Chapter 11: The Dead Man's Date

The room was so quiet that Seo-won could hear the wind in the laundry on the roof.

Tae-min's arm had not loosened.

His hand lay flat between Seo-won's shoulder blades, warm and heavy.

"I what?" he said at last, very calmly.

"You died." Seo-won's voice cracked on it. "On the fourth floor of Daon Tower, on the stairs, on December twelfth. Fifty days from now."

"That's a hell of a thing to say in bed."

"I know."

"Seo-won. Look at me."

He did.

In the glow from the skylight, Tae-min's face was serious, open, and a little pale.

"Tell me. Slowly. From the start."

So he did.

He told it badly, and in the wrong order, with his face half turned into the pillow.

He told about the dinner, and the cold thing he had said.

He told about the weeks after, when Tae-min had not called and he had not noticed.

He told about the glass doors, the fire, the stairwell, the mask.

He told him what Tae-min had said at the end, in the dark, with the smoke coming down.

Don't look.

Just breathe.

When he finished, there was a silence in which a siren went by far away, toward Hapjeong.

"And then you woke up," Tae-min said. "In this bed. Friday morning."

"Yes."

"And you said yes to me at the pork restaurant."

"Yes."

Tae-min was quiet for a very long time.

"I don't know if I believe you," he said, gently. "I want to. You're not a liar. But it's a lot."

"I know."

"Tell me something nobody could know."

Seo-won thought, with his eyes closed.

"There's a page from a magazine in your locker," he said. "At the station. It's folded in four."

"It's from an architecture quarterly, last spring, the page that listed young associates under thirty."

Tae-min stopped breathing.

"My photo is on it. You wrote something in the margin in blue pen. Ask him anyway."

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