Staying at Benjamin’s
Now playing: A House in Nebraska - Ethel Cain // In the woods somewhere – Hozier
Pairing: collections cataloger!Jungsu x collections cataloger!Reader
12k words – supernatural gothic romance
C.W ! : +18, death, grief, religious imagery, haunted house, smut, sub!Jungsu, dom!Reader. It's just… really sad.
Two collections catalogers arrive at an old house expecting nothing more than a day's work.
The oak tree stood pretty far away from the house, its enormous canopy casting a broad shadow across the grass until it reached your feet. Its trunk was so thick it seemed, to you, older than the house itself, older even than the dirt road disappearing into the distance. Long curtains of moss hung from its branches, dancing whenever the wind wandered through them. Beneath one of its lowest limbs, suspended between two twigs no thicker than your little finger, a little spider was building its web.
Sunlight caught the silk only from certain angles, making it visible only for the briefest of instants. Your eyes followed the little spider, intrigued by the way its tiny body crossed invisible distances and each tiny step revealed another thread you hadn't noticed before. What seemed simple from afar unfolded into something impossibly intricate once you got closer. One strand led to another, that one divided into three more, and then into countless others. The little spider moved only forward, releasing its silk as it went… and suddenly the empty spaces grew smaller, another thread appearing where before there was only air. You watched and watched until the passage of time became indistinguishable from the spider's patient work.
For a moment, you wondered how many times she had done this before (or were you wrong to assume such devotion could only belong to a woman?), how many storms tore apart her previous webs, how many mornings began with reconstruction. You found comfort in watching that tiny little creature devote itself to building a home the world would almost certainly tear apart again.
"Good morning."
You startled so violently your shoulder knocked against the trunk. The branch you had been watching shuddered, scattering strands of silk into the light, and so did the spell it had you under. You practically spun around, only to find a man standing a couple of feet away, one hand already lifting in apology as he watched your soul re-entering your body.
"God- I'm so, so sorry. I didn't mean to scare you." Embarrassment spread across his face instantly. "I thought you heard me pull up." A little mischievous laugh slipped out despite his best efforts to keep it in. " Actually, no, that's a complete lie. You looked like you were on another planet. I’m really sorry." He stepped closer, balancing a cardboard tray in his free hand, and only stopped once he reached conversational distance. "As a peace offering” He held one of the cups out to you, the coffee warm against your palms once you took it.
"I'm Kim Jungsu."
The last bit of his never-ending nervous monologue came with a side of the brightest smile you had ever seen. The corners of his mouth stretched so wide they pushed his eyes into narrow crescents, sunlight catching against his features making him look unfairly warm.
"Looks like the company finally remembered we're supposed to be coworkers."
You frowned, tilting your head just a little. "We're... coworkers?"
"Hm." His grin widened. "I got the assignment yesterday, saw your name and spent a good five minutes trying to figure out how that was even possible! We've worked for the same company for... what? Two years? Three? Three whole years and somehow we've never ended up on the same job. Not once! Isn't that weird? I mean, the company's not exactly small, but it's not that big either…" He tilted his head the same way you did, pretending to give the matter serious thought. "Unless you've been secretly avoiding me..." A tiny pause followed before yet another laugh escaped him. "... which would be fair honestly because I do talk a lot.”
A burst of laughter bubbled up from deep inside you, louder than you would've preferred and so unexpectedly genuine that it drew another laugh from Jungsu immediately.
"Well..." He did his absolute best to sound stern… "I just want you to know that completely confirmed what I said." …but the corners of his mouth were betraying him again. "That was reeeeally mean of you, Y/N."
Your laughter lingered for another few seconds before slowly dissolving into the quiet around you. You found yourself looking away, the way we all instinctively do when a moment has become just a little too warm to hold. Your gaze wandered past Jungsu's shoulder until it settled on the house; its weathered white walls glowed beneath the morning sun while its dark windows reflected the sky like tinted eyes. You thought it looked like it was waiting.
"Should we head inside?"
Jungsu looked at you before following your line of sight to the house. "Right..." His eyes drifted across the porch, the sagging flower boxes beneath the windows, the lace curtains barely visible behind the old stained glass. He adjusted the strap of his bag, stepped aside with a theatrical little gesture and smiled at you with that same easy warmth he seemed to carry wherever he went. "After you."
To your surprise, the front door opened with ease. You expected resistance from the swollen wood, but the handle turned smoothly beneath Jungsu's hand and the door swung inward obediently, releasing a current of cool, musty air that grazed your skin. The moment you crossed the threshold; a chill travelled the length of your spine. What reached you first was the smell: dust, weathered wood, a faint trace of mold and the lingering warmth of a home that had once been lived in. Morning light filtered through lace curtains, settling softly over surfaces covered in dust. Crucifixes watched from above every doorway, rosaries rested beside framed family pictures and porcelain angels stood atop bookshelves, cabinets and side tables as if watching over them. Every available surface bore some small evidence of affection. It seemed to you that if something had been placed there, it was because somebody had loved it enough to give it a home.
Your attention drifted toward Jungsu. He still stood near the entrance, one hand resting on the strap of his bag. His eyes were fixed on a small table crowded with family pictures. You found yourself watching silently as his hand reached toward them, lifting each picture one by one, pausing over every face. Even here, surrounded by hundreds of objects waiting to be catalogued, he chose the only things capable of looking back at him. He found people.
The sound of his footsteps carrying him deeper into the house pulled you back to the present, reminding you why the two of you had come in the first place. Years of experience made conversation unnecessary. Clipboards came out alongside measuring tape, cameras and inventory sheets. Jungsu disappeared toward the far side of the room while you were drawn to the shelves lining the opposite wall. Every object seemed to ask for your attention. There was nothing left to do now but begin.
One of countless porcelain angels rested on top of a stack of prayer books, its painted face worn smooth where you could imagine someone's thumb had touched it repeatedly over the years. Beside it sat a chipped ceramic bowl filled with buttons of every shape and color. A pair of reading glasses lay across an open Bible, a dried flower resting between its pages. It was almost like the house had been... paused, its owners having simply stepped out for a moment. And that feeling grew so convincing that, when your fingers closed around the porcelain angel, warmth spread across the back of your hand as distinctly as another hand settling over yours. The sensation vanished as quickly as it came, yet your hand lingered above the shelf long after it was gone.
For a while, nothing happened at all. You finished cataloguing the first shelf before reaching for the next, carefully moving aside another stack of worn prayer books. The volumes shifted beneath your fingers and just like that something slipped loose from between them, gliding across the wood until it came to rest near the edge of the shelf. An old photograph. A woman laughed somewhere inside that frozen afternoon; and you swore you could almost hear her. She had turned away from the camera, one hand rising toward her face as the wind carried loose strands of hair across her cheek. Behind her, a man reached for her gently. You found yourself smiling at it, filled with that familiar ache of stumbling upon a moment of happiness so overwhelming it almost felt like grief. You knew you should have slipped the photograph back where you found it, but you kept it on your clipboard for the rest of the morning.
By noon you started working on the main bedroom. When you opened the door, the first thing you noticed was that the air inside felt strangely warm despite the curtains remaining drawn. You stood at the doorway for a moment, taking in the room: the bed carefully made, twin lamps resting on either side, a rosary looped over one brass bedpost, a tall wardrobe pressed against the far wall. A silver hairbrush still rested on the vanity beside an empty perfume bottle, and a pair of slippers waited under the bed.
You set your clipboard on the nearest dresser and began with the wardrobe. The drawers opened with a soft wooden sigh; inside, clothing lay folded into stacks: cotton slips, pale blouses, cardigans and men's undershirts pressed flat beneath sheets of yellowing tissue paper. Hanging above them was a dark suit jacket preserved inside a garment bag whose plastic had clouded with age. You catalogued each piece as you found it, noting fabric, condition, approximate age, signs of wear, but the longer your hands moved through the drawers, the more insistently familiarity pressed at the back of your mind.
When you lifted the edge of the garment bag, your breath caught. For the briefest instant, the jacket looked like someone just slipped it off, leaving it there with the intention of returning before dinner. You remained perfectly still, your fingers holding the bag open while your mind searched for an explanation. Memory, imagination, exhaustion… anything with a name would’ve worked, but nothing came. You turned your head ever so slightly, as if the answer might be waiting somewhere just beyond the edge of your own thoughts. You’d worked in houses older than this one, bigger than this one, sadder than this one. You'd walked through dozens of bedrooms that still carried the scent of the people who had once slept in them.. and not once did you feel anything like this familiarity. What was so different about this one? You couldn’t shake off that strange sensation of remembering without remembering and it was driving you crazy. Remembering what? You were never here before. You repeated it to yourself: you were never in this house before, Y/N, pull yourself together! … with a little shake of your head, you pushed the thoughts away.
The next object sat half-hidden behind a folded blanket resting on a chair beside the wardrobe. It was a small framed photograph, the dark wooden frame scratched at the corners. A dog lay on its back beneath a patch of afternoon sunlight, his paws folded loosely against its chest, his belly fully exposed. You lifted the frame, intending to check the back for a date or perhaps a handwritten note… instead, the bedroom gave way beneath a rush of warmth.
Sunlight flooded the room. The curtains were wide open, moving gently in a breeze that smelled of grass and late afternoon heat. A woman laughed with your voice and… not your voice? a sound that seemed to pass through your chest on its way into the room, and when your gaze lowered you saw the dog from the picture sprawled in front of the bed, maybe a little older than in said picture, fur silvered at the muzzle, tail thumping weakly against the floor while a man lay beside him with his head resting on his belly. Was that… Jungsu? It had to be- it could only be Jungsu. But for the briefest instant… it wasn't. His face transformed into somebody else entirely: bright blue eyes, a straighter nose, harder lines at the jaw and brows, handsome in a completely different way. Before you could make sense of what was going on, the features slipped back into place. Jungsu looked up at you from the floor with such open, foolish tenderness that your heart lurched, one hand now spread over the dog’s ribs while the other reached toward you, palm turned upward in invitation and for a second you knew the exact texture of his skin, knew that he had been saying something ridiculous to make you laugh because the dog had been sick all week and worry had made the room too quiet.
You came back with the frame still clutched in both hands, still standing beside the wardrobe in the dim bedroom. The curtains were closed, the air stagnant, the dog long dead and the man from the vision somewhere else in the house wearing jeans and holding a clipboard, entirely unaware that your mind still held onto the image of him looking at you like he had loved you for years.
Once again, you found yourself looking for an explanation. Exhaustion, stress, lack of sleep, too many hours spent surrounded by other people's lives. The past several weeks blurred together amid deadlines, paperwork, long drives and way too much coffee for your own good. Tired minds made strange connections, you thought. People imagined things. They carried memories, desires and fears into empty spaces and found them reflected back. You kept repeating it to yourself while measuring the frame, photographing it, recording its dimensions and assigning it a catalogue number, thinking that maybe keeping your hands occupied could help your thoughts settle back into place. It sounded convincing for as long as your attention remained fixed on the work, but the moment there was nothing left to do, the memory returned: Jungsu lying beside the dog, looking up at you with the kind of tenderness only love could have taught. You sighed heavily.
Work resumed. The lace curtains caught your attention next, their once-white fabric softened to ivory by decades of sunlight. You gathered them carefully and pulled them open. Warm afternoon light poured into the bedroom, washing over the floor and climbing lazily up the walls. Outside, the oak stirred in the breeze, its leaves scattering shifting shadows through the room. Beside the window, the vanity came fully into view.
The piece itself was beautiful. Darker wood, surface softened by decades of use. Small scratches, faint water rings. A silver brush rested beside an empty perfume bottle. Hairpins remained scattered inside a shallow porcelain dish. Your fingertips drifted across the polished wood, only when your eyes finally met the mirror did the room begin to change… again.
Sunlight still filled the room, softened into the typical honey-colored glow of an old photograph. Fresh flowers rested in a vase near the window. The perfume bottle beside your hand was full. Seated before the vanity was a woman whose hair spilled to her waist in dark waves, gathered loosely over one shoulder while her fingers worked through it. She wore a pale dress fitted at the waist, and although you couldn’t fully see her face, you were sure about one thing: you were looking at yourself. In the reflection, a figure leaned casually against the bedroom doorway behind you, sleeves rolled to his forearms, dark suspenders crossing a white shirt. Jungsu smiled. Younger despite looking exactly the same. He said something you couldn't hear. The woman in the mirror laughed.
You stumbled backward, the mirror held only your own reflection again. The bedroom returned around you with the most painful abruptness; your heart hammering violently against your ribs. A strange pressure settled at the base of your neck, that kind of certainty that someone was standing behind you. You turned around. The bedroom door was as open as you left it, the narrow hallway stretching toward the opposite room. That door stood open too. Sunlight spilled across the space between you, stretching from the window at your back into the room beyond. Jungsu. He stood motionless in front of a bookshelf, concern pulled his brows together, sharpening the familiar architecture of his face. For one disorienting second the distance between the vision and reality collapsed. The image of him standing in the bedroom doorway lingered stubbornly over the sight of him standing across the hall.
You shook your head. "Sorry," you said softly, the word barely carrying beyond the doorway. "I’m just- uhm… just a little distracted."
He offered a small, unconvinced nod and returned his attention to his work. You stepped sideways until the wall concealed you from view, pressed a hand firmly against your sternum and forced yourself to steady your breathing. You moved to the bed and sat on its edge, and for the first time since entering the house, you found yourself wondering whether you had really been stumbling upon the memories at all, or if they had been finding you instead.
When you finally checked the time on your phone after staring at the exact same spot for what could've been five minutes or fifty, you realized it was already a little past two p.m. The realization came with a practical mercy. You could eat. You could step out of the room, place a reasonable boundary between your body and everything it had just been made to feel, and go back to mundane tasks for a little while. You gathered your papers and made your way to the kitchen.
The kitchen itself was small, colorful tiles climbing the walls toward a wide window overlooking the backyard. The narrow counters had been worn pale along their edges, the table pushed close against the dividing wall. Everything seemed arranged around the repetition of ordinary care; from the row of mugs hanging beneath a shelf and the recipe cards tucked inside a tin beside the stove, to the old dish towel folded over the oven handle. Right above the table, where the afternoon light pooled in a square of gold, a wooden crucifix hung crooked beside a calendar from a year long past.
You had barely unwrapped your lunch when Jungsu appeared in the doorway with his own lunch in one hand and his clipboard tucked beneath his other arm, his steps slowing the moment he saw you there. A reasonable person might have apologized and searched for another room; the house was large enough for solitude if either of you truly wanted it, but he lingered there for a moment, surprise giving way to a small, awkward smile.
"Sorry," he said, though he made no move to leave. "I didn't know you were in here."
You should've said something, should've restored a little distance between the two of you, but you only shook your head, dismissing his apology. After a moment of hesitation, he seemed to understand. He set his clipboard on the counter, took the chair across from you and opened his lunchbox without another word.
Silence with strangers usually had a certain texture, like a tightness, that invisible mental labor of deciding whether to fill it or let it grow. This silence had none of that, it spilled across the table like warm sunlight. You ate slowly, aware of every small movement he made. Whenever he looked up, you found something else to look at, but just a moment later your eyes wandered back, only to find he'd done exactly the same. It happened again and again. By the fourth or fifth time it became so ridiculous that you couldn't keep yourself from smiling. The moment he caught you, his own lips betrayed him, though he seemed to press them together as if giving in to that smile might feed the fire already burning inside his chest. His effort only made it worse. A laugh slipped free on your end, and across the table Jungsu lowered his gaze, his shoulders finally relaxing beneath a smile so bright he could no longer hide it.
The house became strangely quiet around you. The crooked crucifix, the worn table, the cabinets, the afternoon light beyond the window. Everything watched with the patience of things that had seen this before.
The afternoon unfolded much the same way. More than once you turned into a narrow hallway only to find Jungsu already approaching from the opposite end, both of you slowing instinctively where there was barely enough room for one body to pass. The first few times earlier that morning had been punctuated by awkward apologies and hurried steps backward, but after lunch those little formalities had disappeared. Now he simply rested a gentle hand against the small of your waist as you walked past him. Neither of you spoke, you simply continued in opposite directions, carrying the same small smile with you.
Less than half an hour later, you realized you were finally ready to go back to the bedroom. There was little left to catalogue, you told yourself. Only the nighstands.
Your gaze wandered aimlessly across the room, following familiar paths through unfamiliar surroundings until it settled upon one of the nightstands beside the bed. You placed your inventory sheets there first, then the photograph you carried with you since the morning. You found yourself staring at the picture for a moment before shifting your attention toward the drawer beneath it, drawn by the unusual shape of its handle. The brass pull had been fashioned into a tiny compass rose; your fingers curled around it and pulled. Inside rested two rings. Just two narrow gold bands lying side by side upon the faded velvet lining. You couldn't have explained why, but the sight of them filled you with unexpected tenderness. Two rings. Two lives condensed into circles of worn gold. You lifted them into your palm, and with them came the familiar warmth.
Just as the drawer held nothing but two rings, the vision held nothing but two pairs of hands resting together over a blanket. Skin wrinkled by age, fine veins visible beneath it. One hand rested comfortably over the other. You noticed the slight movement of intertwined fingers, the absent-minded caress of a thumb across a knuckle, the effortless intimacy of a lifetime of devotion. Across from yours rested another hand. You found yourself wondering how many years it would take for Jungsu's hand to learn yours that well.
The vision dissolved as gently as it came, but the familiar warmth remained. You lowered your gaze toward the inside of the bands and brought them closer to your face. Tiny engraved letters emerged from the gold, still perfectly legible.
Ida & Benjamin.
September 12, 1937.
At last, the house belonged to someone.
Dark walnut nightstand. Brass hardware. Two wedding rings.
You stared at the words after writing them. They were perfectly accurate, they simply failed to say anything that mattered. Nothing on the page spoke of Ida or Benjamin, nothing suggested the warmth that still lingered in the gold, or the unconscious sweep of a thumb across a familiar knuckle. The inventory had room for dimensions, materials, dates and condition reports, but nowhere to record the things that mattered most. You stood up and started walking toward the hallway, carrying with you the certainty that you had failed, in the smallest and most inevitable way, to describe what had truly been there.
A few steps down the hall, you found Jungsu sitting cross-legged outside one of the smaller rooms, surrounded by careful little piles of books. He looked up at the sound of your footsteps and smiled brightly.
"Finished?" he asked.
You glanced back toward the bedroom, your fingers tightening around the edge of the clipboard as you nodded. "Yeah, I think so."
His eyes lingered on your face for a moment. Whatever conclusion he reached, he kept it to himself.
"I already went through that room," he said, tilting his head toward the door just beyond him as you instinctively began walking in its direction. "There wasn't much in there."
You stopped.
"If you haven't started the library yet..." He nodded toward the end of the hallway instead. "You can take that one."
Your gaze followed his, coming to rest upon a half-open door where rows of books could already be seen through the narrow gap. "Oh… yeah, ok.”
He smiled again before going back to his books, as you turned away and made your way toward the library.
The library occupied the western corner of the house where afternoon light gathered most generously, sunlight pouring through tall windows and settling across overflowing shelves whose contents had slowly surrendered their colors to decades of light. Theology stood beside gardening manuals, cookbooks beside collections of poetry, worn atlases beside family Bibles. You moved carefully along the shelves, recording titles, editions and publishers, occasionally pausing to straighten a leaning row before continuing, until one particular spine caught your attention.
It was bound in faded mauve cloth, its gilt ornaments dulled by time. The volume looked neither fragile nor neglected, only well loved. Jane Eyre. You eased the cover open. On the flyleaf, written in neat blue ink, aa short inscription:
For Ida. So you'll finally stop stealing mine. Love, Benjamin.
You traced the words lightly with your thumb, and as your gaze settled upon the curve of Benjamin's name, the ink began to soften. The letters blurred into one another until they were no longer words at all.
You were lying across Jungsu's bare chest, your own skin resting against his, curled comfortably beneath one arm while the book rested open in his other hand. The room breathed with the lazy warmth of late summer. Windows stood open, curtains drifted inward with every passing breeze, carrying the scent of cut grass and distant rain. His voice moved through you before the words themselves reached your ears, low and slow as he read aloud, revisiting a story he already knew by heart. You felt each sentence twice: once as sound, once as the quiet vibration travelling through his ribs into your cheek where it rested against him. Your fingertips wandered absentmindedly across the warmth of his skin, tracing invisible circles over his sternum, following the rhythm of his breathing while the hand not occupied by the novel drifted along your back, fingertips slipping beneath your hair in absent caresses that carried no urgency at all. At some point you realized neither of you had been paying attention to the novel for several pages. His voice had become the thing you were listening to, the story merely gave it somewhere to go.
You could no longer tell whether the heaviness settling behind your eyes belonged to fatigue or to everything the house had put you through since morning. Either way, your mind refused another object. You slipped the novel back into its place and left the library without any particular destination in mind. Your feet carried you through the familiar hallway on their own until the living room opened before you once again. This time, instead of drifting toward the side you had explored that morning, your attention wandered naturally to the opposite corner, where a small jade-green armchair sat beside the largest window, half-veiled by lace curtains that stirred gently whenever the breeze found its way inside. Only then did you realize how thoroughly exhausted you had become. Not feeling able to keep thinking about it, you crossed the room and lowered yourself into the armchair, letting your clipboard come to rest across your lap for the first time all day. You leaned back, closed your eyes for what could not have been more than a beat of your heart, and the velvet beneath your fingertips ceased belonging to the present.
The warmth of another body surrounded you. You sat comfortably in Jungsu's lap, your knees folded to either side of him while his hands rested at your waist. The room around you glowed under the same midday light. You had one hand on his cheek, your thumb wandering across the familiar curve of his jaw while the other lost itself in the softness of his hair. The space between you disappeared like so many times before. Your foreheads brushed first, his nose grazed yours like following a long-memorized path. When your lips finally met, the kiss carried none of the urgency of discovery. It was slow, familiar. His fingers tightened at your waist, drawing you nearer, and you answered by sliding your hand deeper into his hair, your fingers curling softly at its roots. Somewhere beneath that overwhelming sense of peace lived the certainty that if neither of you moved from the chair, your kisses would eventually melt into the same gentle intimacy that had unfolded between you a thousand times before. There was no nervousness, no urgency; only the comfort of knowing exactly where such tenderness would lead and trusting it completely.
You opened your eyes to the silent sitting room, your own hand resting against your cheek exactly where it touched his just moments before. Heat rushed to your face. For a brief, bewildering moment you remained perfectly still, unable to decide whether you ought to laugh at yourself or be embarrassed for blushing over a life that wasn't yours.
"You've been disappearing a lot on me today, Y/N"
Jungsu's voice, gentle as it was, cut through the lingering warmth of the memory so abruptly that you flinched. You looked up to find him standing in the doorway with an old leather journal cradled in both hands, several yellowed photographs and folded papers protruding from between its pages. He smiled when your eyes met, his own cheeks faintly flushed, then lifted the journal in your direction.
"I think..." he said softly, glancing down at the worn leather cover before looking back at you. "...I found something you should probably see."
Your gaze lingered between the journal and him, unable to settle on either for very long, yet whatever embarrassment that last memory had left behind was eclipsed by curiosity as you noticed the careful way he held that journal.
"Oh-" You cleared your throat, cheeks still flushed. "Yeah, sorry- yeah. Yeah, sure. What is it?"
"I found it tucked away in one of the desks upstairs," he replied, crossing the room to stand beside the armchair. "At first I thought it was just another ledger, but it isn’t, and that’s why I think you should check it out."
You shifted instinctively, making room beside you. He either didn't notice the invitation or chose, with characteristic ease, to ignore it altogether, lowering himself instead onto the rug at your feet, resting the journal on his lap.
"As I was saying, it’s not a ledger, it’s a diary," His eyes lit up as he spoke. " I think I can confidently say I've spent the last hour of my life getting to know this house's soul.”
You leaned forward as he turned the first pages. Benjamin's handwriting greeted you, accompanied by dates spanning decades. At first there was very little beyond ordinary life. Weather noted at the top of each entry, repairs made around the property, the kinds of seeds they planted, the dog refusing to stay out of the vegetable garden despite repeated attempts. Lists of groceries, small expenses, reminders to repair a loose shutter before winter arrived.
Jungsu smiled to himself as he turned another page, angling the journal toward you so you could read beside him. "Listen to this."
"My beloved wife insists the tomatoes taste sweeter when she waters them herself. I suspect they taste exactly the same. I also suspect I'll continue pretending otherwise for the rest of my life."
His silly laugh proved impossible not to answer.
"I like him," you said.
Tucked between yellowing pages lay the first photograph. Benjamin stood awkwardly beside the oak, considerably younger than the man you had come to know through his handwriting, while Ida leaned shamelessly against him with one hand looped possessively through his arm, smiling from ear to ear. Neither appeared to be looking at the camera.
"There are dozens like this" Jungsu said softly. As more pages turned beneath his fingertips, so did the decades of Ida and Benjamin's life together.
Near its middle, the journal thickened where folded envelopes had been pressed between its pages. "They wrote to each other," Jungsu murmured, unable to hide the delight in his voice.
You unfolded the first letter together, each instinctively taking one side of the page so it wouldn’t tear. You expected distance, months spent apart, perhaps a war or a long journey… some reason that would have forced two people to rely on paper instead of conversation; but the first note made it very clear that none of those things had ever happened. Benjamin had simply written because he had wanted Ida to find his words after breakfast. One folded page led to the next until a small stack had gathered beside the journal. In one, Benjamin confessed that she laughed in her sleep that morning, leaving him to wonder what kind of dream could possibly make her smile like that. Another consisted of nothing more than a reminder to wear her shawl if the afternoon turned cold, followed by three entire lines apologizing for sounding like a worried old man. One note admitted that the house became so impossibly quiet whenever she spent even a single afternoon away. Growing old beside her had become so ordinary, he wrote, that he sometimes forgot how miraculous it truly was until she smiled at him from the other side of a room.
Eventually one of Ida's notes found its way into your hands. Your eyes lingered on her handwriting first, so elegantly beautiful, every letter flowing effortlessly into the next with such grace that a quiet "Wow," escaped you. The note itself contained remarkably little. Most of the page had been left blank, but near the bottom she wrote: "If there is another life after this one, find me quickly. I’ll be waiting."
Somewhere between one letter and the next, you found yourself leaving the armchair behind. You couldn’t point to when you had slipped onto the rug, only that your legs had gradually drawn toward your chest until they formed a small hollow where the growing pile of folded notes came to rest, the journal having long since migrated from Jungsu's lap to the space between you. Every page required the two of you to lean a little closer than the last, until your shoulders met lightly above the paper. Neither of you pulled away… nor did either of you seem to notice when your knees eventually found one another, creating an improvised table upon which Benjamin and Ida's life continued unfolding.
As the pages themselves seemed to grow heavier, the afternoon light gradually surrendered itself to the shadows of evening.
Ida became ill.
Benjamin stopped recording the weather, the vegetable garden disappeared, loving entries became observations written beside a hospital bed.
"She slept through most of the afternoon." / "Today she asked whether the roses had bloomed." / "I told her they had. She asked if I thought Benjamin would like them."
Eventually came an entry with no more than a date. Below it,
“This morning, Ida laid her burdens down at last.”
Neither of you dared turn the page. The journal rested across your knees while the world seemed to go still around you. Jungsu lowered his head, his thumb remaining at the edge of the paper like he no longer had the strength to continue. You let your head come to rest against his shoulder as your eyes slipped closed; the weight of Benjamin's grief proving too heavy to carry alone. Jungsu simply stayed there, warm and steady, allowing the silence to stretch. Only when you heard the quiet rustle of paper did you open your eyes again. The page had turned beneath his careful hand. You followed the words without lifting your head, because the small shelter of his shoulder had become the only place from which you could bear to read what came next.
Benjamin resumed writing weeks later, though every sentence now seemed addressed to Ida, who could no longer answer. He wrote about eating alone, yet finding himself unable to set the table for only one. More than once he admitted to speaking aloud and then remembering there was no one left to answer. Near the bottom of one page he wrote:
"I buried her beneath the oak, beside Oliver. She always said neither of us should ever have to wait alone."
Jungsu's fingertip rested under that line as his gaze lifted toward the window, beyond which the immense tree spread its branches over the yard.
"So that's where she is," he whispered.
Silence settled between you once more. Only after a little while did he seem to realize how close you had drifted. His gaze drifted away from the window to find you instead, still damp with tears neither of you had attempted to hide. A small smile appeared shyly (and oh, so tenderly) across his face, and as he offered the journal into your hands his own lingered there, holding yours across the journal, as though four hands instead of two rested upon its pages.
"Would you..." he asked quietly, glancing toward the oak before returning to your eyes, "...like to go meet them?"
The front door clicked softly as it closed behind you, the sound echoing through your dazed mind long after the house had disappeared behind your backs. Outside, the heat had begun to lift from the fields, the air slowly surrendering to the cool of evening. The great oak stood tall, its broad canopy stretching proudly over the house, keeping watch as you left.
Jungsu kept the journal tucked beneath his arm as the two of you walked. You carried the photograph in your hand. It somehow felt wrong to visit Benjamin and Ida empty-handed.
The path revealed itself as you followed it, little more than flattened grass winding away from the porch toward the trees beyond. Neither of you spoke. After everything the diary had entrusted to you, silence felt earned.
You were only able to see the little cemetery when you were nearly upon it. Hidden behind tall grass and the remains of a weathered wooden fence, it could’ve easily been mistaken for another forgotten corner of the property. Only as you drew closer did the shapes separate themselves from the wild growth: three modest stones standing shoulder to shoulder, the one at the center just slightly larger than the others. Whoever had tended this place had done so with sacred devotion, you thought. Beneath the weeds you could still make out the outline of bricks enclosing the graves, a rusted gate hanging open from a single hinge and flowers that had endured beneath the weight of passing years.
A spider had woven its web between the fence and the nearest headstone. The delicate threads caught the last of the sunlight in brief flashes of silver, and for a moment you were back beneath the great oak that morning, watching another web shimmer beneath the last light of the same sun. Gratitude settled over your shoulders. The spider had rebuilt its web, the flowers had continued blooming, Benjamin had continued living. Love, somehow, had found a way. Standing there, you no longer felt like someone looking at the cycle from its edges. You had become part of it, however briefly, another small life passing through its endless turning.
Ida’s grave stood at the center. Moss gathered inside the carved letters, darkening them. You stepped toward the grave until every word came into focus.
Ida Hill.
Sleep well, my love.
I'll be home soon.
To Ida's right, nearly swallowed by the grass, sat a smaller headstone with a rounded top. Oliver had been carved into it, followed by two simple words.
Oliver
Faithful friend.
You stood perfectly still, unable to look away. Only the quiet rustle of grass drew your attention elsewhere as Jungsu took a few slow steps farther into the little cemetery. He stopped before the remaining headstone, lingering there for several long seconds before he spoke.
"Benjamin Hill," he read, his voice no louder than a whisper. The rest of the inscription seemed to catch in his throat. He remained there another moment, his eyes lingering on the weathered stone before finding the words.
"Home at last."
The silence that settled between the two of you drew you deeper into the corners of your own mind. You found yourself wondering how many evenings had ended exactly like this. How many times Benjamin had crossed the fields with fresh flowers gathered from the garden, lowering himself before the stone to tell Ida about the weather or the stubborn roses that refused to bloom until spring had nearly ended. Perhaps he had spoken only a handful of words; perhaps he had spoken for hours. It didn't matter. Love, you realized, had never depended upon an answer. Distance hadn't undone it. Time hadn't undone it. Death itself had only forced it to find a different shape. You wondered whether every passing year had asked him to love her differently. Without her voice, without her touch, without her laughter drifting through the rooms. As memories gradually surrendered their edges, perhaps love had learned to remember what memory no longer could. Yet it had only grown gentler, until honoring her became the ordinary way he moved through the world. Love had ceased to be an emotion and had become the shape of his days, the force that carried him through every season Ida could no longer witness beside him. Perhaps that was what people did when love survived the body that had once received it. They stretched it across absence, day after lonely day, never knowing how far it could be pulled before finally breaking, until one morning (no different from all the others) they realized it couldn't be broken at all. It had simply learned to span the distance, again and again and again. You couldn't imagine there being any instinct stronger than the desire to keep loving someone whose existence had once given shape to your own.
Benjamin had spent all those years carrying the never-ending love he held for Ida gently through each passing day, until the distance between them had finally grown small enough to cross.
You thought of the wedding rings lying side by side inside the drawer with the compass-shaped handle, of the photograph still in your hand, of the mirror in the bedroom, of Jungsu's face appearing again and again in memories that could never have belonged to you.
The house had not been trying to frighten you, had it? It had been trying to bring you here. To let you see.
You gathered a few flowers carefully and laid them at the foot of Ida's stone. After a moment, Jungsu bent to gather a handful of his own, placing them beside yours with the same gentle care. The two small offerings settled against one another, their stems crossing as though neither wished to remain alone. You let yourself lean sideways until your temple found Jungsu's shoulder. He stayed exactly where he was, sharing the silence with you. Tears slipped down your face one by one, warm as they crossed your lips, carrying with them the strange tenderness of grief.
The sun had lowered enough for the fields to darken, every blade of grass catching a final line of gold before surrendering to blue shadow. You walked beside Jungsu. The path was narrow… and more than once your arm brushed his as you moved through the overgrowth. For a while you allowed the rhythm of walking to become the only thing your mind could hold: grass brushing against your skirt… damp earth yielding beneath your shoes… the soft murmur of cicadas hidden in the fields.
Only when your gaze finally lifted again did you realize how close you were to the house. One of the front windows, the one nearest the living room, caught both of you in its darkening surface as you crossed the yard. At first the reflection appeared ordinary enough, just two figures moving side by side through the fading light, shoulders nearly aligned, heads slightly bowed beneath the quiet weight of the day. But the longer you looked, the less the figures obeyed reality. The woman in the window wore a pale dress that moved softly around her calves, though you could still feel your own clothes against your skin. Her hair fell well below your shoulders, loosened by the evening air. Beside her walked a man in dark trousers and a white shirt, his sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms, his posture relaxed with the ease of somebody coming home.
Your steps slowed. Beside you, Jungsu slowed too, his attention fixed upon the very same window. Whatever stood between the living and the dead had thinned too gently to disturb, turning the window into something more intimate than a mirror and less final than an apparition, a place where the house seemed to hold both versions of you at once. You looked from the glass to Jungsu and found him already looking at you. He didn’t look frightened and that loosened something inside you. His eyes searched your face as though they had found an answer, and in that single look you understood everything he could not bring himself to say. I saw it too. I know. I'm here.
He lowered his gaze for only a moment, almost shyly, before lifting one hand between you, his palm open.
You looked at his hand. Reason still lingered somewhere within you, insisting that none of this could possibly be real. That the house had filled your heart with someone else's longing and your mind with someone else's life. But his hand remained where it was, waiting. You placed your palm against his. His fingers closed around yours with a gentleness that left no room for doubt.
Together, you walked the rest of the way home in silence.
You and Jungsu stood just within the entrance, still joined at the hand, neither releasing the other. You turned slightly to look back at him, finding him a single step behind you, his features softened by the dim evening light filtering through the curtains; his eyes fixed on you. The house met the silence between you with a silence of its own. Holding his gaze for yet another moment, you let your fingers slip gently from his hand and began to drift backwards toward the living room, turning absentmindedly as your feet found the familiar path across the floor. Before the darkness stretching through the house could fully gather around you, you glanced over your shoulder once more, catching him still where you had left him, watching you with a faint smile. Without breaking your stride, your fingertips wandered lightly across the wall until they found the switch they were looking for, and a soft amber light spilled through the hallway, not chasing away the shadows, only lending the house enough warmth for the night to settle into its corners.
Naturally, the soles of your feet found the coarse weave of the living room rug. You let your hand drift across the back of the armchair before lowering yourself onto the floor. Your side settled comfortably against its upholstered side as your elbow came to rest upon the cushion, your temple finding the cradle of your palm.
Behind you, you heard Jungsu disappear into the kitchen: the soft complaint of an old cupboard opening, porcelain lifted carefully from its shelf, the delicate meeting of one cup against another. Your mouth curved into a shy smile. The thought of him standing alone beneath the warm kitchen light, sleeves rolled above his wrists as he searched through old cupboards, made you hide that smile against your own palm as though the empty room might somehow catch you in the act. When you finally lifted your head again, your gaze wandered accidentally toward the standing mirror beside the bookcase.
There you found a woman who could only be yourself. Dust clung to her knees where the day had left its traces, loose strands of hair framed her face and her lipstick had blurred at the corners of her mouth. Everything the mirror returned was familiar. The woman in the glass was undoubtedly you… and still you could not locate yourself within her. You drew a slow long breath and watched the reflected body breathe with you. The image obeyed every movement of yours faithfully, yet each perfect imitation only widened the distance between recognition and belonging.
The sound of approaching footsteps drew you from your thoughts. Jungsu returned carrying two cups, one in each hand, their steam rising through the dim room in pale, intertwining threads. He crossed the carpet carefully and placed them on the table, lowering himself to sit beside you with his legs crossed. He rested his hands on his knees and simply looked at you, the tenderness in his gaze softened further by the weariness in his eyes. You shifted where you sat, your body turning toward him. Eventually, he lifted his hand toward you. His fingers brushed past your temple, gathering the loose strand of hair that had fallen across your cheek before tucking it behind your ear. His palm lingered against the side of your face, his thumb now tracing the faint salt-dried path beneath your eye.
You held his gaze while the house breathed its impossible candle heat around you, and in the simple act of watching him you understood that whatever had followed you through the rooms, whatever had stirred through memory and grief, had made its home in him as well.
"You feel it too, don't you?" His voice reached you barely louder than a whisper. "Please... tell me I'm not the only one." A dry laugh escaped him as he lowered his eyes before looking back at you. "I saw you, Y/N. I saw you in the bedroom... in the library... and here, in this very chair. Every single time I'd find you completely still, staring at nothing... just... gone." He shook his head, his brows drawing together in helpless surrender. "I kept thinking, she knows! She knows. She has to know. I was right... wasn't I?" His eyes searched yours desperately, damp and impossibly wide. "They let you see too... because they did..." His voice faltered. "...to me." He swallowed hard, his gaze slipping away for only a second as though he could no longer bear the weight of your eyes on him. Tears spilled freely down his cheeks. "God..." A shaky laugh escaped him. "I don't even know how to say any of this without sounding completely insane." He gave his head the smallest shake. "Listen to me. I know how this sounds." His fingers tightened faintly around yours. "They… they gave me memories that aren't mine... memories that couldn't possibly be mine, Y/N, I… I knew rooms I'd never stepped into by heart, I missed people I'd never met." His voice caught. "I spent the whole day trying to convince myself that whatever was brewing inside me was just admiration for an incredible coworker. That I'd gotten too tangled up in someone else's love story, that I was overwhelmed… but every room just made it worse." He looked down again. "I kept asking myself why me... why you... why today... why this house. I thought there had to be an answer that would make all of this disappear." A long silence settled between you. "But somewhere along the way..." His smile returned, tired beyond words. "...I stopped asking." He let out a slow breath. "Because somehow... I didn't care anymore. I don't care anymore." His expression crumpled in disbelief. "How is that even possible?" He closed his eyes briefly. "I don't know if this love is mine... or if I'm carrying someone else's. I don't know where Benjamin ends... and where I begin- fuck." His voice dropped almost to nothing. " I don't even know if there’s a line between us anymore. Maybe I've become some sort of bridge- or a vessel… or maybe I've simply lost my mind." His trembling hand guided yours slowly toward his chest until your palm rested over his heart. His pulse answered immediately beneath it. "Can you feel that?" His voice had become unbearably gentle. "It won't stop." His throat tightened visibly. "God..." He smiled helplessly. "I've tried." Another shaky breath. "I really did." His heartbeat answered for him beneath your palm. "Every time I looked at you... it only grew worse, Y/N." His eyes searched yours with the kind of vulnerability that made him seem suddenly much younger. "It hurts." He laughed quietly, embarrassed by the confession. "It burns… everything inside me keeps turning toward you." His voice broke again. "I can't even think properly anymore." He searched your face as though you alone might be able to answer what had become impossible for him. "Tell me, Y/N..." His fingers curled weakly around yours. "...if this isn't mine..." His gaze flickered down to where your hand rested over his heart. "...why does it hurt like it is? Why… can I feel it right here?" A long silence. "And if it is..." He shook his head, defeated. "...why can't I stop it?"
"I thought I was gonna be the one telling you we'd imagined all of this." You confessed quietly. "I spent the whole day explaining everything away... every feeling, every memory, every impossible certainty. I kept telling myself there had to be another answer… because that's the one thing I know how to do. I wanted to pull this place apart until it made some kind of sense." Your eyes drifted toward the darkened window before returning to his. "But every explanation I found only led me to another memory... and every memory pulled me further into this mess" You let out a quiet breath, an almost-laugh. "Yes, I saw them too. Yes, I remembered things I couldn't have remembered. I looked at myself in that mirror and I couldn't even tell who the reflection belonged to." You shook your head, frustrated, frightened, completely overwhelmed by emotions you didn’t know how to untangle. "I hate not understanding this, I hate that I can't explain it. God! I hate that every part of me is telling me to run from this place without ever looking back..." Your fingers curled instinctively against the fabric of his shirt. "...because I don't want to." You watched him soften all at once, his eyes widening as he finally gave in to hope. "What scares me right now isn't them anymore, Jungsu." Your thumb moved absentmindedly against his chest, feeling the steady rhythm beneath your palm. "It's the thought of refusing them… of spending the rest of my life wondering what would've happened if I'd stayed." You searched his face for a long moment. "If all they've wanted... was one last chance to love each other through hands that can still touch and hearts that can still race..." Your voice trembled, though your gaze never left his. "Then I don't want to stand in the way of that. I don't want fear to be the last thing that survives them." Your voice fell to little more than a whisper. "I'm tired of resisting it, Jungsu." You took a long breath… "If letting myself love you tonight means making room for them..." and smiled. "...then I'm ready."
“Are you?"
He leaned toward you slowly, one palm lowering to the floor beside him to steady his weight, close enough that you could feel his breath mingling with yours as his lips reached for you. It was scarcely more than the weight of a question (do you want this to? …do you?), the gentlest brush against your mouth, as if wanting even this much might still be asking for too much. The kiss ended as soon as it began, only a brief peck on the lips and he retreated by little more than the width necessary to take a reassuring breath. His face remained close enough for you to see the flush gathering across his cheeks and reaching toward the tips of his ears. Your open hand moved to the side of his face and before you touched him you remembered the texture of his skin, the warmth of it, the gentle curve of his cheek giving way to the firm line of his jaw. Maybe you, too, had known him for years. When your gaze finally lifted from the place where your bodies met to find his again, you found him watching you with his lips still slightly parted, his breathing caught between one clumsy inhale and the next, his eyes wide and dark and willing, both of you studying each other at such close range that every unfamiliar detail seemed to arrive already carrying the ache of recognition. No longer interested in finding reasons to hesitate, you erased what little distance remained between you.
Your fingers slipped behind his ear and into the softness of his hair, drawing him back toward you before either of you could make room for doubt. Your thumb lingered against the line of his cheek while you tilted your head ever so slightly, finding him again, and when his lips met yours there was nothing tentative in the way you embraced him. Somewhere within the want that carried you forward lived the memory of another woman's hands, hands that had learned another man’s face through decades of repetition… yet none of it felt borrowed. It didn't feel like imitation. It felt… as though devotion could recognize devotion regardless of the bodies it inhabited.
Jungsu followed you with the all-consuming trust of surrender, answering each small move you made with one of his own. One of his hands found your waist, steadying himself while everything else in him seemed to come crumbling down, his fingers trembling faintly against your side as though they, too, were learning you through touch.
His lips were warmer than memory suggested, softer than anticipation allowed you to imagine, still carrying the sweetness of the tea left beside the armchair. There was this… almost painful carefulness in the way he kissed you, hesitation still visible in his clumsy attempts to understand the shape of your mouth, every tentative movement guided only by his willingness to follow wherever you led him.
One slow shift of your bodies became another until you were seated across his lap, your knees folding on either side of him, the change in height allowing you to cradle his face between both hands. He looked up at you with his lips still parted and his breathing uneven, his flush deepening under the weight of your gaze. His eyes followed every tiny movement of your face with unwavering focus, his brows softened, everything in him seeming to wait for whatever you might choose to do next. The sight of him beneath you - painfully willing - sent warmth pooling down your body.
Each time you drew him closer, he came without resistance, his hand still at your waist while the other found the small of your back to anchor himself against the overwhelming reality of your nearness. His body answered yours and you learned the shape of him through those responses: the exact pressure that made his fingers tighten at your waist and the quiet sounds he failed to contain when your fingertips tugged gently at his hair. Every new discovery arrived shadowed by the sensation that you already knew it all… how he would yield, how he would look when held, how he would soften beneath the devotion of a woman who felt so intensely for him. The kisses became at once new and remembered: the first between two people who had met that morning, and the last between two lovers who had spent a lifetime finding their way back to one another.
What begun as the hesitant convergence of two uncertain bodies gradually surrendered to a primal rhythm, your bodies swaying together with the slow, intense cadence of tide meeting cliffside, the yielding insistence of water returning again and again to the same ancient stone. One movement gave way to the next until pulling apart felt as unnatural as asking the shore to forget the sea that shaped it.
The dark folds of your skirt poured over either side of Jungsu's lap. His hands, which only moments before still carried the uncertainty of first discovery, now moved across your body with the confidence of someone remembering an old path, while yours abandoned even the last pretense of restraint. The playful tugs that had teased at the softness of his hair became guidance, your fingers threading through the strands at the nape of his neck, drawing him wherever your lips wished to find him next. Each softened sound he failed to suppress filled you with pride because it revealed how completely he had entrusted himself to your care. You answered that trust in the only language your body seemed to know when it came to him, drawing him nearer, allowing your lips to wander along the architecture of his neck before returning, again and again, to the place where it all began.
At some point his wandering hands reached the last layer separating you, and for the briefest instant the rhythm that had carried you both like water came to a pause. He searched your face and when you answered by drawing him nearer instead of retreating, the final step to surrender was crossed. The room seemed to exhale with you as he sank into you. The impossible warmth of unlit candles lingered still, their imagined light softening the gilded halos of the saints upon the shelves until the gold dissolved into intimate amber. Your joined breathing found another cadence as your bodies drew closer and closer, every slow shift carrying you deeper into one another until even the smallest distance surrendered.
Your eyes lifted from Jungsu's shoulder for only a moment and found the standing mirror. It reflected the two of you. Your hair had long since come loose, dark strands spilling across your shoulders. The loosened collar of your blouse had slipped from one shoulder, yet the broad line of Jungsu's back concealed you almost entirely, his body folded against yours so naturally that the mirror could only offer the silhouette of two people who had forgotten themselves in one another. Your forearms rested around his shoulders, your fingers loosely entwined behind his neck. He remained nestled beneath your chin, his face buried against the hollow of your neck.
At first the mirror reflected only the two of you. Then, gradually, it began to hold four. Your own face remained untouched, but another woman's rested within it, her cheek where yours was, her hands embracing the same shoulders your own hands already held. Jungsu's bowed head remained beneath your jaw, but Benjamin's silver-threaded hair shimmered within the same outline. Ida met your gaze from your own eyes, no grief left in her expression. Without ever breaking eye contact, you inclined your head until your lips hovered beside Jungsu's ear. He only settled more completely against you. Your voice emerged scarcely above a breath.
"Take, eat; this is my body..."
Jungsu didn’t stir. Neither did Benjamin. Ida still said nothing. Her lips never parted. She watched only you.
"...Drink of it; for this is my blood of the covenant..."
Only then did Jungsu lift his head, his eyes finding yours. His hand found yours, his fingers slipping naturally between your own. He held your gaze quietly for a moment before shifting beneath you, rising onto his knees without ever letting you go. One hand remained around yours while the other settled at your back, guiding you down until the carpet received your weight. He followed you down, his body folding once more against yours. As he leaned over you, his broad shoulders gradually eclipsed the mirror. Only he remained.
"What?" he asked softly. His chin rested against your shoulder, forcing him to look up at you through his lashes while absentminded fingers traced slow circles across the bare skin of your waist.
"Nothing." You turned your face toward the window before he could catch how flushed your cheeks were. The attempt lasted all of three seconds before your eyes wandered helplessly back to him. "Jungsu, you're looking at me like I've grown another head."
He melted into a brief laugh. "I'm looking at you because..." He hesitated, his brow knitting slightly as the words refused to arrange themselves into anything that felt true. "I've never..." He laughed again, at himself this time. "...I've never looked at someone and thought they could be this… this beautiful." His eyes searched yours, realizing too late how incomplete that sounded. "I don't mean just..." He gestured vaguely toward your face, then your body, before letting his hand fall with a defeated sigh. "You. Just... you."
The confession was so earnest that it bordered on embarrassment. There was no practiced charm in it, only wonder spoken by someone who had completely forgotten that silence might have protected him from rejection.
"That's a ridiculous thing to say."
"Probably."
You tipped your head back as you laughed, your eyes falling shut. "Oh, definitely!"
He smiled. "Still true."
"You have terrible timing, dummy." You slipped two fingers beneath his chin, gently coaxing him into looking at you again. “You pick now to tell me that? Wouldn't morning have been easier?" A smile tugged at the corners of your mouth. "Or lunch? Maybe somewhere between cataloguing the dining room and emotionally collapsing over years and years of handwritten love letters?"
"Hey, in my defense… I was busy being absolutely fucking terrified before... y’know?”
That drew another laugh from you, brighter, louder, and you turned back to look at him. Whatever awe had lingered in his expression softened into the boyish look of someone who still couldn't quite believe his own luck. He still looked at you as though you were the most astonishing thing he had ever encountered.
"You're still looking," you whispered, your thumb brushing lazily across his cheek.
"I know."
"You're making me nervous."
"Good," he said with a smile so gentle you couldn’t call it teasing. "I've been nervous since I walked up to you under that tree, miss. Seems only fair."
You rolled your eyes with theatrical resignation, though the gesture failed to conceal your smile. "That," you declared, "is the worst attempt at flirting I've ever heard."
"Did it work though?"
You let the question linger, pretending to weigh it with exaggerated seriousness before reaching up to brush a strand of hair away from his forehead.
"Maybe a little."
His smile broke into the widest grin you'd seen all day. "I'll take 'a little.'
Eventually Jungsu drew a slow breath and, with the reluctant smile of someone accepting that even beautiful nights must continue toward morning, gathered you into his arms. You rested your head against his chest as he carried you from the room, the impossible warmth of unlit candles lingering behind you as you both disappeared into the darkened hall.
The mirror above the basin reflected only you. You washed your face in cold water, and when you lifted your head again you were still alone there, your hair falling loosely around your shoulders, tiredness lingering beneath your eyes, happiness softening you into someone who felt a little unfamiliar.
You gathered your hair in both hands and bowed your head slightly, smoothing the strands at the nape of your neck before tying them back, when warmth spread at your waist. Jungsu's arms circled you from behind, still moving through sleep, and before you could turn he had folded himself around you, his face sinking into the hollow between your neck and shoulder, his breath warm against skin still cool from the water. In the mirror, his eyes remained closed, his entire posture suggesting that waking had been an inconvenience he intended to endure only by staying attached to you.
You couldn’t help but laugh as you let one hand fall behind your shoulder and found his hair, combing your fingers gently through the tangles. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”
His reply dissolved against your neck into an unintelligible sound.
“That was very persuasive,” you said, meeting his drowsy reflection. “Unfortunately, I still need you to let go.”
He tightened his arms a little, offering a counterargument.
“Hey, we can’t stay here forever.”
Another muffled protest followed, no more comprehensible than the first.
“You’re incredibly articulate this morning, Jungsu.”
He lifted his face only enough to murmur, “You abandoned me… had to come get you.”
The solemn grievance in his voice made you laugh again. “Use the bathroom, Kim Jungsu.”
He released another wounded sound when you loosened his arms and slipped away, closing the door upon his protest before it could acquire actual words.
By the time he emerged, you sat at the edge of a window with a cup of coffee warming your hands and another one waiting beside you for him. Jungsu had his hair combed into submission except for one strand that had already escaped near his temple, his bag settled over one shoulder and yours held carefully in the other hand. He paused when he saw you, smiling widely.
“You found coffee?” he said. You simply nodded and held out the cup for him.
He crossed the room to accept it, his fingertips brushing yours around the warm ceramic, and remained standing between your knees while he drank. For a while neither of you said anything. He looked through the window toward the oak, then around the kitchen. Whatever he thought, he kept it to himself.
You finished the last of your coffee and set the cup beside you. “We should get going.”
Jungsu nodded. He placed his cup beside yours and extended his hand.
“Ready?”
You looked at his waiting hand, at the familiar lines of a palm you had known for less than a day and remembered with the certainty of years, and placed your own on it.
“Ready.”
You walked together through the house, past rooms restored to ordinary shadow, past religious images whose painted eyes no longer appeared to follow your movement, past furniture holding nothing beyond the impressions left by use. Neither of you spoke as you crossed the entrance hall. The house made no effort to delay you. Jungsu opened the front door, and the brightness outside poured over the threshold. You stepped out first.
The morning air met your face with startling freshness. You crossed the porch, taking several steps toward the oak before turning back, expecting to find Jungsu behind you.
Benjamin stood in the doorway. Smiling.
You smiled back.
Note: I originally started working on Staying at Benjamin's because of a request I got, but somewhere along the way this story became much more personal. Earlier this year I lost my dog, Rufo. He was by my side for fifteen years and saying goodbye to him forever changed the way I understood love. Grief has this very strange way of teaching us that love doesn't disappear when the body does, it simply changes shape. It learns to exist in memories, in habits, in places, in those little moments where we find ourselves reaching for someone who isn't physically there anymore. Although Staying at Benjamin’s is a romantic love story, I think it ultimately became a story about that transformation. So I'd like to dedicate it to everyone who has ever loved someone and has had to grieve them. I hope you still find ways to carry them with you. I’d like to especially dedicate it to Rufo, my soul dog, my beloved son, who, in my heart, is waiting for me just beyond the clouds. Thank you for reading. <3