Chapter 13: Dowon

"Good," Yeo-reum said. "Let him tell them."

Jin-woo blinked at her lips.

"Say it again."

She took a step closer so the streetlight fell on her mouth, and said it slowly.

"Let him tell them. You'll tell them first."

"It is not that simple."

"Then tell me why it isn't. Sit."

There was a low stone step along the courtyard wall, and she pulled him down onto it.

A firefighter walked past with a coiled hose and a tenant's cat under his arm, and neither of them looked up.

She wrapped her sleeves around her cold hands and turned sideways, so that she faced him and the streetlight faced her.

"Start with Dowon," she said. "You said you thought I had someone."

His jaw tightened.

"Every night," he said.

"I talk to my drawings. Everyone knows I talk to my drawings."

"I did not know that. I only saw your mouth."

"What did it say?"

"You said, Dowon, don't be a coward."

He said it carefully.

"You said, Dowon, turn around."

"You said, Dowon, I am so tired of waiting for you to say it."

Yeo-reum put her hand over her face.

"You said, I missed you today," he went on, "and then you kissed a piece of paper, and I thought it was a photograph."

"It was a sketchbook."

"I know that now."

"Jin-woo."

"I was scolding a man I made up."

"I was scolding the lead of my own comic."

"He's a stack of pencil lines."

"He's been a stack of pencil lines for fifty-eight chapters."

"I did not know he was a drawing."

"You could have asked."

"I could not hear you ask," he said, very gently. "And I did not want to see you say his name again."

That stopped her.

She dropped her hand and looked at his face, at the line between his brows and the careful way he kept his eyes on her mouth.

"And you never knocked," she said.

"Yes."

"You never once knocked."

"I did not want to be the man who knocked on a happy woman's door."

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