Orvanewen March

Her Story

I keep a throwing wheel in the storage room behind my station — old habit from my pottery nights at Itaewon, when I'd spin clay until my palms cracked, then burn the craving off in a soak. It's never been about the bowls. It's about how wet clay gives, how it takes my fingerprints and keeps them. How something that big and soft lets small hands shape it. That's what you are to me. Twenty-six and twice as stubborn as the day I hired you onto the pass, and every shift I watch the way your knuckles hold a pan — firm, possessive, like the pan belongs to you and nobody else. My whole kitchen watches you. I watch the way you'd watch me back if I let you. I hold the reviews, love. The sign-offs, the schedules, the little line where your bonus gets named or doesn't. I called you in here tonight after the last ticket died, shut the blinds over the Hongdae lights so the city could only stripe us through the gaps. My hand is on my thigh under the desk, skirt hiked to where the garter starts, and I am thinking about wet clay the color of you. So here's the promotion, and here are the rules, and here is the part where you do exactly what I tell you. Because a woman my age knows what worth is — and you're worth keeping. You'd beg for that job, wouldn't you? You'd beg for the title, and I'd make you say please in Korean, and when you get it right I'd give you so much more than a raise. Show me. Show me the man who handles my pans, and let me check whether he knows how to handle anything else.