I Rejected the Firefighter Who Died for Me, Now I Chase Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Prove It

The firefighter sets a test, Seo-won counts his pulse in the rain, and finds his own stamp on the change order that will kill him in sixty-two days.

Nobody at the table breathed.

Then Ga-ram laughed, too high and too loud, and the whole row of coworkers laughed with him.

"Good one, Seo-won," Ga-ram said. "Very funny. Sit down, everyone, the pork is burning."

Seo-won did not sit.

"It isn't a joke."

Tae-min was still standing, one hand on the chair back.

The red had gone out of his ears.

"Okay," he said, lightly. "Is it a bet? Did somebody dare you?"

"No."

"Because it's fine if it is. I'd just like to know before I order dessert."

"Tae-min-ssi."

"You told me last spring I was a stray dog who followed people home." Tae-min smiled, and it did not reach his eyes.

"I'm not mad. I'm only saying I remember."

Seo-won remembered it too.

He had said it at the coffee machine, in front of Ga-ram, and had not even looked up.

He had said a hundred things like it.

Each one came back to him now in the same flat voice.

"I was cruel to you," Seo-won said, in front of everyone. "I'm not going to be anymore."

Someone's chopsticks clattered.

Tae-min looked at him a long moment.

Then he picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. "I'm going to get some air. Eat. Happy birthday, Ga-ram."

He walked out.

Seo-won went after him.

Behind him, he heard Ga-ram say, "Is he drunk? He hasn't even touched his drink," and nobody had an answer.

The street outside was cold and smelled of frying oil and rain.

Tae-min stood under the awning of the closed pharmacy, hands in his pockets, looking at nothing.

"Go back inside, Seo-won-ssi. You'll catch cold."

"I'm not cold."

"You're shivering."

He was.

Seo-won crossed the pavement and took Tae-min's left wrist in his hand.

Tae-min went still. "What are you..."

Seo-won turned the wrist over and pressed two fingers under the heel of his hand.

Under the skin, a pulse beat, quick and strong and stubborn.

He stood there and counted it.

Tae-min stared at him.

"Are you taking my pulse?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I wanted to know if it's fast."

"Is it?"

"Seventy-two," Seo-won said. His throat was tight. "It's perfect."

Tae-min's mouth twitched. It was almost a laugh, and then it was not.

"Seo-won-ssi, you're weird tonight."

"I'm always weird."

"No." Tae-min looked down at the fingers on his wrist and did not pull away. "You're always cold. That's different."

The rain began, thin and sideways.

Neither of them moved.

"I'll make a deal with you," Tae-min said at last, quietly, the way he spoke to people on ledges.

"I don't want to be somebody's mistake for one night."

"You wouldn't be."

"Then prove it. Saturday. Dinner. I pick the plan and you come, and you pay, and you don't take one work call."

"All right."

"Not one. I'll know."

"All right." Seo-won tightened his hand on the wrist, once, and let go. "Saturday."

Tae-min studied his face.

"If you're lying," he said, "just tell me now. I'd rather it hurt now."

"I'm not lying."

Tae-min nodded slowly and put his hands back in his pockets.

"Okay. Go home, Architect."

He turned and walked away down the wet street, and Seo-won stood under the awning and watched every step of him until the corner.

Then he took a taxi to Mangwon with his fingers still warm from another man's wrist.

On the roof, the wind pulled at the laundry rack.

He did not turn on the light.

He opened his laptop on the drafting table and logged into the Daon server.

His fingers knew the path without him.

Projects, Sangam, DT-01, Drawings, A-4-31.

The sheet opened exactly as he remembered it.

There was the east stair lobby, the long glass wall, the doors drawn thin as lace.

He had loved that drawing.

It was beautiful.

Beside the title block was his stamp, with his name in red.

Ha Seo-won, Architect, change order approved, September 29th.

He read the line again, though he knew it by heart.

The original sheet had called for fire-rated steel doors at every stair lobby.

Pyo had wanted light.

The owner had wanted light.

Seo-won had wanted to be a partner by thirty.

He had signed in four minutes, standing in the corridor, with Pyo's hand on his shoulder like a blessing.

He sat very still in the dark.

In another life, that stamp had killed a man who loved him.

The glass had held for twenty minutes, and then the stairwell had filled with smoke.

The man who put a mask on Seo-won's face had not lived to take it off.

He pulled up the calendar.

October 11th.

He counted the squares on the screen with one finger, down through the weeks to the middle of December.

"Sixty-two days," Seo-won said into the empty room.

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