But you, your sideburns curved into your beard, which tickled my face, you were so close. Something cold touched my cheek. A 500-milliliter bottle of Fiji water you had brought to my busted lip.

—Are you all right?

A deep, slightly hoarse voice. Lips with a hint of dryness covering a cute snaggletooth. It felt like a crime to let those friendly lips just pass me by. I kissed them before I could stop myself. Your tongue, which was as warm as your gaze, caressing mine—I wish that was how our love began, but this was long before it really started. I was just crazy. Over you? No, I was crazy from the excessive booze, the music, the chaotic laser beams, the stuffy air that felt like it could suffocate me any minute.

And more than anything else, I was crazy with my own piercing unhappiness.

I tasted blood. The taste shocked me sober and I pushed you away, then whispered in your ear.

—Please forget me.

I staggered as I got up from the floor. Yes, to tell you the truth now, after all that has happened since, I wasn’t that drunk that night. It was just a stupid excuse in my attempt to gloss over the awkward moment. Boram and Qri shook my shoulders, and Kylie’s “All the Lovers” started playing over the speakers. “Fuck this, come on, let’s go.” I pretended to be more drunk than I was as Eun-jung supported me on our way out of the club. Up on the surface, I magically sobered up and turned my head back toward the entrance leading down into the club. In the direction from which Kylie’s voice continued to resound. The only thing I felt about you at the time was worry.

You, Gyu-ho, who tasted my blood.

◊

Kylie.

Summer of 2010, I went on my first leave from my compulsory military service, and the only three things floating around in my brain were iced Americano, Kylie Minogue, and sex. A man waved to me as I got off the express bus—K, my civil servant boyfriend of six months. He was holding a Starbucks venti extra-shot iced Americano in one hand, and I chugged that elixir of life so fast my eyes rolled up into the back of my head. Bitterness: my favorite taste in the world. That first coffee in three months made my heart pound like mad.

—Hyung, the new Kylie Minogue is out, I want to listen to it now.

—All right. Let’s go inside somewhere.