Deal with Him | Lee Heeseung

15-A sinful finale

Don't we only want something to last forever when it is nearly over? Eternity is a hypocritical illusion.

Would it be sweet if we tasted the time? Bite the clock? But beware--the debris of what was and will never be again may get stuck in your teeth, rooting on pendulum motions.

The last day of a past has come: that one dreadful November evening of re-welcoming reality.

Her bed is softer than usual, and herself quieter.

Mei has her hair spread like a tapestry on the sky-blue pillow of her bed and Heeseung's hands, like a prison on her side. Hands frosty, he brushes her waist as she sits, quiet and almost immured.

A chamber of silence and lush of growing present are the only visitors of her home, which, for that year, was his, too. Her hands between her thighs, his lips on hers, and he's breathing and whispering and crumbling her senses more with each passing second as they get infected by dusk light.

Mei gazes vacantly into the black eyes that were never so sky-like; she looks and explores a part of him she never did before, a part of him resembling cosmos-an outer space enigma.

And her eyes are half closed, or maybe they are just observing, dreaming, or travelling and photographing. But they look half closed. The bridge of her nose is just angled so very kindly that when she slightly stirs, it brushes against his and it tingles and feels like electricity running through wires.

She stares, alike him. The air seems to dissolve, and singularity of two bodies has never felt so intimate and hurtful. He scoots closer. She stills and keeps watching.

As November approached and the tourist wind carried nostalgia with it, leaves fell from the branches and clung to her window wordlessly. They are dead. Death, numbness of soul and one-hundred-eighty on life.

What happens now? She asked a million times in her head. What happens now when she is not herself? When she is not alone? She knew nothing but individuality. 'And all I loved-I loved alone.' Alone. So, now what happens?

Her answers are nowhere, but for a minute and two heartbeats, she forgets and leans into the additional warmth of his chest.

If only air could taste this warm and breathing would be so comforting. Her hands are burning. Hot and unwonted, they touch his face and that space below his lips that looks like it's filled with shadow, and if she were to paint it, it would take a million years because such ideals can't be captured by paper and colour.

But she doesn't paint it-she looks at it and seems to listen. No, those are his lips. They cast whispers that don't pass her ears, but she listens, somewhere distantly, and swears she sees the words.

Yes, they are sweet and only add honey when he calls softly, through the pauses, "Love."

She retreats but keeps staring in silence. Mei is Mei. And he knows and smiles and pinches that delicate nose and then laughs.

Same she, same ice. Yes, he knows, but he still says he will miss her.

His thumbs near the deep, blue eye bags that never go away, but that he loves and caresses. Both hands on her jaw; both sets of eyes absorbed. He tells her again what she doesn't want to hear, and then his eyes close first and his arms pull her in.

She sits awake, lucid and contemplating. How disastrous a fate. She could have loved alone. "But there was nothing to love until that night."

...

"When?" Mei inquires, her gaze falling to her wristwatch with the lavender leather strap. The hour hand stands dead and waiting, while the minute hand derisively paces 'tic, tic, tic', parting with the second hand that passes the seconds, like it just can't wait for the sand in the hourglass to run out, to see the end of what is no more.