Chapter 27: The Mugs

By two o'clock there were forty people at the foot of my lane.

Rory had parked his truck across it, and he sat on the tailgate with a thermos, telling them nothing.

The news van had come and gone. The fans stayed, with their phones held up, calling a name into the trees.

Chan had gone down to the detachment with the constable and the Seoul lawyer on a speaker, to start the paperwork.

He'd said, "Stay with him," and I'd said, "Obviously."

Hyunjin was up in the loft.

I could hear the screen of his phone clicking, and a hundred small voices coming out of it.

I climbed the ladder with a cup of tea I didn't want, and I stopped with my head and shoulders through the hatch.

He lay on his stomach on the mattress under the beam, in the red flannel, with his hair spread over the pillow.

On the phone, a girl was crying with her hand over her mouth.

She was saying he was the most beautiful man in the world.

"Turn it off," I said.

"They love me," he said, flat.

"They love the picture."

"That's what I said." He turned the phone face down.

"A hundred thousand of them and not one has ever seen me. I could be a lamp."

"Hyunjin."

"You were kind to me on the ladder. You were kind to me at the bar. I know it was kindness."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm warm, I'm quiet, I do the dishes." He kept his eyes on the mattress.

"I'm a very comfortable guest.

"And when you're tired of me you'll still have Chan, who actually knows where to stand."

I put the tea down on the floorboards.

Then I climbed the rest of the way in and sat cross-legged in front of him, with my head bent under the slope.

"The first morning," I said. "Before I knew a damn thing about you."

He glanced up.

"You got up before either of us.

"I came downstairs at six, and every mug I own was on the drying rack.

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