Chapter Text
He has a defined Cupid’s bow for his upper lip.
From her seat Gyeo-ul, legs crossed and chin rested on a palm, watches with curious eyes as the fluorescents illuminating Seoul Station traced the outline of his mouth, as if intentionally to catch her attention. Brushing off the chill that she had felt run through her spine—perhaps brought about by the late Saturday night air—, she nods to herself, finally realizing how that particular lip shape was named after the iconic baby with wings (actually a Roman god) who shoots arrows at people and makes them feel helplessly attracted to somebody.
Not that it has the same effect on her—she insists it’s something else.
That mouth, she thinks as she peels her brief focus off the notebook on her lap and throws another side glance towards him, her finger tapping impatiently on her cheek and her bottom lip slightly jutting out, is distracting!
He catches her looking at him.
His mouth had been slightly agape for a second before Gyeo-ul quickly averts her eyes, feeling relieved when she could hear him chattering again. Well, that was awkward, she mutters to herself.
She thinks he’s a bit weird too; one minute he sounds like a whining kid, puffing and pouting exasperatedly, the next he’s laughing and roaring with a surprising bout of enthusiasm. Min-ha would’ve approached him and told him off immediately in her usual passive-aggressive manner if she were here.
Gyeo-ul though doesn’t really seem to mind it much the first two minutes of what seems to be a phone call with his friend, except that now she feels like she’s knowing—although through involuntary means—a bit too much about him for a stranger: apparently he’d just recently sold his car that’s why he’d ended up taking the subway, and he’s supposed to meet up with this “friend” (whose name is Jun-han? Jung-hwan?) so they can visit someone in Sokcho.
There’s a crease forming in between her brows now and on the portion of the page of her notebook where she had ended up scribbling rugged, curved lines in an attempt to replicate the shape of that hard-to-not-notice mouth with her pen. Unsatisfied, she draws another one again, and another, all while trying to keep her growing frustration at bay and her glances from the corner of her eye as subtle as possible this time.
This isn’t exactly how she had imagined the ‘getaway’ Min-ha had somehow coerced her into taking.
Not even an hour in and she’s already breaking her promise not to think about or do anything closely related to work. And then there’s this loud man slowly ruining what she had expected would be a peaceful subway station on a late weekend night.
“Chingu-ya, I’ve already planned everything ahead, you know! I’m good at this—best, even,” Gyeo-ul overhears him saying, and a humored scoff slips out of a corner of her mouth. She starts clicking her tongue again, her brows furrowed in confusion, and her pen spinning faster and faster around her fingers.
She looks at her paper and feels unsatisfied, restless all over again—although she knows she shouldn’t have to be, over drawing a grown man. She’s been holding a pen for most of her life, and he’s just a stranger, after all! One who had seated himself at the other end of the bench she also happens to be on, although she really thinks he could’ve just sat—or stood—anywhere else with all this space around. This man could just look and stay hideous in her drawing for all she cares, and the world would surely keep on turning.
Feeling the night air grow colder through her overcoat, Gyeo-ul heaves a sigh of concession and finally shuts her notebook, and stuffs it and her pen back into her large duffel bag that she had carefully tucked by her safe side earlier.
Tuning out of the unwanted phone conversation beside her, she lets her eyes wander around the unusually vacant platform for a change of scene. From where she sits, she could make out just around five others waiting with them at the subway station, each of them absorbed in their own little bubbles: a message on their phone screen in need of attention, an interesting discussion with a companion, a refuge found on a partner’s shoulder…
On weekday evenings, when people rush to get home for dinner or for a long-awaited rest, the waiting lines could stretch long, like a convoluted snake. The station would often get too crowded, with a spectrum of mostly black and white uniforms dotting the platform, the thick yellow line by the platform edges that’s supposed to tell just until where people could stand, most of the time seemingly ignored—although, of course, there are glass screen doors safely separating the trains from the platforms in most stations now.
Inside a vibrant lecture hall back in her undergraduate years, she had learned the fundamental knowledge that everything we see in nature can be reduced to lines. Behind each unique stroke can grow a number of possible meanings and fully-rendered pictures—like how zigzags and scribbly lines can imply restlessness or excitement, and thick lines may denote something that needs to be emphasized. Straight lines generally give a sense of stability and direction, while curved lines may express comfort or sensuality…
Sensing the man seated beside her to have finally quieted down, Gyeo-ul’s eyes gravitate towards him again.
The phone call must have already ended as he’s now resorted to giggling over something on his phone screen. At least no more of that involuntary eavesdropping, aka hearing him trying to sound cool to his friend!—he isn’t that cool, she tells herself.
In fact, he’s just loud, and annoyingly fashionable too.
Huh—did she just call him fashionable?
Her eyes widen in surprise. Why did she suddenly find him wearing that white shirt and navy blue cap and faded denim jeans and leather jacket fashionable?!
Rapidly blinking away what she thinks might be tiredness numbing her reasoning, Gyeo-ul finds the curved lines contouring his cheekbones that she hadn’t taken notice of earlier becoming more defined. And attractive.—'Mwo-ya!?’ She scrunches up her nose just thinking about it.
Her phone rings, thankfully interrupting her from her unguided thoughts. It’s Min-ha—and her godly timing again, saving her—asking if she’s going to be okay on her own. Gyeo-ul convinces her and herself as well that she will be; she’s ‘25 and not anymore a baby’, which is honestly how Min-ha seems to treat her like most of the time.
The woman seems to have prepared a checklist of what to remind Gyeo-ul too, but a familiar tune suddenly starts to play through the station speakers, interrupting them.
“Min-ha, the car’s arriving in a minute,” she promptly cuts her friend off over the phone.
“Okay then, it would take around 8 minutes to Yongsan Station. Don’t forget to get off there, don’t dare doze off, and don’t—
“Arasseo, arasseo… Min-ha-ssi, are you a rapper?” she chuckles at her own attempt at humor, “Don’t worry about me. I’ll make sure to send you a message.”
“NO, call me!—ah, I know you wouldn’t—just make sure to answer my call instead, OK?!” Gyeo-ul laughs again at her fussy friend in reply.
She begins to load her bag on her arm and stands up to prepare to board the midnight subway train, but not before taking one last wistful glimpse at her benchmate, who still seems preoccupied with fixing his baggage. “I guess, thanks at least for keeping me awake,” she mumbles to herself, a ghost of a smile on her lips.
And then she leaves.
Beautiful.
Jeong-won would’ve loved to take a photo of the moment—it’s the first time he’s riding the subway in a long while, and on a weekend night. The neat, spacious interior of the unusually empty subway car he has just walked into inspires something in him—except that it isn't actually empty; there was someone else who had gotten there before him, he realizes now, and he suddenly feels awkward.
The woman at the far end of the car seems asleep though, and Jeong-won wonders if she would consider it out of line if he were to take a photo with her in it, unknowing.
Finally taking a seat near the door that connects to the other car, he gently places his backpack beside him, his lips pursed as if in deep thought, and his eyes still reveling in the mysterious appeal of a solo midnight subway ride. The shiny metallic vertical poles anchored in between seats, and the horizontal bars attached to the ceiling are very noticeable in a blue and white interior void of passengers. He sighs, his bottom lip sticking out into a sulky pout. These lines would make a really cool symmetrical photo if I were to stand in the middle...
Jeong-won finally decides that he would just take the picture. He might regret it if he wouldn’t, so he quickly fumbles for the digicam he has kept in the front flap pocket of his bag.
“People do this all the time anyway,” he mumbles to himself as he stands up from his seat and walks to the center of the aisle, “and no one would mind if I would, anyway.” Right, why would he feel bothered by just one stranger who doesn’t and wouldn’t seem to mind?
Raising the camera to his eye-level, Jeong-won squints through the viewfinder and takes a photo, and then another, a lopsided smile burgeoning on his face.
His smile immediately fades when someone coughs, just loudly enough for him to hear.
Jeong-won reflexively pulls the camera away from his face—feeling as if he’d been caught red-handed, although he knows he shouldn’t be. His eyes alert and his lips tightly pursed, he stiffly returns to his seat, trying his best not to meet the other person’s eyes in the process.
Thankfully, the woman—who’s apparently not asleep now, Jeong-won notes—is busy scrolling through her phone on her seat at the far corner of the subway car to even look at him. Unlike him, she seems unbothered and cool sitting there with her legs crossed, an ankle on the other knee, her eyes trained on her cellphone.
He takes another photo, and it’s kind of too late when he realizes what he’d just done.
Immediately bringing down the camera to his lap, he looks at the photos one by one on the small camera screen, and a corner of his mouth lifts into a smile. It's timid—from the fear of possibly having offended this stranger, or something else.
“I’d never see her again after this, anyway,” he says in hopes of pacifying the erratic beating in his chest.
In about three minutes, he would be getting off at Yongsan Station.
