21. Chapter Twenty-One #3
The store is done. Or close enough to done that it doesn’t feel like a construction site anymore.
The shelves are in, sanded and painted clean white, standing in neat rows where Ryowoon bolted them to the floor.
The freezers hum along the back wall, running cool and steady after Ryowoon performed what I can only describe as mechanical surgery on their compressors.
New lighting, bright and even, replaces the flickering tubes that used to give the place the ambiance of a horror film.
The ceiling is patched, sealed, weatherproofed.
The windows have new frames. The register has been cleaned and calibrated and sits on the counter like it’s waiting for its first customer.
Even the courtyard got attention. Ryowoon repaired the wooden platform, replaced the rotten slats, oiled the surface until it gleamed warm in the afternoon sun.
Mrs. Nam’s kitchen has been scrubbed down to the tile, the old pots scoured, the pantry restocked.
It looks like a place that’s alive again. Like someone cares about it.
We haven’t talked about selling. That conversation has been sitting between us for weeks now, untouched, like a dish neither of us wants to be the first to reach for.
I’ve caught Ryowoon looking at the shelves sometimes, his head tilted, thinking about something.
Caught him measuring the wall behind the counter one afternoon with a tape measure, muttering numbers under his breath, and when I asked what he was doing he shrugged and said he was checking if a display rack would fit there.
Not a conversation about leaving. Not a plan to pack up.
But I know it’s coming. The season’s turning. The deadline we didn’t set but both feel is pressing closer. We said we’d get it cleaned up and figure it out. The first part is finished. The second part we’ve been avoiding.
I sit on it for three more days, turning the words over in my head each night while Ryowoon sleeps beside me.
Rehearsing. Scrapping what I’ve rehearsed.
Starting over. Because the last time I tried something like this, the last time I showed up with a plan that involved staying, keeping us in the same place, it blew apart so catastrophically that I spent ten years picking shrapnel out of my chest. I know it’s different now.
I know he’s different, that we both are.
But my heart still kicks against my ribs every time I open my mouth to say it and close it again.
On the fourth night I stop being a coward about it.
Ryowoon sits cross-legged on the sleeping mat after his shower, toweling off his hair, his shirt off and the ink on his arms highlighted in the lamplight.
Yuro is curled at the foot of the mat, nose tucked under his tail.
I sit down across from him and pull my knees up, and something about the way I do it, or the way my face looks, makes Ryowoon slow and then stop.
He lowers the towel, drapes it over his knee.
Looks at me with hooded brown eyes, his brow creasing just slightly. Waiting.
“I put in my resignation at the academy,” I say.
I hold his gaze and watch for the thing I’m afraid of. The flash of panic, the shuttering, for him to go cold and hollow right before he says something designed to push me away. I’m braced for it. Every muscle in my body coiled tight, ready to absorb what comes.
Ryowoon doesn’t move. His expression doesn’t change. He sits there with the towel over his knee, his wet hair dripping onto his bare shoulders, and watches my face with stillness.
I keep going before I lose my nerve.
“There’s nothing for me in Seoul. Hasn’t been for a long time, if I’m being honest with myself.” I swallow. “I’m not selling the store, Ryowoon. I’m moving back.”
His eyes flicker. A twitch at the corner, a shift in the depth of them.
“If you want to leave,” I say, make my voice calm even though my pulse is hammering, “I’ll respect that. But you’d have to sign your half of the store over to me, because I’m keeping it either way. It’s not going on the market. It’s staying.”
Silence stretches between us. The lamp buzzes faintly. Yuro’s tail thumps once against the mat in his sleep.
Ryowoon holds my eyes for a long time. Long enough for me to count my own heartbeats. Then he speaks, his voice low.
“What about your career?” He tips his head slightly. “Teaching was what you wanted. The whole reason you left in the first place.”
“Haemok has a new school,” I say. “They’ll need teachers.
I can apply there, get a position. Hire someone to run the store when I’m working.
” I’ve thought about this from every angle.
I’m not twenty-three anymore, making reckless choices because I’m lovesick.
This is something I thought well about it and considered everything that I’d be changing.
Weighed what matters against what doesn’t.
“It’s not giving anything up. It’s just doing it here instead of there. ”
Ryowoon’s jaw works. He looks down at his hands, turns his wrist so the constellation tattoo catches the light. Looks back up.
“And what about me?” he says, like he’s asking me to say the part I haven’t said yet.
I bite my lip. Feel the thud of my heart, the tightness in my throat.
Think about the last time, the college pamphlets on his desk, the way his face closed up and got cruel right before he detonated everything between us.
Think about how I’m sitting in the same position, asking the same thing in a different way, and how the fear of his answer hasn’t gotten smaller with age.
It’s just become something I’m willing to face.
“Do you want to stay?” I ask him.
Ryowoon breathes out through his nose, tips his head back. Stares at the ceiling for a few seconds. Looks back at me.
“Do you want me to?”
I look at him. At the lines of his face I’ve memorized twice over now, once in youth and once in the worn, handsome angles of adulthood.
At the scar below his jaw, the piercings in his ears, the tattoos that tell the story of our lives together.
At his eyes, brown and deep, watching me.
But not with guarded caution anymore. Just open. Waiting.
“Do you love me, Ryowoon?”
I ask so quietly I wonder if he hears it. A question I’ve held onto for over a decade, turning it over in my hands like a stone worn smooth, never daring to set it down between us because of what the answer might cost.
Ryowoon laughs.
It startles me. The sound surprised out of him too, shaking his shoulders.
He rubs a hand over his face, his eyes crinkling, and when he drops his hand his eyes are bright.
He leans forward. His palms come up to cup my face, fingers warm against my jaw, thumbs brushing my cheekbones.
He holds me there, his eyes close to mine, and the laughter fades.
“There hasn’t been a single moment of my life when I didn’t love you, Heo Seyeon.” His voice grows rough, sober. “Not a single one.”
I kiss him. Surge forward and crush my mouth to his, swallowing the last word, tasting it on his tongue.
My hands fist in his damp hair, pulling him into me, and I kiss him until my lips go numb and my lungs are screaming and I still don’t want to stop.
He grips me back just as fiercely, his arm banding around my waist, hauling me into his lap.
I go willingly, my legs wrapping around his hips, my chest flush against his, and at the foot of the mat Yuro lifts his head and huffs and relocates to the hallway, his nails clicking on the floor.
I pull back just far enough to breathe. Ryowoon’s forehead presses against mine, his breath fanning warm across my lips, his hands splayed wide across my lower back.
“Say it again,” I tell him.
His mouth curves. “I love you.”
I kiss him again, harder. Push him down onto the mat, pinning him beneath my weight.
His hands slide up my sides, pulling my shirt over my head, and I shiver as the cool air hits my skin and then his palms replace it, warm and calloused and everywhere at once.
I fumble with his pants, shoving them down his hips, feeling him grow rigid against my thigh as I grind down.
His breath hitches and his fingers dig into my hips and I roll against him, feel the groan rumble through his chest and into mine.
I reach behind me. He watches, his eyes darkening, his chest rising and falling as I work myself open on my own fingers, my free hand braced on his stomach for balance.
It stings and I gasp through it, but I don’t slow down because I need him in me.
Need to feel him fill every gap that’s been empty for too long.
“Seyeon.” His voice is sandpapery. “Let me—”
“No.” I pull my fingers out, grip his cock, slick and flushed and straining. Line him up. “I want it like this.”
I sink down and the burn splits through me, makes me grit my teeth and dig my nails into his abs.
Ryowoon’s head tips back, his throat working, the tendons in his neck standing taut as I take him in.
I don’t stop until he’s buried to the hilt and I’m sitting flush against his pelvis, both of us panting, trembling, connected so deep I can feel his pulse inside me.
I brace both hands on his chest and start to move.
Rolling my hips in tight circles that make us both groan, finding the angle that sends sparks up my spine.
Ryowoon’s hands grip my thighs, holding on, his eyes locked on my face with an expression that makes my stomach flip.
I pick up the pace, lifting and dropping, and the sound of our bodies meeting fills the small room.
His cock drags against the spot inside me that makes my vision swim and I cry out, bowing forward, my forehead dropping to his shoulder.