Page 37 of Damian & Jun: Episodes 1-4
He lay down and closed his eyes. His last waking thought was that he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to sleep in such a strange situation.
He woke with a jerk to a tail on his face. There was a weight on his neck and shoulder. Someone laughed, and he pried one eye open against the light shining directly through the apartment window into the loft. A cat-size creature stepped on his head and then off. A lashing tail hit him across the lips just as he tried to raise his head.
“BoBo, don’t whip JunJun.”
“Ugh.” Jun dropped his face back down on the mattress. Somehow, he’d pushed the pillow away during the night and was sleeping flat on his stomach, his arms cradling his head. “What time is it?”
“About one—in the afternoon. You should check the app.” She thrust her phone at him.
He pushed up on his hands and knees and sat cross-legged, cradling the phone in his hands. Rough numbers in his head pinpointed Damian as somewhere over the eastern half of the Pacific Ocean if not closer. It was at least a fourteen-and-a-half-hour flight direct, but Damian had had to fly to LAX and take a flight from there to Incheon. Otherwise, he would have had to wait till the next day.
It seemed like everything between the US and Seoul went through LAX these days.
He flicked open the app and checked. Damian had Wi-Fi on the plane and had left him an update an hour before.
Damian:
Jun curled up in a ball, elbows pressed to the mattress next to his knees, and typed back.
“Damn, you’re flexible.”
Jun craned his neck up. Mi Hi twisted her lips to the side and nodded at his posture. “I can’t do that.”
“I’m a dancer?” Jun offered. They’d been over this yesterday, hadn’t they?
“I know. I know. I’ve seen your videos. You’re like crazy flexible. It’s just…seeing it like this is different.”
Awkward. While so many people knew of him, he wasn’t a real person to most of them.
He pushed his lips together and shrugged.
“Well. You can hang out here or come down to the main floor. I’m going to run out and get stuff for breakfast.”
BoBo wandered back and flopped against Jun’s face, purring.
“I think BoBo has spoken.” Mi Hi knee-walked out of the bed and grabbed clothes. “Take care of each other, boys. I’ll be back.”
“Do you need your phone?”
“Is your man texting you?”
“Yeah.”
“Keep it.” Mi Hi disappeared down the stairs.
Jun crouched on his elbow so he could use his hands to pet BoBo. He didn’t know what the next day held, or even the next twenty-four hours, but here, right now, texting Damian and petting a cat felt pretty good.
The app pinged. Still on the plane. Three more hours to go. We’re working on retrieving your passport. We have to decide how to retrieve you next.
Jun puffed out his cheeks and texted back with his thumb:
The little typing dots bounced up and down. BoBo purred. Jun rocked back and forth, his butt in the air.
Eventually, Damian’s answer arrived:
Jun sucked in a big breath, staring at the screen. BoBo lifted his head and pawed at Jun’s hand. Pet me. The rest of the world doesn’t matter. PET ME!
Jun’s left hand picked up the motion over BoBo’s back. He texted with the thumb of his right hand.
