the anatomy of love / jungri

02. 人生的节奏？（是心跳）。

02. RHYTHM OF LIFE?
(is the heartbeat.)

That night, I didn't kiss him.

After dinner, we simply stood on the roof together, for a long, long time. The sun spilled over our cheeks as we stood like that, our hands one or two centimeters apart on the railing, his shadow overlapping mine.

As I looked out into the distance below me, I thought about falling. I thought about the wind whistling against my body, the blood roaring in my ears. I thought about the fraction of a second that would pass over, my last breath of air before I would die.

But, I also thought about Jungkook. I thought about the time I first met him, and then I thought about the look in his eyes when he'd said, "Yerim, let's get married."—like an ocean without waves, infallibly peaceful, silent. I thought about growing old together, year after year, that handsome face beside me filled with wrinkles and weathered by time.

Sometime while I was thinking, Jungkook brought out red wine.

The carmine liquid swirled in a glass between my fingers as I tilted my chin to look at him. His hair fell just above his eyes; it looked unruly, at the moment, a few stray locks catching the fading sunlight as the wind tossed them in the air.

"Jungkook, have you ever thought about meeting that person?" I asked him, voice a bit ragged from being silent for so long.

I wasn't drunk—I was simply wistful, and he met my gaze, then, with a clouded curiosity in his gentle eyes.

"What person?" He questioned, a slight raise in his brow.

I watched as he leaned back against the railing, elbows propping his body at an angle. His shadow thinned as his torso elongated, legs stretched out in front of him.

"You know, the 'one'. The person that you'll love for as long as you live." I answered, licking the bitter taste of wine off of my lips. "And don't tell me it won't ever happen to you—because it will."

He chuckled, then, a low rumble that sounded in the back of his throat, and it was a while before he spoke.

"I suppose I've thought about it. Yes, I've thought about falling in love...." he trailed off a bit before shaking his head, "But, love doesn't give me what I want in life. I want stability. I want certainty, and love can't give me either of those. Even when you say that I'll love this person for the rest of my life, I don't know if I will. I don't know—Yerim, I don't like to not know."

I nodded; I understood.

As a scientist, there wasn't anything Jeon Jungkook didn't consider methodically. As if life were an experiment, he wanted to procure the best result, and in doing so, he needed to maintain control.

Love is uncontrollable. It isn't fair from the start, and the only thing you can do after giving out your heart is hope that you'll get it back one day, still alive and beating.

It was quiet, before I raised my head and laughed.

I looked him right in the eye as I told him, "I know—but Jungkook, when you do fall in love with someone...I want you to know you can leave me."

—

Han Kang's The White Book:

"Each moment is a leap forwards from the brink of an invisible cliff, where time's keen edges are constantly renewed. We lift our foot from the solid ground of all our life lived thus far, and take that perilous step out into the empty air. Not because we can claim any particular courage, but because there is no other way."