A Dot of Red

Won-young drew one long, unbroken line, the way she had when she first learned to draw. Keep going like this, and her head would sort itself out soon enough.

"I ended it. Once I'm back this time, I don't think I'll be leaving the country for a while, and I can't keep telling him to fly to Korea every time we want to see each other."

He half-hid his face behind the small mug, and because of it she had no way of knowing what her senior was thinking. What she did know was where her eyes went whenever he drank. The muscle of his arm, slipping free of his short-sleeved shirt, set something rocking in her for no good reason at all—those shoulders, broad as the Pacific, and the hair that fell as if he hadn't tried in the slightest. She simply liked the look of him, and she watched for a long while.

"Just like that?"

Lee-kyung's voice, arriving after a long silence, pulled a crease into Won-young's brow.

She hadn't expected it. Evan had refused, and then refused again. He didn't want to break up. He would come to Korea to see her. They couldn't end it like this. He had clung to her more than once. Believing that European men all preferred to keep things light—maybe that had only been her own prejudice.

Won-young answered without taking her eyes off Lee-kyung's wrist.

"I hate long distance. I'm not crazy about relationships that get too serious either, but while I'm seeing someone, I want us close whenever one of us needs the other. Meeting when there's time. Eating together, holding hands, looking at something good. That's what I like."

"So you broke up just because of the distance?"

"Yeah. He was a good person. Even so, ending it was the right call."

"…."

"Am I too selfish? When we broke up, he said so. That I'm too selfish."

Lee-kyung set the cup down. For a moment their eyes met.

"He called you selfish?"

"Yeah. First time in my life I've heard that."

She and Evan had been together barely two months. He was forever crossing Europe for packed photo shoots, so the times they had actually met didn't even come to five. That was why, when she had to tell him she was going back to Korea, she hadn't expected the conversation to turn so hard. She truly hadn't known he was that far gone on her.

Turning the memory over, Won-young scratched idly at the side of her neck—and met Lee-kyung's eyes again.

"But come on. When a man and a woman are breaking up, isn't being selfish kind of the point? Agreeing on the day you'll end it and syncing your calendars would be weirder."

"Still. From his side it must have come out of nowhere. You suddenly said you were going back to Korea."

"Yeah. I apologized, sincerely. I hadn't thought I'd come back like this either."

"So why did you come back, anyway? What got you so sick of it?"

"Who knows."

Her senior remembered, clear as anything, that she had said she was tired of Florence. Won-young smiled a little, her face somewhere between knowing and not.

Already the third. Another coffee sat on the low table where Lee-kyung worked, and Won-young's eyes—still laying down fine pencil lines—clung to it and would not let go. He knew exactly what that look was saying.

Quit the coffee, you menace.

Something along those lines. The thought cracked him into a laugh. There hadn't been much to laugh at in his days, and yet after Won-young came back he kept finding himself doing it. Was that a good sign?

He mixed the paints he had squeezed onto the palette and brushed them on, drinking as if it were nothing. Sure enough, she couldn't endure even that brief stretch. Worry crossed her face.

"How much are you drinking a day these days?"

The news that she had broken up with her boyfriend had, in truth, pleased him the whole time. Careful not to let that pleasure show, he answered with a face arranged into indifference.

"Couldn't say. I haven't been counting."

"You drink coffee this often in the daytime, so of course you can't sleep at night. Didn't you say you don't even get five hours?"

"Ji-an told you that, too?"

"That is not the point right now."

Then what is. He swallowed the words, set his brush down, and stood. With one hand he lifted the chair easily and set it beside Won-young. He had meant to sit, but in that short span his mind changed. Bending from the waist he had been holding straight, he looked quietly down at the countless lines she had drawn.

These past few days, dropping by the studio, she must have been bored; she often sketched new bag designs in the work notebook. He hadn't set out to snoop, but coming and going to brew coffee, he had happened across several of the things she designed. He didn't doubt for a second that she would make a good designer.

Forcing down a heat he couldn't name, he spoke as if nothing were wrong.

"Of all the places you interviewed, not one of them called?"

Maybe it was the curve of his leaning body; the distance between them closed. Long straight hair hiding the white nape of her neck. An ear half bared. Shoulders drawn in, as if she were tense. Won-young from behind was lovely, the way she always was, and her scent pushed up into his nose.

"Huh? Uh—no. None of them."

"Every last one of them has terrible eyes."

Won-young laughed, a dizzy smile like something that lingered, and Lee-kyung couldn't look away from it in full bloom. If anything, he shifted the angle of his bent waist and brought his face closer still, as if he might swallow, any second, the lips that had been chirping like a baby bird all this time.

"Why are you laughing?"

In a span no longer than a blink, Won-young turned her head and looked at him.

Too close. Their faces met with no room between them, as if their breaths might tangle, and each of them was busy trying to steady their own.

Won-young had always been quick to laugh. She smiled far more often than she frowned, and maybe that was why people, looking at her, decided she was uncomplicated. Asking why she was laughing was an old habit of Lee-kyung's. Whenever she laughed, he had a way of wanting the reason.

This time she laughed until the corners of her eyes folded.

"Senior, that was a compliment, wasn't it?"

"What was."

"That they don't have eyes. That was a compliment."

"…."

"Which reminds me—there's something else I want to know."

"What."

His voice shook, just a little.

"Senior. Is there someone you like right now?"

He straightened all at once and drew back from behind her.

Won-young's face went hot in a rush. She had been perfectly fine when he actually leaned in, and now the blush, arriving late, was enough to drive her out of her mind. By the time she managed to cover her face with her palms, the corner of his mouth had lifted, just slightly.

"Couldn't say."

"Could you answer like you mean it?"

"Why do you want to know."

"I told you everything. The men I dated, the one I broke up with. I didn't leave out a single thing."

A soft poke. Before she could pull away, red paint was stamped onto the tip of Won-young's nose. He had dotted the highest point on purpose, as if he wanted her to see it, and she yelled.

"Heyyyyy!"

Ryu Lee-kyung was smiling, his lips pushed into a pout.

And then, beyond the wide window, rain came down in a rush. One whole wall of his workspace was glass from floor to ceiling, so the world outside showed with unusual clarity: people hurrying to get out of the wet, branches thrashing in the downpour, a puppy soaked to the fur.

Raining again, Won-young thought, looking out.

"Senior, it's raining."

Even in Florence, whenever it rained, she had gone out and walked the streets without fail.