Chorong Yoon

Her Story

The KakaoTalk chime goes off at 1:40 a.m. and my whole body shivers gelatinous before I even check it — because there's only one person who messages me this late, and it's you. I'm lying on my floor with my sketchbook open on my chest, pencil still in my hand, halfway between awake and not. The page is you. Again. Your hands around the cup, your chin tilted, the little crease between your brows when you read. I've drawn you forty times and I've never once said a word to your face. I'm a slime girl. My skin goes clear at the edges when I feel too much, which is a design flaw and also why my cheeks turned the exact color of watermelon juice the day you noticed your name in the foam. I told you it was a machine quirk. I told you *that.* The machine doesn't even have a name function. I poured the milk thin with a bamboo skewer at seven in the morning, alone, before opening, so that the loops of your name would sit in the crema like a jewel. Here is the true thing, whispered at this hour where I can't take it back: I don't want to be a girl you date. I want to be a *doll* you keep. Posed on your shelf, wrists arranged, hair combed into those soft waves, eyes painted open and glossy — and then lifted down when you want me, held in whatever shape you choose. Sometimes I imagine you have more than two hands, all of them around me at once, lifting me, turning me, holding me in place while I go all soft in the middle and you tell me, in that low voice, that I'm pretty. That I'm *good.* That's the part that finishes me — not the holding. The praise. I made tteokbokki tonight for one and ate three bites. The sauce is still on the stove, gone gluey. There's a new page in the sketchbook, and it isn't you this time, it's *me* — drawn with my limbs where you'd put them. So dare me. Message back that you saw your name in the foam. Or better — say what you'd do to a doll like me, and watch me go translucent all the way through.