The walls that aren’t lined with cabinets and wardrobes are papered with wheat-colored grass cloth. The cabinet fronts are stained a brown-black and the floor is a dark wood, too. It reminds me a little of his rooms back at Wansu’s house. Between the bed and the panel of windows, a singular long black leather sofa sits. There are no yellow pillows, but it’s not white like Wansu’s either.
“I feel misled,” I declare, looking out the windows at the city streetlights below.
“In what way?” Yujun fills a kettle with water and sets it on a burner.
“You said there were yellow pillows.”
He tilts his head toward the center of the room. “On the bed.”
The apartment is small enough that it only takes me a few strides to decide that he’s confused about the color wheel. “These are off-white.”
“Lemon yellow. That’s what the package said. Hungry? I’m going to make some ramyeon.”
“I’d love some.”
“Do you want spicy pork or spicy chicken?” He holds up two packages.
“Chicken.”
“Egg?”
“Yes, please.”
He presses on a cabinet door and it swings open to reveal a small refrigerator. “Cheese?”
“Yes, please.” Yujun introduced me to cheese ramyeon before he left and it was surprisingly delicious. “Can I help?”
“No. It’s ramyeon, and even Wansu can make that.”
“Why even Wansu?”
“She’s a disaster in the kitchen. My dad used to make fun of her—how she could do everything from speaking four languages to solving complex math equations in her head, but put her in the kitchen and she immediately becomes less helpful than a toddler.” He digs a few more things out of the refrigerator and plucks a knife off a magnet strip on the side of the cabinet. “Mrs. Ji taught me a few basics before I went to college and I picked up a few skills in the army. The Korean military teaches you how to shoot a gun, find a land mine, and cook a stew. You can pull out a couple of seat mats, though. It’s in the last entry closet. We’ll eat at the table.” He gestures to the wood and marble coffee table in front of the sofa.
As I’m squeezing by him, he drops a kiss on the top of my forehead and a flush of heat zips from my crown to my toes. This is a domestic scene. He’s cooking. I’m setting the table. The bed with its off-white, not at all yellow, pillows is a few feet away. Anticipation hums inside me.
“There are also chopsticks and table mats in a drawer under the table,” he adds as I carry the floor pillows over to the window. I love that I’m getting an actual visual of how Yujun spends his evenings when he’s home from work. He throws a pillow on the floor in front of the sofa, heats up some water for a bowl of ramyeon, and then . . . well, I’m not sure what he does after that, but I’m going to learn.
Moments later he joins me, setting down two trays—one for each of us. There are little plates of kimchi, soybeans, and soy sauce cucumbers, a small covered dish decorated with painted flowers along the edges, and the bowl of ramyeon trimmed with green onion sprinkled over a slice of American cheese. I straighten my chopsticks and poke at the cheese. “We’re big on cheese in America. How is it that we never thought of this combo before?”
Yujun’s twin dimples appear on his cheeks before he digs in. “I’m not sure. The GIs introduced processed cheese to us during the Korean War. Someone put it on ramyeon and the rest is history. Eat up before the noodles get swollen.”
I watch as Yujun pierces the cheese with his chopsticks and lifts his noodle-laden chopsticks to his mouth. The melted yellow cheese glides down the noodles like drops of thick rain. He closes his eyes and makes a small moaning sound that echoes in parts of my body that are hungry for something other than food.
I slurp down my own noodles until all that’s left in my bowl is a cheesy broth with small bits of green onion and maybe a tiny bit of egg.
He watches with approval, and as I finish the meal, he gestures toward the skyline outside the windows. “Do you know what Yongsan stands for?”
“No.”
“Yongsan means ‘Dragon Mountain.’ Yong is ‘dragon’ and you know that san is ‘mountain.’ ”
“Right, like Namsan or Bukhansan.”
His left dimple appears. “Exactly. Back in like AD 90, Korea was divided into three kingdoms. The central kingdom was Baekje. During King Giru’s reign, a sighting of two dragons flying over the Han was recorded, and thus this region was named Yongsan, shielded in the rear by Namsan and protected in the front by the Han. Or you can believe that the mountains look somewhat like a crooked dragon.”
By the scornful way he refers to the second explanation, you can tell he views the latter as sorry and sad and only suitable for those who have no heart. Yujun is the man who gave me a jade duck on a red cord and said that ducks mate for life or die. He’s a romantic. Who likes cheese on his ramyeon.
“The dragon is our most mythical creature because it is virtually indestructible. Its body is covered in scaled armor. It has claws and horns. It can fly, jump, climb, and no one can escape its wrath. The king’s throne is yongjwa, or ‘chair of the dragon,’ and his clothing was known as yongpo, ‘the clothing of the dragon.’ Any sign of the dragon is revered. Almost all of the subway station names reference some part of Korean history. Like Seongsu means ‘Holy Water.’ There was a stream in that area that was so pure you could drink directly from the source, so it became the town with holy water.”
I shove my bowl aside and lean back against the base of the sofa. “That’s it? Is that all you know?” I tease.
He launches into a full etymological discussion of the other subway stops. Banghak is for a crane and Nokcheon is for a deer that bathed in a stream after a natural disaster. Dolgoji means skewer made of stone and represents the black rocks on the range of Mount Cheonjang. And as he talks, I explore—not the apartment or the recesses of his medicine cabinet—but him. I test the steel of his thigh, the warmth of the skin of the back of his hand, the tender region along his collarbone exposed by the open neckline of his shirt.
He pauses after Boramae, the falcon that represents the air force, whose academy used to be situated at the current Boramae Park.
“Don’t stop,” I whisper against the shell of his ear.
He goes on, but I don’t hear him over the swell of desire that has filled my head and infused my body. His hand comes up to hover at my waist, as if he’s unsure if he moves whether I’ll stop, but I won’t. I’m learning him. I’m learning that licking the curve of his inner ear makes him shudder and that his pec will jump under my palm. I’m learning that his eyelashes are longer than I recall and that his thick hair is kept in check by a slight undercut, unnoticeable unless you brush the outer strands aside. I’m learning that his smell is like sunshine and forest and comfort and need, all of it wrapped up in one heady scent. I’m learning that his patience can be snapped.