Chapter 24: Both Sides of the Panel

The first thing Yeo-reum knew was light on her eyelids, and a warm weight along her whole back.

It was Saturday morning, and the balcony door stood open to the pale blue of early day.

Jin-woo's low gray bed sat beside her drafting table, where the two of them had pushed it together the night before.

His arm lay heavy and sure across her waist.

She lay still and listened to his breath on her neck.

He slept on his right side with the aids on the shelf, the way he always did, with his mouth near her ear.

She turned over carefully, until she was facing him.

His face on the pillow was young and bare, and the black hair had fallen away from both ears.

He looked like the drawing, and he looked like nobody but himself.

She watched him for a long minute, with no pencil in her hand.

Then she laid her palm flat on his chest.

His heart went on under it, slow and strong.

Slowly, she kissed his shoulder, on the faded blue crescent, and then the line of his collarbone, and then his throat.

He stirred.

His hand moved on her hip.

His eyes opened without focus and found her face, and the corners of his mouth began to lift before he had read anything.

"Good morning," she said.

She made it large and slow, so he could take it from her lips.

He looked at her mouth.

"Say it again," he said, thick with sleep, too loud, and delighted.

"Good morning."

"I read it."

"I know you did."

"I read it without them," he said. "In the morning, with no machine. You said it, and I saw it."

"What else did you see?"

"Everything."

She laughed, and pushed him onto his back, and climbed over him.

The quilt slid off.

The sun came in low.

It lay across the bed, over his chest and the long stretch of his stomach and her own round thighs on either side of him.

"I want to see you," she said.

"You are seeing me."

"No hurry today. Nowhere to be."

"No," he agreed, and his hands came up, warm and slow, to her waist.

She bent and kissed him, and the kiss was deep and lazy and tasted of sleep.

His hands slid up over her ribs and held her, and she sighed into his mouth.

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