I Want to Sleep with You

"Yeah. She's decent. You can see her getting better every time. Not bad."

"Wow. You praise her an awful lot, sunbae. Back when you were teaching me to draw, you did nothing but nag me, day after day."

"Well. You should've drawn better, then."

"......"

That crooked way he had of talking, every now and then, was still unbearable. Won-young nearly lost her temper, then drained what was left of her cocktail in one cool swallow.

In the meantime Lee-kyung rose slowly to his feet.

"Let's go."

"Where."

"Pork belly. You said you wanted some."

"The rain stopped ages ago. And if I eat meat this late, I'll get fat."

"So you're not eating?"

"Who said I wasn't?"

Lee-kyung slipped away first without a word, took out his wallet, and paid. Won-young hurried after him a beat too late and told him not to, but the server had already run his card.

She glared at him where he stood in the entrance. Lee-kyung showed his teeth and grinned.

He had kept her waiting for hours, long enough to wear her out, and then he smiled like that—warm, gentle. It was infuriating. She hated him for it. And the more she hated him, the softer her heart went.

Won-young looked away for a moment from Lee-kyung as he came over with the drinks.

The worn signboard, the dowdy wallpaper, even the taste for grilling over coal briquettes—it was exactly the sort of restaurant he liked. Packed with people just off work, a place he would never bring Ryu Ji-an. Somewhere he had probably only ever come alone, or with Seon-jae.

Watching him twist the soju cap off cleanly, Won-young smiled with a sidelong little look.

"Ryu Lee-kyung, you've turned into a proper old man."

"What are you talking about."

"I said you're old, sunbae. An old man like you, dating a girl in her early twenties—one whose cheeks are still plump—people would call you a thief."

"......This about Se-hyeong?"

A faint smile on her lips, Won-young laughed softly. Expressionless, he slowly poured the liquor.

"Quit the nonsense and drink. Did you wait long earlier?"

"What do you think."

"Then why do you keep showing up just to get treated like this."

Their eyes met. Cold as the words were, something he could not hide lingered on his face. Watching it, Won-young wavered all over again.

"......Sunbae."

"Your mom and dad are doing all right?"

As if he meant to break the delicate air between them, Lee-kyung asked after her parents. Won-young nodded.

In their school days, when she had been learning to draw from him, he had often walked her all the way to her gate. Back then he had truly loved the sundubu-jjigae, the soft-tofu stew, that Hwa-seon simmered for him. The tall sunflowers you could see only in front of Won-young's house, the rainbows that sometimes hung in the sky, the pork sizzling on the low wooden platform in the wide front yard whenever it rained—none of it was a memory he could forget. Even now that stew from those days came back to him now and then. For Lee-kyung, it had been the finest food there was.

"You going to keep living like this? No plans?"

He asked before she had even tasted the bitterness of the soju in her first glass.

Unlike him, who planned everything and moved with care, she was thoroughly impulsive. Even so. It still felt as if he were treating her like a child, and she slid him a glare.

"I didn't make any plans. For a while I'm going to loaf around with nothing to do. You have no idea how hard I worked overseas all that time. I want to be paid back for it. For now I don't want to think about anything."

"They don't say anything at home?"

"You know my parents. Whatever I do, they say it's fine. This way, that way—they tell me to do whatever I want."

"Fair enough."

When she had graduated from university in Japan without a hitch and then announced she would go on to Italy and enroll in a fashion design school, her parents had told her to do as she pleased. Instead of stinging advice, those two had only ever cheered her on until she was full.

Filling the second glass, Lee-kyung asked again.

"Nothing you want to do here? You're greedy. Always so much you want."

Greedy. The things she wanted. At the words he let fall, the chance she had left behind in Florence came rushing back. Turned over in her mind, the fact that she had taken Marlon Lee's call herself felt like a dream that had drifted impossibly far—as if some phantom had bewitched her, and she had only just come back to herself.

If he learned she had refused an offer like that and come home, he would fly into a rage, no question. She didn't have the nerve to say it. If she could help it, she meant never to tell Lee-kyung what had happened in Florence, not until the day she died.

"Once I get tired of playing around, I can set up a workshop then, or join a company here and work as an ordinary designer. I'm trying not to rush."

"Doesn't sound like you."

"And what does sound like me?"

"Sincere every second. Working hard. Someone who lives fiercely. That's you."

The corners of her eyes trembled, just barely, but she answered in a voice gone softer.

"I wanted to try living like this, just once."

She was someone who had never once allowed herself the luxury of ease, not until thirty came. In truth, every morning when she opened her eyes the same worry stirred. Is this all right? Is it really all right to be doing nothing? The anxiety did settle in her; that was true. Even so, a life like this was not a bad one.

Just then a server brought the meat and went. As Won-young reached to grill it, Lee-kyung snatched the tongs away.

Among all the people in the restaurant, only one caught and held her eye. The heart that had pounded at the sight of him more than ten years ago came back like déjà vu and took hold of her.

Dangerous. Truly.

The man before her tempted her from one moment to the next. He lifted her up, let her down, set her fluttering, drove her out of her mind. The height. The clean-cut brows. The squared shoulders and the long, lean body. And above all, those tender eyes.

Should I tell him I love him again? Confess that I've come to like him once more, the way I did back then—that looking at him leaves me shy, and fluttering, and light all the way through?

Because he's beside me.

I keep having indecent thoughts.

In a voice threaded with nerves, Won-young spoke as if hesitating.

"Sunbae. Listen."

"Yeah."

"I don't think how much you like someone is proportional to time."

"What are you about to say now."

She uncrossed her legs and drew her chair in close. To eat, in earnest, the meat he was grilling, Won-young gathered her hair up and tied it. As if she didn't notice the look Lee-kyung let fall steadily over her, she smiled, sweet.

"I had a nickname back then. When I was chasing you around all the time. Remember?"

Among her friends, Won-young's nickname had once been Ryu Lee-kyung Fanatic. Lee-kyung himself, the one all that devotion was aimed at, had called her Leech.

Whether she became his fanatic again or his leech, she didn't care. She wanted to stay at Lee-kyung's side for a very, very long time.

"Why a nickname all of a sudden."

"Will you call me that again? Like back then?"

Indifferent, he laid the best-cooked piece of meat on her plate.

"Just say the point."

"I want to sleep with you."

Lee-kyung yanked out a napkin at once and barely caught whatever was about to come straight back out of his mouth. He glanced at the lump of meat he had shoved into the napkin without even chewing half of it, then, looking thoroughly dumbfounded, knocked back a mouthful of soju.

"Are you insane?"

"No. I'm perfectly fine."

"You call that something you can just say."

"I can't?"

She could not know what kind of woman Lee-kyung liked, but she knew exactly which parts of her he did. When she tied her hair up. When she blinked, heavy with sleep. Or when she came at him outright, set on seducing him. She remembered that in moments like those he had loved her more than anyone. Tying her hair up, blinking on purpose, blurting out that she wanted to sleep with him with no lead-in at all—all of it was for that reason.

Because she wanted him to fall for her.

Because she wanted him to like her.

"Right now I want to hold your hand, and I want to kiss you, and tonight I want to go into your studio and sleep toge—mmph!"

Won-young never finished. Lee-kyung's hand had flown up and covered her mouth.