***
It was probably around noon, the sun high in the sky. Restless energy pooled in my veins, so much so that I broke into a half-walk, half-trot through the woods. I wasn’t really looking for mushrooms, more just trying to clear my head.
I hadn’t been off my meds in so long that I only kinda remembered how it felt. The psychiatrists and therapists that I had seen had always assumed that I would never go off my medication, and so I was never taught coping mechanisms. All I knew was that I turned into this grasping, possessive person who was so obsessively attached to people.
Maybe, I thought, not having much hope, me being older would stop me from going full crazy, maybe I would just be half-crazy. I would warn the boys tonight, and we would make a plan to stop me from bothering them as much as possible. I could cook outside and sleep in shifts. Maybe they could build a lean-to for me like they were building one for the sheep. With the start of a plan in my head, I immediately felt better. I felt so much better that I actually started looking for mushrooms…and stopped looking where I was going.
“Ooof!” I exclaimed as I hit something hard, but instead of falling to the ground, warm hands caught me, and a friendly face smiled down on me.
“Naekkeo,there you are! Etto said you had gone this way. He was worried, so I came to check on you and help carry the mushrooms. May I walk with you?”
“Sure,” I said absentmindedly, and off we went, my arm looped in his.
“Etto says that you don’t want to talk about what happened last night. Is that right?"
I looked high up into the branches of pine trees and breathed in a large lungful of the sea air.
“Yeah, it was just a lot, and I’m feeling out of sorts, so I’d rather talk about it later.”
“That makes complete sense. We can speak of other things.”
There was not an inconsiderable layer of pine needles on the ground, most likely not even from this year, or not entirely. They were the result of year after year after year of pine needles falling and accumulating here on this island, where everything was left untouched. Most things in the world were connected, by phone, by plane, by someone knowing you on the street and calling out. Here on the island, it was almost like we were on the moon.
“Did you ever tell him?” The words tripped off my tongue, as if they had been waiting for the right moment to escape.
“Tell him what?” Jin Woo replied, smiling down at me.
“That you love him? That was your big juicy secret, wasn’t it?” My words petering out. Maybe it was rude to bring up what someone who had been drowning and delirious with hypothermia had said. I didn’t quite know the etiquette.
Instead of looking offended, his smile grew larger. It seemed that our natural state as a pair was me being afraid of offending him, and him thinking the whole thing was hilarious.
“Yes, I told him. We’ve figured out quite a few things about our relationship here on the island. I told Ettore that maybe that’s why we were shipwrecked here, and he responded, ‘No, it was the fucking waves and the shitty volcano.”
If there were any birds in the trees close to us, my barking laugh would have scared all of them away.
“That does sound like him!”
I worked hard not to hold on tighter to Jin Woo, and looked around as if I was taking in the sights on a busy street in New York City, instead of mostly barren woods on a deserted island.
“So, no need to continue the experiment, right?”
Me? I didn’t care; I was a cool, chill, normal girl. Me? Obsessive? Pshaw!
Instead of his arm loosening and dropping mine, his tightened on me, and we took a hard right until we were in a little thicket of trees, my back against a pine.
“We told you that you were...additive, no? Not a replacement for something in our relationship?”
Jin Woo came off so easygoing that I had forgotten howlargehe was. He could rest his chin on my head; instead, he had one arm on the tree behind me and his face close to mine.
“Yes,” I breathed. I was impressed I could even do that. He was just so much, his dark eyes burning.
“Will you remember that? Will you be a good girl?”
My lip flicked out and wet my lips, and his eyes followed. I was starving and thirsty all at once.
“Yeah,” I croaked.
“Good girl,” and then he was kissing me, his hands cradling my head as he kissed me like he was drowning and I was air. I was carried away and in the current, gladly being devoured by him. I nipped his lower lip half-accidentally, and he moaned into my mouth, so animalistically that I automatically tried to clench my legs together, but I couldn’t when he was between them, hard and strong.
