Prologue

The rainy season had dragged on longer than anyone expected. Rain that had been falling for a fortnight was forecast to keep up through the day after tomorrow.

"Lee-kyung. Want to sleep with me?"

Lee-kyung had stopped to boil water for coffee. His bangs, slipped halfway down, hid the crease in his brow.

"Lee-kyung."

At her prodding he lifted his head and looked at her without a word. Straight black hair, a lingering softness still in her cheeks, a T-shirt washed through with blue. At some point she had given up tying her hair back and started wearing it loose, and from a distance so slight he could have reached her with the smallest stretch of his hand she kept at him—coaxing, sulking, glaring—with her lips parted just a little.

He endured the urge to catch her by the waist that very moment and spend the whole night tasting her. He tipped beans into the grinder, ground them fine, and regarded her with a face that gave nothing away.

"Don't get cute."

When she didn't answer, the world went suddenly still.

Strange. The girl he knew would have been furious by now, or else smacked him across the back of the head. She was kind enough with other people, even warm—but with him, she had a temper.

Lee-kyung set the grinder down as if it didn't matter.

"Come on. I'll take you home."

"I like you."

"Do you dislike me, sunbae?"

Twelve confessions. Through exactly that many she had never once let herself be wounded, offering with unshaken steadiness a heart she had kept for years. Aside from the time he spent in the army, she came to see him nearly every day. She would watch in silence while he stayed shut in the studio from morning to night, doing nothing but paint, then suddenly toss out I like you and turn his thoughts inside out—with no idea how close those words came to driving a man mad.

Lee-kyung turned.

"If I said I didn't, would you believe me?"

"No. I wouldn't."

"Then why ask."

"Because I still want to hear it from your own mouth."

She twisted a few strands of hair around the tip of a nail. Even that small gesture shook him clean through. Lee-kyung drew a long breath and turned his head as if he hadn't noticed.

"Why do you even like me. Doesn't it get old, confessing and getting turned down every single time?"

"No, it doesn't. Honestly, I get fluttery every time I say it. You know what? Your eyes shake whenever I confess."

"What?"

"Sometimes I got confused, and it made me a little sad. Lately, though, I can see it clearly."

Through the drifting dust he met her face, touched with a faint smile. His brow twitched. A small laugh escaped him, and then his expression changed.

"So? What is it you see."

Holding her breath, she stepped in closer still.

"That you like me too, sunbae."

Her cheeks were flushed, ripe and full as peaches. Her eyelids trembled in fine little beats—nerves, maybe—and her shoulders drew in, and all the while Lee-kyung watched the clean line of her mouth.

It can't be.

The truth he had sworn she would never catch dropped, with a dull thud, straight down beneath his heart under the weight of that single blow. He had refused her again and again because she had been too young. Only two years lay between them, and still he could not accept a confession offered in a school uniform. Now she tangled her gaze with his once more, her face too lovely for pretty to cover.

"Look properly, sunbae. I'm not a kid anymore."

"I'm not going home today."

She still hadn't quite shed the last of her youth. She leaned toward him and whispered.

"Are you going to turn me down again today?"

The space between them closed to nothing. Even the sound of their breathing felt like a single breath.

Hoo. Hooo. Hoooo.

Her long straight hair, falling to her waist, stirred softly. She came close enough to dizzy him, right up to the tip of his nose, and—unbelievably—bit his lower lip. She held it a moment, let it go, and murmured into his ear again.

"Sunbae, my chest is bigger than you think."

"Really."

Bold enough a second ago, she stepped back as if the shame had caught up with her. Her black eyes wavered, unsettled, as though she feared what might come next. She seemed to want even that hidden, but it caught cleanly in Lee-kyung's sight.

You bit my lip. Where do you think you're going.

Heat hit him all at once; he hardened. When she took yet another step back, his temper snapped.

"Where are you going."

"Huh?"

"I said where. You're supposed to show me how big they are, aren't you."

"Are—are you crazy?"

"Me? Or you."

She scratched at her hair.

"They said if I put it like that, it'd work."

"Who."

"Ji-an... told me."

"Ha. From now on you get your relationship advice from me. Not her."

"Huh?"

"Close your eyes."

At the voice cutting through the air, she closed them. Maybe he had been waiting for this moment just as long. He hollowed his cheeks, curled his tongue, and drew her lips in. Red flesh caught; saliva mixed. She flinched, as if she hadn't known a kiss could be like this. His large hand slid down from her cheek and seized, all at once, the chest he had been watching all along.

"Mm—"

The patience he had stacked, layer upon old layer, had reached its end. He had put this picture in his head dozens of times—no, hundreds. Stripping her. Opening her. Hearing her soaked and breathless with excitement all through the night.

"Sun—sunbae..."

A breath wrapped in hot air barely slipped free.

"Scared?"

"N-no."

"Then?"

"It's not that, sun—bae..."

"You didn't see this coming?"

"Hah—mm, n-no."

Her eyes, long and catlike, lifted toward the ceiling. He felt a deep hesitation in her, but no sign of refusal. In one motion he pulled her shirt up over her shoulders. Her breasts, full enough to strain past the bra, swallowed his gaze completely. His verdict was plain enough.

"Huh. Bigger than I thought."

"You've been hiding these all this time?"

"S-stop looking. It's embarrassing."

Her cheeks puffed. Pouting, she covered her chest with both hands. Lee-kyung reached out with those long fingers and moved her hands away.

He wanted to ask.

Can you promise you won't regret this? If you let me now, I don't know what I'll do to you. I might be the one begging for you—far more than you think. Once you find out how filthy my thoughts have been about you since you became a woman, you'll want to run.

"If you don't want it, move."

He threw out that short line and stripped her bra off in a single pull. Their gazes, gone hot and wet, clung to each other with a desperate ache. It dazzled him. He could no longer only look at a body curved past what his want could bear. He took one peaked point of flesh between his teeth and licked, sucking in slow strokes. Mm. Mmm. Nnh. The raw, near-moan of her voice raked his ear without mercy.

"Hah... ah."

The desire to swallow her whole writhed in him. At the end of his tilted gaze he licked the shell of her ear. The scent he had known for so long was the same kind as those nights he came home alone and spent until morning spilling himself pale. A raw instinct shivered and beat its wings.

While she grew from girl to woman, he had already called himself a bastard in his own head more times than he could count. She was the girl who had never stopped scrambling his thoughts. That he had held out this long, scolding and condemning himself, was only because he was, at bottom, a rational man. Lee-kyung had always been strong in that way. Under that familiar scent, heat gathered lower and lower. The moment he closed his hand around the smooth weight of her breast, he let go of the last thread of reason he had left.

Unused to undressing her—it was the first time—he stripped every last piece of clothing away, and from the instant skin showed he licked her without pause and urgently parted her legs. In the end he soothed her while she cried and railed—if this was what he'd wanted, why had he been so cold all those times he turned her down—and took her three times before the night was through.

He couldn't stop. It was the first time he had lost himself like an animal.

That summer, the two of them began to date in earnest. They burned every moment, like an ember so hot it might catch and be gone. Some days in her rented room, some days in the car, and most often in Lee-kyung's studio, they made love through more days than either of them could count.

"Ah—ah...! Sunbae, that hurts there!"

"You said you'd let me do anything."

"I said it hurts!"

"That's why I told you to stop saying things you can't take responsibility for."

The corner of his mouth was smiling. Tears pricking, she struck his back hard.

"You said just once. Do you even know what number this is?"

"Did it hurt?"

His eyes, gone gentle, wrapped softly around her. She buried her face against his neck and leaned into him, at ease.

"I didn't know you'd like my body this much."

"You won't throw me away, right?"

"I won't."

"Promise."

"Promise."

Their small, slender little fingers hooked around each other.

He didn't know it then—how heavily those words would come to swing the whole of his life.

He shouldn't have made a promise like that.

...He shouldn't have.