***

Kim Yong-beom was good at everything.

Like someone born and raised on an island, he adapted effortlessly, building a life as if it came naturally to him. By the time I woke up, he had returned from the sea, heated water for me to wash with, and prepared food.

When I stepped out, he would be waiting with dishes made from conch or abalone that he had prepared with ease.

I sat across from him, still sluggish, eating the food he had made.

It was warm.

And it was good.

In the afternoons, I would put a cup of apple-scented tea beside me and open my notebook. A poetry collection, a notebook and a mechanical pencil that was all I had.

Scribbling clumsy poems across those pages was the only luxury I had left.

Kim Yong-beom sat across from me.

“I’m not looking.”

When I covered the notebook with my arm, he let out a quiet, mocking smile.

‘Y’ou don’t even know what poetry is. What would you do if you saw it? Can you even read?’’

I swallowed my tea and the words I once would have thrown at him.

Instead, I looked at him.

There he was, sitting and gazing out of the window, a small teacup almost hidden in his large hand.

A large yet careful hand.

A hand better suited to holding a pen than a knife.

Sitting on the narrow two-seater sofa, I took in his broad shoulders, which seemed to claim the space as their own. Above those were his long neck and the subtle rise and fall of his Adam’s apple.

His jaw was strong enough to lock down like a crocodile’s and never let go.

He had a straight, well-defined nose.

Then, my gaze lifted to meet his pitch-black eyes.

“….”

“….”

We just looked at each other for a while.

There were countless reasons to look away, but I didn’t want to.

Suddenly, everything began to feel unreal.

Being on a desert island with no one else around, listening to the waves crashing, bathing in warm water, eating until I was full, drinking apple-scented tea and writing poetry felt more like a dream than reality.

It felt more like a dream than reality.

And yet… it was real.

It was a reality created by Kim Yong-beom.

“It’s… livable.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Being on the run all the time was fine, even if that’s all I ever did.

When had I ever not been running?

When had I ever had a place to settle down and live like a normal person?

This was the first time.

The first time I had ever lived like this.

“Thank you.”

At my quiet words, Kim Yong-beom didn’t ask what I meant. He didn’t list what he had done, didn’t make a show of it.

He simply looked at me—and said,

“Your hair. Want me to cut it?”

I ran my left hand through my hair.

The damp strands caught between my fingers before slipping free. From the ends that brushed my ears, down to my neck and shoulders, the lengths were uneven.

When I was young, my mother used to cut my hair. I think I was around twelve when I gave her the scissors because it kept falling into my eyes. She told me that at my age I should be able to cut it myself.

Standing in front of a small mirror that was barely big enough to show my face, I tilted my head this way and that as I cut. Trying to make both sides even, I kept thinking, ‘Just a little more, just a little more’ until my hair ended up shorter than my ears.

It looked so awful that I nearly cried.

The women in the shanty laughed at me. Even the men who came to buy from them snickered.

If I had learned at the age of nine that money ruled everything in this world, by the time I was twelve I had made a decision: No matter how miserable my life became, I would never be laughed at for something like my hair again.

I clung to the mirror and the scissors, straining my eyes.

The more I tried to even it out, the more I began to resemble a human being.

After that, I cared for my hair more than anything else.

But that hair — the hair I had taken such care of —I cut it off myself when I was twenty-one. I was sold to pay off a debt and dragged into the slave market in Mia.

I left it a tangled mess so that no one would want to buy me.

“Okay. Cut it.”

I sat on the sofa by the window.

Kim Yong-beom stood behind me.

As if he had seen someone do it before, he cut a hole in the middle of an old, yellowing newspaper and slipped it over my head.

His fingers moved through my hair like a comb.

He smoothed it down, cut it, brushed it again and trimmed carefully over and over.

Those same rough hands that had once been used to cover my mouth and stifle my screams were now moving through my hair with quiet, unexpected care.

“Back at Mia, did you see everything I went through?”

Whenever I was caught trying to escape, they beat me just enough to keep me alive. They’d say my hair was too neat, then hit me until my cheeks were swollen.

He must have seen it, too.

“You thought I was some crazy b*tch, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

I turned my head sharply, but Kim Yong-beom caught my face and turned it back forward.

“You were insane. Yelling back at knife-wielding thugs, getting beaten and stripped bare—and still trying to run. At some point, I figured you were just stubborn beyond reason.”

“Thanks for the recognition.”

“I thought you were human.”

I went still.

“How could you not go mad in a place like that? Even someone who walked in on their own would lose their mind there. But you… you were the only one I noticed. The only one who seemed alive in that hell.”

“The only one who survived.”

Those words reached back to those long, exhausting days; to the desperate fight to stay alive; to the part of me that had refused to die.

Tear after tear fell onto my knees.

Despite crying like a fool, I couldn’t stop looking at him — only him — faintly reflected in the window.

He didn’t offer empty comfort.

And somehow, that made it all the more comforting.

“What are you doing? Hurry up and cut it.”

My voice was hoarse from crying.

Kim Yong-beom crouched down and started cutting again, more carefully this time.

I could feel his warm breath brushing against the back of my neck.

My shoulders tensed.

“Don’t move.”

“It tickles.”

“Bear with it.”

There was no more conversation.

Kim Yong-beom narrowed his brows and focused on cutting my hair.

I simply watched him.

When he finally put down the scissors, I looked at my reflection in the window.

My hair now fell neatly to my shoulders.

“Want it shorter?”

I shook my head.

I liked it far more than the way I had once painstakingly cut it myself, strand by strand. Before I knew it, a smile spread across my face, my mouth hanging open like a fool’s.

He was looking at me—the man who had cut my hair, even when my own mother had let it grow out.

Embarrassed by his gaze, I quickly closed my mouth.

The air turned awkward in an instant.

I stood up, took off the newspaper draped over my shoulders and felt a large hand lightly brush the back of my neck.

“There’s hair stuck.”

“….”

“Here too.”

His hand brushed away the strands of hair clinging to my neck, chin, and earlobe. When it reached my cheek, I held my breath unconsciously.

It might have been the stray hairs inside my clothes, or perhaps it was simply his touch, but my whole body tingled.

“Open your eyes, Lee Chun-hee.”

I hadn’t realized I had closed my eyes.

I placed my hand over his, which was still resting on my cheek, and held it firmly as I slowly opened my eyes.

He was right there in front of me.

His face was getting closer.

I didn’t move away.

His lips brushed against mine briefly, then he was gone.

“You’re not avoiding me?”

“No.”

“You’re not going to hit me?”

“No.”

“I’m going to keep going.”

His lips came closer again.

“If you’re scared, say so. If you want to pull away, then do it. You can say no. That’s fine. It’s okay.”

But I didn’t pull away because I chose not to.

I didn’t know where this would lead—but wherever it was, I wanted to stay with him.

“If I do this again, I won’t stop.”

Then Kim Yong-beom kissed me.

The unfamiliar sensation of him catching my lower lip made me lean back slightly, but he followed me, deepening the kiss.

One of his hands cradled my cheek, while the other settled around my waist.

There was a quiet strength in his touch — not forceful, but steady enough to show that he wouldn’t let go.

Strangely, that made me feel at ease.

As the kiss deepened, I said something unintentionally. Holding my breath only made my heart pound harder and my ears ring, as if the world had faded away.

The crashing waves faded.

All I could hear was the soft, tangled sound between us.

Even the slightest tremble of my lashes felt unbearably vivid.

Just as I reached my limit, I grasped the hand on my cheek.

Clinging to his wrist like a lifeline, I tightened my grip — and only then did a small space open up between us.

With our lips barely apart, I finally let out the breath I had been holding.

“Ha… haa…”

When I opened my eyes, Kim Yong-beom was looking down at me.

In his pitch-black eyes, I saw myself.

I was breathless, with an unfamiliar expression on my face.