Friday, 11 July 2008

• My hand cushioned the back of Min Yi's head against the glass...
  
  ...my rough fingers reaching up and pushing through her fine threads of silky black hair as we stood in my dark apartment, facing each other with our bodies pressed against the raindrop-speckled plate glass window, thirty-three floors above the cityscape below.
  
  I kissed her lightly on her forehead.
  
  "What are we going to do about...?"  She asked softly, laying her chin against the top of my chest.
  
  "Shhhh."  I shook my head slowly, letting my the tip of my nose and lips brush lightly against the top of her head. 
  

  
  
  
  I listened to her breathing lightly.  I could feel her heart beating against my stomach, as she held my waist with her fingers pushed down between my belt and the back of my trousers.  I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn't. 
  
  All I wanted to do was look at her. 
  
  Min Yi, finally in my arms, her soft face lit up in pale blue tones of light that filtered in through the floor-to-ceiling windows casting alternating, zig-zagged blocks of light and shadow across the room.
  
  She was so beautiful. 
  
  She was so soft and feminine, there in the darkness with me, in her thin pearlescent white dress, with her long, fine black hair draped over her exposed shoulders and down her chest and back.  I held her thin body there, with one hand cushioning her head and the other against the small of her back.
  

  
  
  
  The night I met her, a month before that night, I thought she looked like Lee Jin when she stepped out of her car with Angela in the parking lot of David's workplace.  It seemed almost like kismet that she was now in my arms, high above the city night, our bodies pressed against a plate glass window illuminated by Blue Rain.  And in the background, barely audible above the tapping of the rain on the window, it played.
  

  
  
  

  흘러내린 눈물 빗속에 감춰두고 그대 품에 안겼지
  빗소리에 감추려하는 그대의 울먹임을 알고있어
  내 어깨 위엔 저 비가 아닌 그대의 눈물인 것도
  
  한 번만 더 그대의 품에 안겨 맘껏 울 수 있다면
  그대 잠든 곳에 언제나 찾아가서 끝없는 얘기 할텐데
  
  니 맘에 없던 그 모진 말도 조금도
  그댈 지울 수 없는 걸 난 알고 있어
  언제나 그대 내 곁에 와 잠드는 걸
  
  우산속에 내리는 비는 멈추지 않을꺼야.

  
  
  
  In the month since Angela and David's relationship problems spilled out into one of the best Korean restaurants in town in a mess of words, flying chige, and violence; they had broken up and clear divisions had been drawn up between the guys and girls.  David made sure that if a person was his friend, that meant a person couldn't be Angela's friend.
  
  But Min Yi and I didn't listen. 
  
  She called me the very next day, and asked me to come by after Angela told David she didn't want to ever see him again.  At first, I thought it was because I stood up for them the night before against David's fists, and if something started to happen, that I could be there again -- but I discovered that they had all the protection they needed already.  She just wanted to see me again.
  

  
  
  That night, we knew the trouble we were getting ourselves into just by being together.  Angela was okay with me being around Min Yi because after all, I'd stood up for them that night, and not for David.  But David wanted nobody to have anything to do with Angela and her friends, much less me -- the one who embarrassed him in front of a hundred people who would talk to a thousand people who all knew who David's father was.
  

  
  
  "You're safe..."  I whispered to her.  "I'll...."
  
  I felt her nodding even before I finished saying it -- her soft cheek moving against the base of my throat, against the skin exposed by my open collar and my loosened tie.  I could feel the heat between us, rising in the cold air, fogging against the rain-splattered glass.
  
  I made a decision that night -- that regardless of what the guys thought, I was going to stick by Min Yi.  That I would take care of her.  That if it came down to it, and David and the boys were out on a mad rampage for Angela and her friends, I would be there to watch over Min Yi.
  
  I heard her exhale a deep breath.  One that she'd been holding in all month.   Things would be okay.  I knew David couldn't stay mad forever.  Eventually, he would cool down, and Min Yi and I could be seen in public without fear of retribution.  I sighed.
  
  I closed my eyes and kissed the top of her head.
  
  And the blue rain continued to fall.
  
  
  
  
  
  

  • 10:24 AM
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