It's too hot for anything.
Too hot for sex. Too hot to eat. Too hot to breathe.
But you do it all, anyway.
His naked back is to you as he leans against the stove with a flexed arm. The muscles between his shoulder blades writhe as his neck dips to accommodate the tiny space.
You watch the sweat roll down his tanned skin, waiting at the square table with a leg up on the chair. He's stirring something in a pot that smells like food. You're not really sure. He's fine at cooking--maybe even good--but you don't eat much of anything he touches.
The steam makes the walls sweat, and the wallpaper starts to peel. You're in nothing but an old bra and the underwear you slept in last night. He's in his navy boxers. There's no need to get dressed in the morning--you'll just sweat right through it. You hunch over the table, like the heat weighs you down.
He turns around with two bowls in his hands and a cigarette between his teeth. He slides one to you across the table--the one with the egg on top--and sits down.
He puts his cigarette out on the ashtray between you and--without so much as a look in your direction--picks up his chopsticks and starts slurping noodles from his bowl.
You eat even though you have no appetite. He doesn't seem to care all that much. After getting a few small bites in, you sink all the way back in your chair, your body sliding down the seat as your bare legs sprawl to the side. Your arms hang straight down, dangling by your sides as your thighs stick to the plastic.
He pays no mind to it as he continues eating. Your wet hair is glued to your forehead. Your sweat tickles your chin and drips onto your chest. The only thing keeping you from going insane is the oscillating fan that cools your skin as it turns, though the constant clanking of the blades practically drives you insane anyway.
You sigh through your nose as you stare up at the ceiling. The white light flickers above you--the only cold thing in the room. A mosquito casts a shadow on your face, and you smack your cheek as it lands on you.
Rarely does any sunlight creep into your suite. Only a few slivers make it past the bedroom blinds at certain hours.
"Did you pay rent?" you ask, your voice bland with exhaustion.
He slurps loudly, his head lowered to the bowl.
Since there's nothing left to say, you close your eyes and pretend it's spring again, when everything starts over.
You stand up when you feel yourself dozing off. "I'm taking a bath," you say, already walking to the bathroom.
He finally looks up, and it's his turn to stare at your back as you leave. "It's your third one today," he calls through a mouthful of noodles, his voice rough from the sex earlier.
"I pay the water bill anyway," you reply halfheartedly right before closing the door.
You can't stand the feeling of suffocating in your own skin. You can't breathe--can't think--in this weather. It seeps from the city into your walls and traps you in an airless prison.
You remove the little clothes you have on and run the bath. You sit on the edge of the tub and stare at the stream of cold water. It sputters occasionally as it leaves the faucet. You lose yourself in it.
When it fills a third of the way, you step in and sit down, letting the cold shock your body. If you bathe three times today, and only fill a third of the tub every time, that's technically only one bath.
You hug your knees and stare at the dripping faucet, like it's leaking tears.
Not long after, you let yourself cry, too.
It's not ugly, like your mother when she cried. Youβve always hated it when she did--her face contorted in strange ways that made her seem like an entirely different person. You would wonder where she went and get angry when she wouldnβt return. Nothing you did would make her stop. She would sputter, only to continue, and the tub would overflow.
You make the bath your home, imagining the foot of the tub is the horizon on a setting sun. You lick your tears to taste salt and turn the silence into a seascape.
You hate this city. You hate what it does to you. You hate how the summer traps you inside it.
You think about dying and what it's like. You wonder if you really do return to your birthplace in death. Fallen leaves return to their roots. You heard the phrase somewhere growing up. You wonder if you'll return to the sea--maybe because you've never had a religion or anything to believe in other than yourself. You wonder if that makes you selfish or smart.
You think you'll die if you stay here. Clusters of skyscrapers, an urban hellscape of people and filth--people who can't afford a big city with big opportunities. It costs a life to spend one here.
After some time, you hear the door creak open. You smell him before he even enters--sweat and smoke and your shampoo.
Days are slow when it's hot, and it might be the only thing you like about summer in the city. You haven't moved since you sat down. Your bones begin to hurt.
He sits on the closed toilet lid and lights a cigarette between his teeth--elbows on his knees, hair spiked with sweat. Only when he exhales do his muscles relax.
You both pretend it doesn't happen--this ritual where you stow away to the bathroom and cry in the tub. You think it's childish--like you're playing pretend in an ocean that's really a bathtub. He lets you.
Once, you fell asleep in the water and almost died of dehydration. He came in to fish you out and carry you back to reality. In the kitchen, he mixed salt with water and watched as you drank. You laughed at the irony. It was the first time he heard you laugh since moving in together, and it was when you were closest to death.
You're about to doze off again when his voice brings you back.
"Fuck this," he mumbles lazily, his hand scratching his nape. You're not sure if he means the heat or this life in general.
Part of you aches for the person he was that you never got to see. You think it's a waste--a wild card turned bad beat. He was never really the same after the military. You donβt ask about it.
He rarely talks about his past. You know what high school he went to--saw a few photos of him in his uniform with some other kids that seemed like some sort of gang. He looked different back then.
Years ago, your brother tested into some private high school in Seoul, and you didn't hear from him much after that. He loved basketball, you think. You haven't talked to him in years.
He came back to visit one time during the summer on crutches--said he injured his knee while playing. You weren't buying it, but you kept quiet.
You looked at him, and you still remember the way he looked at you.
It was the moment he knew you had changed.
One night, it was particularly humid--the kind of weather that could make anyone boil over.
Seongje was drunk and had gotten into a fight in the alleyway behind a bar. It had been a month since his discharge. You waited against a wall, smoking a cigarette as he threw punch after punch.
When you glanced over to see if it was almost over so you could go home, he grabbed onto the man's leg mid-roundhouse kick. He brought his elbow down to his knee, over and over. You watched his tight shoulder wind up his beatings, his face contorted as he seethed.
The man shouted, then fell to the ground from the repeated blows--right into a warm puddle. But the hits kept raining down, beating a relentless rhythm into his bone. You saw his blood mix with water. You heard cartilage crunch.
You blew smoke from your teeth and walked away.
You yawn, and it alleviates you enough to move again. He passes you a cigarette, and you nip it between your lips. Resting your arms on the edge of the tub, you lean forward so he can light it for you.
There's not much to talk about these days. It's more comfortable this way.
You take a drag and sink back. This time, you look at the ceiling. The white paint peels from the wood, leaving islands of brown underneath, each one surrounded by yellowing ripples and years of stain. You blow smoke at them in jealousy.
"If you need to piss, just piss," you say, your gaze still locked on the ceiling.
He doesn't respond--only brings the cigarette back to his lips.
After a moment, you place your hands on the sides of the tub to lift yourself up, ready to get out and return to your reality. Before you can, he grips your wrist so tightly you think he's in pain.
You look down and see the archipelago of his spine, the weight of his neck as it bends like a bough, letting his head hang low. You like the way his bones look when they peek out from under his skin--like skipped stones on the water.
He doesn't say anything, just squeezes your wrist until you think it'll break. That's when you know to sit back down.
He has odd ways of showing when he wants you to stay, but you know what they mean each time. He likes how you don't expect him to talk to you.
Sometimes, you still see bits of who he was--when he throws things abruptly, when he breaks his silence with a loud curse. He rarely yells, but when he does, it's sharp and gone as soon as it punctures the air.
You learned about thunder back in high school; lightning heats the air in a fraction of a second, expanding it rapidly, which sends a loud shockwave through it. You wonder if you're like lightning--always striking where there's least resistance. And he's the shockwave that follows.
In high school, you wanted to be an environmental scientist. The city dries up that dream with each passing, impossible day.
"Are you leaving me?" you ask, the words evaporating as soon as they leave, like the smoke from your mouth. You're predictably calm.
Storms over the coast always scared you awake as a kid. Now, you find yourself seeking them in him.
"Then why is half our savings gone?"
There's a shoebox on the very top shelf of the closet, with all the important things: your passports, the matching thread bracelets you never wear, bank statements, diplomas, and a stack of cash you've both been contributing to since moving in together.
You had a feeling ever since he started leaving for work an hour earlier. You assumed he was cheating, so you didn't bother asking about it. When you saw a duffel bag with his clothes stuffed inside under the bed, you checked the box.
The chair waddles as you stand on it. You fish out the shoebox from the back of the top shelf. Rummaging through it, you find an old photo of the two of you: you're sitting next to each other on a weathered porch, looking out in different directions at the sea in front of you, right behind the camera. You remember exactly what you were seeing--what it smelled like.
You're both barefoot, soles in the packed soil below, eyes squinting against the sun. It reflects a sheen of sweat on your foreheads. There's a cigarette tucked in the shell of his ear. His white, sleeveless shirt sticks to his skin as he leans back on his palms, his tanned biceps tense. It's the darkest you've ever seen him.
You're resting your chin on your fist, hunching over your spread knees. Your brows furrow at the salty wind. Your hair is tied back in a lazy bun.
It's the happiest you've ever seen yourself.
Every summer, the two of you packed your bags and drove to Busan to visit his grandmother. She lived in a fishing village right off the port.
The road trips were mainly silent as he drove lazily and you stared out the window, your bare feet resting on the dashboard. You havenβt returned since she passed two years ago.
She never liked you all that much, anyway, but she showed you kindness through her disapproval--swatting you back in the house with a slipper when you wore too little, making you peel corn with her on the porch, forcing you to finish the food she made.
Seongje knows you miss your home. It's where you were born and where your mother died, and where he thinks youβll die, too. Though you don't act much different when you're there, he sees it in your eyes when you stand on the shore--high tide lapping at your knees, hair caught in the wind, eyes somewhere far off. You become unreachable.
He knows being in the city with him has killed you.
You place the photo back in the box before noticing the wad of cash, noticeably smaller in size. It's bound by a thin, loose rubber band that's losing its snap. You flip through it with your fingers, counting what's left and ignoring the fact that he took the money but left the picture.
He doesn't respond to your question--doesn't even act like you said anything at all. He just runs his palm through his hair, still hunched over and looking at the tiled floor.
"Are you running away with someone?" you ask, more curious than accusatory as you put your cigarette out on the tub's edge.
He finally lifts his head, then looks at you slowly. Even now, in his state of sweat and exhaustion, his eyes are electric.
"What do you think?" His voice is low and rumbles on the way out, his cigarette forgotten between his fingers.
You can only look at him--straight into those eyes that make you want to run from them--your face relaxed but unreadable. His irises flicker back and forth as they lose their focus on your face.
After a moment of this, he stands up and leaves, his hand ruffling the back of his head on the way out.
You lay your head back on the rim of the tub and close your eyes, allowing fatigue to seep back into your body. You wonder if dying feels like this--a sinking sleep that brings you home.
Right as you begin to dream, the door opens again. Though you're awake, you keep your eyes closed. Even when you feel the water ripple around you when he steps into the bath, you remain blind.
The water sings when he sits opposite you. You hear the spark of a lighter, smell the familiar puffs as they sift through his teeth. It's only then that you open your eyes.
His legs extend on either side of you, hugging the curve of the small tub. One hand brings a cigarette to his lips while the other pinches something small that glistens when you blink. He holds it out to you--a silver ring, with a princess diamond embedded right on its shank.
He knows you're slipping away, and he knows he still needs you--right where he is, wherever that may be.
Your eyes glance down at it, then back up to him. His face is just as unreadable, like he has no room for expectations. A very still second passes before you take the ring and slip it onto your finger.
"You didn't buy this with our money," you note simply, holding your hand out so it catches the light. Not even five times the amount could afford something like this.
He taps ash over the tub. "I got a side gig."
When he looks at you, you feel like ice under salt--cold and scalding all at once. You see something that could be his past glint in his eyes, and you know you won't be staying here for long.
There's a brewing storm inside him that you want to throw yourself into--a quelled madness you've seen only in him, like he alone has the right to be this way.
The faintest shadow of a smile sits on your face as he looks at you. It's all he needs. He comes closer, the water dragging on his skin like it doesn't want to let him go. He kisses you where it hurts.
You hope he continues to corrode like this--until you feel at home again.
You strike first, but he hits harder.
