CHAPTER 21

HAN JIHAN

      "You should stop this." 

       Jungho pulls out the cigarette between his lips and blows out a thick puff of smoke. It pollutes the air that surrounds him and dares to linger, like my eyes watching him through the white clouds of smoke. He swirls his head and locks eyes with me. 

        "Stop what? Smoking?" The tilt of his head would be cute if it wasn't for him manspreading beside me with a cigarette held loosely in his fingers and the cocky lopsided grin that tugs at the corner of his lips. 

          "No." I breathe. 

          "Then?" He asks, Adam's apple bobs down in a gulp he takes. He desperately takes the cigarette back between his lips and sucks at it.  Inhaling a deep lungs-burning breath all while his eyes hold mine. 

          "You should stop coming here." I force the words out. They protest and threaten to choke me, they cling to my tongue and make my mouth go dry. But still, I manage to push it out.  

           "Why?" His voice, it's no more than a whisper. He looks taken aback by my insistence. I allow a sigh to leave my lips as I cut my eyes up ahead. Why- it's a useless question to ask. Because he knows exactly why. The answer to it is everywhere. Even in this silent air, it's a minuscule presence. 

           "That's my thing to ask. Why?" My gaze travels back to his yale blue eyes glistening in the dark. Moonlight illuminates the soft and sharp sculpture of his face. My eyes travel to the slope of his nose to the plush of his lips. Where my fingertips are itching to touch. My breath is stuck in my throat and I can't go on with what I am yet to say. 

            The knot in my throat doesn't go down even after I force a gulp as my eyes go back to his. "You don't want to be here. That's clear as day then what's the need for this drama?" I utter, my voice is low. We don't want it high, don't want it furry and aggressive. Even my bite-backs have no heat when it hits his core. 

            "Drama?" He asks, his forehead creases, lips go between his teeth, and runs a hand through his hair. It cuts through the unruly yale blue locks and prevents them from falling on and hiding his same blue eyes. It got longer through the weeks. It only reached his eyebrows when I first saw him. His hair was slicked back perfectly (Which was disheveled by the time they returned.)  and the look of  Nobel, I can still see him in the back of my head and can feel him in my skin. He was unknown to me then. Someone I don't dare to wish for. 

             And now, the same man sits beside me, smoking on my rooftop. Tugging at the undone threads of resistance in my heart. I wonder when did I allow myself to forget that he was not for someone like me.

           "Why are you looking at me like that?"

           I blink, "Huh, nothing." The invisible hands of the night drag my eyes to its magnificent darkness and save me from his searching blue orbs. 

           "Don't worry, I'll be heading back before the sun even rises. Maybe, I'll go when your parents are asleep?" 

           "That's. . . ridiculous." A laugh stumbles out of my mouth at his rumbling. But it's really ridiculous for him to leave without seeing my parents and telling them goodbye. That will drag them down, and I don't want that. 

           "Anyway, you can't leave now. If you want to leave you should have, before letting them know you came to stay, Jungho." The words burn my tongue. They stay in the air and remind me of his lie constantly. 

           "I still can't place why you had to lie there." My hands hold on my legs and I draw my knees close to my chest. A breeze comes and touches my cold body through the warmth of the silk, running goosebumps down my neck and face. I bend my spine and rest my head on my knee whispering a 'why' into the silk pants. 

           "It wasn't a lie." 

           "Wasn't it?" I turn my head on my knees and find him staring down at me. 

            Oh my, good-looking boy. . .

            "No." Cigarette smoke fumbles out of his pretty mouth with the whisper of his utterance. As if he read my mind and the rising question in it he says, "I really came to stay." 

            "Why would you when all this is only some kind of arrangement for you? You came clean at the meadow Jungho." My eyebrows scrunch and my heart collides with my ribs. It's bad. 

            "That's where I lied, Jihan." His eyes can't leave me just the way mine can't abandon him. He mashes the dying-down cigar on the roof, tosses it away with a twist of his wrist, and rises from where he sat two feet away from me, taking a quick stride toward me. 

            A sudden jolt passes through my veins and my thigh tingles when it touches Jungho's. All the hair on my body decides to stand and acknowledge the presence of something new. My jaws clamp when his butt touches the spot just beside me. 

           "I didn't mean a single word I had said. I was- outrageous? I know, Jih." He ruffles the back of his head with a painfully clenching jaw, and my hands ache to reach and hold it in them, to graze the stubbles that glisten under the moonlight with my fingertips.

              How's it possible to grow dark beards when he got blue for his hair? 

             And I also want to smooth out the crease on his forehead when he turns and faces me. 

           "I'm sorry." He blows out a sigh into the night, this time no cloud of white smoke leaves his parted pink lips. 

          "I really am…" His whisper is fragile and defeated. I don't know why, but I reach and take his hand resting on his lap in mine, squeeze it and utter "It's okay." And I mean it. 

            Because his eyes are the pathway of his heart and I see the truth.