Worry

I want to remember the heat of August — a month that flowed more slowly and lazily than any other, yet left behind clearer imprints than any other — like an ice pop melting into sticky sweetness.

I want to remember the August sun blazing down on the garden. The parabolic arc of a rainbow cast over the water spraying from the aqua gun connected to the hose. The cry of the cicadas clinging to the oak tree, seeming to symbolize summer itself. The awareness of being alive that came from the tiny beads of sweat beginning to seep out onto my skin after I took off my t-shirt.

As he had mentioned, the rain from the night before must have been very slight, because when I stepped out into the garden, the ground was already parched under the fierce sunlight. August was now past its midpoint, but the intense heat remained.

With ample sunlight and water, the plants were full of vitality even as people wilted under the prolonged heat wave. The weeds, too, surged with the same vigor, so after first pulling up the ones that had sprouted again in just a few days, I connected the hose to the spigot in the corner of the garden.

Shwaaaaaa.

The sound of the water alone made it feel as if the surrounding temperature had dropped a degree or two. I directed the stream toward the sweet osmanthus whose branches I had pruned with clumsy hands, and brought my left hand close to the nozzle. The water was cold. The sun pouring down on my bare shoulders and back was hot enough to scorch.

Amid the cicada noise and water sounds that numbed my mind, I brought my chilled left hand up to my lips.

Using my thumb and forefinger, I gathered and toyed with the flesh of my lower lip. In an instant, a strange sensation washed across my skin. Even through my sunglasses, in the blinding sunlight that seemed to bleach the world white, I found myself thinking of his lips.

The suction — intense enough to be painful — was a direct measure of the depth of his desire for me. Remembering the way he would bite and pull as if trying to swallow me whole, I twisted the flesh between my thumb and forefinger. The cicadas' song seemed to drag my consciousness into a dizzy swirl, like being sucked into a lollipop. I twisted hard enough that I thought the skin might split and bleed. I was getting hard.

Ahem. Hmm.

At the deliberately staged sound of a cough announcing a presence, I slowly turned around.

He was leaning against the open doorframe with his arms crossed, tilting his head slightly as he looked my way.

Surprisingly, I felt no shame. For some reason I wasn't embarrassed. I kept the aqua gun running and held his gaze as he stood there on the steps.

With a faint smile, he unfolded his arms and came down the stairs. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, pressing his lips to my ear as his hands stroked my chest and stomach — slick and gleaming with sweat.

My summer got a little hotter.

"Since when have you been pinching your lip like that when you're alone?"

"You really do surprise people sometimes," he added. A sweet, syrupy scent drifted from him as he spoke. I remembered him saying he would make pancakes with fruit for breakfast.

"If you wanted a kiss, you should have just come in and pinned me down."

I tilted my head back as his lips burrowed into the nape of my neck. Two small, nameless birds flew quickly past the top of the tall oak tree. His hands caressing my chest and his lips kissing my neck felt like the sun itself.

"Have you always been out here like this without a shirt on?"

I nodded, placing my hand over his as he stroked the space between my shoulder and upper arm.

"Next time, let me know in advance. It's such a shame I've been missing out on something this good all this time."

He kissed the outer edge of my shoulder where it met my arm, then moved to stand at my side, gently massaging the back of my neck.

"Those sunglasses suit you. Then again, what wouldn't?"

I smiled back at him as he lightly tapped his own cheekbone, then redirected the hose from the sweet osmanthus toward the mock orange. The arc of the rainbow grew larger as the stream stretched farther. The sound of water hitting the mock orange was slightly different from the osmanthus.

"I... I think I should go see a doctor."

"......"

His hands, which had been lightly massaging my neck and shoulders, gradually stilled.

"I thought it was just mild gastritis, or maybe just the heat getting to me, and that it would pass... but you seem really worried, Director, and honestly, the symptoms haven't shown any sign of improving, so I'm going to get checked out. It's probably nothing serious, but it also seems foolish to just keep enduring it when there's no change."

No one had ever worried about me this much over something as simple as a poor appetite or mild nausea at certain smells. I don't particularly enjoy eating to begin with, so I had never taken loss of appetite seriously. This time too, I had mostly intended to leave it alone as usual, expecting it to pass on its own.

But he had been so attentive that he had noticed the symptoms even before I mentioned them. The fact that I — the one actually living in this body — was being so careless with something someone else cherished so deeply felt like an act of disrespect toward the person who cared for it.

And, though it still didn't quite feel real, I also had the thought that if I was going to continue working steadily as a full-time artist, maintaining a certain level of physical health had to be accepted as part of managing myself.

"Next week, I'll make some time, just briefly during the day... I'll go, and come right back."

After a long silence I looked over to find him still resting his hand on my shoulder, lost in thought. His profile — frozen as if he had forgotten even to blink — looked even more like a sculpture. Elegant and delicate, almost ivory in tone, yet the rough, wild nature visible just beneath that thin surface drew from him an irresistible tension and a kind of sexiness that made it impossible to look away.

Expressing the wildness behind the elegance, or the elegance concealing the wildness, was impossible with ordinary skill. He seemed like a masterpiece born from the hands of a great master. At least, that was how he appeared to me.

Whether he sensed my admiring gaze or had simply finished his thought, he flinched slightly, became aware of himself, and turned his head toward me.

"Yes... that's a good idea. If your body isn't well, you should see a doctor. I'll make an appointment so Inwu can take a look."

I hadn't expected him to suggest seeing Inwu, so my eyes widened slightly without me realizing it.

"He may not look it, but he's very thorough with his examinations."

He gave a brief, closed-mouth smile. Then, suddenly, his expression turned serious. He turned his body fully toward me and stepped closer. The shadow of his large frame fell across half my face.

Even though he had emerged from his thoughts, his expression remained as if time had paused — the same distant look from moments before. But he wasn't looking past me. His face, if anything, was filled with a longing that seemed to want to pull me into his world and keep me there.

He lowered his head and pressed his lips to my shoulder. As his hands slid down from my shoulder to trace along both my sides, the head of the aqua gun swayed. My other thoughts swayed and scattered with it. Hah... A faint, sigh-like moan slipped out from me.

His hands moved from my sides to my back, then gripped my waist tightly. The lips that had traveled from my shoulder up to my neck slid along my jawline, and I closed my eyes in anticipation, parting my mouth.

"Mm, ugh. Mmm."

In the sudden, deep kiss, I lost my grip on the aqua gun. The hose thrashed wildly like a long eel pulled onto dry land, then went still, its head dropping quietly onto the grass, water trickling out.

I wanted to remember every detail — the heat of August, the sensation of his kiss painting new feelings onto my lips and tongue that I hadn't known before, and the sweet, sour, hot — and sometimes startlingly unfamiliar — taste of those summer days as my first feelings for another person carefully ripened.

About the first infatuation they say becomes the benchmark for all subsequent relationships in a person's history, and the object of that infatuation, whom I could never forget — Liu Weikun.