EXCERPT FROM 6.25 (Yook-i-oh) by Me-K AHN

EXCERPT FROM 6.25 (Yook-i-oh)

  X saw them together. Well, actually, she saw Producer MJ first, naked, all six-feet of him in front of her, blocking the doorway of his apartment. No glasses. Flaccid.

       She’d knocked three times. He never locked the door, so she walked in.

      Had he planned to just stand there behind the closed door until she left?

      Behind the Producer in the bedroom, pale skin glowed on the futon in the grainy darkness. It looked like an Ingres nude, long and elegant. The beauty of it stopped her. She expected to see the nude surrounded by silk and satin tapestry with a bead-encrusted peacock feather duster in hand. It was Jimin. Thinner than she’d imagined. 

      She could hear the echoes of the protest in the distance outside. The President of Korea had just allowed U.S. beef into the market even amid breakouts of Mad Cow disease in Montana. It was 10 p.m. Protesters had come out in record numbers for the all-night candle vigils.

      She couldn’t move, fixed on the creaminess of Jimin’s skin. She wanted to reach out and touch it. As if it might make it easier to leave. She clutched the toothbrush she’d just bought from the 7-11 tightly in her hand.

      “I’ll put some clothes on,” the Producer said.

The line of his waist snaked violent in the darkness. As if his body were transforming. He threw the covers over Jimin who barely stirred.

       X did not wait for the Producer to dress; she ran, out of the warm, grainy frame, into the cool echoes of the riot police, her suspicions confirmed. She finally had a reason to run away. Yet she knew she could only run so far; images of Jimin kept passing before her—Jimin filling MJ’s glass, Jimin at his elbow, Jimin polite, ingratiating in all the right ways.

      In these quaint alleys she once loved, the lingering tear gas from the riot police still stung her nose, though a strange calm had settled for the moment.

      But then MJ grabbed her arm from behind, and everything went red inside her. He was out of breath and stopped them in front of a cobblestone wall. She noticed the contours of his face were more agitated than usual. It was what she usually loved about him, the drama of his face, the lines so bold and assured they etched themselves into her. She stared at the silhouette of his long chin, and saw Jimin that first night they met, making sure MJ had enough dried squid and peanuts with his beer, showing his guests to the bathroom.  

      The Producer pulled her closer. “X, we didn’t do anything,” he said. “We were just sleeping.” His touch was desperate in the way it lingered on her. 

      She jerked away, and saw Jimin again, this time on the floor with that collage in front of her, that shorn hair. “I thought you were on your way back from work,” X said.

      MJ nodded, his black curly hair still disheveled.

      “And ten minutes later you’re in bed with her?” She threw the 7-11 toothbrush down. “Very impressive.”

      “I told you…,” he said. “Go ask Jimin yourself.”

      So X turned back as if she were heading towards the Producer’s apartment. But then turned again to the main street. Away from Jimin. Back towards the burning smell.