Chapter 11: The Lamp

He came to the side door of my wing at nine, as I had told him to.

I had sent the housekeeper home early with a basket of Da-eun's pears.

I had lit one lamp.

I had changed my dress three times, and then stood in front of the mirror wearing nothing but a robe, laughing at myself.

The knock was soft.

I opened the door, and Tae-seong stood on the mat in a clean white shirt, with his hands empty and his hair still damp.

"I didn't know what to bring," he said. "I almost brought a socket set."

"You're here. That's enough."

"Am I allowed in?"

"Come in," I said. "Please."

He stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him, and the lock turned under his hand.

For a moment we only stood there.

The apartment was very quiet.

Through the glass wall, Seoul lay spread out in lights, and the Han River ran through the middle of them, dark and wide.

"Is it all right that you can see the river?" he said.

I looked at it.

The bridge was a thin line of lamps in the distance.

"Yes," I said. "It's all right tonight."

"If it stops being all right..." he said.

"I'll tell you," I said.

"You'll tell me."

"Tae-seong." I took his hand. "Stop being careful."

His breath went out of him in a rush.

He pulled me against his chest and kissed me, slowly, with all the care he had been saving.

It was nothing like the shop, or the rain.

It was deep and unhurried, and his hand moved up into my hair, and I tasted the faint mint of his toothpaste.

I opened the buttons of his shirt, one at a time.

He was lean and warm under it, with a scar along his ribs I had never seen.

A line of dark hair ran from his chest to his belt.

"What happened here?" I asked, touching the scar.

"A car jack," he said. "I was seventeen."

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