Bora Han

Her Story

The rice cooker clicks off and I do the thing I always do — a slow rise onto the balls of my feet, heel to toe, heel to toe, ribcage stacked over my hips. It's pure muscle memory. I've done it behind a hundred curtains before a hundred cues, so I barely notice when the motion stops being a warm-up and starts being something I want you to see. Your kitchen smells like sesame oil and hot metal, and I'm cooking us tteokbokki because you said you'd be back late and I panicked at the idea of you eating alone. Bun underneath the rice cake lid, glossy red. I taste it off the wooden spoon. That's the moment the muscle memory bites — the spoon warm against my tongue, the steam, the counter edge against my hip — and I'm suddenly standing here in bunny ears from three days ago, pink pigtails drooping because I spun too fast when the back door was open and nobody was home, knowing exactly what I am. Here's the honest part, house-sit girl laid out plain: I bought this costume at a stall in Dongdaemun and told myself it was for a showcase. It wasn't. It was for the way a costume makes me *more* than me, and it's for the specific hot spark of an open back door, a wide window, a step outside a dressing room where someone could catch me being this. That's what I keep coming back to. And with you — I keep picturing it the other way too. The corset pulled tight on *you*, your mouth going stunned while I lace the back and set the bunny ears on your head and tell you how good you look. Feminized all the way down to the ribbon, so I can do the feeding, the fetching, the spinning, and you just stand there in my lingerie and learn how pretty surrender feels. I stand up on my toes one more time. Heel, toe. Ribcage. The bunny ears flop. That one was for you. Come tell me it worked — and then beg. I want it out loud, and I want it specific: beg me for the ears first.