13. Chapter Thirteen #5
A few weeks in I’m at the store one afternoon, helping Mrs. Nam restock the back shelves.
She’s gotten a delivery of canned goods and dried noodle packets that need to go up, and I balance on a step stool reaching for the top shelf while she supervises from below, directing me like a military general.
“No, not there. To the left. Your other left, Seyeon.”
“Halme, I only have one left.”
“Then use it properly.”
I snort and shift the cans where she wants them, wiping sweat off my forehead with my arm. The store’s warm today, the afternoon sun beating through the windows and the old ceiling fan doing its useless best overhead. I’ve been at it for a couple hours and my shirt is sticking to my back.
Mrs. Nam shuffles off to the front counter to attend to a customer and I finish the last row, stepping down off the stool and stretching, my shoulders popping.
As I’m reaching for the next box I hear a low, throaty rumble from outside.
It gets louder, closer, then cuts to an idle right outside the store.
I wipe my hands on my jeans and walk through the store toward the open roll-down doors, squinting against the sunlight.
Ryowoon is sitting on a motorcycle.
Not just any motorcycle. A black Yamaha SR400, the model from the magazine ad he had taped above his bed for years, the one he used to stare at while I studied, the one he’d circle with a pen and leave lying around as if someone might take the hint and buy it for him.
It’s sleek and dark and beautiful under the afternoon sun, chrome reflecting the light.
Ryowoon sits astride it with both feet planted on the pavement, his jacket on, a dark tee underneath, his helmet hanging off the handlebars by its strap. He looks at me with a crooked grin already forming.
I stop in the doorway. Look at the bike. Look at him. Look at the bike again.
“What’s this?”
“What’s it look like?”
I come closer, walking around it, taking it in. My eyes trace the body, the engine, the clean lines of the tank.
“Is this yours?”
“No, I stole it.” He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, it’s mine. Bought it with my savings a couple months ago.”
I shake my head, laughing. I press the heel of my hand against my mouth but I’m grinning behind it, grinning so wide it hurts, because this idiot actually did it.
All those years of staring at that ad, all those years of talking about it while we sat on the rocks at the harbor, all those late nights when he’d flip through car and motorcycle magazines by flashlight and tell me one day, Seyeon, I’m going to ride the coast on one of these and never come back.
And here it is, real and solid and rumbling beneath him.
“You absolute lunatic.”
Ryowoon’s grin widens. He reaches behind him and holds up a second helmet, matte black, dangling it by the strap.
“Want to go for a ride?”
I shouldn’t. I still have boxes to unpack and Mrs. Nam’s going to give me grief about leaving early.
But my hand reaches for the helmet anwyay, and when I glance back through the doorway Mrs. Nam is watching us from behind the counter with her arms folded and a knowing look on her face that says go, you fool, before I change my mind.
I pull the helmet on, fumble with the chin strap, and swing my leg over the back of the bike. The seat’s narrow. My knees bracket Ryowoon’s hips and when I settle my weight the whole frame dips slightly between us. I put my hands on his sides, uncertain for a second about where to hold on.
Ryowoon glances back over his shoulder, visor up. “You’re going to want to hold on tighter than that.”
I wrap my arms around his waist, locking my hands together against his stomach over the jacket. I can feel the expansion of his ribs when he breathes.
He kicks the stand up, revs the throttle once, and we shoot forward.
My stomach drops and my arms tighten instinctively as the bike surges beneath us, the engine roaring.
The storefronts blur and then fall away as we clear the main street and hit the coastal road, and the world opens up on both sides.
The sea stretches out to our left, glittering in the late afternoon sun, and the hills roll away to our right, green and scrubby with pine.
Wind rips past my helmet, my shirt billowing against my back, flattening against my chest where I’m pressed to Ryowoon’s spine.
I don’t know the speed. I don’t look. All I know is we’re moving fast, the asphalt streaming beneath us, the yellow line eating itself up under the front tire as Ryowoon leans into the curves of the coast road.
His body shifts and I shift with it, my chest flush against his back, my chin tucked near his shoulder.
The leather of his jacket warm under my cheek, feeling the flex of his core muscles beneath my locked hands every time he adjusts his weight.
My heart hammers. Wind screams in my ears, salt air rushing over every exposed inch of skin, the vibration of the engine pulses up through the seat and into my bones.
The coastline whips past in streaks of blue and grey and green and the sun sits low and gold on the water like a coin sinking.
I close my eyes and just feel the speed, the rush, Ryowoon’s body in front of me, the road pouring away beneath us.
We ride past the harbor, past the breakwater, past the fish market and the cannery and then further, out where the road empties and the houses thin out and it’s just us and the coast and the fading light.
Ryowoon pushes the bike faster on the straight stretches and slows on the bends, smooth, confident, his hands loose and easy on the grips.
I tighten my hold every time he accelerates and he doesn’t tell me to ease up.
The sun dips below the horizon as we loop back.
The sky turns shades of violet and deep blue and the air cools and raises goosebumps on my forearms. Streetlights start to flicker on as we re-enter Haemok, the bike slowing as Ryowoon steers through the narrow streets.
My blood still sings, the rush still buzzing under my skin, my face tingling from the wind.
Ryowoon pulls to a stop outside his apartment building.
The engine cuts and the silence feels deafening after the roar of the road.
My ears ring. I unlock my hands from around his waist, flexing my stiff fingers, and swing off the back of the bike.
My legs feel wobbly when they hit the pavement, the phantom vibration of the engine still humming through my calves.
I pull off my helmet and run a hand through my hair, matted flat with sweat.
Ryowoon swings his leg over and stands, pulls his own helmet off.
I stare at him.
His hair is a mess, shoved in every direction from the helmet, sticking up at the back and plastered across his forehead.
His cheeks are flushed from the wind, the color sitting high on his cheekbones, and his eyes are bright.
Alive. He looks loose, his shoulders dropped, his mouth curved just slightly.
The restless coiled energy that he carries in his body all the time, that constant tension in his jaw and his hands, is gone.
He stands there in the dim glow of the streetlamp with his helmet tucked under his arm, windswept and flushed and bright-eyed and so completely himself that it knocks the breath out of me.
He’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.
I stand on the curb holding my helmet and looking at him and feeling as though the ground has shifted beneath my feet.
“What?” he says, catching me staring. His brow quirks.
“Nothing,” I say hoarsely. I clear my throat. “Good bike.”
He grins, pleased with himself, and hooks the helmets over the handlebars. Tips his head toward the building.
“Come on.”
We climb the stairs and Ryowoon unlocks the apartment, pushing the door open and calling out into the dark.
“Sihyung. You home?”
No answer. The apartment’s empty, Sihyung’s shoes aren’t on the rack by the door. Ryowoon kicks his own off and flips the hallway light on, tossing his jacket over the back of a chair as he heads for the kitchen.
“You hungry? Want to order something?”
I stand just inside the doorway, pulling at the collar of my shirt where it’s pasted to my skin with sweat. The ride and the heat of the afternoon and the hours at the store have left me sticky and grimy, a film of salt and dust coating my arms.
“Yeah, but maybe I should shower first.” I pluck at my shirt, grimacing. “I’m pretty gross from helping Halme, and then the ride on top of it.”
Ryowoon looks back over his shoulder from the kitchen counter, where he’s digging through a takeout menu drawer. He wrinkles his nose like he can smell me from across the room.
“Yeah, me too.” He jerks his head toward the bathroom. “Want to go together?”
It’s a simple question. We’ve been doing this since we could walk, since our mothers bathed us in the same tub, since shared locker rooms and group showers after PE with all the other boys.
My mother has photos of us as toddlers splashing each other in a plastic basin in the courtyard.
There’s never been a single second of awkwardness about it.
Ryowoon is Ryowoon and I’m me and our bodies have never been something either of us thought about in any other way.
“Sure,” I say.
The bathroom is barely big enough for the shower stall and the sink, the door that doesn’t close all the way, left ajar against the frame. Ryowoon turns the faucet and the pipes groan and rattle before the water comes on, sputtering, then steadying. Steam starts to curl.
He peels his shirt over his head and tosses it in the corner. I pull mine off too, dropping it on top of his. I undo my jeans, start pushing them down.
My gaze darts sideways.