Chapter 4: Ink

Missy pulled her robe closed and went down the path in her bare feet.

"Hyunjin, you're soaking wet."

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry. I couldn't decide whether to knock."

"For how long?"

"Forty minutes. I think."

She took the sketchbook out of his arms before the rain could ruin it.

Then she pulled him inside by the sleeve.

In the kitchen she wrapped a towel around his long black hair.

She sat him in the chair that Jisung had left warm.

He looked at the chair, and then at the floor, and his ears went red.

"You saw," Missy said.

"I saw. I wasn't spying. I came to ask you something, and then I looked up."

"And what did you think?"

"That he looked happy," Hyunjin said. "And that I was jealous."

"Of him?"

"I didn't know which one of you I was jealous of."

She laughed, soft, and crouched to rub his cold hands between hers.

"Ask me, then."

"I draw," he said. "It's how I think. I'd like to draw you, if you'd let me."

"You've been out there forty minutes to ask me that?"

"Yes."

"Show me what you've got."

He handed her the sketchbook, and she turned the pages.

The cabin desk with the green blotter. The blue pen, lying alone.

The grey cat asleep on Jisung's chest.

Her own face, laughing, with the rain behind it.

It was an easy, loving, careful hand, and he had drawn her better than she had looked in years.

"You made me pretty," she said.

"I didn't make anything. That's how you looked."

"Hyunjin."

He took a breath.

"Can I ask you something else? You can say no."

"Go on."

"Everyone tells me I'm beautiful," he said. "They have for years."

His voice was very quiet.

"Nobody ever asks what else I'd like to be wanted for. Do you want me? Or do you want my face?"

Missy put the sketchbook down on the table and took his face in both hands.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Four STARZ Members Came to Hide, Then Fell for the Cat Café Owner from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.