11
South City. The summers were long, hot, and humid.
In the summer of my sophomore year, I met Cole.
I was working at a tutoring center downstairs, and he was a print model upstairs.
We knew of each other but never said hello. After all, how well can you know someone you haven’t spoken to in three years?
For him to come back to the school, he had to cross the entire city. A three–and–a–half–hour bus ride.
And was renting a temporary room nearby.
On the hottest night of the summer, a typhoon was coming.
Chapter 2
On the hottest night of the summer, a typhoon was coming.
I was the last one to lock up.
5 2 2 8
I saw a group of people from upstairs pass by, laughing and talking.
Cole had grown taller. He was conspicuous even at the back of the group.
He never once looked at me.
By the time I got to the elevator, they were already gone.
It was empty.
Actually, a simple hello would have been fine. We were alumni, after all.
I went downstairs with my backpack.
On the night a typhoon comes, it doesn’t rain. The sky, which should have been inky black, was stained a deep, unusual pink.
And Cole was standing there.
2019
Wearing an oversized black hoodie, his bangs hanging obediently. His eyes were unguarded. In the light of the entryway, they held the clarity of a
summer night.
Like a lost puppy.
“Senior, the buses have stopped running.”
That night, I took him back to the single room I had rented for eight hundred a month.
The bed was pitifully small.
Later, when he stood on the stage of the highest awards ceremony, hailed as a genius actor, adored by the masses, I was still in that rental apar-
tment, eating instant noodles.
Only one thought crossed my mind.
His first time, at eighteen, was on my tiny bed.
He really had it rough.
I didn’t understand.
Many media outlets described him as rebellious, untamable, with a talent that bordered on arrogant fearlessness.
But in my memory, during that summer, he was always obedient.
ཅ ཆ ཚ ཚ ཚ
He was a good boy.
He did all the chores, cooked all the meals.
He always called me “Senior.”
Only in bed.
He was mischievous, calling my name in a different tone: “Chloe Taylor.”
Crossing the line.
He wouldn’t listen to anything I said.
Later, I understood what they meant by his talent being all in his acting.
And that the modeling agency upstairs, where I worked, didn’t exist.
Three and a half hours.
Just to catch a glimpse of me, again and again.
To see me home safely.
Cupter
To see me home safely.
Once was not enough. It had to be a thousand, thousand times.12
Ashton wasn’t angry.
It was as if all his emotions had been sucked out of him. In a few seconds, he accepted a fact.
His first love was not me.
It was a man who looked seventy percent like him.
A man who had won an award at nineteen that Ashton coveted but could never get.
From the day he debuted, he had been seen as his replacement.
Ashton crumpled the paper in his hand and said nothing more.
“So what?” he sneered. “It was centuries ago. What does it represent?”
He turned to leave, not looking at me once.
But as he reached the door, he collapsed.
Ashton, just as his manager had wished, had a miserable episode.
Everyone thought he had been hospitalized for a broken heart.
It trended instantly.
When Ashton woke up, I was packing my things in the hotel.
He looked around. Vera was by his side, but he didn’t see me.
“Where’s my wife?” he asked Vera.
Vera, trembling with anger, slapped him several times.
The show was suspended, postponed indefinitely.
SES ŏ
Vera came to see me once.
