The Date, and the Story of Kim Jae-gyeom
"If you don't have any other plans today, how about going for a drive with me? Want to get ready and come out? I'll wait in the car."
Even while making no effort to hide the desire burning in his gaze, he still offered her a courteous way out—and something in Ji-su's throat went gulp before she could stop it.
The sound of her swallowing was loud enough that the heat spread past her face all the way to the tips of her ears. Jae-gyeom's own ears had turned red as he watched her, but Ji-su was far too flustered to register the color of anyone else's ears; she just nodded frantically and shut the front door.
"A drive... that's a date, right? What do I do? What am I supposed to wear? This is a disaster."
Never dreaming her muttered soliloquy carried all the way into the corridor, Ji-su left Jae-gyeom chuckling as he descended the stairs. Thankfully, the junk car was long gone, but the beer cans and the plastic container of hangover soup still lay strewn across the first floor of the building. What got him, though, was the bouquet—purchased with her own money, no less—that Young-baek had made off with. Jae-gyeom laughed to himself, cleaned up the mess, and got in his car.
His first date with Ji-su was, without question, enough to set his own heart racing—but the moment he thought about telling her the story of how Kim Jae-gyeom had become Yoon Jae-gyeom, the morning's scene in Pyeongchang-dong came flooding back and his mood sank despite himself.
On Sunday afternoon, the Hankuk University campus was a spectacular sight, its ginkgo trees ablaze in gold.
"Wow, it's been ages since I've been back to school. I think this is my first time since graduation."
Her voice was music to his ears. As they wandered through the not-too-crowded campus, Jae-gyeom reached into the past and brought up something they'd never talked about.
"I grew up in the States, and came to Korea after my mom passed. But my family registry was still a mess back then. I took my mother's surname from the moment I was born."
"Ah. So that's why..."
He explained that the American school system didn't line up with Korea's, and while he was busy catching up academically after the move, he'd ended up placed a grade below—same age as her, one year behind. His surname, he added, was legally corrected to his father's only after he graduated high school.
"My first day at Gyechon High was honestly a shock."
"Ah... the transfer student welcome ceremony."
The school was so small that rumors of a new transfer student spread through the entire student body within thirty minutes of the morning. And every student going to get a look at the newcomer was a rite of passage so entrenched they'd actually named it—the "transfer student welcome ceremony."
"You know the upperclassmen would even follow me into the bathroom?"
"The bathroom? Why?"
"...To check the size."
"That's insane!"
Ji-su's face flushed crimson in an instant. Jae-gyeom only laughed. It was the truth.
"Everything about life in Korea was unfamiliar, school was new, and it was hard in a lot of ways. I basically kept my mouth shut unless I absolutely had to say something. My Korean pronunciation was still a bit clumsy back then, so I was embarrassed about it too. And I'd never experienced being the focus of that many people's attention all at once."
"I can imagine."
"A few people asked my name, and I told them Kim Jae-gyeom. But you know how it goes—answer honestly when they ask where you're from, and you can predict exactly what comes next."
"Right. Say you're from America, and it's instantly 'say something in English.'"
"Exactly. So I said I was from Seoul. And after that, since I showed no interest in keeping any conversation going, most of my classmates gave up on me within a day."
Sitting side by side on a bench in the dappled shade, Jae-gyeom shared his reflections as "Kim Jae-gyeom on his first day at Gyechon High"—then turned to look at Ji-su.
"I'd run off to the bleachers by the field during lunch. And then, from way off in the distance, a girl started walking toward me. I assumed she'd come to gawk at me like everyone else, so I ducked my head."
"..."
"But she just plopped down right near me and started working through a workbook."
"...I couldn't believe it at first, but of course it was me."
Jae-gyeom had figured he'd absorbed a lifetime's worth of attention in that single day, so it struck him as almost miraculous that someone existed who didn't spare him even a grain of it. So it was he who asked the question first: why, of all places, had she chosen to sit there?
"I like that zelkova tree. And if it was spring back then, that was probably the only tree in the whole yard that wasn't a cherry tree..."
"That's it. That's exactly what you said. 'This is the only tree with no petals falling under it.'"
"Wow, I was so boring."
"You weren't. You're the reason school was worth going to at all. I told you—it's you, my first love. After the day we met, I deliberately sat far away so I wouldn't get in your way. But whether I was there or not, you never once noticed anything around you."
As if to answer the unguarded honesty in his eyes, Ji-su's own gaze shimmered back with a whole spectrum of feeling.
"Back then I'd come to Korea out of nowhere with no mom, and I felt like I was completely alone in the world. Then suddenly I was told to take my father's name... Someone like me, carrying a birth story even I could barely accept—I didn't think I had any right to approach you, the person everyone sang praises about. So I decided I'd confess properly, like a man, once we were grown."
"..."
"You're the reason I survived those years alone in Gyechon. In spring and fall, out on the field. On rainy days, and in summer and winter, in the library. Being able to watch you study every single day—that was my happiness."
Jae-gyeom took her hand.
"Im Ji-su. Will you date me? You've already met my mother, so think of this as leading to marriage. I'll make you happy."
"..."
Ji-su was afraid her voice would come out a trembling wreck if she tried to speak, so she couldn't quite open her mouth. Instead, she answered him the most direct way she could—by nodding.
Hand in hand, the two of them sat for a long while, quietly watching autumn settle over the campus.
On the way back to Ji-su's place, a question she'd been carrying all day finally slipped out.
"But did you really come up to Gyechon last night just to see me? I was drunk when I called you... that can't be it, right?"
"I was in Seoul for a family gathering... and I was already missing Im Ji-su anyway, when you called for me."
Since the subject had come up, Jae-gyeom gave her a brief account of his family situation—that they only gathered on his father's birthday, and what his relationship with his stepmother was like.
"She doesn't like me. I'm literally the 'child born outside the family,' so I imagine she finds me repulsive. And now that I'm not just a Kim anymore but a Yoon too, all the more so."
"Did you... get treated badly? Like in dramas..."
Her face crumpled on its own as she imagined what his past might have been—drama-level coldness and cruelty. But Jae-gyeom shook his head.
"Whatever she felt, she never let it show."
"...That's a relief in some ways, but it must have been hard on you all the same."
As her clumsy comfort gently soothed the old wound, Jae-gyeom's car pulled neatly into the one spot in the paid parking lot where Ji-su fed the meter every month. With the engine's hum gone, nothing remained between them but stillness.
"...When do you head back down to Gyechon?"
"Now. I'm leaving as soon as I see you get inside. Everything I needed to do here is done."
"You must be exhausted."
He got out of the car, took her hand, and they stepped into the building together. The old one-room building had no security keypad on the shared entrance and no CCTV anywhere. On the fifth-floor walk-up with no elevator, the first unit on the second floor was Ji-su's world.
They climbed the stairs slowly. At the ends of their clasped fingers, each of them could feel it—that pink-tinged warmth, perfectly heated and faintly sticky, laced with reluctance. When they finally reached the second floor, Ji-su worked up her courage first.
"If you don't absolutely have to leave today... should we do that thing we talked about earlier?"
"The thing we talked about?"
"That... the thing we were going to do once we got inside my place."
Jae-gyeom cast his mind back to their daytime conversation.
"Oh, the movie?"
"No. Not the one I wanted—you're the one who said you wanted to..."
Im Ji-su, tossing out words that amounted to a lethal provocation while unable to meet his eyes—she was so adorable that Jae-gyeom burst out laughing. There was no reason to refuse, and beyond that, it simply made him happy: he wasn't the only one aching for it. Im Ji-su wanted him too.
The front door stood right there—one turn of the key and they'd be inside—but even that much patience had run dry, and Jae-gyeom pressed his lips to hers. Ji-su's back met the front door.
The wanting that had only barely, precariously hovered between them caught fire at the edge of their mouths, blazing until it seemed it would consume them both. A lover's breath and the soft, wet sounds of friction began to fill the corridor, making it feel warm and close.
"Mmnh."
At the small moan that escaped and echoed in her throat, Ji-su startled so badly she nearly fainted—she froze mid-breath, eyes flying wide open. Jae-gyeom pulled back a step. In the gaze that met his, the desire was deep and unmistakable.
"Your door code—it'd be a bit much to tell me, right? You press it."
Ji-su turned to open the door—then pulled him back toward her instead. Just before their lips met, she whispered.
"0430. You open it."
"It's your birthday."
Their lips locked again, hotter this time, leaving Ji-su flushed and burning and stoking Jae-gyeom past all restraint. The front door swung open under his hand and clicked shut behind them, and from there, the two of them and their early-autumn night only rose hotter, and thicker, and closer.