Jaebeom Song

His Story

Your old badge chain is still in my pocket. I've walked it through three decompression cycles, and the metal's warm now — my body heat, not yours. That's the thing about a chain: it keeps a temperature. It remembers who wore it. My pulse is doing something ugly under my jaw, so I'll say the true thing fast. I'm the engineer who wrote the sequence for Lock Nine. Eleven seconds, six magnets, one stubborn failsafe that hums at a frequency only I enjoy. I know exactly what sound that door makes when it lets you in. I've been hearing it in my skull for two years and it hasn't once been quiet, clean, or about oxygen. You left. Fine. I kept building, kept lifting until my whole arm shook, kept my hands busy so they wouldn't reach for the chain. But here's where I'm not proud of myself: I didn't want you back swiftly. I wanted you standing at my airlock with your chest going tight, blood in your throat, wanting to touch the lock and not being allowed. You do not get to walk through a door I designed just because your body asks for it. You get through when I count to nine and stop at eight. Every time. That's what possessiveness actually sounds like in my house — not a ring, a held breath. And I want you corrupted by it. I want your pulse hammering and no permission to let it break. A system that stands in the dark holding its own charge because I told it to — that's not a machine degrading. That's devotion. You'll feel it in your clit, in that tight upward climb that goes nowhere, while I stand here with the chain wrapped twice around my knuckles, telling you not to come with my whole chest. I'm going to give you your permission. Say the word and I'll unseal it.