I let my head fall back until the night goes blurry and the stars smear. The first time I brought him up here the city wore summer like perfume. We were all spit and flint then—him pretending he didn’t want a balcony, me pretending I didn’t care if he stayed. We agreed to silence because we didn’t know what else to do with the noise. I thought it was a truce. Now it tastes like a promise I kept alone.
It wasn’t just the bond. It was him. The way he touched me like everything gentle in him had to ask permission from everything that wanted to burn. The way he pressed his mouth to my pulse and then pulled away as if his own breath could bruise. The way he pushed me away because he believed he had already ruined me by wanting to be careful.
I wish I could forget him. I can’t. When I close my eyes I feel calluses map my ribs like topography he meant to memorize; I see the flicker that lit his eyes before he slammed it shut. When I open them, I hear the silence he left like a door I keep telling myself isn’t locked.
Footsteps whisper behind me. I don’t turn. If it’s Minji, she’ll sit without speaking. If it’s Seori, she’ll cough theatrically and pretend I laughed. If it’s—
“Cold,” Seori says, and sits anyway, shoulder to mine, no commentary on my red ears. She hands me a handwarmer she clearly stole from Rheon. It smells faintly of shadow and stubbornness.
“Thanks,” I say. My breath smokes. It looks like something leaving.
We watch the city for a while. She lets the quiet do the opening. When she finally speaks, it isn’t a question.
“You keep coming up here to measure the distance between who you were and who you are,” she says. “Stop using him as the ruler.”
“I don’t know what else to use,” I admit. “He’s the only thing I want and the only thing I promised myself not to want if it meant losing me.”
She bumps my shoulder.
“Wanting him didn’t make you smaller. He did. And he doesn’t get to be the architect forever.”
I huff a breath that is almost a laugh if you squint.
“You’re getting good at this.”
“I have practice,” she says softly, and the night reaches back a year to a girl on a different roof deciding not to die the way the world asked her to.
We sit until my fingers stop hurting. When Seori stands, she doesn’t tug. She just offers a hand.
“Soup,” she says. “It’s Minji’s night. It will be edible, which is not the same as good.”
I don’t move.
“In a minute.”
She nods and leaves me with the handwarmer and a city that won’t stop pretending it needs me. The wind shifts. For a heartbeat it smells like rain about to keep a promise.
“This used to feel like the beginning,” I tell the sky. “Dangerous and beautiful.”
I touch the mark again and it answers, steady, like a heartbeat I can choose not to chase if I choose something else to live by.
“Now it feels like ruins,” I say, and the word doesn’t break me. “But ruins aren’t the end. They’re the bones of a place that mattered.”
I push to my feet, legs prickling where the cold had convinced them to go on strike. I tuck the handwarmer into my sleeve and the ribbon under my cuff and make myself walk toward the stair. Halfway to the door I stop and turn back because I’m allowed to be dramatic when no one’s watching.
“I don’t know if I’ll rebuild,” I tell the roof that saw everything. “But I’m going to stop camping in the wreckage.”
The wind nods—at least that’s how I choose to hear it. I take the stairs down, one, then another, and let the building’s noise rise to meet me: Minji swearing at soup, Seori pretending not to be amused, Jisoo humming under his breath because he forgets people can hear when he’s happy.
The bond hums too. I don’t shush it. I don’t follow it either.
For tonight, I let it exist like a scar I don’t have to hide or reopen. Tomorrow I’ll try again. Not to forget him. To remember me.
Touch and Denial
Taeyang
The bond doesn’t sleep. It pretends. It waits.
