Chapter 18: What He Said

They did not make it to the bed.

They did not make it past the fourth-floor landing.

It was ten at night, the stairwell light was on its timer, and the doors to 401 and 402 stood just down the hall.

Jin-woo had held her hand all the way from the tower, through the taxi, up four flights of narrow brick stairs.

On the last turn he stopped.

"Say it again," Yeo-reum said.

"Which part?"

"The part you told the cameras."

He turned her until her back was against the cool painted wall beside the fire alarm, and set his palm flat beside her head.

Then he bent, so that she could see his mouth, and said it in the quietest voice she had ever heard from him.

"I love you."

It came out almost without sound, a whisper of shaped air.

She read it with her whole body.

"That's too soft," she said, unsteadily. "I could barely read it."

"I do not know what a whisper sounds like."

"Do it again."

"I love you."

"Again, and louder."

"I love you," he said, in the old flat train-station voice, and it rang off the brick down four floors.

She laughed, helplessly, and pulled his face down and kissed him.

The light clicked off on its timer.

Neither of them moved to turn it on.

The dark made the kiss deeper.

His hands found her waist under the hoodie and lifted her half off the floor, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Not here," he said, against her mouth.

"Here."

"There are neighbors."

"Then be quiet," she said.

"I cannot tell if I am quiet."

"I'll tell you."

She pressed her palm over his mouth, and felt him smile under it.

She took her hand away and kissed his throat.

"I'll tell you with my fingers," she said, and she tapped once on his shoulder to mean soft.

He laughed, and it came out as a breath against her hair, and then he did not laugh.

His mouth moved down along her collarbone.

She dragged his suit jacket off his shoulders and let it fall to the stairs, and her hands went to his shirt.

She was in no hurry to be careful with the buttons.

One popped and rolled down the steps, and she heard it tick, three, four, five times, into the dark.

"Yeo-reum."

"I know. Buy another."

He lifted her.

She locked her legs around his waist, and the wall was cold along her back.

His chest was warm along her front, and the contrast made her gasp.

His hand pushed her skirt up her thighs and shoved her underwear aside, his fingers sliding into her wet pussy.

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