Page 100 of A World Apart
After the prescribed thirty seconds of holding pressure against the tattoo, I swiped the cloth downwards to remove the now-slick paper, leaving behind the transfer of the swallow.
“Is it okay?” Jihoon asked, flexing his shoulders, giving the appearance of a swallow in flight.
“It looks good,” I admitted, putting my hands on my hips, admiring the image.
“I want to see,” he whined, trying to stretch his neck over his shoulder and half-spinning around in the process, like a puppy trying to chase its tail. I doubled up, holding onto the counter for support as I belly laughed. The duality of this man, I swear. One minute he is pant-meltingly seductive, the next he is a complete clown.
Jihoon stopped spinning and pinned me with a heart-stopping smoulder, crowding into my space until I was backed up against the kitchen island.
I gulped as I looked up at him.
“Something funny, jagiya?”he rumbled, pressing his hips into mine as he caged me in with his arms on either side of my body.
I could only shake my head. His eyes seemed to hold me as firmly as his body, and we just stood there, unmoving for several moments until a smile broke across his face, erasing all the smouldering embers of just a moment ago, and I knew I’d been played like a fiddle at a country wedding.
“You…” I trailed off in exasperation, lightly smacking his chest, which only seemed to make him laugh harder as he moved to dodge me.
“I like having this effect on you. I just hope you like my brain as much as you like my body.”
I rolled my eyes, but then turned away from him to hide my grin before I pulled my t-shirt off over my head. I turned back around, looking up at him from underneath my lashes.
Jihoon stopped laughing. He raked his eyes up and down my bared skin, his face growing more flushed with each passing second.
“Do me.” I all-but purred at him.
He choked; literally choked on an inhale and I had to thump him on the back several times before he could wheeze out, “Gwaenchana, I’m fine.”
“I just hope you like my brain as much as you like my body.” I repeated his words back at him sympathetically as tears streamed down his face.
An hour later we were floating in the pool, our new temporary tattoos proudly adorning our skin. I’d chosen to place mine on the inside of my right forearm, since no one I knew would care if I had ink on display, temporary or not. I couldn’t stop looking at it though, it seemed so perfect.
“Do you think you’ll ever get a tattoo in a place people can see?” I lazily waved my arms trying to keep myself from floating into the edge of the pool.
“Mmm,” Jihoon hummed before he answered, “I want to, but it’s a lot of hassle.
“When Sungmin got his, the managers were so mad.”
I almost rolled over in surprise and had to quickly get my legs under me.
“Lee has a tattoo?” I spluttered. I still didn’t feel comfortable using their given names. It made them like real people − which they were − just not to me, so I mostly used their stage names when we spoke about them.
“Yes, he has a tattoo of the moon on his hip,” Jihoon replied, tapping his hip bone.
I let my legs float back to the surface to resume my carefree passage around the pool.
“Did you get in trouble for the feather?” I asked, remembering the way he’d pulled up his shirt to show me, that day we’d had breakfast in his hotel room.
Jihoon made a humming sound. “They were not happy, but by that time, it was too late.”
I thought about this while I watched the clouds overhead. His body was so regulated, from his weight, to his hair colour. He kept reassuring me they all had so many more freedoms now, so how strict must it have been when they were trainees?
“Will you get more?” he asked, shaking me out of my reverie as he swirled his hands near to me.
“I kept meaning to,” I said thoughtfully. “But every time I thought about it, something would come up that stopped me.”
“Like what?”
“Uni work, no money, the annual blood-drive on campus. Just life things.” I shrugged, not easy to do while partially suspended in water.
