His hand hovers over my shoulder, close enough that if I shift a tiny bit to the right, he could cup my cheek. I feel myself listing in his direction and catch myself at the last second before I fall into his hand.

“Yes. Yes, we can.” I’d agree to anything at this point. Drink a cup of poison with me? It’s delicious. Sure, fill my cup to the brim.

Yujun’s hand drops to his side but I don’t feel too sad about it, as the dimple makes a reappearance. “There are three ways up to the tower—cable car, bus, and your feet. Well, we could also take a taxi.”

I stare up at the thin cable wire and then down at my flimsy sandals. “I’d rather walk.” It can’t be all bad. Yujun has dress shoes on.

“It can be steep in places,” he warns.

“Walk. Definitely walk. I rode one of those cable cars at a fair and I spent the whole time with my sweaty palms curled around the safety bar, wondering if I’d survive if the line broke.”

A smile dances around the corners of Yujun’s lips. “And your conclusion?” he queries.

“In some places, yes, but with many broken bones. I don’t think there’s even one safe spot along this cable line.” The wire carrying the cable cars from the top of the mountain down to someplace on the street is barely visible.

“There is quite a bit of open space between the cable car and the ground,” Yujun concedes. “But it hasn’t failed yet.”

“Have you ridden it?”

“Oh yes, but not for years. I think I was fifteen?” He considers it for a moment. “Yes. Second grade—that’s second year of high school here,” he clarifies. “I came up here with hyung and a friend of ours. Our friend had moved here from Busan and he wanted to see what the city looked like.”

“Hyung?”

“Ah, have you forgotten our lessons already?” he teases. “Hyung is what I would call a male friend who is older than me. If Sangki-ah wasn’t my same-age friend, but older, I’d call him hyung.”

The conversation we had the other night about proper titles is starting to come back to me. “But I wouldn’t call him hyung, right? I would call him . . .” I’m not sure how to say Sangki’s name anymore after the talk with Jules. What was the respectful way to say another person’s name? “DJ Song?”

“Still against oppa?”

“I thought you said that I shouldn’t call anyone else oppa.”

Yujun’s lips quirk up at the corners. “That’s right.”

“Are you going to tell me what that means? I have this feeling it has some hidden definition.”

There’s a light sigh, as if Yujun doesn’t want to share, but he says, “All older males are called oppa. If Sangki-ah were your brother or you were very close with him, you’d call him oppa. But if you were to say it to someone you liked, you would use a different tone. We would know.