" when you see me with some other one "

*

It had all started with the drop of a tear on the open pages of a library book.

He had been the one to approach me. It had been a month since... Jae. I was at the library.

Despite what little reason I had at the moment, my fingers ended up picking out an anthology of modern Korean poetry from the shelf (it was the first time I read poetry since Sungjin gave me the paper I now kept in my pocket at all times). I had just stumbled upon the section of the book which was dedicated to love and romantic interaction. The sensation of reading about that, which I had just recently lost burned my slowly healing scars and exposed them to the world once more. The pain fell out of me in the form of tears.

A well-built man emerged from between the shelves as if appearing from thin air. "What's wrong, bebe?" he murmured once he walked over, the click of his thick-soled combat boots resounding against the floor. The silver linings and studs on his leather jacket glinted slightly as he passed beneath the ceiling light. He looked so... unreal. The glossed-sideways hair atop his head swayed towards me as he sat beside me and turned my chin so I would hold eye contact with him. His eyes were cold, colder than the granite of Sungjin's kitchen counter, and my curious fingers itched to touch his eyelids so I could find out if their actual temperature corresponded to the smooth stone's.

I sipped in a breath full of dust and the mustiness of the surrounding books. "I'm ok-okay," I managed to hiccup out through my heaving chest and ocean-trailed eyes.

His face read clearly: disbelief. "Good boys shouldn't bluff like that," he chided. His thumb stroked over my chin in a semicircle and ended the trajectory with a firm press to my bottom lip. "You must be..." His eyes flicked to the open book of poems and he smiled — a melancholy yet cruel lilt of his mouth and display of his gleaming teeth — before dragging his thumb tenderly over my lower lip. "Heartbroken."

His finger tasted strongly of iron.

I did my best to stop the tears which were streaking my cheeks with angry red lines. "Yes," I brokenly whispered out, a hush reserved only for him and for me. For us both, and no one else. "Yes..." The tears gathered in the crooks of my eyes and he caught them with his fingers as the salty droplets began to cruelly fall out, as if they were taunting me and my inability to stop them. "I— I miss him so much—" The stranger pulled me into his warm chest; the cardigan spread beneath the leather jacket soaked up my tears and my words. The pain stayed. "I— I still love him so, so much—"

The man holding me close sighed out onto my shoulder and pulled me closer still. I stumbled onto his lap as I was pulled forward out of my chair, and he held me on his heavenly thighs, and there was no one around, and it was just us... and I was on edge. But I was also... frankly, curious beyond reason.

"What— What's your name?" I asked him, clutching onto the coarse fabric of his clothing.

"Mine? Kang Younghyun. But I go by Brian. Year '93."

He was older than me, and he always would be. More mature, too, despite his sometimes forceful teasing, as I'd later learn. "Kim Wonpil," I bashfully breathed into his firm chest. "Year '94."

He'd hummed, then. Pressed buzzing lips to my neck, followed by nipping teeth I couldn't ever possibly resist. When I checked my reflection in the mirror at the library some time later, the skin was blooming with a bright red blob I knew (even back then) would turn purple with time. "Well, Kim Wonpil, '94... Meet me at the Internet cafe — noon on Saturday — if you wanna be mine."

And that's how we came to find each other.