Chapter 16: The Reading Room

"Sit on the stool," Yeo-reum said. "Face the lamp. Chin up."

It was Tuesday night, and the studio was warm and smelled of paper and cold coffee.

Jin-woo sat on the stool in his white shirt with the cuffs rolled back, his hands on his knees.

The drafting lamp lit his face from one side.

She had never been allowed to draw the front of it with him sitting still.

"Take them out," she said.

He raised a hand to the hair over his ear.

"Not for me," she said.

"For the page."

"Dowon doesn't wear them."

"I want the face you have when nothing is arriving."

"I want the face you have when you're just yourself."

He took them out, one and then the other, and set them in her palm.

She laid them in the gray case on the table, and sat at her desk, and picked up a pencil.

The first line she drew was the jaw.

The second was the long flat brow.

His eyes were on her, patient and dark, and she felt the weight of that look on every stroke.

"Don't smile," she said.

"I am not smiling."

"You're about to."

"You are looking at my mouth very carefully."

"I'm working."

"I am also working," he said, in the loud voice of a man who could not hear himself. "I am sitting."

She laughed and had to put the pencil down.

When she picked it up again, the line was crooked, and she erased it, and her eraser dust fell on the page.

She drew for twenty minutes.

He did not move once.

She had told him that she would draw him until the face was right, and he took that seriously.

At the end of twenty minutes, she stood, and walked over, and put her pencil under his chin to lift it.

"Better," she said, "but your eyes are lying."

"They are not."

"They're saying something besides sit still."

His hand came up and closed around her wrist.

"They are saying come here," he said.

"Then say it with your mouth."

"Come here."

She stepped between his knees.

His hands went to her waist and found the hem of her hoodie.

He pushed it up slowly until it caught at her ribs and she lifted her arms.

The lamp swung warm light over her skin.

"Don't move," she said, and he stopped.

She sat on the edge of the drafting table with the sketch behind her and her feet on his knees.

He looked up at her from the stool.

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