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It is almost midnight.
Yeonhee yawns, one hand stretching over her mouth like a parachute.
“I think I might go to sleep,” she says softly.
“Don’t,” Juri says, just as soft. The lights are off, the curtains drawn, the world silent. Juri’s eyes are white-hot specks in the darkness. “Don’t.”
Yeonhee feels the heat of Juri’s hand edging closer over the bedsheets. She takes it, running her thumb over the swell of a knuckle. She doesn’t let go.
The universe is apartments, streetlamps, and them. They splash through puddles of light like children, and vanish like ghosts in the intermittent blackness.
“Where are we going, even?” Yeonhee giggles. Juri’s hand is pulling her arm taut, and forwards.
Juri looks back, grinning. “Out.”
It’s true. Home is far behind them now, small enough for Yeonhee to pinch between her fingers.
“Bang,” she says, crushing it.
Juri laughs. For a moment it really seems like it’s gone.
There is a crumbling building on the brink of the city. A staircase twists up one side like a ribbon, black and wiry.
“Let’s go up!” Juri says, because of course she does.
She tries the door. Unlocked, because of course it is: it was Juri’s hand on the knob.
Each step further off the ground groans in warning, drives their smiles further into delirium. The last stair joins to the roof. When they reach it, the wind sends their hair flying backwards, makes Yeonhee close her eyes and deeply inhale.
The city lights beneath them are like a billion frozen fireflies.
“We’re so high,” Yeonhee breathes.
“Yeah,” Juri whispers. “Let’s never come down.”
Never lasts half an hour. It is enough.
Some shops are still open, some strangers still restless. Traffic drifts past in the background. Yeonhee looks up: glowing street signs cut through the sky, a fleet of colorful spaceships.
A nearby light washes her arm turquoise. She feels Juri’s finger trace its silhouette, softly, carefully.
“Can you feel it?” Juri asks, eyes twinkling. “The light?”
“Mm,” Yeonhee hums. There is something cosmic in how it envelops them both, cloaks Juri’s finger and Yeonhee’s arm in the same city shine. “It’s like…the milky way.”
Juri’s laugh is full of magic. “What does that even mean?”
Streets open to plazas. The crowd swells. Footsteps and voices come together like an orchestra just for them. They move through it together, hands clasped, dancing around obstacles to a rhythm of their own.
For a flash of a moment Yeonhee meets a stranger’s eyes. They have depth, she sees—that same hint of darkness, that same human gleam.
Smiling slightly, she lets her body get lost in the ocean of people, in the ocean of scenes, in the warmth of Juri’s grip.
In the middle of an empty park is an empty pagoda. Yeonhee’s phone has been discarded on the table, playing familiar music up and into the atmosphere.
Juri sways to the beat like an apparition, half in shadow. Yeonhee mirrors her, locking their fingers loosely in between.
“Here, come closer,” Juri murmurs, and Yeonhee does. Now she can make out the curves of Juri’s face, the piercing softness of her gaze. “Put your hands on my hips.” Her words are laws of motion. Yeonhee’s body complies. She can feel Juri’s breath on her cheeks, warm and real. “Then…”
It is Yeonhee who closes the gap. She sees Juri’s blink of surprise and ignores it. Yeonhee kisses her like she’s out of breath, like she’s drowning, like she’s trying to taste Juri’s heart on her tongue.
Don’t do this, she tells herself in between gasps. Not so desperately. Not like it’s the last time. Not like it’s goodbye.
But she can’t stop.
Juri breaks away. “Yeonhee.” Her voice is low and uneven, her head down, her eyes shrouded in darkness. “Can’t we just—disappear? Like this? Into the night, and all?”
Yeonhee shuts her eyes, letting her forehead rest against Juri’s hair. She says nothing.
Under the night sky and the invisible stars, the only sound is the music from the tinny speakers of Yeonhee’s phone.
Dawn finds them huddled on a bench by the sea, one earphone per person, the world blocked out by half.
Yeonhee watches the waves wobble beneath the skyline. The boats have woken up again. She wonders where they’re going.
Juri’s hand tightens from its place in Yeonhee’s lap. Yeonhee squeezes back, almost reassuring, and turns.
You know I’m in your hand always, she’s about to say, then doesn’t—Juri’s eyes are already closed, her breath already even, her night already given way to the past.