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Being with Hye-jin, you decide, is a bit like a waltz.
There's a certain magic to her smile—to that sparkle in her eyes—that draws you in like a dream, or an inevitability. It's a little like what gravity might feel like, if you could feel it, you suppose: the apple cannot help but fall to the ground, and you cannot help but fall for Yoon Hye-jin.
And yet. Even as she is all heart and reckless, messy energy, sharp words and sharper laughter, you're the exact opposite, all cautiousness and cowardice, bound by the ghosts in your head that never let you forget your sin. She'll say or do something to make you laugh helplessly, an electric shock of joy that squeezes your chest almost painfully in its intensity—but then, without fail, the ghosts begin to speak, the way they always do. In an exhale, like broken glass.
Joy? they whisper, in the back of your mind, a grotesque, ruined echo of all the dead people you once loved. Refusing to be silenced, no matter how many pills you swallow dry, no matter how many trips you make to the therapist. You don't deserve joy. You're a plague unto the people around you. A torment. A curse.
So you pull back, let the voices drown you in their agonising, relentless, unforgiving sadness. Paste a smile on your face, go about your day, turn your heart inside-out and pretend you're as unaffected as you look. Lock yourself in your home at night and bite your tongue till it bleeds.
And yet—no matter how hard you try—you find yourself back in front of her once again. An apple to the ground, as inevitable as gravity.
As rhythmic as a waltz.
Unfortunately, you've never been good at dancing.
You can already imagine the smirk on her face, if you told her that. Our Chief Hong, she'd tease, with a flick of her hair and a curve of her lips, not good at something? Impossible.
But, well. Funny dental-hygiene dances in a kindergarten classroom are one thing, but dancing—real dancing, with two people and a choreography and a song—has always been a step too intimate, a touch too personal for your liking. Being a hair's-breadth away from the other person, feeling the roughness of their palm and the warmth of their breath. Being in a conversation you can't escape, no matter how charming or quick-witted you are; no, in a dance, you just have to wait till the end of the song.
And for you, whose defence mechanism has always been to hide, to force a laugh and crack a joke and take a step back—of course you've never been good at it. Time has always been your enemy, and for you especially, the very worst torture is to be dictated by someone else's rhythm, a rhythm you can't control. Every time you've danced, you've felt that sinking, thrumming unease, that claustrophobia. Bile in the back of your throat, that terror pounding against your ribcage hard enough to bruise.
And probably that's how she should make you feel. Because it is a waltz, after all. The way she leans forward and you take a step back. How you smile at her and watch her own expression flicker with uncertainty. That time when you reached over to press your hands to her cheeks, revelling in the scorching-heat of her blush. And when she leaned over you that day on the couch, close enough that you could taste the sweetness of her breath on your own tongue, only for her to end up running away like a startled cat.
Push and pull, in and out, back and forth. Your heart beating to the way she moves, ebbing and flowing with the light of her smile. It's everything you should hate, your very worst fear.
But instead of feeling that awful, hazy fear, that blackness that shrouds your mind and consumes all rational thought, you feel...something light, and warm. A headiness that makes your heart thrum like a hummingbird in your chest. Something like the scent of tangerines in the summer, or the sighing of the ocean-breeze.
And you should fight it, you should, because the voices are right, you know they are. You're a plague and a torment and a curse, everyone who's ever loved you is dead, you don't deserve this faint strain of light and warmth, this distant, long-forgotten something that you think might be a little like happiness. You should fight it, except that Hye-jin is kind and beautiful and she makes you laugh, and when she looks into your eyes you feel like you might drown in the feeling, might die for how much you want to just let yourself—just fall, into her arms.
You push her away once, twice, three times. You smile and tease and call her Ms. Dentist, with a mocking twist of your lips, and she keeps coming back, all fire and wit and challenge, and you think you've never met someone quite as infuriatingly stubborn.
You push her away four times. Five times.
Still, she comes back. A waltz. (A plague.) A dream. (A torment.) An inevitability. (A curse.) "Are you scared?" she asks.
"Yes," you tell her. She smiles, takes your hand, and you feel your last ounce of restraint shatter like thin ice.
You close your eyes, and let yourself fall.