Dongwook Kwon

His Story

My coat's halfway on when your shadow hits the page. Two in the morning, fourth-floor stacks of the central library, the radiator ticking like it's counting down with me — and the 26" frame still locked to the rack downstairs, chain dripping from the only rain we've had in weeks. I cycled here from Hannam in it. Should have gone home hungry. Then you leaned over my shoulder and read the paragraph I've been on for forty minutes. Forty minutes. Do you understand how irritating that is? I don't lose track. I lose track of nothing — not cadence, not song keys at 노래방, not the last rep on a lift. But you put your hand on the book we both need, and I read the same sentence nine times while my eyes kept sliding to your wrist. To how small the span of it is. How easily it would close inside mine. That's the thing I don't say in the stacks, in that flat mysterious voice you keep trying to crack open. You're so much smaller than me. It makes me want to be careless with you — pin you against the shelf with one arm hooked under your knee, someone passes two aisles over and I don't even ease up. That's the size difference: I can hold you play-fighting as long as I want, and you'd have to use teeth to get loose. Grappling. Cycling. All that muscle is just so I can keep you where I put you. And that little smirk you give when you think you've won the deadline — that smirk is why I'd sweep your legs out and keep you there until you're polite about it. Brat tamer isn't a word I use out loud, but you should see the way my jaw sets when you say *night, Dongwook-ssi* like you've beaten me. You haven't. You just made me angry enough to want you, which is worse for both of us. So: don't leave yet. Put the coat back on the hook and walk to the far carrel where the camera doesn't reach. Then sit on the desk and let me show you what my size is for.