Beside

The apartment is warm. Too warm.

You know why. You know exactly why. The thermostat is still set three degrees higher than you’d ever choose because Jinsoul ran cold and you ran warm and at some point you’d stopped fighting over it. She won that debacle. She won most of them, actually, except the ones she let you have so you could feel like you had a say.

You haven’t touched the dial. Can’t.

Five days since the funeral. Or four. You’ve stopped counting because counting means the number gets bigger and bigger numbers mean more distance between now and the last time she was breathing in the bed next to you and you’re not ready for distance. Not from her. Not yet.

People came. People spoke. You remember almost none of it. Someone gripped your arm hard enough to bruise and you didn’t notice until that night, standing under water you couldn’t feel, staring at the purple crescent on your bicep like it was written in a language you used to speak.

You sit up.

The bed is enormous. Which is funny, because six months ago you couldn’t fit in it. Not properly. Jinsoul slept like she was trying to absorb you. One leg thrown over yours, arm slung across your chest, her breath pooling in the dip below your collarbone. Every night. Without fail. Like if she loosened her grip even slightly you’d float off somewhere she couldn’t follow.

You’d complained about it once. Just once.

“You sleep like a koala. You know that, right?”

She hadn’t even opened her eyes. “Mm. Be a better tree then.”

You’d laughed. That useless three-in-the-morning laugh that barely qualifies as sound. Pulled her tighter anyway.

Now the mattress stretches beside you like something left behind after a flood. You put your feet on the floor and the hardwood bites cold, which doesn’t track with the thermostat cranked the way it is, but nothing about your body tracks anymore. Too warm under covers. Too cold outside of them. Starving but the thought of chewing makes your jaw lock up.

The kitchen is worse.

Her mug. Drying rack. Chipped handle, cartoon whale that looks more like a deformed potato. Second date. Street vendor in Hongdae who clearly thought it was a masterpiece.

She’d laughed so hard at the register the guy looked personally wounded.

“It’s perfect,” she’d wheezed, wiping her eyes. “It looks exactly like you before coffee.”

“It looks like a potato.”

“I know what I said.”

You fill the kettle. Two cups of water. Muscle memory, your hands moving through a routine they haven’t been told is over.

You stare at the waterline. Pour half out.

Stare again. Pour the rest.

Then you leave the kettle empty on the counter and slide down to the kitchen floor with your back against the cabinet because your legs have made an executive decision without consulting you.

That’s where it starts. The first one.

Seven months ago.

You’d come home late. Not the end-of-the-world kind of late, but late enough that dinner had gone room temperature and the candle she’d lit was a pathetic nub of wax barely clinging to the holder.

“Hey.” She didn’t look up from her book.

“Hey. I’m sorry, the meeting ran—”

“Eat first.”

You’d stood there in the doorway, briefcase still in hand, jaw working around an excuse she’d already decided she didn’t need to hear. Jinsoul turned a page.

“Microwave. Thirty seconds. Don’t kill the rice.”

So you’d eaten. She’d read. When you finally dropped onto the couch beside her she closed the book without marking the page, which meant she either didn’t care where she left off or she’d been reading the same paragraph for the last hour waiting for you.

She leaned into you. Not dramatically. Not with any preamble or production. Just shifted her weight until she was tucked under your arm, fitting into the gap between your ribs and your elbow like the space had been carved for her specifically.

“Bad one?”

“Yeah.”

“Wanna talk?”

“Not really.”

“Okay.”

That was it. The entire negotiation. No interrogation. No guilt trip about the cold food or the wasted candle or the thirty minutes she’d spent pretending she wasn’t watching the door. Just her weight against your side. Warm. Steady. Her fingers finding yours, tracing slow circles on your knuckles, the kind of idle touch that didn’t mean anything except everything.

You’d cried. Not from that day specifically but from the pile of days behind it, all the weight you’d been packing into your pockets and pretending wasn’t dragging you under. The tears came quiet. No production. Just a leak you couldn’t stop.

She didn’t speak. Shifted, pressed your head against her shoulder, worked her fingers into your hair. Held you like that in the lamplight and the hush of the apartment while your breathing did whatever it needed to do.

“You’re too good for days like this,” she’d murmured. So quiet you almost missed it. “You know that, right?”

You hadn’t answered. Her saying it was the answer.

Now.

Kitchen floor. Cabinet digging into your spine. Empty kettle catching light on the counter.

You pull your knees up. Press your forehead against them. The tears come and there’s nothing underneath. No shoulder. No fingers. No voice.

Just the thermostat humming at a temperature meant for someone who isn’t here.

You don’t remember deciding to go back to work on Tuesday. Your body just does it. Alarm at six. Shower where you stand under the water for eleven minutes without washing anything, watching the steam curl toward the ceiling like it has somewhere better to be. The suit you grab is wrinkled because ironing requires a version of you that currently doesn’t exist. You notice a small stain on the cuff. Soy sauce, probably. From the last dinner you cooked together. You wear it anyway.

The commute is strange. The train is the same train. Same route, same stops, same automated voice announcing stations in that cheerful cadence that has no business being that awake at 7 AM. But the seat next to you is empty and you keep glancing at your phone like there should be a message waiting. There always was. Some mornings it was just a single character. A heart. A sun emoji. Once, inexplicably, a picture of a pigeon she’d seen on the balcony with the caption this is you running late.

Nothing today. Nothing tomorrow. Nothing ever again from that number.

The office is wrong in a way you can’t name until you’re at your desk and it clicks. It’s the normalcy. That’s what’s wrong. Keyboards clacking. Someone’s lunch in the microwave already at 9 AM, which is a crime against decency but nobody’s ever had that conversation. Choi from accounting cackling at something on his phone. A printer jamming in the corner. The world spinning at its regular speed while yours has been lodged in amber since Sunday morning.