A night like this is meant to be shared, remembered, and talked about for years. A sky like this is meant to be kissed under.
Na Jaemin is kissing me.
My blood is roaring through my veins, and my pulse is pounding in my throat, and I can't, I won't pull away if my life depends on it, because Na Jaemin is kissing me like a starving man, like he can devour me all at once.
"Mina," he whispers against my lips, and my name is a quivering, magical incarnation; it moves, coils, swims into life with his breath, releasing and searing upon my heart in a flash of heat and light and savage joy.
The snow falls in sheets around us. His breaths are wispy clouds of white.
His lips are different, and yet so exquisitely familiar. In my head I know I've loved him before, but as he kisses me, it doesn't feel like it anymore. It is better than the first time. It feels like the first time and the last time and the only time all at once.
I love him. I have always loved him. I will always love him. It is no use fighting it, or denying it. I love him, and my heart loves him, and my mind loves him, and my body loves him. We - my heart, my mind and my body - all of us in me love him. We love him the way the water pulls back and turns over and beats against the sand, trying to wear the earth away. And even though it doesn't succeed, it pulls back and pounds the shore again and again, as if there were no last time and there is no next time and this time is the time that counts. We love him, and that's the way it is, the way it's always been. I know it, we know it, and he knows it.
The lights go off the moment we enter the house. It's a blackout, caused by the snowstorm, no doubt. I stumble a little, and he steps right up to me, and wraps his hands around my waist. I catch my breath and look up at him, my heart thumping in my chest and my skin tingling under his strong hands. He looks at me as softly as a caress.
"Careful now," he murmurs, his breath warm, feathering my face.
"You'll catch me if I fall, right?" I say, a little breathless, swaying into him, giddy and flirtatious and flush with excitement.
"Too late. I've already fallen. Hard." His voice is husky, his lips a bare whisper from mine.
"You're flirting." I say in a throaty voice. I am reckless and restless; the fever is back. I cannot stop staring at his lips.
"I can't help it." His voice is a low rasp; it crackles and charges the fissure of space between us with electricity. "You know I've always found it extremely difficult to behave as I ought to when I'm with you, Mina."
I feel lightheaded and terribly wicked and powerful. "Are you saying I bring out the worst in you?"
"The worst, in the best possible way." His words float like a dusty whisper between us. "Sit." He pushes me onto a sofa, his hands lingering on my shoulders.
Jaemin is busy searching through cupboards, and I hear the rasp of a match, smell paraffin, and see a flare in the darkness. Jaemin is standing there, an oil lamp in his hand, adjusting the wick so that the flame burns bright and clear in the little glass chimney. When it's steady, he slips a frosted-glass globe over it.
"Why would you have a lamp but not a torchlight?"
"It belongs to my mum," he grins. "I do have a torchlight, but there are no batteries. Why?" He looks at me, smiling a little, and says softly, "Are you afraid?"
"No." I toss my hair. "Why would I be afraid of you?" But my voice is trembling a little, and a thrill of excitement is running all the way down to my toes.
"I see." His voice is soft, but his eyes are on me, and the intensity in them makes me catch my breath. "I wouldn't want to scare you." We are saying things that do not mean a thing, our eyes are saying all the things that our words are not.
"Do you want something to drink? Water? Orange juice?" He is smiling crookedly.
"Orange juice."
He walks off into the kitchen.
He opens the fridge, and takes out a carton of orange juice, and pours it into a glass.
He comes back, and hands me the glass of orange juice; he watches me, as I drink it. I pass it back to him, and he drinks from it, his lips on the same spot where mine touched, his eyes on me, as he sets the empty glass on the table.
He sits down next to me. We are so close our thighs are touching.
I draw a deep breath. He's trying to rattle me. He hasn't changed a bit.
"I've got something I want to share with you."
I gulp.
"What?"
"A letter."
"What?"
He smiles kindly at me.
"Not a real letter. Not the kind you send out, but you know, the kind you make up. In your head."
"Oh. An imaginary letter."
"Yeah, an imaginary letter."
I swallow. "Why would you want to share an imaginary letter with me?"
"I want to teach you how to write an imaginary letter."
"I see." I keep my voice casual.
"It is," he purses his lips, "a love letter."
"Oh. Wow." My voice is faint.
"Are you excited about your lesson?"
"Lesson?"
"Yes, lesson." He clucks his tongue. "Focus, Miss Kim. On how to write an imaginary love letter in your head."
"Oh. Hm. No. I'm not very excited."
He scowls.
"Oh. Okay. If you must." I sigh. "Go ahead. Teach me."
He clears his voice and speaks in a tutorial manner. "The purpose of this love letter is to convey feelings one cannot say out loud. Here is your first question: Why would a gentleman be unable to declare himself openly?"
I bite my lip, as if thinking hard, and say, "Um, because he's...a mute?"
His lips twitch in an effort not to smile. "I see you passed the general and went straight to the specific. The answer, Miss Kim, is that a gentleman is unable to declare himself openly if his circumstances prevent it." He raises an eyebrow. "Are you paying attention?"
I nod.
He smirks. "Now, how do you think he should begin?"
"With her name?"
"Unimaginative." He thinks for a while, and taps his lips with his forefinger. "To my unsuspecting love."
"Wow. Cool. Much more imaginative." He narrows his eyes at me. I grin.
"And now for the essence of the letter."
I keep my eyes on him. He gazes into my eyes for a long minute, then says in a quiet voice, "The eyes are a good place to start."
Now he's going to start teasing me in earnest. I am sure of it.
"When I look into your eyes, I lose all sense of time and place. Reason robbed, clear thought erased, I am lost in the paradise I find within your gaze."
His voice is throbbing with a quiet intensity; it echoes in the darkness and the stillness.
I feel his gaze on my face - he is so close - but I do not dare look at him again. Instead, I rest my chin on my hand, curling my fingers over my cheek in an attempt to hide my blush.
"I long to touch your blushing cheek, to whisper in your ear how I adore you, how I have lost my heart to you, how I cannot bear the thought of living without you."
I am silent. I can't breathe.
"To be so near you without touching you is agony. Your blindness to my feelings is a torment, and I feel driven to the edge of madness by my love for you."
The only sound in the room is the thudding of my heart.
"Where is your compassion when I need it the most? Open your eyes, my darling, and see what is right before you: that I am a man madly, deeply, desperately, in love with you."
I am shaking. I grip my hands into fists and search for composure. Why do I feel stretched thin, so transparent and tremulous? Why does my heart gallop like a mad thing? Why do I feel I am coming undone?
I know none of the answers. I want to find something to laugh about. But his love letter is an intimate glimpse into his heart. And there is nothing to laugh about. I am dangerously close to tears.
"Do you have any questions?" His voice causes a ripple to cascade through me.
I clear my throat. "How would you sign it? Your secret admirer?" My voice sounds close to normal, which I am quite proud of.
After a pause he says, "No, that won't do."
When he speaks, his soul is in his eyes; his voice is scratchy, hoarse.
"Longing for you." He takes my hand in his, and his lips are hot on my palm. "And I would sign my name underneath. Na Jaemin."
My fingers curl over his.
Wordlessly, I stare at him.
"What do you think?" he asks, in a quiet voice. I can see the heat in his eyes. He is breathing hard, as if it is an effort to speak.
I try to breathe normally and speak normally, but there is nothing normal about this moment.
"Very - nice," I say, in an unsteady voice.