Relapse

The apartment smells like citrus and sleep and someone who's been breathing against your chest for the last six hours.

That shouldn't be remarkable. People sleep next to people all the time. But you spent a year on a rooftop that smelled like tar and concrete and the slow accumulation of every bad decision you ever made, and the distance between that and this — her shampoo, her candle, the warmth of a room someone actually lives in — is the kind of distance you measure in who you used to be.

She drools.

Not a lot. Just enough that there's a small wet patch on your t-shirt where her mouth has been pressed for the last however many hours, and her lips are parted in a way that would be unflattering on anyone who isn't her, and a strand of hair is stuck to her cheek with what you're generously choosing to call condensation.

She would be mortified. If she knew you were watching — really watching, the way she watches everything — she'd shove your shoulder and call you a menace and probably check her phone camera to confirm she doesn't, in fact, drool, and then she'd find photographic evidence to the contrary and delete it before you could see.

But she's asleep. And you've been awake since 3 AM.

The phone is on the coffee table. Face down. The screen went dark hours ago but the messages haven't.

Rei

My father didn't make it. Three weeks ago. I'm back in Seoul.

I know I have no right to text you. I'm texting you anyway.

Read: 3:12AM

You've read them eleven times. Your brain does this thing where it circles back to data points it can't categorize, runs them through the same filters, gets the same output, and runs them again. The messages don't change. The weight of them doesn't either.

Yujin's hand is on your stomach. Her fingers are curled into the fabric of your shirt, loose, the unconscious grip of someone who holds things in her sleep. Pillows, blankets, the edge of the duvet, your shirt. Always something. Like her body needs to anchor itself to the room even when her mind has left it.

The lamp is off. The city is doing its pre-dawn thing outside the window — that grey-blue wash where the streetlights are still on but the sky is starting to compete. Her apartment smells like the cold remnants of last night's dinner and citrus candle and her, and you're lying in the middle of all of it with a woman sleeping on your chest and a dead man's daughter in your phone.

The light changes. The grey-blue becomes grey-gold. Daylight, coming whether you're ready for it or not. She stirs.

You know her waking sequence by now. It's not gradual — it's a switch. Eyes open, two blinks, and she's online. Fully operational in about four seconds, like a system booting up with no loading screen.

"Hi," she says into your chest. Her voice is rough with sleep.

"Hi."

She lifts her head. Sees the wet patch on your shirt. Her face cycles through recognition, horror, and denial in about half a second.

"That's not — I don't — that was already there."

"It wasn't."

"You sweated."

"Onto my own chest?"

"It's been warm." She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and shoves your shoulder — light, reflexive, the way she shoves everything she's embarrassed about. "One word about this and I'm deleting you."

"Deleting me from what?"

"Everything. The wall. My contacts. My brain. Gone." She pushes herself up, straddling your waist, and her hair is a disaster and the shirt she stole from you hangs off one shoulder and she's squinting at you through the morning light with an expression that's trying very hard to be threatening and is achieving something closer to a disgruntled puppy.

She drops forward. Kisses your cheeks. Then the corner of your mouth. Then your mouth, soft and unhurried and tasting like sleep.

"Morning," she mumbles against your lips.

"You already said hi."

"That was hi. This is morning. They're different." She traces a line down your nose with her fingertip. "Hi is acknowledgment. Morning is affection. Keep up."

She kisses you again. Longer. Her weight settles onto you and her fingers find the hem of your shirt and trace idle patterns on your stomach while her mouth stays on yours, lazy and warm.

She pulls back. Her palm is flat on your chest, feeling your heartbeat, and she's looking at you with the half-awake softness she only has in the first five minutes of the day, before the brightness kicks in and the energy ramps up and she becomes the full-beam version of herself.

Her eyes narrow. Just slightly. The photographer's scan — fast, intuitive, the thing she does when something in the frame has shifted and she can't name it yet.

"You're awake," she says.

"Usually am."

"No. You've been awake. For a while." She presses her palm harder against your chest, like she's reading the heartbeat for timestamps. "Your eyes do this thing when you haven't slept. They get — sharper. More still. Like they're compensating."

"That's not a thing."

"It's a thing. I've seen it three times. This is the fourth." She doesn't push. Just stores it. Taps your chest once with her finger, a small punctuation mark, and rolls off.

She pads toward the bathroom. "Shower," she calls over her shoulder. "I smell like sleep and dried mango and you, and one of those needs to be fixed before I'm a functioning person."

The water runs. You hear her hiss — she always gets in before it's warm — and then the sigh when it adjusts. The bathroom door is open. An invitation she doesn't have to make explicit anymore.

You don't follow her. You sit on the edge of the couch and pick up the phone.

The messages are still there. You read them a twelfth time. Then you type.

You

Can we meet? I have some time today.

The reply is immediate. Like she's been holding the phone since last night.

Rei