Page 75 of When Worlds Collide
“Hmm, because you’d be a terrible teacher.”
“I am an excellent teacher.” He grinned against my lips, and I playfully caught his bottom lip between my teeth for a moment.
“I don’t think students are supposed to be in bed with their teachers.”
He said something in Korean that I didn’t understand, but it sounded naughty.
“If you let me teach you, you’d understand exactly what I’m going to do to you now.” His voice rumbled in the way that I loved before he reached his hands up to cup my face, pulling me towards him for a toe-curling kiss. His tongue darted into my mouth and told me, wordlessly, exactly what he was going to do to me.
But, as predicted, I hadn’t learned a single word of Korean in bed that morning, so here I was, walking down a busy, freezing street in Itaewon on my way to my very first Korean language lesson. With a real, accredited language instructor.
I passed by a small office wedged in between a homeopathic pharmacy and a family-run mart. The signage on the office door made me pause.
Emigration Corp. Marriage. Fiancée Visa. Translation.
It was a bit shabby – all of the buildings and businesses around here were – which had been a surprise to me, coming from the more touristy area of Itaewon. It wasn’t the words that gave me pause, so much as the memory of the passport agent and what she’d said to me as I entered Korea and insisted I was staying with a friend.
“Your friend could always marry you.”
I pushed that thought down – way down – but it had the uneasy result of bringing to the surface the ticking clock that was always in the back of my mind. I’d been in Seoul two weeks now,and I was no closer to getting a Visa to stay here past the 90-day tourist window.
My mind flashed back to this morning, once we’d finally rolled out of bed. I’d cornered Jihoon about it in the kitchen, as he was pouring water into the coffee machine.
I’d walked up behind him, running my hand up his warm back, delighting in the softness of his skin. “Joon?”
He didn’t turn around. “Hmm?”
“I need to figure out what I’m going to do for work.”
Jihoon put the water filter jug back in the fridge, and turned around to face me, leaning casually back against the counter. I tried not to get distracted by the way his pyjama bottoms hung low on his hips.
“You know, you don’t need to work. You can apply for an extension.”
“I do need to.” My words were sharper than I intended, but I was done freeloading.
I’d come to learn, or at least suspect, that Jihoon quite liked the idea of supporting me; but I didn’t. It didn’t make sense to me. We weren’t… married, we didn’t have kids, there was no need for me to sit at home all day, playing housewife.
Plus, I was truly terrible at cleaning. I could push a vacuum round, or do the dishes, but beyond that, no one wanted that to be my full-time occupation.
“I want to work,” I tried again. “I want to find something I can be good at. And I don’t want to just be renewing a tourist Visa every other month – which I’ll eventually not be able to do, anyway.” I took a step back, needing room enough to breath.
“Unless, you don’t think I’ll be here that long?”
He frowned. “Why would you not be here long?”
I shrugged. “Not having a Visa makes leaving easier.”
Jihoon went very still. So still, it seemed even his chest stopped moving with his breaths, but maybe that was just me.
“Do you want to leave?”
“No.” I swallowed. “But that will happen, if we don’t make plans for me to stay. Right now… I’m a visitor.” I put my hands on my hips, resisting the urge to fidget.
Jihoon was silent as he regarded me, a tic working in his jaw.
“I don’t want you to leave.”
Air whooshed out of me, and I dropped my hands to my sides. “Then I need to work.”
