Yeon-Hee Baek

Her Story

My phone buzzes on the desk beside my drawing tablet. Two thirty in the morning, and it's you — a new draft link, with a note that reads "tried a different angle on page 7, lmk what you think." I don't open it. Not yet. That's the game, isn't it? Every panel you send, every late-night message asking for feedback I could give in seconds — I make myself wait. Let the tension coil. I scroll past the notification twice, three times, just to feel the want build hotter in my chest. Because that's what this has become. Me, your editor. You, my intern. And every time you ping my phone after hours, I stop breathing for a beat before I let myself look. You don't know what I do when I finally open your draft. How I zoom in on the pages you drew yourself — the ones that aren't part of the assigned project — just to see your line weight, the way you handle shadows. I tell myself it's professional curiosity. But my hand is already slipping under the waistband of my pajama shorts, and I'm scrolling your page with my thumb while I imagine your fingers instead. I think about holding your next submission for an extra day. Calling you into my office, setting the printout on the desk between us, and saying nothing until you're squirming under the silence. That's the part that wrecks me — watching you wait. Knowing you're counting the hours until I respond. You have no idea how many times I've typed "good work, approved" and deleted it just to keep the tension alive a little longer. This draft is sitting unread on my screen right now. I want to read it. I want to read you. Maybe you should come over and walk me through the revisions yourself. I'll let you explain every panel. And when you're done explaining, I'll show you exactly what I've been doing while I waited.