would find a way to bring you back to him. Instead, he says, “Crazy coincidence, right?”

You take a deep breath, processing his words. “Yeah, crazy coincidence,” you say in a tone that Jay can’t quite decipher, something he’s not used to when it comes to you.

There’s a small silence, unspoken words hanging heavy in the air, weighing down Jay’s tongue in his mouth. In the kitchen, a timer goes off. Your head swivels in its direction. “I should probably…” you start, but don’t move. Jay gets the message nonetheless.

“Right. Yeah, of course. I won’t keep you any longer. Hope you like the rice cakes.”

“Thanks.”

His hand is on the door handle when you call out his name, sending electricity down his spine. He turns around with embarrassing haste.

“Come have your meals here when you’re working on your café. You always used to skip them when you were focused on something… I don’t know if you still do, but the offer is there.”

Jay smiles. “Okay,” he says.

.

“You’re still here?”

Your voice makes Jay jump. He’s been alone for at least three hours now, and with the sun having set, the classroom is plunged in darkness, save for the streetlights outside and the bright lamp above his prep station. When he turns around, you’re walking towards him, and he can just make out a mix of surprise and amusement in your smile as you step into the light. There’s some concern, there, too, he’d like to think.

“I am. And you’re sneaking up on someone holding a very sharp knife.”

You reach his prep station, rest your lower back against the counter. “I’ve seen your chopping skills, Park. I’m not afraid of you.”

Playfully, he rolls his eyes. Is it just him, or have those jabs you like to throw at each other started to feel less sharp, less rough around the edges lately? Like a dull knife, “a knife that’s been loved too much,” his mother always used to say. You still use it because it’s familiar, but it’s not as efficient anymore.

“I’m not the one who showed up to a cooking course not knowing what a julienne was.”

“Yes, but that’s because you’re the one with a world-renowned chef for a dad.”

Jay tilts his head, taking the hit. “Well, dad is a generous term for that man.” Immediately, he wishes he could take back his words. Not only have the two of you never delved into any sort of personal matter, you’re not nearly close enough to do so—and he’s afraid you’ll think him ungrateful for the life he’s had, like he always is whenever he mentions his dissatisfaction with his dad to someone. He watches as you look down at your hands and tug at your sleeves. His stomach flips with embarrassment. He’s said the wrong thing, and now that you were finally starting to relax around each other, he’s gone and made things weird.

But then, you look at him, that mischievous glint still in your eyes, and ask, “Do you really want to get into your daddy issues right now? Nine p.m. on a random Tuesday?”

His shoulders sag with relief. He lets out a breathy chuckle, saying, “No, better not. What are you doing here, anyway?”

You wave a notebook at him. It’s simple, with metal spirals holding the pages together and a transparent plastic cover. “I wanted to go over some recipes at home and realized I left this precious thing here. What about you?”

“Also going over some recipes. It’s not going swimmingly, as you can see,” he replies with a sigh, gesturing at the mess of pots on the stove, of diced vegetables on the cutting board, of spoons and chopsticks and knives strewn around the station. It’s not like him to be so disorganized, and judging by the astonishment on your face, you know this. “I’ve been here since the end of class, and I still can’t get this sauce just right.”

You furrow your eyebrows. Jay waits for it—a teasing comment, a snide remark, if you’re feeling particularly mean. Something about how easy today’s lesson was, how this is something he should’ve mastered in no time. But the hatch never drops.

To Jay’s absolute bewilderment, “Have you even eaten?” are the words that come out of your mouth. He’s even more surprised to find that he indeed has not eaten yet. When he tells you this, you click your tongue and shake your head. Is he being… scolded?

“That’s not reasonable, Jay,” you say, and it takes him a few seconds to be fully sure you’re genuine and not playing an elaborate, ultra-convincing trick on him. You grab a spoon, dip its underside into the sauce Jay has been breaking his back over the entire evening and bring it to your mouth. “Plus, your sauce tastes just fine.” You sound irritated. It only confuses Jay further.

“Just fine is not exactly what I’m going for, here.”

“Just fine will have to do for now,” you say with a tone that lets him know this is where the conversation ends. “Come on, let’s clean this up and go eat something.”

Jay has a feeling you don’t often run into people that don’t listen to you, and he decides he doesn’t want to be the first. So, quietly, he gets to washing dishes as you pack away his many tries at this stupid doenjang. He tells you to put them in the communal fridge or take them home to yourself—if he can go the rest of his life without having to look at another soybean, he’ll be happy.

“That might be a bit tricky if you plan to go into Korean cuisine,” you point out.

“Let a man dream, Y/N.”

This is how Jay finds himself under a red tent thirty minutes later, tipping back soju and munching on stir-fried anchovies with peanuts and crispy, burning-hot scallion pancakes that coat his fingers with oil. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he looked at the empty plates in front him and found himself ready for more.

“We go to one of the best culinary schools in Seoul, a city in which fine-dining options abound, and you bring me to a pojangmacha,” he states matter-of-factly, looking around at the people around him, all varying amounts of drunk, at the old lady wearing a plastic mask and frying all kinds of finger foods that go perfectly with alcohol.

“Seoul has nothing more delicious to offer than its street food.”

Jay tilts his head in agreement, raising his glass to yours. “Can’t argue with that,” he says, and the sound of your glasses clinking gets a smile out of you.

A few beats of silence pass. Surprisingly comfortable silence, Jay thinks as he watches you watch the passers-by. You suddenly turn to face him, and he picks up the bottle of soju, pouring the both of you a drink, pretending he wasn’t staring at you just seconds ago. “So, what was that thing about your dad earlier?” you ask unceremoniously.

The question should take him aback more than it does, but perhaps the shared bottle of alcohol has already worked its magic between the two of you—Jay doesn’t feel like it’s an inappropriate topic to broach with someone he’s only previously spoken about food and overly strict chefs with. “So you do want to get into my daddy issues on a random Tuesday at nine p.m.,” he jokes.

“Well, it’s more like ten p.m. now, so I think we’re good.”

He chuckles. “Alright. Well, how do I go about this without sounding like the most clichéd poor little rich boy ever? I had everything but a father. The man you see on TV, barking orders at his kitchen staff and criticizing the cooking show contestants like their food isn’t worth a dime, that’s basically the same man I had at home. Except most of the time he wasn’t even paying enough attention to have something to yell at me for. I could’ve been flunking half of my classes, and he would’ve been none the wiser.”

“Gosh. That… sucks,” you say, looking genuinely distraught. “I always thought he was playing it up for the cameras.”

Jay watches the clear alcohol swish around his glass. “His father was an army general and he himself was a cook in the army for a decade. It wasn’t an act at all,” he says, then drinks the soju. It burns on its way down. “It was okay at first. It was even good, sometimes. He wasn’t always there emotionally, and he spent a lot of time at work, but we didn’t argue every time we talked. But my mom wanted a divorce, she didn’t like being the wife of a celebrity chef, she didn’t care about the big house, and the fancy restaurants, and the articles in the magazines. When she left him, she said, “I fell in love with you for your kimchi stew. Now you charge hundreds of thousands of won for two scallops.” He was even more distant after that, to say the least.”

He pauses there, letting silence hang in the air between the two of you. You pour the last of the soju in Jay’s glass, then ask the owner for another bottle and another scallion pancake. “Go on,” you say, gently. Jay wonders for a second if he deserves your listening ear—but if you’re happy to extend it, he might as well take it. Getting it all out feels surprisingly good. Refreshing.

“Well, the weeks at my mom’s new apartment were great. We’d cook together, go out to museums, watch movies. I could talk about anything with her, even the embarrassing stuff. She felt like a friend as much as a mother. But my father… mostly, he wasn’t there. I couldn’t go to him. He was always at work, always off somewhere more important, he didn’t even show up to my high school graduation. The only times he would pay attention to me was when I cooked. I would stay up preparing banchan, fermenting kimchi, making pastes from scratch. He’d come home late in the evening, join me in the kitchen and teach me tricks. All without a word. I think it was the only way he knew how to show care. I’ve talked about this with my mom at length… I think he’s been taught that showing vulnerability means being weak.” He glances at you, your eyes wide open as if you used them to listen rather than your ears, your eyebrows furrowed in empathy. “I told you this was cliché.”

You smile. Something warm spreads in Jay’s chest—it’s the soju getting to him, surely. He continues before you can say something nice and make him lose his footing. “I desperately wanted to make him proud. I knew he wouldn’t bat an eye if I brought home the best grades or became the captain of some sports team. So I dedicated myself to cooking. And now, I love it, I really do…”

“But part of that is because you want him to notice you.”

Your eyes meet. The woman running the stand approaches then, setting down your soju and pancake on the table. “Does that make me a fraud?” Jay asks when she’s gone. It’s the first time he’s uttered the question out loud. He hopes it comes out casually, consciously self-deprecating, and not like something he’s been terrified of since the course started.

You frown. “Of course not. We all have different reasons for cooking. Yours is just as valid as anyone else’s.”

Jay likes how seriously you take him. Between those who think his connections got him into the school and those who suck up to him, thinking it’ll get them a spot at one of his dad’s restaurants, not many of his classmates treat him as an equal, pure and simple. But you do. You’ve always been as snarky towards him as towards the rest of them, and you don’t question his presence in the classroom.

For a second, he dares hope he’s found a friend in you.

“What about you? What’s your reason for cooking?”

An introspective smile spreads on your lips as you ponder his question. “I want to make better japchae than my grandma.”

When Jay presses, you tell him about your hometown and Kim’s Kitchen, your grandma’s restaurant, the simple but hearty food that people keep coming back for. “It’s delicious, but I want to learn other techniques. Make more sophisticated meals. She says I think I’m a big-shot now that I’ve moved to Seoul and spend hours cutting carrots into identical strips. But I like it here, it’s so different to anything I’ve ever known. Sure, the chefs are on our asses about the smallest details, and everyone is simultaneously friend and foe, but outside of school, nobody cares about you. No eyes following your every movement, no gossip spreading from door to door. Living in a small town is like being trapped in middle school forever.”

He asks what the name of your town is, but you dismiss him easily. “The chances of you knowing it are slim, and the chances of you ever hearing of it in the future are even slimmer.”

Jay grew up without the affection of his father; you grew up with the unwanted attention of every adult around you. Somehow, it led you to the same point in life. Early twenties, an obsessive love of cooking, and a need to leave your past behind.

Soon after that, as Tuesday tips into Wednesday, you decide it’s time to go. Jay tries to pay, but you insist otherwise. “You’ll get it next time,” you say.

The soju has stained his cheeks red, has warmed him up enough to not feel the cold November air biting at his skin. You’re clearly a better drinker than he is, helping him into a cab and deciphering his address as his speech comes out mumbled. He’ll regret ordering that third bottle in the morning.

Next time. Looking out the window at the rapidly passing buildings and people and street lights, Jay turns the words around in his head. He decides he likes the sound of them.

.

Indifferent to whether someone’s leaving or arriving, the bells of your restaurant’s door chime when Jay walks out, just as they did when he walked in. They continue to ring for a little bit, the emptiness of the restaurant amplifying the sound. It’s all you can do to stand there, your brain valiantly trying to wrap itself around what just happened and failing.

The only proof that less than ten seconds ago, like an apparition, Jay stood in front of you, is the remaining glass Tupperware, filled to the brim with rice cakes and light brown toppings, your mouth already anticipating their softness and sweetness.

Soft and sweet. Those adjectives would describe something else you know.

Your brain is truly failing to understand how he could not only appear, but also leave again so suddenly. In and out within five minutes. And what had you done—invited him to eat here? You try to recall the short conversation, but every word spoken and heard is blurry, mumbled; a momentary black-out. His presence in Kim’s Kitchen was so nonsensical that nothing seemed appropriate to say. Maybe he has completely grown out of his habit to skip meals when he works, maybe the overwhelming smell and thought of food doesn’t cut his appetite anymore, and you wouldn’t have to coax him out of the kitchens or bring dinner to him when he perfects recipes. But you had to say something, anything to ensure you would see him again, as though you haven’t become literal neighbors, and as you walk back to your kitchen, you realize that you had buried the ache of missing him deep into the marrow of your bones.

Deep enough to ignore, deep enough that it never went away.

Your knees suddenly buckle underneath you and you drop to a crouch. An unexpected, gasp-like sob escapes your throat. You cover your mouth with your hand, but it’s too late—the dam has broken. Holding onto the handle of the oven like it’s your only tether to this world, more sobs keep pouring out of you, and you do nothing to force them down. You need to get it out somehow, the shock of seeing him, here, of all places. The shock of your present and your past colliding, bleeding into one another like you have been desperately trying to prevent for years. The shock of your heart giving in so easily at the mere sight of him.

Except it wasn't just the mere sight of him, was it? It was his voice, still gentle, still carrying that lilt of amusement. His scent, the same woody perfume, masculine but not overbearingly so. The kindness, painfully obvious in his eyes and in his gestures: of course Jay would move in somewhere and proceed to deliver homemade rice cakes to everyone in the neighborhood.

He was close enough to touch. Just a few steps, and you could’ve—what, exactly? Wrapped your arms around him, buried your face in his neck, as you once loved to do, kissed him? It’s ridiculous. Eight months of knowing each other, six of those spent dating; you hadn’t even spent a whole year together. And yet, here you are, half a decade later, mind still branded by a hot iron with every memory you have of him.

You’ve never cried so pathetically. Even when you left Seoul and everything you had built there behind, you barely let yourself cry—a few silent tears on the train back, and that was it. No time to wallow, you had a grandma to take care of and a restaurant to run. Seeing Jay today feels like mourning your relationship, five years after its untimely death. You knew you wouldn’t have been able to do everything that needed to be done while feeling this kind of pain, but you also know that feeling it all at once like this is impossibly worse.

You don’t know how long you stay there, crouched low, tears drenching your palms, shoulders trembling. But at some point, a pair of arms wrap themselves around you, and the familiar scent of rose water and medicine envelops you. Your grandmother. It’s not every day that she has the strength to come help you out at the restaurant, and the fact that you’re in such a state now that she’s here only makes you feel worse. In her arms, you feel like a kid again, crying over a dead goldfish or a mean comment on the school playground as she strokes your hair and shushes you.

“What on Earth has gotten you like this, my dove?” she asks gently. The sound of her voice calms you down, brings you out of your mind, stuck in the past, and back to this moment in time.

You sniffle and rub your eyes dry. “I saw someone I thought I’d never see again,” you say, voice heavy, sitting uncomfortably in your throat.

Your grandmother chuckles. You look up at her, and all the tenderness in the world is in her eyes. “Well, aren’t you a lucky one?”

“I don’t feel lucky.”

Brushing away tears from your cheeks with her thumb, she says, “You know, there are some people I’d do anything just to see one last time. This is a precious opportunity, dear. Don’t let it slip away.”

A small smile appears on your lips. “You don’t even know who this is about,” you murmur, and this is apparently funny enough for your grandmother to burst into laughter.

“Oh, honey, I don’t need you to tell me to know. It’s written all over your face.” She gives you a knowing smile, then is back on her feet, a hand extended out to you. “Now, come, we have work to do.”

.

The real estate agent didn’t lie when he called the old bookstore a fixer-upper: there are floorboards coming undone, flaky wallpaper that needs to be torn apart and reapplied, electricity and gas pipes that should definitely be checked by a professional. Jay has weeks, if not months, of work in front of him before he can start thinking about opening the café.

But it’s his, and that is all that matters.

He has saved enough money working at upscale restaurants in Paris and London, and the only upside of having both his grandfather and his mother pass away in the past three years has been the inheritance, which has allowed him to pursue this otherwise unreasonable dream. And if he somehow runs out of money, maybe you’ll give him a part-time job as a kitchen porter.

Thankfully, the real estate agent did also not lie when he said he “knew a guy.” One phone call is all Jay needs for said guy, or Heeseung, as his parents would have it, to show up at the shop and have a look over it. The only thing he asks for in return is lunch at Kim’s Kitchen, and Jay is more than happy to oblige.

Just like yesterday, you’re nowhere to be seen when the two men step inside the restaurant. The same waitress — Jay wonders if she’s a family member of yours — greets them and shows them to their seats, far from the kitchen, to someone’s great disappointment. On the menu today is abalone porridge, “again,” raw beef bibimbap, which Jay orders, and spicy fish stew, which Heeseung orders. Jay notices how intently Heeseung watches the waitress as she rattles off the dishes of the day and wonders if there’s something there, or if he’s just very hungry and low on patience. But from the way his eyes stay on her even as she retreats to the kitchen, he assumes it’s the former. Part of him is curious to know more, but a bigger part is very much aware that this is a man he met an hour ago and is not in the measure to ask, “Hey, got a thing for that waitress?”

But maybe Heeseung will give him the answer himself.

“The chef here is really good with spicy dishes. Not so spicy that you lose the flavors, but not so little that it becomes bland.” He’s probably just trying to make small talk, but Jay latches onto this like a lifeline, because the mere mention of “the chef here” is enough to get his heart racing.

“Oh yeah? Do you know her well?” he asks, conscious that this might not be the most normal follow-up question to a statement about your cooking skills. He tries to appear as nonchalant as he can, pouring water into his and Heeseung’s blue plastic cups.

“I do, actually. We’ve been friends since childhood.”

Childhood friends. Jay’s eyes narrow momentarily before the rational part of his brain reminds him that the man in front of him need not be an enemy.

“How do you know it’s a her, by the way?” Heeseung asks.

“Oh. The real estate agent mentioned it yesterday,” he replies, not even sure whether that’s true or not. “Y/N, I think it was?”

Heeseung smiles. “That’s the one.”

Why does your name make him smile?

Jay is not a great actor, but he puts on his best relaxed, just-trying-to-get-to-know-you, I-have-no-other-intentions face, and asks, “Are you guys, like…?”

Heeseung furrows his eyebrows, taking a second to compute Jay’s words, then leans back in his chair, a surprised expression on his face. “Oh, no, not at all. It’s never been like that. No, I’m, uh… There’s someone else I like, let’s just say.” Jay follows Heeseung’s gaze, turning around to find the waitress — Knew it — gathering the empty bowls from another table. When he looks at Heeseung again, he’s smiling in a shy, self-deprecating sort of way, but before he can ask him about it, Heeseung continues speaking. “Anyways, I’m sure our moms would love to see it happen, but since the two primarily concerned are against it, I doubt we’ll ever make them happy. In that regard, at least.”

“What do you mean, they’d love to see it happen?”

“Well, you know what moms are like,” Heeseung says, shrugging, but Jay gives him a look that says he does not know what moms are like—not theirs, at least. When it came to relationships, all his mother ever told him was to be careful. “Her mom has known me since I was little, and vice versa. Our moms are friends with each other. We’ve only ever been polite to each other’s moms. That’s enough for them to think we should get married.”

Jay almost chokes on his water then. “Married?” he echoes in a tone that makes him sound far more involved than he’s trying to come off as. He clears his throat. “I just mean, I didn’t realize it was marriage you were talking about. That’s pretty, uh, big,” he explains with an awkward chuckle.

If Heeseung finds his behavior suspicious, he doesn’t say anything. “I know. But here, it’s marriage or nothing. You better not be caught dating anyone for fun, because suddenly your parents, their parents, and basically every parent in this town is on your ass about getting married and having kids. A lot of people get engaged right out of university, or even high school, sometimes.”

“Wow,” Jay says, because that’s all he can think to say right now. Everywhere he’s been, being in your early twenties has meant dating apps, one-night stands and casual relationships. None of his close friends are even engaged at the moment, and he’s twenty-five. He’d be lying if he said he’d never imagined what yours and his future might have looked like when you were dating, but when he’d pictured marriage and children, you were both thirty at the very least.

“Yep. Things are changing, though. My parents already had me at my age, whereas I don’t even have a girlfriend. And I’m not the only one. Well, Y/N’s in the same boat, for one.”

Hope flares in Jay’s heart. “She’s not seeing anyone either?” he asks, thinking his tone sounds natural enough, but aware that his eye contact is far too intense. He can’t help himself.

“Nope. Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen her date anyone in a really long time. I’ve always assumed she’s just busy with the restaurant, but I should ask her about it. It’s probably just that there aren’t many options here…” he trails off, looking into the distance with a pout. But then, his gaze sharpens as he directs it to Jay. “Guess one more option has appeared, though. I think it’s safe to assume you wouldn’t have moved here all on your own if you were dating someone, right? You don’t have a wife and kids back in Seoul?”

Jay laughs, more out of shock than anything. “Definitely not, no.”

Heeseung leans back in his chair with a grin on his face, the brightest Jay’s seen him smile so far. “Perfect. I honestly have no idea what kind of men Y/N’s into, but you seem decent enough so far.”

“I’ll take decent enough.”

The food arrives then, and as they eat, Jay tries not to burst into tears at the thought that you made this meal. He is both relieved and sad when Heeseung shifts the topic from you to their renovations plans. They agree that it would be best to start with the studio, so that Jay can move in and not have to extend his stay at the guest house he’s currently living in for another month or two. There are things Jay can’t do himself, things for which he has neither the skills nor the time to learn, such as completely replacing the wood panels that line the floor or removing the old, deteriorating ceiling tiles. Apparently, in this town, every guy knows a guy: Heeseung has someone for water, for electricity, for gas, and they’re respectively a cousin, a brother-in-law’s brother, a long-time friend. Jay will get to do the fun bits himself—choosing the wallpaper and parquet flooring, building and arranging furniture, decorating the café. The sooner he can get a functioning kitchen set up, the better. He can only try out so many different cake recipes and sandwich-filling combos in the tiny kitchen of his current residence.

Even when he goes to pay at the counter by the entrance of the kitchen, Jay doesn’t get a glimpse of you. It’s only when he exits the restaurant, the chime of the bell already a familiar sound, and he turns around to wish a good day to the waitress, that you peek out from behind the curtain. A smile and a wave, directed at him. You’re gone before he can return the attention.

He is inexplicably giddy all day—well, he knows the reason for his unwavering smile, but to Heeseung and his team, he lies that it’s “just excitement at seeing the project coming along so quickly.”

.

There’s a knock at the door just as Jay, fresh out the shower, slips his t-shirt on. He wonders who it could be at this hour—it’s almost ten p.m., too late for the old lady he’s renting from to drop by with food like she did yesterday night. He debates asking who it is behind the door, but ultimately decides, naively perhaps, that not only are the crime rates in this town probably extremely low, it wouldn’t make sense for a robber-slash-serial-killer to knock before barging into a house.

You look the opposite of a robber-slash-serial-killer as you stand at Jay’s door, a black plastic bag in your hand, a smile he can only describe as angelic on your lips. Bottles clink together as you raise the bag to shoulder-level. “Let’s catch up,” you say, but instead of letting yourself in, you turn and head somewhere else.

“Wait,” Jay says, but you don’t, so he scrambles to put on his slippers and grab his jacket from the coat rack. The two-room apartment he’s staying at sits atop his landlady’s house, and although she’d told him he was welcome to use it, he hadn’t ventured up the other set of stairs that lead to the roof. You seem to know your way around, though, so he follows you.

From this high up, Jay can see the sea glittering in the distance, the small fishing boats rocking peacefully on the water, the many roofs strewn around the town, their colors lost to the night. It should be in this moment, as the beauty of the town he’s chosen to set up store in reveals itself to him, that he truly feels that he made the right decision, coming here. Or it should’ve been when he found the old bookstore; or when Heeseung told him the place looked much worse that it actually was, and that it would be a piece of cake, renovating it.

Alas. It’s only when you press the button to the fairy lights, flickering to life and casting a halo of golden light behind you, that Jay knows he’s really found what he came here for. He’s transfixed, feet frozen to the concrete, eyes glued on your face, but you don’t seem to notice. “Nice place, right?” you say, gesturing to the potted plants, the low wooden table, even the clothesline on which the fairy lights hang, like fireflies. It’s all he can do to nod appreciatively.

From a trunk he hadn’t noticed, you pull out two cushions and one blanket. The cushions go on opposite sides of the table, and you hand him the blanket. “Here, your hair’s still damp, take this,” you explain, not quite meeting his eyes. Without another word, you sit across from each other, Jay watching you carefully as you pull out bottles of soju, cans of beer and a packet of dried anchovies from your bag.

“A successful trip to the convenience store,” he comments.

“To welcome you to the area,” you add. “And to catch up on lost time.”

Lost time. An appropriate way of describing the years that separate this moment from the day you let go of his hand. Would things have gone differently, had you known you would meet again like this down the line?

He appreciates that you don’t tiptoe around the subject. You’re not strangers, you never could be, no matter how much time you might go without seeing each other. There’s a certain level of connection you can’t come back from. The two of you can’t start anew, and he’s glad you’re not pretending like that is what this is. And yet, there’s the gnawing feeling that you’re treating him more like an old friend than an old lover. You’re being almost too welcoming. You’d always made him feel special, like he was to you what no one else had ever been, what no one else could be—right now, he just feels awkward.

Dismissing all the questions burning the tip of his tongue, Jay settles for a safer one. Rather than on your face, he focuses his gaze on the way you fill the small glasses to the brim with soju. “How did you know I was here?”

“Mrs. Yoon used to be one of my schoolteachers. She’s also a friend of my grandma’s. She showed up to our house the night you got here saying she had just welcomed the most handsome lodger.” you say, imitating her. “Wasn’t hard to figure out who she was talking about. She’s pushing eighty and still getting excited about boys, of all things.”

You clink your glasses and tip your drinks back at the same time. “You think I’m a boy, Y/N?”

Jay can’t help the smirk that appears on his lips as you briefly choke, the soju seemingly going down the wrong pipe. “She probably does. You could be her grandson.” He knows you’re avoiding the question, but he lets you off the hook, just this once. There’s a slight furrow in your eyebrows as you pour a second glass for the both of you. You don’t wait for him before you all but throw it down your throat.

“So. How’ve you been?” Jay asks after a few moments of silence. Surprise flashes through your face for a second, as though you weren’t the one to propose this catch-up session in the first place. When you sigh, there’s far too much depth to it for a 26-year-old, Jay thinks.

“I’ve been fine,” you answer simply. “Just working a lot.”

“Too much?”

You briefly meet his eyes. “Sometimes, yeah.” You must know this won’t cut it. Even when you were just getting to know each other, this sort of run-of-the-mill, surface-level answer didn’t fly between the two of you. So, Jay says nothing, waiting patiently for you to go on. “It’s not the work in itself that’s tiring. I’m glad my grandma’s recipes continue to be loved by so many people, and I’m glad she’s also letting me put my own twist on our dishes and come up with new ones. I work long hours, and we only close one day a week, but I like what I do. It’s this town…” you say, looking around yourself with disdain, as if the very buildings and roads that constitute Seojuk-ri are the ones you’re at odds with, “that’s exhausting.”

“Things haven’t changed, then?”

“Not in the slightest. People are still just as nosy, just as overbearing, just as sickeningly well-intentioned as they have always been. If anything, it’s gotten worse, because the old people have gotten older and the young people are starting to take on those characteristics, too. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Everyone that I love is here. But if I have to go through one more conversation with another one of my school friends, mother of two at 24, about when I’m finally gonna have a kid, I might just take all of my family’s money and flee. I don’t want to hear about my biological clock anymore.”

Jay chuckles, cracking open one can of beer for you, another for him. You grab it immediately, taking large gulps as you look up at the sky with anger. “Gee, I wonder why,” he jokes. “I always thought it was your dream to give birth to twins before your frontal lobe even fully developed.”

You roll your eyes. “It’s not like there’s anyone here I’d want to knock me up,” you say. You pause at the same time, as it dawns on you both how your words could be interpreted. Despite himself, hope flashes through Jay. He already knew from his conversation with Heeseung that you were single, but to hear it from you — not in these exact terms, but still — is something else entirely.

“That’s… good to know,” he says for lack of a better alternative, feeling as flustered as you look. You’re both silent for a little while, exchanging quick, chaste glances, as though there’s anything to be shy about between the two of you.

“Your turn,” you say eventually. “I’ve been here this whole time, but you’ve moved around, right?”

He nods. Tells you about his time in Paris, about the two-year contract he got offered upon completion of his stage at the Michelin-starred restaurant—the one you’d also had your eye on. Tries not to read too much into your expression, which you seem to be keeping as neutral as you can. Wonders if it’s still a sensitive topic.

He quickly moves on to London. “Surprisingly, my favorite part of working at L’Arôme was getting to help out with the desserts once in a while. The techniques, the flavor combinations… I found them more exciting. So when I got the opportunity to work under a pastry chef in London, I didn’t hesitate for a second.”

Of course, he had to learn all the basics first. Ganaches, caramels, meringues, all sorts of dough… What he ended up falling in love with was the simplicity of it all. The cuisine his father, and therefore, Jay himself, had always been interested in was complex. Measured down to the milligram, temperature-controlled, extensively researched and tested-out—so much fuss for something that will be eaten in two, three bites. It was a different sort of culinary experience, one Jay realized he wasn’t as taken with. He liked irregular chocolate chips, cracked cake tops, frosting spread unevenly. As often as he could, he would go to a different café in London and try about half of the baked goods they had on display. For the first time in his life, Jay knew exactly what he wanted his next step to be, and he knew it was his decision and only his.

You listen intently, nodding along to his words, and Jay tries not to lose his focus when your smile turns particularly fond. You don’t even seem to realize what you’re doing, and that somehow makes things worse.

“And then, well, I ended up back in Seoul.”

“For your mom.”

“For my mom, yeah. And now I’m here.”

“And now you’re here.” A pause. Then, a mere whisper, “How?”

How, indeed. In the past couple of days, every time Jay’s mind drifted back to you — which happened far too often for him to keep count — he’d been in awe at the sheer improbability of your reunion. Of all the seaside towns you could’ve hailed from, it just so happened that it was this one, the only one he had any sort of attachment to. It was this sort of happening that made him reevaluate his lack of belief in some higher force, some ruling hand over the universe.

“I came here with her a few months before she… you know. Died. Passed away. I never know what word is preferable. People have such weird ways of reacting to it.”

You shrug. “Whichever one you like is best. I like to just…” You guide your thumb across your throat, tilting your head as you make a clicking sound with your teeth. It’s a crude gesture, and Jay can’t help but laugh. You’re probably the only person he knows that would ever refer to someone’s death like that. He appreciates your trying to keep this conversation a light-hearted one—somehow, you must know his mom’s passing still feels raw in his best moments, unbearable in his worst.

“It was just a town that she liked. She couldn’t spend too much time away from home, so we were here for the afternoon only. Maybe if we’d stayed longer, you and I would have run into each other sooner?” Jay says, drawing a smile from you, which in turn always makes him feel oddly relieved. “Anyways, I think she came here a few times when she was young and wanted to relive those moments. Her life flashing in front of her eyes, something like that.”

You consider his words for a few seconds. “I wonder what sort of buried memories will come to the surface when I’m on my deathbed.”

And without missing a beat, as if the answer was written on his tongue, Jay says, “I’ll remember you.”

He hears the breath that hitches in your throat. You stare at him, seemingly caught off-guard, while in his head, like a cassette tape, he replays you. Late nights spent in kitchens. Late nights spent under the red tent of your favorite pocha. Conversations that started at sunset and stopped at sunrise. Knowing glances thrown across a classroom, a house party, a restaurant table. Falling asleep next to you. Waking up next to you. Your hair tickling his neck. Your hands on his waist, on his shoulders, everywhere.

A blush creeps up his cheeks. With effort, he tears his gaze away from yours, takes a swig of his beer in the hope that he can blame his redness on the alcohol. Eventually, you look away too, smile down at the empty glass in your hands like it, rather than the man sitting across you, just all but confessed its love to you.

The night goes on like this, for longer than either of you anticipated. The September night air should deter you from staying outside so late, but between the blankets around your shoulders, the alcohol, and the warmth of finding each other again, the cold truly has nothing on you. It’s only when you yawn, causing Jay to yawn for so long that tears brim his eyes, that you decide it’s time to go to bed. Your chat takes on a more light-hearted tone as you put away the cushions and he gathers the cans and glass bottles for later recycling; you don’t stop talking as you head back down the stairs, and stand in front of Jay’s door as you finish recounting an anecdote. Of course, he wants to invite you in, not even because he has anything salacious in mind, but just to prolong the night as much as he can — although he can’t say with total certainty that nothing would happen if you found yourselves in a dark room together — but he says nothing. If he’s going to do this again, he’s going to do it right and take it step-by-step.

When you’re ready to leave, you press a chaste kiss to his cheek, and if he wasn’t so stunned by the sudden warmth overcoming him, he’d have embraced you before you could turn around and leave.

As he tosses and turns in his bed later, Jay thinks back to his work trip to Japan from last year, where he’d learned about the art of kintsugi. He’d stayed at a guesthouse, where one shelf of a cupboard had been filled with bowls lined with gold. When asked about it, his host explained that to repair broken pottery, the Japanese sometimes mixed gold powder with lacquer in the cracked areas. The object was more beautiful broken when fixed than in its original state.

Maybe he is getting ahead of himself, maybe he is being overly optimistic, but he can’t help but think that the two of you, too, might become more beautiful than you ever were.

.

Sometimes it’s Jay that drags you out of the kitchens when it’s far too late to still be behind a stove, sometimes it’s you. More often than not, you end up at the same pojangmacha you went to the first time, where you and the owner are now on a first-name basis. She’s taken to asking whether the two of you have finally gotten together every time she sees you. You’ve taken to not answering and smiling at Jay, as if you’re waiting for his answer as much as she is.

Other times, and on weekends, when the place you need to drag each other out of is the comfort of your respective beds, you will try out an upscale restaurant in Gangnam or Hongdae. Since that first outing of yours, Jay has insisted on paying for every meal, and you only stop opposing after the fifth or so time, when you realize that your feeling of owing him is completely one-sided. You learn many things about Jay over the course of these first couple of months—one of them being that he is the least transactional, most generous person you have ever met. He is on par with the village aunties who let you and your siblings spend the afternoon at their houses and filled your bellies with snacks your mother never bought you, for absolutely nothing in return. You wonder where he learned to be so kind. The most he’ll accept from you is a vending coffee machine when you notice him dozing off during break, and he’s too tired to argue.

You don’t know what to make of the growing friendship between the two of you. Between classes and your part-time job — three nights a week spent washing dishes at a barbecue place isn’t ideal, but rent in Seoul is high, and at least you don’t have to deal with drunk customers — you don’t have time to give it too much thought. Because while on paper, you really are just friends, in your head, things are slightly more nuanced by that.

It’s not like you’re an expert when it comes to love. With one eight-month relationship during high school that you got little out of except for the basics of sex and some notions of the type of connection you want, and another one that lasted the three months of the summer between your first and second year at the local college, you’re actually very, very far from love expertship. But no need for a PhD to know that what you feel for Jay is not platonic—unless everyone else’s hearts start racing, palms start sweating, thoughts start blurring when their friends are around, and no one has bothered to let you know.

Who knows if he feels the same way? He hasn’t told you, and you definitely won’t be asking him, too scared to lose the person who might potentially become your closest friend here. One thing about you, however, is you won’t push your feelings down. Even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t know how—the women in your family have always compared you to an open book, sometimes reproaching you for it, sometimes praising you. Even you, in your twenty-one years of living, have yet to come to a conclusion on the constant transparency of your emotions. It’s a blessing not having to bottle things up only for them to explode later—you get to really live through your feelings as they come. It’s a curse, however, when you can’t hide your disappointment upon receiving a terrible gift, or when the desperation written all over your face only works to drive someone away.

Curse or blessing, you won’t try to pretend you feel nothing for him. Sure, you won’t throw yourself at his feet — it’s not like you’re that infatuated with him, at least, not yet — but you won’t ignore the warmth that spreads from your stomach all the way to your fingertips whenever Jay smiles at you.

After all, there’s a small possibility he feels that same warmth, isn’t there?

.

You wake up painfully early. You know that with age, hangovers only get worse, and you’ve been careful not to go overboard when you drink—but last night was a case apart, so you might as well let yourself off the hook.

Your thoughts are muddled, as if still coated and sticky with soju, and your entire body is screaming for water. After drinking what feels like two liters of it straight from the tap, you prepare enough coffee for everyone in your house, knowing you’ll end up drinking half of it, and inhale the smell of the ground beans like they have healing properties. It’s in moments like these, when there’s no one to cook up some hangover soup and you must do it yourself because you’re the first one up, that you’re glad you cook for a living. Chopping some vegetables, boiling some noodles, preparing a broth, you could do it with your eyes closed, and you practically do. You’re not all there, half of your head still crunching beer cans, laughing over nothing with Jay as your conversation begins to make less and less sense. Sense—you at least had enough of it not to end up in his bed last night, which you knew was a real possibility when you showed up at his temporary apartment with alcohol in hand. There was a moment of pause yesterday in which he looked for a video to show you in his gallery. It gave you time to look at him, really look at him, for the first time since he magically appeared in Sojuk-ri. Like a caress, your eyes had languidly trailed from his well-kept nails, up his arms that had gotten insultingly bigger in your five years apart, up the throat your lips knew so well, to the face that filled your dreams more often than you’d care to admit. And, in your inebriated state, your thoughts had gone… there. They didn’t quite leave when he found the video of a dog, the reason he wanted to show it to you in the first place completely forgotten, and they have apparently still not left you now, as you peel carrots and ponder the universe’s way of doing things. Not very subtle, you conclude.

The sound of a door swinging open and hurried footsteps abruptly interrupt your thoughts. In the time it takes you to turn around, whoever it is rushing to the bathroom has already closed the door behind them. The thought of a family member of yours needing the toilet this badly first thing in the morning gets a giggle out of you, until you hear retching sounds. Your head snaps up, eyes widening as the awful noise continues, stomach turning. It lasts for another minute, then you hear the toilet flush, the sink run. You stare at the bathroom door worriedly until your sister-in-law, Yeonju, appears from behind it, Yeonju who got married to your brother five months ago, Yeonju who helps out at the restaurant and has never once complained, Yeonju who’s just gotten sick. In the morning.

Her steps halt the moment she sees you, her eyes widening, her mouth falling agape to mirror your expression. You stay like that for a few seconds, simply staring at each other, both of you at a loss for words as the meaning of it all dawns on you. “You’re up early,” she says finally.

“I am. I drank too much last night.” As she nods, you have another realization. The words come out of your mouth as quickly as they form in your brain. “I haven’t seen you have a drink in a while.”

A few more beats pass. “Don’t tell anyone,” she whispers. “It’s too early.”

You nod vigorously. “Of course.” Then, a smile breaks through the shock on your features, warm tears prickle at your eyes, and Yeonju looks away, fighting back a smile of her own. You put down your vegetable peeler and run to her as quietly as you can, and, dismissing for once the fact that she doesn’t like to be touched excessively, take her in your arms and hold her tight.

She allows it for a little bit, then, with a hushed giggle, says, “Okay, okay, don’t get too excited. It’s only been six weeks.”

You lean back, hands on her shoulders. “Six weeks?!” you say, whisper-screaming her words back at her.

“Mh-hm.”

“You’ve told Seungkwan, right?”

“I’ve only told him and my mother. I would tell yours, too, and Grandmother, but…”

“They’re not the calm and collected type, I get it,” you say, nodding seriously, as if you are the image of composure yourself.

Indeed, “You’re crying,” Yeonju points out, chuckling as a tear rolls down her own cheek. “Stop crying. I’m going to be sick again, for a different reason this time.”

“Shut up,” you laugh, and take her in your arms again. “I’m preparing you for the commotion that will inevitably happen.”

You let her go back to bed soon after, and pick your peeler back up. You should think of your brother, of your mother, of your grandmother, of Yeonju—but, for reasons you don’t feel strong enough to try and understand, the person that comes to mind is Jay. I want to see him, you think. And, for the first time in five years, the thought that immediately follows is, I can go see him.

So you do.

It's another hour before the soup is done and your family eats it, and then you’re putting your shoes on, retracing last night’s steps to Jay’s rental, the Tupperware he used for the rice cakes now cleaned and filled with your hangover cure. It takes a minute for him to open the door after you knock—you’re about to leave the soup at his door and turn back on your heels before it creaks open.

“Y/N?”

Everything about him is still veiled with sleep. His voice, deep and slightly groggy, his half-open eyes, his dishevelled hair, even his clothing—or lack thereof. You try not to stare at his naked upper body, but it’s hard not to when the realizations hit you that not only has he kept his habit of sleeping without a t-shirt, his torso has gotten impossibly more defined since the last time you saw it. You swear his shoulders didn’t use to be so broad.

But really, it’s the familiarity of the sight that has your head reeling so. How many times have you woken up to this Jay? He was always a morning person, and so the thought that he might still be sleeping at 10 a.m. hadn’t even crossed your mind. You hadn’t expected for such waves of memories to wash over you at the mere sight of him half-asleep.

He follows your gaze downwards, his own eyes widening. “Oh, sorry. Let me go grab a shirt.”

“No, it’s okay,” you blurt out, grabbing his wrist to stop him, and letting go of it just as quickly. “I only came here to give you this.” Jay looks down at the Tupperware in your hands like it’s an alien object. “It’s nothing fancy… just some noodles and vegetables. But it always makes me feel better after I’ve had too much to drink,” you explain, feeling more out of place with every word.

“Thank you,” he finally says, taking the container from your hands. “I think I might really need it.”

You try not to let it show, but you’ve never felt so helpless around him. Even when you were first getting to know each other, things had progressed so naturally, almost as if following a predetermined pattern, that there had been no room for shame, or embarrassment, or awkwardness. You’ve always prided yourself on your ability to take everything in stride—but this, this is putting a stoke in your wheels.

After all, when you last saw Jay, it wasn’t a goodbye, see you later, take care till then. It was meant to be a real adieu. Seeing him again undoes everything you had convinced yourself of these past few years: that you would both be better off that way, that if you truly loved someone, you’d know when to let them go, all sorts of inanities. You can’t accept that things could’ve gone differently.

“Well, I hope you enjoy it,” you say, unable to bring yourself to mirror the smile on his lips, before he can invite you in to have breakfast with him. You whisper, “Bye,” and take your leave under his watchful gaze.

.

A few days ago, Jay received a text from Jaemin, one of the few friends from culinary school he’s actually kept in touch with. It’s not like they call each other every day since graduating three years ago, but Jay isn’t surprised to see his name on his screen. All sorts of people have been reaching out to him lately—losing your mother will do that. He doesn’t even know how half of these people have heard of it.

Hey buddy, the text reads. I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your mom. Call me if you need anything man. I mean it.

Another one had come a few minutes later. Could you text me your address? I’d like to send you something.

It took Jay over a week to answer the many well-wishing messages flooding his inbox, but he got around to it eventually. When Ms. Lee, his dad’s house help, knocks on his bedroom door to tell him mail has arrived for him, he assumes it’s from Jaemin, although there is no sender information or return address. Everything sent as condolences for his mother, Ms. Lee takes care of. But this one is specifically addressed to him.

For lack of a better alternative, he is staying at his father’s apartment in Seoul until he finds his own place. He knows he couldn’t withstand staying by his lonesome in his mother’s apartment, surrounded by her things. Her absence would be overwhelming. If he stayed in a hotel room, he’d probably wither away. At least, here, he has one person worrying about him, making sure he eats his meals and gets some sunlight every day. He means Ms. Lee, of course—his father has become even more of a closed-off workaholic, as if that was even possible, in the two weeks since his ex-wife’s passing.

He tears the envelope open, curious as to what Jaemin needed to send as a letter that he couldn’t have simply texted. Inside is a singular sheet of paper, folded in half. He takes it out, unfolds it. The sight of all-too familiar handwriting makes his heart stop.

It’s a recipe for pine nut porridge. There’s just one word on the back: Eat.

In the three days between his mom’s death and her funeral, Jay barely stopped crying. His eyes were constantly achingly puffy, his nose perpetually red and runny. But since the day of the funeral, he hasn’t shed a single tear, as if he dried himself out, as if the tears and pity of others drained him. Now, holding the piece of paper that was in your hands just days ago, his body shakes with loud sobs.

He feels a twisted mix of sadness and hope. Your letter is at once a reminder of his loss, of his life without the two women he’s loved most, and a sign that he still exists in a corner of your mind. That you still care enough to do this.

He remembers a conversation you’d once had about exes and past crushes. It was in the middle of a rainy night; he left the blinds to his bedroom up so that the only light you’d need was the one emanating from the moon and the stars, bright and fuzzy at the edges. Your head was resting on his chest and you were trailing your fingers up and down his arm when he asked if you ever thought about the men that came before him. You laughed, saying that he was the first man you’d ever been with, the others were boys. “And I don’t even mean that as an insult. We were so young,” you said. “I don’t think about them in the way you mean, no. But I do believe that with anyone you’ve ever loved, or even just held in your affections, you always carry a little bit of them with you afterwards.”

He had felt jealous then, even though he understood what you meant perfectly and knew he wasn’t being rational. (He only stopped pouting when you said, “Of course you have nothing to worry about. I’ve never felt the way I feel about you with anyone else.”) But now, he’s glad for it. He pictures you, looking beautiful in your little corner of the world, wherever that is, with a little bit of him in your heart. He remembers the sunny day on which you met his mom, and he pictures you, four years later, hearing the news, writing down the recipe you knew by heart, sending it in the mail.

It’s only basic ingredients. Pine nuts are expensive, but he’s sure neither his father nor Ms. Lee will mind him using them. And so, for the first time in two weeks, he picks up a knife, and gets to cooking.

.

Jay has caught the flu. You’ve never seen him so pathetic.

Nestled under the covers of his bed, half of his face hidden, eyebrows furrowed as if he is in deep pain—stepping into his room, you first wonder whether it really is that serious, then you feel immediate guilt for accusing him of exaggerating, even if it was just in your head. You are so used to the men in your family, your brother especially, looking like they are on the verge of death when faced with the common cold. But Jay — reasonable, independent, reliable Jay — is the last person you know who’d play up being sick for pity or attention.

“Here,” you say, putting a tray down on his bedside table. On it rests a bowl full of steaming, fragrant pine nut porridge that you’ve just prepared—easy to digest without being bland, it’s your grandmother’s go-to recipe for sickness of any sort.

“Thanks, baby.”

Even seeing him in his current state, you can’t help but tease him when the opportunity arises. “I think you’re the baby here.”

He manages a weak smile. “I hate that you have to see me like this. You shouldn’t feel like you have to take care of me, you know.”

“I know I don’t, but I want to.” You sit at the edge of his bed, gazing softly down at him as you brush away the hair that has stuck to his forehead with sweat. He can barely keep his eyes open, and his skin is alarmingly warm against your palm. “You’re still so hot. I mean your temperature, Jay,” you say, admonishing him slightly when his smile widens. He’s running a fever and still he’s able to see innuendos in your innocent words.

“Sorry,” he whispers. You pinch his earlobe.

“Wait for the food to cool down, and hopefully it’ll make you feel a bit better. Just give me a shout if you need anything,” you say, rising from your seat.

“Wait, Y/N.”

“Mh-hm?”

He hesitates. “Will you stay?”

It isn’t like Jay to ask anything from you. In your four months of knowing each other, you’ve always been the one who overshares, who coyly asks for favors, who texts him at all times of day and night. He listens to your anecdotes from seven years ago, remembers the names of all your friends and family members, does everything you ask him, does things you didn’t even ask him, and never complains. You do it because you expect him to do the same in return, to rely on you as you do on him. Maybe if you bore him by recounting in excruciating detail what you did that day, and where you went, and who you saw, and what they told you, he’ll feel like he can share worries weighing on his mind or memories that come to him out of nowhere. Maybe if you make him go to the store to get green onions and butter, then make him go back because he got the wrong brand of butter, he’ll feel like he can call you at six in the morning because he needs a second opinion on whether his tie and socks match, or whatever it is that men care about fashion-wise.

It’s working, you think, albeit very slowly—after your first time bonding over drinks and fried food, it took him three weeks to mention his dad again. It was another two before he told you more about his childhood, his mother, his school years. You’re greedy for everything he has to offer—you’ve never been so curious about someone, never craved so intensely to know what was going in their mind at any given moment. If he actually got a penny each time you asked him, “Penny for your thoughts?” he wouldn’t be rich, but he’d have an impressive amount of useless coins.

In your two months of dating, your efforts have become more visible. You don’t feel like you’re picking at an iceberg anymore, nor do you have to soften him up with alcohol and snacks. He always tells you what you want to know, and increasingly doesn’t need to be asked—you almost cried of happiness the day he started going on an unprompted monologue about how versatile and nutritious beans were, and how he could still taste the bean stew his grandmother had cooked once when he was eight and never again since.

Compared to words, actions are a bit more complicated. While he seems to do anything you ask, he has a harder time doing the requesting. Small things maybe, can you fetch him the salt, can you peel the potatoes; but he’ll always be the one who drives the two of you somewhere, he’ll never let you carry any of the groceries, he’ll never ask you to move your head even if his arm is killing him, he’ll always let you pick the movie you watch or the food you eat. When you insist on cooking for him, he insists on helping out. You pushed him all the way to the living room once, but he was back in the kitchen within the minute.

All morning, he’s been adamant on you going home, because he can take care of himself, and you’ll get sick, and “Who’ll take care of you when you get sick?” as if he wouldn’t be glued to your bedside the entire time. Only after some time do you agree that you’ll stay in the living room and check on him every once in a while, then go with him to the doctor tomorrow if it’s still this bad.

So when, finally, he asks you if you will stay, there’s only one possible answer.

“Of course, baby.”

.

Jay quickly settles into a new sort of routine.

He wakes up around nine a.m. every day without the need for an alarm, which, to him, is the height of luxury. He takes his time eating breakfast and getting himself ready, then heads out of the apartment with the strict necessities in the pockets of his coat and an empty tote bag. By that time, Heeseung and his men have started work in the soon-to-be café, and he drops by, standing there unnecessarily, watching the progress happen in real time. Most days he stops by the convenience store nearby to buy them soft drinks and various snacks. Sometimes he stays with them until lunchtime, sometimes he walks around the neighborhood, greeting everyone he walks past, smiling to himself when he realizes that they’re increasingly more polite, friendlier, less apprehensive of him and his sudden arrival. Then it’s lunch and he goes to your restaurant, by himself or with Heeseung and his team, eats like a king, and if he’s lucky, you’ll tell him to wait until your shift is over and you’ll spend your afternoon break with him. If he isn’t, he’ll go home and diligently practice new recipes, or less so diligently watch reruns of The Great British Bake-Off and consider it research.

Thankfully, more often than not, you grace him with your presence for a few hours in the afternoon. Part of him feels bad and keeps on telling you to go get some rest if you feel too tired in-between shifts; part of him knows he would be devastated if you actually did. You show him where everything is, from the singular bus stop to the post office to the pharmacy. You take him to the beach a couple of times, sitting in the hard sand or venturing out to the water, wincing at how cold it is against your feet until one of you inevitably splashes the other one and a chase ensues, both of you quickly wound out of breath from too much running and laughing. It makes him wish he’d been a high schooler with you—they are such adolescent moments, and he wishes he could feel the total carefreeness of them, but the weight on his heart every time he looks at you is too heavy. He wishes he knew you from before, he wishes the feeling of having known you his entire life wasn’t just a feeling but reality. Seeing you in your hometown is one step closer to that, but when he sees you talking to Heeseung and remembers that Heeseung knew you as a seven-year-old, scraped his knees on the same pavement, sat in the same classrooms listening to the same teachers, jealousy rears its ugly head and makes his stomach twist.

Sometimes the time spent with you is tinted with such sadness that he wishes he’d never met you, so that this could be a real fresh start for the both of you, but these thoughts never stay long. He reminds himself that finding you again is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that he won’t waste on melancholy and what-ifs.

So he forces himself not to dwell on the past, but it’s a tough resolution to uphold when most of your conversations revolve around it. Of course, you tell each other about your plans for the future, where you want to go with the restaurant and how he plans on running the café, but catching up seems to be the priority for the both of you. Jay is reassured by the amount of questions you ask him—you seem to want to be filled in on the years of his life you weren’t a part of as much as he does yours. He’s somewhat surprised at how easy it is to talk to you again. Only somewhat, because he can’t imagine feeling anything but absolutely himself around you, with a few instances of the nervousness and self-conscious awkwardness that only your gaze could provoke in him, but still surprised, because every time he thought about meeting you again, he was sure your break-up would hang like a sword over your heads, threatening to make every interaction stilted and uncomfortable.

You don’t talk about the break-up. It’s there, somewhere in the air between you, but you don’t call it by its name. And actually, anything that has to do with your relationship, past or present, isn’t mentioned. Jay is too afraid to bring it up in fear of breaking the connection, fragile as it may be, that you’ve reestablished over his first week of being here. Instead, he tells you about the kitchens he worked in, about life in France, about how much better the Seoul metro is than the London underground, and don’t even get him started on the Parisian métro, but he doesn’t tell you about how much he missed you at that time and how he wanted to share every little thing with you but couldn’t. So now, he does: the ridiculously cheap baguettes and pastries, the ridiculously expensive rent, the omnipresence of and accessibility to culture, “and the food, oh my God, the food, you would’ve lost your mind.” You smile at this, a small, sad smile, and Jay regrets everything he’s ever said. He almost says something like, “You deserved it more than I did,” but before he can, you say that that sounds nice.

You tell him that your life hasn’t been as fun as his since leaving culinary school, but he absorbs every detail you give him, no matter how small, and wants nothing more than a step-by-step recap of what you’ve been up to since the last time he saw you. You’ve mostly been running the restaurant, which requires the sort of time and energy your grandmother simply doesn’t have anymore. She thankfully hasn’t had another fall since the first one five years ago, but the toll on her health has been so great that the days where she is both physically and mentally sound enough to help you in the kitchen are fewer and further between. About three years ago, you found someone to hold down the fort while you enrolled at the nearest culinary school and completed the credits you needed to get your Restauranteur’s Certificate. The prestige of that school was nowhere near that of the one in Seoul, and arguably you didn’t even need it, because you wouldn’t be applying to work at restaurants other than Kim’s Kitchen, but it was more of a principle thing and everyone in your family insisted on you getting it.

“That’s about it, I think,” you say dismissively. If you’ve missed him, you don’t tell him.

It’s not like either of you tries to hide it, but of course, people are quick to notice how often you and Jay are seen together, despite his very recent arrival. Even though you’d complained of it many times when you and Jay dated, the extent to and speed with which gossip spreads in this town comes as a shock to him. It starts with seemingly harmless questions from Heeseung and the three men that work with him. At first, they’re simple questions about himself, where is he from, what did he do before coming here, why did he come here, how is he liking it, does he know anyone—their curiosity knows no bounds. They’re usually unsatisfied with surface-level, one-sentence answers. And just when he thinks they’re satiated, the mere mention of you gets them going again, oh how did the two of you meet, did you get along, did you know she lives here?

When he asks you how he should reply to such inquiries, you instruct him to do as he feels. “Be ready for everyone to be in your business no matter what, but it’ll be even worse if you tell them we dated. I’m used to that kind of talk, but I don’t know how you’ll feel about it. Well, you’ve received media attention, so you know what it’s like.”

Media attention is something of an overstatement. As a kid, he appeared a few times on his dad’s cooking show, and since then, he’s been interviewed for a grand total of three food-centered magazine articles. He can’t say he “knows what it’s like,” because no one has ever cared about his personal life, let alone his love life.

But Jay isn’t a great liar. And while part of him doesn’t want to lie or even omit the truth about your relationship — he’s very proud of having once had the honor of calling you his girlfriend — he also doesn’t want to barge into your hometown and be an annoyance to you. So the first time Heeseung asks him what kind of relationship the two of you had, before he’s had the chance to discuss it with you, he errs on the safe side and says “We were… friends.” But his tone is a dead giveaway, and Heeseung just replies with a dubitative, “Interesting.”

Within days, the word has spread that he’s not just the odd tourist in the off-season. No, this guy is here to stay, the whispers around him seem to say, all polite nods and friendly smiles when he turns to look at them. When he brings it up, you give him a look that says I told you so and remind him not to mind them, that it’ll blow over the minute something else interesting happens.

Except Sojuk-ri is not a place where interesting things abound, especially at the end of September when all the excitement and busyness of summer is slowly fading. And so the braver ones start to show themselves. He’ll be eating at your restaurant, and the people sitting at the tables nearby will engage him in redundant conversations. “The food here is good, right? Y/N is a great cook and a lovely girl. I heard the two of you met at school? What brings you here, if not her?” He has the feeling that making a bad first impression in a place like this would be social suicide, so he answers as cordially as he can, hoping they’ll back off when they realize he won’t be giving them any information they haven’t heard already.

But they don’t. Older gentlemen will be standing arms crossed or hands clasped behind them right in front of his shop, watching as Heeseung and his team work. When he arrives, without fail, they’ll go, “Ah! So you’re Jay. What an unconventional name. And what are you planning on opening here?” He’ll explain that he goes by his English name rather than his Korean one since coming back from living in Seattle as a kid and liking the sound of Jay more than Jongseong. He’ll tell them that he’s turning the old bookstore into a café downstairs, and an apartment for him upstairs. They’ll either wonder out-loud what their town might do with a café, or celebrate the arrival of a new business in the area. “If you sell iced drinks in the summer, you’ll make a ton of money!” they’ll say with a big smile and a slightly-too-harsh tap to his shoulder.

Their female counterparts aren’t much better. When the weather allows it, they gather under the gazebo, sharing snacks and trading gossip—Just like on TV, Jay thinks the first time he sees them like this. If he happens to pass them by, one of them will stop him, a stranger calling his name with unsettling familiarity, and wave him over. Something about them tells him it’ll do him no good to ignore them. And truthfully, he quickly comes to not mind and even enjoy these encounters; it’s only a matter of getting used to their overbearing nosiness. They want to know all the basic stuff, of course, where’re you from, what’re you doing here, what’s your relationship with Y/N, but it’s the juicier details they ooh and ahh at, what do your parents do, oh, poor thing, how did she die, is that why you moved here, and anyways what’s your relationship with our Y/N? Of course, they don’t buy it that the two of you never dated: from his reddening cheeks to his loss of composure, anyone with two eyes and their head screwed on right can tell that saying, “We were good friends,” is one hell of an understatement. Embarrassingly quickly, he buckles under the pressure. They coax the truth out of him with persistent questions and persimmon slices.

“I guess we did date for a little bit,” he admits the second time one of these run-ins happens.

“Ah, see! We knew you weren’t telling us everything. And how long were you together?”

“Six months,” he mumbles, hiding his shy smile behind the cup of barley tea they’d poured him. To these women who have been married for as long as or even longer than he’s been alive, six months must be laughable. But to Jay, those six months were never topped—in intensity, happiness, or length.

They collectively ‘aw’ at him, expressions of endearment — and pity, Jay thinks — on their faces. “You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?” one of them asks, more a statement than a question. He looks down at the cup, warm in his hands, smile faltering. In their eyes, he seems to turn from a cute, excitable puppy, into a pitiful one. “It’s okay!” they reassure him. “You’re here now, you can get her back. She hasn’t dated anyone since she’s come back from Seoul, you know!”

He only manages to create a believable lie when they ask how things ended. “It was a mutual decision. She had to move back here to help out at the restaurant, I was going to Paris, it would’ve been too hard to stay together while we were so far apart.”

When he says he has to go, they don’t hold him back.

Unfortunately for Jay, the seventeen-year-olds are as interested in his love life as the seventy-year-olds. He’s scouring through the ‘1 paperback for 1000 won’ section outside of the second-hand bookstore when he hears them. Giggles, at first. Then hushed whispers, light slaps on arms, “You go talk to him,” “No, you go.” Approaching footsteps. A finger taps his shoulder twice, someone clears their throat behind him, and he turns around, expecting the worst. It comes in the form of a young girl, still in her school uniform.

“Yes?” he says, as politely as he can despite his frustration growing at the prospect of repeating the same conversation he’s been having for the past week. The girl, Yewon, if the name tag on her navy blazer speaks the truth, seems to forget what she meant to say, and just stares at Jay wide-eyed for a few unbearably awkward seconds. Her two friends have stayed behind, some feet away from her and Jay, and it takes one of them yelling “C’mon!” for her to remember what she came here for.

“Um, you’re Jay, right?”

“I am, yes.”

“And you used to be Y/N-unnie’s boyfriend?” It’s asked with such a perfect mix of straightforwardness and clumsiness that Jay can’t help but smile.

“Indeed.”

Her eyes widen again and she whips her head backwards, nodding frantically at her friends who gasp and slap each other’s arms. “And do you have a girlfriend right now?”

“No, I don’t.”

“So, are you and Y/N-unnie going to date again?”

That takes him longer to answer. “I don’t know. This is the first time we’ve seen each other in five years.”

For approximately three seconds, Yewon looks like she’s never heard more crushing news. Then, her features return to normal, and she says, “Okay! Thanks, bye,” and runs back to her friends, three black heads walking away as they whisper conspiratorially to themselves. Jay isn’t sure what to do with himself for a few moments afterwards.

But the most embarrassing of these moments by far is when his landlady shows up at his door one late afternoon, behind her two women with eyes exactly like yours beaming right at him. “I have friends who’d like to meet you,” she exclaims, and walks in without Jay’s invitation. It is her house, after all. “I’ll prepare some tea!”

While she busies herself in the small kitchen, the two women step inside. The younger one shakes his hand vigorously, a huge smile on her face as she introduces herself as Mrs. Ryu, your mother, and the other woman as Mrs. Kim, of Kim’s Kitchen fame, your grandmother, who just bows her head politely, smiling serenely. Quickly recovering from the shock of three women, two of them strangers, appearing at his doorstep, he bows back, bending from the waist, then shows them to the living room. He hands them cushions to sit down, awkwardly waiting for one of them to say something as he settles across the coffee table from them. Your grandmother just looks out of the window, peaceful as ever, while your mother asks question after question, the same ones as everyone else, and nods at every answer he gives, like they’re a confirmation of what she already knows, like she just wants to hear it for herself. The way her eyes never once leave his makes him doubt whether she has some sort of mind-reading, lie-detecting ability.

Jay prides himself in his capacity to adapt to any situation, to just go with the flow and make others feel easy around him—but this is too much, even for him. He doesn’t know what to say, where to look, what to do with his hands. Before he himself knows what he’s doing, he stands up and excuses himself to the bathroom. He locks the door behind him, looks at his reflection in the mirror, hoping it’ll give him an answer as to what the fuck is happening, to no avail. He texts you instead, and is surprised when you answer right away.

Jay Hey

Your mother and grandmother are at my apartment?

Y/N Are you asking or telling me this?

Jay Both

Y/N Lol

That’s what you get for going around town telling everyone we used to be together

I had to have an awkward convo with them yesterday, your turn now

Good luck!

Jay Aren’t you going to help me out?

Y/N Nope

:)

So that’s useless. He was hoping you’d tell him why they had come to see him or whether there were things he shouldn’t say, but all you’ve done is let him know an “awkward convo” was on the way. When he comes back to the living room, your mother is still looking at him expectantly, only tearing her gaze away from him to thank Mrs. Yoon for pouring her a cup of steaming green tea.

“Jay, you’ve always lived in big cities, haven’t you?” Mrs. Yoon asks as he takes a seat next to her. When he nods, she smiles compassionately. “You must not be used to this kind of attention. I hope no one’s offended you.”

He chuckles. Not used to it is one way to put it. “It’s definitely been… surprising.”

Your mother and Mrs. Yoon laugh. Your grandmother smiles, and her features are so similar to yours that Jay feels like he gets a glimpse into the future for a millisecond. “This is just our way of welcoming you,” Mrs. Yoon explains. “Newcomers are rare around here… Old-timers like us, we’re used to knowing people your age from the moment you’re born. I know it might seem overbearing, but we can’t help but be curious about you.”

“Especially when it turns out that you know my daughter quite well,” Mrs. Ryu says, a knowing glint in her eyes as she peers at Jay over her teacup. His tea goes down the wrong pipe. His guests laugh as he does his best not to spit liquid all over them. “I’m not here to admonish you, Jay, if that’s what you’re scared of. Or lecture you, or anything of the sort.” She puts her cup down with a sigh. “Y/N has always told me about everything going on in her life. When my children were growing up, I made sure to be someone they could always come to to talk about anything, good or bad. It’s worked out to varying degrees between the three of them, but Y/N has never been one to hide things from me.” Here, she gives Jay a look he can’t quite decipher. “And yet, I only really learned about you yesterday.”

Today is nothing but surprises for Jay. He knows how close you are to your mother—he remembers the frequent calls you’d make to her, the way you’d mention her as often as you would any friend, the way you’d always say, “I’ll just ask my mom about it,” whenever you encountered a problem, no matter how big or small. It doesn’t make sense that she wasn’t aware you had dated someone for six months.

“I thought you knew Y/N had a… a boyfriend in Seoul,” he says, feeling oddly uneasy referring to himself that way in front of your mother.

“Oh, I did, I did. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten that she made you say hello a few times on the phone,” she says, laughing. The amusement on her face quickly fades, however. “But things haven’t been quite the same since she came back. Of course, everything happened so quickly back then, and we were all so worried, it just wasn’t the time to talk about relationships.” She turns her head to Mrs. Kim, takes her hand between both of hers, and your grandmother closes her eyes, her lips stretched in that calm, unwavering smile. Jay wonders whether she’s been listening to the conversation at all. “She was… She was sad. And not just because her grandma was injured and she had to leave school, I could tell. It was a difficult time for her. I should’ve been there more.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Seokja,” Mrs. Yoon chimes in. “You had to take care of your mother.” Your grandmother opens her eyes and smiles at her daughter.

“I know. It wasn’t easy for any of us, that’s true. We all had a lot on our shoulders, but I think Y/N took the brunt of it. And she never complained. Well, now she does, but she never did back then. Anyways, it took me a month to realize that something else was going on with her, why she seemed so… listless. It was only when I asked that I learned you two had broken up. She wasn’t even answering her friend’s call, Sumin, I think her name was?”

Jay doesn’t want to hear this. He knows your mother means no harm, but your unhappiness after the break-up is the last thing he wants to talk about this morning, or ever, really. Because of course, it brings him right back to his own unhappiness back then, nesting itself in every last crevice of his body and soul, reminding him of how it made every day feel the same, every food bland, every color dull. Even before he arrived here and saw you, it’s been a committed effort of his not to think of that period of his life, not to reopen the wounds that have taken so long to heal. What’s the point? He doesn’t want for one unfortunate event to taint his memories of your time together. He wants to remember the feeling of making you laugh, the sight of you in the morning, all dishevelled hair and warm skin under the sheets, the sound of your humming while you cooked. Your break-up he locked up in a box and pushed all the way to the back of the closet, only reopening it late at night when melancholy comes in sleep’s stead.

He has forbidden himself, and he’s done his very best at it, to think of how you were feeling. Naturally, he was dying to know how you were—doing as awfully as him, or letting life go on as if nothing happened? Did images of him appear in your head at random times of your day, memories you thought forgotten suddenly resurfacing, or did he never cross your mind? All these questions and uncertainties only hurt him more. He texted you once, a week after you left. A simple How are you?, forever unanswered, because you blocked him immediately. His phone number, all his social media, everything. He didn’t try, but he assumed he wouldn’t even be able to contact you by email. And so, for the five years that followed, he tried to limit his thoughts of you to moments you had really shared, to focus on the tangible rather than the imagined. It stung too, of course, but somewhat less.

She was sad. Listless. In just a few words, your mom has undone all of his efforts.

“Back then, all she told me was that you weren’t together anymore. I tried asking her once more later, but she reacted so badly that I never mentioned it again. All that to say, the town gossip made its way to us, and it’s only yesterday that she told us everything that happened.” He looks down at the contents of his teacup. “Oh, Jay,” she says, letting go of her mother’s hand to grab his. Jay is mortified to feel tears pooling in his eyes at the unexpected gesture. At least now he knows who you get your empathy and kindness from. “I know this is not a fun conversation to have. And I know it must’ve been hard for you, too.”

He nods, dropping his head even further down. She pats the back of his hand.

“It hasn’t been easy, no. But… I’m happy I get to see her again.”

Your mother mirrors his small smile. “I think she is, too,” she whispers, and he can tell she means it. He dares to believe it’s the truth—the opposite would be too painful.

“I found her crying in the kitchen the day she saw you for the first time,” your grandma says. So she was listening this whole time.

“Mom!” Mrs. Ryu exclaims just as Jay echoes, “Crying?”

“Oh, they weren’t sad tears. I don’t think so, at least. I think she was just shocked. Overcome with emotion, if you will,” she explains, addressing Jay a polite smile. “And this kind of emotion means something, don’t you think?”

The three women look at him like they know something he doesn’t.

It’s a lot to process at once. In the past five years, he’s been realistic enough to not delude himself into thinking you were either crying yourself to sleep every night since the break-up or not sparing him a single thought. He knew, or in some ways hoped, at least, that you were dealing with it like him: that there were good and bad days, that you wished things could’ve ended some other way, or not at all, but that you mostly tried to look at what was to come rather than what was left behind.

And today, on an otherwise peaceful Saturday morning, he’s gotten the confirmation that you suffered. That it wasn’t easy then, that there seem to be unresolved feelings now. What is Jay meant to do with this knowledge? It doesn’t make him happy. He could never be happy knowing you were, or are, in pain. Part of his ego might be comforted in knowing he wasn’t alone in his pain, but the bigger part of him that still longs for you would rather you forget about him and move on than hold onto him and hurt.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he stays quiet, takes a sip of the bitter, over-brewed tea. This doesn’t seem to bother his guests.

The silence doesn’t last long—four heads whip in the direction of the door as it creaks open. “Mom, Grandma, keep this behavior up and I’m sticking you both in the retirement home. Don’t count on me to take care of you,” you say as you walk into the apartment without so much as a knock. Relief washes over Jay as he watches you take your shoes off and make your way to the living room, meeting his eyes and shaking your head as if to apologize for your forebears. Your grandma contents herself with closing her eyes again and turning towards the window, letting the sunlight hit her face, a smile on her lips. If being old means you get to check out of conversations at any given moment without appearing rude, Jay doesn’t much mind aging.

“I’m not of retiring age yet, honey. We’ll talk about that later,” your mom says. “Plus, we weren’t doing anything wrong, just… getting to know our new neighbor. Isn’t that right, Jay?”

“We live across town, we’re not neighbors,” you say before Jay can reply.

“Please, everyone in this town is a neighbor.”

Jay is happy to fall back and watch you and your mother’s back-and-forth, with interferences from Mrs. Yoon here and there. You’re here; you came. Jay really thought you were going to leave him alone in this, but here you are in the flesh—why? To make sure your mother wouldn’t reveal something embarrassing about you, as if anything anyone said could change his opinion of you? Or perhaps, to protect him in some way, to tell him, If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it together?

He meets your gaze from across the table. It lasts just a fraction of a second, but there’s a glint in your eyes, something like the complicity he thought he’d lost all those years ago. He allows himself to think you’re here for him.

You manage to shift the topic of the conversation away from you and Jay, and he feels like he can breathe properly again. There wasn’t that interrogation-like quality that sometimes comes with meeting the family to his discussion with your mother and grandmother, but he is glad nonetheless to not be the subject at hand anymore, and can talk more freely now that every word directed at him doesn’t feel like added weight on his shoulders.

Fifteen minutes later, there isn’t a drop left in the teapot and the conversation naturally comes to an end. Your mother looks around at everyone and, with a smile, says, “Well, I think we’ve inconvenienced you enough, Jay. Sorry for bursting in like this again.”

“It’s all good,” he replies, and means it.

“You should come around for dinner soon, okay?”

“I will, thank you.”

A few more niceties in this vein are exchanged, Mrs. Yoon says she will drop off some side dishes for him sometime during the week, as if he is a starving, overworked college student and not a classically trained chef. Your grandmother tells him she’ll go check that “the boys are doing a good job fixing up your café.”

You stay behind. Jay doesn’t know if the three women are exceptionally good at reading the room, or if he missed some silent signal of understanding between you and them, but they don’t question your not following them. The sudden quietness makes Jay feel like a giant in a too-small space, a room that can’t possibly contain the two of you.

And yet. You sigh and head back to the living room, going for the couch rather than the cushions on the floor, but Jay can’t bring himself to join you, and so sits back at the same spot from earlier.

“Seriously, Jay?” you say, chuckling, but he detects an actual trace of annoyance in your voice. Unable to hide your thoughts as always. You pat a spot on the couch next to you. “Come here.”

But Jay doesn’t move. Can’t. All he can do when he looks at you is search for traces of grief. He had five years to work out all of his feelings around your breakup, and he thought he had sorted through everything, gone through all the phases. Seeing you again, he feels like he has to start over. The past week hasn’t felt real, he thinks. He thinks it so hard, he says it out loud, only realizing what he did when he sees your expression soften.

“It’s been weird, hasn’t it?”

“Weird is one way to put it, yeah.”

There’s a pause, during which he spends every second worrying about what sort of turn this conversation will take.

“Is this a good time to talk about the elephant in the room, then?” you finally say.

He looks around, eyebrows furrowed with worry. “There’s an elephant in this room?!” he whispers.

You burst into laughter. “I see your humor hasn’t improved over time.”

“Seeing as you’re laughing, I’d say yours hasn’t, either.”

“Touché.”

Silence settles between the two of you again, creeps inside Jay, makes him wait for your next words with bated breath.

He had a feeling that all the skirting around the subject you’d been doing would come to this. It’s not that you’re pretending it didn’t happen, that would be impossible, for him, at least—he looks at you and he’s transported back to Seoul five years ago, at school, in one of your apartments, in the streets after dark. But you haven’t been actively tackling it either and with every passing day, the weight of unspoken words grows, making every conversation, every look at you harder and harder to navigate. This is new for the two of you, who in your six months of being together, had mastered the art of communicating—you never didn’t speak to each other. You especially were good at saying what was on your mind without ever being hurtful, and you’d helped Jay stop bottling his feelings up when he thought he could get over them himself and not have to trouble you with them.

Nothing you say could ever burden me, baby, you’d told him. I want to know everything that goes through your head.

And many things have changed since then, but maybe this hasn’t—the look you have in your eyes now is the same one as then, soft and inviting, aware that conversations aren’t always as easy as they are necessary.

“You’re here,” you say after some time. Jay was so caught up in his own thoughts, entire minutes could’ve passed without his noticing. You spoke so quietly, he wonders if he imagined it until you add, “You’re in Sojuk-ri.”

He smiles, stops himself from replying with something annoying like What an astute observation, Y/N, it would only be stalling. So, for lack of a better alternative, and because he assumes you have more to say, he whispers, “I am.”

“We used to date.”

Jay isn’t sure where you’re going with this. He nods, unable to suppress a grin. “We did, yeah,” he replies, louder this time.

“Then I broke up with you.”

A chuckle escapes his lips. “You’re on fire this morning,” he says, because he can’t help himself, and warmth envelops his heart at the sound of your laughter.

“I just want to recontextualise.”

“Woah, big words.”

“Big word, singular. And shut up. I’m trying to be serious, here,” you chide, still smiling.

“Sorry.”

A sudden shadow passes over your face, making your eyebrows furrow, your smile disappear. Jay’s heart drops, his feelings, as always, a mirror of yours. You rise from your seat on the couch and make your way to him. Every step you take echoes inside of him and grows louder as the distance separating you decreases. Then you’re standing in front of him, and he looks up at you, and there’s something like a magnet under his skin, desperately reaching out for yours, that makes his hand wrap around your ankle. His eyes stay trained on your face as you lower yourself to the ground and cross your legs. If you mind his touch, you don’t say or show it.

“You’re right, it doesn’t feel real,” you say. Your eyes sweep his face, focus on one part at a time. You simply stare at him for a moment as though trying to convince yourself that it is, indeed, real, that he is really there, not a figment of your imagination but a person whose flesh and bones used to be as familiar as your own. He lets you look to your heart’s content, because it allows him to look at you, too.

His loose grip around your ankle tightens ever so slightly and you look down at his hand as if suddenly noticing its presence there. After a second of what seems to Jay like hesitation, you place your hand atop his. “Would you still have moved here if you knew this was where I lived?”

“I would’ve come here years ago, if I knew,” he says with a small smile.

You furrow your eyebrows. “You didn’t even try calling.”

This takes him aback. Was that what you’d wanted? “I texted you, and you blocked me right away.”

The crease between your brows deepens. “I know.”

“You also didn’t try calling.”

“I sent you a letter.”

For some reason, it astonishes Jay that in all of five years, communication between the two of you amounted to one unanswered text and a letter with no return address. “You did. That was nice of you.”

Finally, this gets a smile, albeit subdued, out of you. “I know.”

“If I’d managed to call you somehow, would you have picked up?”

“Yes,” you say immediately. Then, “No. I don’t know.” Then, in a smaller voice, “It hurts too much to think about the other ways it could’ve gone. The better ways.”

Jay sighs, tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “Then let’s not think about them. It won’t do us any good.”

Your eyes meet. The sadness in yours tugs at his heartstrings. “Are you mad at me?” you ask, the tremble in your voice making it sound like you’re on the verge of crying, and it’s all Jay can do not to take you in his arms and hold you tight against his chest.

“No. Not at all,” he says, and he hopes his tone alone is enough to convince you.

The magnet under his skin is uncontrollable. It raises Jay’s hand from where it was resting on your shoulder to your face, makes it cup your cheek, makes his thumb swipe slowly across your skin, right where tears are threatening to fall, as if preventing them.

“I tried being mad at you,” he says. “I tried a bunch of emotions. Sadness. Indifference. Nostalgia. But anger made things so much worse. It didn’t feel right, because I’d never been angry with you before. And it felt… It felt like admitting things could’ve gone differently. It felt like grieving a version of us that never existed because it never got the chance to. I decided to focus on the actual memories we had, and remember them fondly, instead of wasting my energy on being angry.”

A single tear falls from your right eye, wetting the top of Jay’s thumb. “I understand why you did what you did, Y/N,” he continues. “You had your reasons. You handled everything the best you could. It hurt like hell, but I can’t be mad at you for that.”

Jay doesn’t have to hold himself back from embracing you; you do it for him. Arms wound tightly around his neck, face in the crook of his neck, you quite literally cry on his shoulder. He hadn’t realized how close he himself was to crying until tears start falling freely from his eyes, mouth trembling as they gather at his jaw before dropping down the back of your t-shirt. Between sobs, you say, “I’m sorry. Even if you aren’t angry, I’m so sorry, Jay.”

He has never expected anything from you, least of all an apology. Yet hearing those words heals some of the fissures in his heart, puts the pieces back together like superglue. He doesn’t need or want a repeat of your break-up conversation, and he doubts you do. He doesn’t want to hear how staying together wouldn’t have been a possibility, how you’d both have too much going on, how you were too young to hold each other back, how the distance between France and South Korea was too substantial to dismiss.

He wraps his arms around your waist and brings you closer to him. Closing his eyes and trying not to let your proximity overwhelm him, he strokes your hair, rubs your back, tells you it’s all okay. “Don’t apologize, baby,” he says, the nickname unwittingly slipping from his lips. “We’re here now, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?” He feels you nod against his shoulder, but your sobs don’t relent.

Would it be very wrong if Jay said he missed having you like this? Of course, he hates to see you unhappy, but there’s a part of him that has always been endeared by the sight of you crying. If he could, he'd destroy whatever's upsetting you in a heartbeat, but at the same time, he can't help but selfishly rejoice in the fact that it's him you go to for comfort. It’s in his arms that you find what it is you need to get over what’s troubling you; under his touch that you slowly calm down.

He doesn’t know how long the two of you stay like this, nor does he care, but at some point, you lean back and take a deep, stabilising breath. Jay feels a page turn when your eyes meet—there might be no way to change the past, but the future is a blank canvas, the cursor at the start of a new document, and it’s up to the two of you how you want to write it.

You smile, and so does he. “I missed you,” you say.

“I missed you, too.”

There are more things to be said, but you’re both talked out. You have so much time ahead of you anyway.

.

The party started an hour ago, and Jay wants to leave already.

Not because it’s boring, the music bad, the conversation dull—not at all. If anything, this is a good party. One of the more fun ones he’s been to. On a regular day, he’d have no intention to leave until the early hours of the morning. But this isn’t a regular day, because you’re here, and somehow look prettier than you ever have before. Jay doesn’t know what it is—your hair, your outfit, your makeup, or maybe you’re secretly a witch able to cast beauty spells that work on already unfairly beautiful people such as yourself. He can’t stop looking at you, can’t stop searching for you in every room he walks into, and he tells himself that it’s because there really is something different about you tonight, ignoring the voice at the back of his mind telling him to quit finding excuses.

He finds you in the kitchen pouring yourself a drink, on your own for the first time tonight. “Hey,” he says when he’s close enough for you to hear him. He stands next to you at the kitchen counter. You look at him, smile, and return his greeting, in a small voice that he likes to think is intimate. Instead of loudly talking over the loud music like everyone else, you lean into each other and speak in low tones.

“I’m glad to see you,” you say.

“Me too,” he says, a grin he can’t suppress on his lips. “Any particular reason?”

You look around the room. “Just… this week was a lot, and I thought a crowded party like this was what I needed, but it turns out I was wrong. I’m way too tired to socialize with people I barely know. It’s nice to see a familiar face.”

As much as he likes to distance himself from most of his peers, at the end of the day, Jay, too, is just a man. A lot of his bedtime scenarios with you revolve around being your knight in shining armor in one way or another. Were they usually more dramatic than saving you from a tiring party? Yes, especially if he’d watched a superhero movie that evening. Nevertheless, he sees his chance, and couldn’t be quicker to grab it. “Do you wanna get out of here?”

The rest of the evening feels like a movie. Jay thinks that when he looks back to this moment, he’ll remember it as slightly fuzzy around the edges, like the two beers he had during the party gave a delightful haziness to the rest of his night. He feels light-headed just looking at you.

After quickly thanking and saying goodbye to the host, a classmate of yours who’s drunk enough not to be suspicious of your leaving together at ten pm, you walk around the streets of Seoul. The sky above you is dark and starless, but the many restaurant, bar and shop signs are so brightly lit it might as well be the middle of the day. There are about as many people as you would expect on a Saturday night in Hongdae, but Jay likes being there with you, feeling as happy as the smiling partygoers around him look, guiding you through the crowd with a hand on your lower back. You eventually reach the Han River, content to laugh at each other’s silly anecdotes and talk about a myriad of topics until hunger gets the best of you and you settle on finding the nearest fried chicken shop.

You’re both quieter as you eat—you jokingly remark that the two of you must’ve been really hungry, but Jay has something else on his mind. He tries not to stare at you too openly, but it’s a struggle: when the thing that’s been at the center of all your thoughts for the past few weeks is sitting right in front of you, it’s hard to do anything other than look at it.

It isn’t especially hard to know how you feel. Unless Jay likes you so much that he’s deluded himself into thinking the sentiment was reciprocated, he really doesn’t think you are immune to him. He’s made sure not to fall into the trap of ‘she isn’t into you, she’s just nice’ by paying attention to the small things: the smile that you try in vain to suppress whenever he compliments you, the way you stand closer than necessary when you work together in his or your kitchen, the small, innocent touches to his arm that linger, especially when you’ve had a couple of drinks. He doesn’t assume you’re in love with him because you laughed at a joke he made once. Rather, he’s observed, compared, spent hours sitting on his couch, looking into the distance, analysing. He’s come to the conclusion that you won’t slap him in the face and kick him in the balls if he makes a move.

At least, he really, really hopes so.

He pays for the food and you head out together, both seemingly more contemplative and lost in your thoughts than when you came in earlier. Without a word, you start walking in the direction of the subway station, and after a minute or two of intense self-pep-talking, Jay finally manages to take your hand in his. You react to his touch immediately, fingers interlacing with his with all the ease in the world. It’s near destabilising, how naturally your hands seem to fit together. For the rest of the way, the two of you exchange glances and smiles, and Jay almost runs into passersby and poles every fifty meters.

The next train arrives in five minutes. Jay keeps your hand in his as he turns to face you, and you mirror him, gently swinging your arms back-and-forth between your bodies. You look down at them, smiling, while he keeps his gaze trained on your face, smiling, too. He can’t see himself, but if he could, he’s sure the unbridled affection he’s currently feeling for you would be evident in his features. His heart is overflowing with unfamiliar but somehow comforting emotion, and he feels, at this moment, to a disconcerting degree of certainty, that he will never love someone quite as much as he loves you.

Three words burn the tip of his tongue, and he’s desperate to do something, anything, really, that will make you see how his entire being aches for you. But with your hand in his, he feels paralyzed, like a cat has fallen asleep in his lap and the slightest movement will wake it up. All he can do is stand there and control his breathing, a task that becomes complicated when you look up at him, a sheepish smile on your lips.

“Do you wanna come over for ramen?” you ask, voice a mere whisper, keeping your conversation private amidst the busy subway station. You just ate, so he isn’t particularly hungry, but he has an inkling you aren’t really offering ramen.

Jay doesn’t know what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t for you to drop the facade the moment he steps inside your apartment. You don’t even give him the time to shrug his coat off or rid himself of his shoes, and you certainly don’t pretend like you’re going to prepare some ramen—the second the door closes behind him, you turn around, grab his face in your hands, and press your lips to his. Just like with your hands earlier, his body reacts to you before he can even comprehend it. Maybe it’s because he's imagined this moment so many times, reality has become indiscernible from his daydreams, and he knows exactly what to do; he’d rather think it’s because the two of you are meant for each other.

His eyes close and his palms rise to meet the dip of your waist, pulling you towards him with such unintentional intensity that the two of you stumble backwards until his back hits your door. You press your body against his, stomach to stomach, chest to chest, mouths never straying apart, but it’s somehow not enough, and he wraps his arms around you in a futile attempt to meld your bodies to each other.

You stand there for who knows how long, Jay has better things to do than count the seconds, but long enough for your stillness — only your lips have been moving — to make the sensory light of your entryway turn off, leaving you in darkness. This seems to pull you out of your trance, and centimeter by centimeter, you lean back, gaze riveted on Jay’s lips, then his eyes. They meet only momentarily. Your arms were wrapped around his neck, and now, stepping back once, you let your palms glide over the length of his arms until they reach his hands. You keep them there as you look down at the ground.

“Sorry,” you say, and Jay can’t find a single reason on Earth why you should be apologising. “I thought that if I didn’t do that now, I’d never find the courage to.”

He smiles, and, taken by a sudden surge of confidence, raises a hand to cup your face and make you look at him. “I’m glad you did.” He bends down to trap your lips in another kiss, softer this time, slower, because now that he knows you won’t slip through his fingers like sand, he wants to take his time.

He hopes he’s not being too cheeky when he asks, “Where’s your bedroom?”, each word whispered against your lips. To his great relief, you don’t seem to find him impertinent, smiling as you lead him to your room.

Something stops him on the threshold while you turn on the lamp on your bedside table. The room is bathed in a warm, golden glow, and the light reflects perfectly on your bare skin as you lift your sweater over your head, leaving your top half covered by nothing but a bra. Jay doesn’t mean to stare, but he does—the mere sight of you has him breathing heavily, his muscles contracting in anticipation. Nothing outside of this room is of any importance to him in this moment—only this is, only you are. He walks towards you, more single-minded than he’s ever been.

One hand on your lower back, the other cupping the side of your face, he stands close enough to feel your rugged breath against his lips, but doesn’t lean in any further, simply taking the time to look at you. The unbridled lust in your eyes, your agape mouth—he knows he’s the one making you feel this way but can’t bring himself to believe it. “You’re beautiful,” he whispers, because he means it, and it’s all he can think of. How beautiful you are. How you’re letting him, of all people, see this side of you.

Your mouth closes into a smile. “Can you just kiss me, please?” you ask, and Jay doesn’t need to be told twice. He gets the message—no more dilly-dallying.

As your lips meet again and fall into a slow, sensuous rhythm that has Jay’s heart beating uncontrollably hard, your hands find purchase in the fabric at the bottom of his sweater. You don’t want to be the only one half-naked, it seems, and when Jay obligingly gets rid of his sweater, you tug at the remaining black sleeveless tank on his upper body. He laughs and says, “Don’t worry, this can come off too.”

Something in your eyes makes Jay laugh again when he takes it off, his torso now on full display. Your smile is so genuine, like you’re just happy to be here, to see him like this. It’s surprisingly innocent for a moment like this. He feels a little self-conscious at your unabashed staring, but tries not to mind it. If you like it, he likes it—all he can do is hope his efforts in the gym haven’t been for naught. Still grinning, you exhale a slow, shaky breath, and say, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

You nod. “Mh-hm.”

Like magnets your lips find each others’ once more. Jay makes you step backwards until the back of your legs hit your bed, and, propping one knee on your mattress to stabilize himself, lowers you down onto it. Hovering over you, he breaks away to look at you, in search of a sign that you’re okay with this, and the sheer want and trust in your eyes reassure him that this is more than okay, and actually, can he get on with it please.

He lets you set the pace. You kiss him with a feverish sort of intensity that he is more than happy to return. He focuses only on the feeling of your lips moving against his, because if he lets himself be distracted by anything else — your hands tugging at his hair, your breasts pushing up against him, your hips bucking ever-so-slightly into his — he’s scared he’ll lose total control over himself. What that would entail, he isn’t sure, and doesn’t care to find out, not right now at least, not for your first time together.

He breaks away to let you both catch your breath. One hand firmly holding you by the hip, the other on the side of your neck, thumb brushing up-and-down your throat, a barely-there pressure, he presses kisses to your jaw, your ear, your neck. A small hum escapes your lips when he reaches a spot in the crook of your shoulder, and he doubles down there, biting and sucking on your skin hard enough to leave a mark, the sound of your soft moans drowning out everything else.

“Jay, please,” you whisper. This makes all the blood in his body gather in one spot, and for the first time since arriving at your apartment, he realizes just how much he’s straining against his trousers. You seem to notice this too, and, looking him straight in the eyes, place a hand on his bulge, then repeat, “Please.”

Jay thinks he might pass out.

That simple touch of yours, as well as the knowledge that you want this as badly as he does, has his entire body screaming out for yours. But he’s barely started, and perhaps he’s a more patient person than you are, because he doesn’t want to give in just yet. The word “please” sounds too good on your lips, and he wants to hear it over and over again, just for that confirmation that he is the only one who can provide you with what you need.

“Okay, baby,” he says, but gently takes your hand off of him, placing it on his shoulder instead.

Then he starts making his way down. A kiss to the side of your chin first, then your throat, then your collarbone. Slow hands on your warm skin, he reaches behind your back to unhook your bra, and you arch slightly to grant him easier access. He has to take another stabilising breath when your upper body is fully revealed to him, but you squirm, grip on his shoulder tightening, and he concedes not to take things too slow.

It feels like everything that’s happened in his life has led to this—a grand, elaborate scheme just to hear the gasp torn from your throat when his lips wrap around one of your nipples. He’d smile with unbridled pride if he wasn’t so wholly concentrated on the task at hand. He drinks in every satisfied sound you make, savours the feeling of your nails digging into his skin, makes a note of every little thing that has you arching your back in a desperate attempt to get closer to him.

You whine when one of his hands trails up the inside of your thighs, slowly but surely approaching where you need him the most, although never quite making it there. He tells himself that one day, he’ll drag this out, just to see how long he can withhold it from you, how long it would take before you start begging. But right now, he needs it as urgently as you do.

You’re warm and damp against his palm. Your hips seem to move of their own accord in the search for even the slightest of friction—Jay doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve this, to deserve you, but he knows that he’ll do everything to keep it.

It’s far too easy to reach underneath your short black skirt, hook his fingers under the waistband of your tights, and pull them down along with your panties. Your lace panties, Jay notices, which match your bra, and he is reminded of a party during his last year of high school when Bang Yedam, a friend of his at the time, newly self-appointed sex expert since he’d lost his virginity at summer camp three months ago, had drunkenly assured him: “If a girl is wearing a matching set of underwear when you hook up, you didn’t fuck her. She fucked you.” Jay had nodded like it was gospel. Now, hovering over your half-naked figure in your bed, he smiles to himself. He thinks of you getting ready for this party, and maybe it was a coincidence, and you just liked wearing matching underwear, but maybe, just maybe, you’d worn this in the chance that he might see it. You’d worn it because you wanted him to see it.

With that thought in mind, he finds the sweet spot in the crook of your neck again, pressing kisses there as he slides two fingers between your folds. He shouldn’t be so surprised to find you so completely and utterly soaked—if your jagged breathing and increasingly louder whines weren’t enough, then this is the physical confirmation that you want him just as badly as he wants you. “You’re wet,” he whispers, lips moving against your jawline. He doesn’t mean to tease, he’s just so astonished, so in awe that he’s able to get you like this, that he can’t help but speak the words out loud.

You try to hide your face behind your forearm, but his free hand is quick to guide it away. “Whose fault is that?” you mumble, attitude immediately fading away when he presses the pads of his fingers to your clit and starts to draw slow, regular circles.

He can’t explain the feelings that overcome him. Watching your eyebrows furrow, your cheeks glow, hearing your breathing and your moans get louder, feeling your hands grabbing at him and pulling him impossibly closer—he feels all of your pleasure like it’s his own. Of course, when he’s had sex before, his partner’s pleasure was always as, if not more important than his own, but this, this is something else. He wants to give you this forever. He wants to give you everything he has.

He slips a finger inside of you, and you whimper out his name, and he wants to die. You take it in so easily that he’s able to add a second one just moments later. Your fingernails dig into the skin of his bicep as he continues to press kisses to your neck, fingers repeatedly grazing a spot deep inside that has you clenching around them. The pitch of your moans change, higher, whinier, your hips buck upwards without you seeming to even realize it, and it dawns upon Jay that he’s about to give you an orgasm for the first time ever. He’ll be damned if the mere thought isn’t enough to make him come, too.

And then, just as he’s sure that you’re on the brink of coming undone on his fingers, you grab his wrist and pull it away from you. He’s hurt you, or he read you completely wrong and you were hating every second of it, or—

“I want you.”

He’s confused. You just had him. He was knuckles deep inside of you. “But-”

“Jay. I want you,” you repeat, hooking your fingers around his belt loops.

Oh.

“Are you sure?” he asks, because it’s always good to ask, but also because he finds himself almost wishing you’ll say no. He knows that he’ll last an embarrassingly short amount of time once inside you, and he feels like he’s doing a good job so far and doesn’t want to taint it.

But you just laugh, start to undo his belt, his trouser button. He lets it happen, focuses on his breathing instead. “I’m very sure. There are condoms in the first drawer,” you say, nodding your head towards the bedside table.

Jay tries to be normal as he finds said condoms and strips; meanwhile, you readjust yourself on the bed so that your head rests on the pillows. You look at his face, smile, then look downwards, watch him put the condom on, and smile harder. He would usually feel so self-conscious at this point, like he’s being evaluated, but you make him feel like he has nothing to worry about.

Your body looks lazy on your mattress, one hand on your stomach, the other next to your head; one leg resting, one hiked up. A work of art is what you are, Jay thinks. And you’re waiting for him, an angelic look on your face that makes him want to do the most sinful things to you. He repositions himself on top of you, propping himself up on his forearms, kisses you to calm himself down, but it’s no use. You wrap your hand around him, pump him a few times, rub the tip of his cock against your clit. That alone has a deep grunt escaping his throat—he really won’t last long.

Then finally, you align his head with your entrance, and he pushes in, both of you immediately gasping at the overwhelming feeling of being united like this. Your voice is strained when you tell him to go slow, and you claw at his back as he makes his way inside of you, inch by inch. Jay hopes you’ll leave marks for him to find tomorrow and every day after that, proof that this is really happening, that it isn’t an umpteenth dream of his. He waits for a few moments once he’s all the way in, lets you relax around him. He can practically feel the tension leave your body once the pain of the stretch fades away and only pleasure remains in its wake.

His movements start out shallow and slow. He doesn’t want to hurt you, doesn’t want to lose the little control he’s still holding onto, albeit with struggle. But every thrust, every torturous slide of his cock into you has his grasp on reality slipping from him. Of course, you’re not helping: with his face buried in the crook of your neck, your mouth is practically by his ear, your moans so loud he feels them in the tips of his fingers.

“This feels so good, Jay,” you whisper. Something inside him snaps.

Jay grabs the backs of your thighs and hooks your legs around his hips. He’ll find the spot deep inside you his fingers had reached earlier, he’ll make you cry out until your voice turns hoarse, he’ll make you say his name until it’s the only thing you know how to say.

He doesn’t know whether you have neighbors or whether your walls are thin. He also couldn’t care less. His thrusts are deeper, quicker, harsher, but just as regular. You are perfect around and underneath him, and he is slowly losing his mind. He, who usually barely makes a peep during sex, so concentrated on doing things right, can’t stop himself from moaning and grunting, the sounds dampened against your skin.

He isn’t sure how long he’s been fucking you, but it can’t be more than a few minutes—and yet, here you are, mouth wide open, crying out as your orgasm washes over you. Jay comes seconds later.

His soul has left his body. You seem to be in a similar state. He continues to move, shallow thrusts to get every last drop of pleasure from him and from you until you are both completely spent. He eventually slips out, kissing the side of your face as he does, and rolls onto his back. He quickly discards the condom, then turns towards you, warm satisfaction and bliss spreading from his stomach throughout his entire body at the sight of the contented, peaceful look on your face. Strands of hair stick to your forehead with sweat. He brushes them away, whispering, “You’re so beautiful.”

You chuckle. “You mentioned that earlier.”

“And I’m mentioning it again now.”

Opening your eyes, your gaze bores into his. “And you’re very handsome,” you whisper back, palm coming up to cup his cheek. You take the time to just look at each other, and Jay thinks this is what heaven must be like. He bends down to press a kiss to your lips, then another, and another—why would he stop when he finally has you all to himself?

You giggle in-between kisses, and of course Jay joins in, light-headed and light-hearted with a giddiness unlike any he’s felt before. He doesn’t stop when the both of you are smiling so hard your teeth bump against each other, which only makes you laugh more, makes him tighten his grip around your waist.

“You know,” you say eventually, looking up at the ceiling, “I think I might like you. Just a little bit, though.”

Jay lifts his head from your neck, stares at you like you’ve just told him Santa Claus was real all along. You glance at him, a shy smile on your lips that you try to suppress.

He’s grinning so much it hurts. “Yeah?”

You shrug. “Mmh.” He’s never been so endeared by someone trying to play it cool.

“Well,” he starts, taking his time pressing more kisses to the side of your face. “I know I like you. And not just a little bit.”

“Okay, it’s not a competition,” you say, although your smile has reached your eyes by now. You’re not doing a very good job hiding your happiness.

“Mmh, except it is.”

You attach your lips to his again—an effective way of getting him to shut up. But this time, they’re not the chaste, gentle kisses from moments ago; they’re immediately deeper, hungrier, an obvious aching for something more. The energy that Jay thought he had completely lost comes rushing back to him, a surge of desire rising within him again.

He’s never wanted anything so intensely. But a sudden question appears in his mind, and he knows he won’t be able to shake it unless he’s made sure the both of you are on the same page.

“Can I be your boyfriend?”

Your gaze softens. “I thought you’d never ask,” you reply before kissing him again.

He hopes this never ends.

part two

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