Page 85 of Lethal in Pink

It becomes our default coordinate. I take the chair facing the wall; Jae takes the one opposite me, manga propped against a terrifying stack of veterinary pharmacology notes.

Outside those walls, the campus moves fast, but the friction between us vanishes into muscle memory.

In the sun-bleached courtyard between buildings, his hand finds the small of my back—not possessive, just a flat, steady palm between my shoulder blades guiding me through the midday crowd. I’m midway through a pissed-off rant about jurisdictional precedent when he makes contact, and neither of us breaks stride. Later, when I’m pressing a point about stare decisis, my fingers wrap around the corded muscle below his elbow, gripping hard enough to leave half-moons in his skin before I let go. He doesn't flinch. He just waits me out, treating my physical punctuation like it's just another part of the room's architecture.

Then there is the hoodie. A faded black thing with a stretched-out hem and a small hole near the left pocket. I took it one evening when the campus AC dipped low and my arms were goosebumped raw, and it never made it back to him. It migrates—draped over my desk chair, balled on my passenger seat, hooked over my bathroom door. He sees it everywhere and never asks for it back. When the evening breeze cools down, he just brings another one, and sometimes I steal those too.

By early December, the glare through the east windows turns thin and pale, doing nothing to break the lingering autumn warmth outside. I’m highlighting a case brief on Penn Central, a strand of hair clinging to my temple for the third time in two minutes.

Jae reaches over. His fingers are warm, slightly rough at the pads from handling instruments all morning. He tucks the strand behind my ear with a touch so light I barely feel it—just the brush of skin against my temple, the careful hook of his index finger.

Then he leans forward and presses his lips to my forehead.

It lasts less than a second. Warm, dry, certain. No hesitation. Then he pulls back, his hand dropping to the table, and turns straight back to his manga.

I keep reading. The pink highlighter doesn't stop moving across the page. The Takings Clause…does not prohibit all regulation of property…I don't look up, because if I look at him, the carefully locked room in my chest is going to shatter into a million jagged little pieces.

By the time mid-December arrives, the city outside remains stubbornly mild, but the campus quiet bleeds into the shadowed intimacy of Jae’s apartment.

His kitchen table is buried under a landslide of academic debris: cracked vet textbooks, a constellation of highlighters, and an open pizza box with a single, congealing slice left under the overhead pendants. Finals are close enough to taste like copper, but we’ve been sitting here for two hours accomplishing absolutely fuck-all.

Jae reaches for the last slice, folds it lengthwise, and takes a bite.

“You know what’s weird?” he says around the mouthful, his eyes fixed hard on the black marble. “I keep thinking about after. After graduation. Like, what that actually looks like.”

“What does it look like?” I ask, nudging a highlighter cap.

He sets the pizza down, his shoulders drawing back, his jaw setting. “My family thinks this degree is a waste of time. They wanted me in the family business. Have since I was old enough to understand a balance sheet.” He pauses, his thumb tracing a slow circle on the stone. “They’ve never once asked what the hell I actually want. It’s always been about legacy, or what positions the family name. They have a blueprint. And I am significantly off-script.”

“What do you want?” I ask quietly.

He looks up, holding my gaze until something cracks open. “An actual clinic,” he says, his voice dropping rougher around the edges. “My name on the door. Four exam rooms, a surgical suite in the back, big windows so the animals can see outside while they’re waiting. I want to be the person who’s there at two in the morning when a dog is bleeding out on a kitchen floor. I want to matter in a way that’s mine.”

The raw, stripped honesty of it catches behind my ribs. I know the suffocating weight of family blueprints too well, but when he asks, “What is it you want after graduation, hotshot?” I swallow the truth about the contingencies waiting for me and offer a safe half-truth about passing the bar.

Later that night, the apartment feels smaller. It’s half-packed—a duffel bag gaping near the door, vet textbooks boxed and taped against the baseboards.

We sit close on the couch, watching a black-and-white movie with low dialogue while takeout containers scatter the coffee table. I pick at cold pad thai that tastes like cardboard.

“Did I tell you about Sheba?” Jae asks, pitching his voice low, his thumb tracing the rim of a water glass. “The cat. She’s old. Properly old. Twelve, maybe thirteen. She’s camped out on this windowsill in Seoul for hours every day, face in the sun. It fucking terrifies me that one day she won’t be there anymore.”

The admission slips out before he can build the wall back up.

“She’ll be there,” I say, the words carrying a fierce, unwarranted certainty. “When you go back. She’ll be on the windowsill. Exactly where she’s supposed to be.”

Jae turns his head, his eyes finding mine in the blue glow of the laptop screen. “Exactly,” he says softly.

Twenty minutes later, a strand of hair falls across my face.

Jae reaches over, his warm, rough fingers hooking the strand and tucking it behind my ear. Then he leans forward and presses his mouth to my forehead.

The kiss lasts a full three seconds. His hand settles at the nape of my neck, fingers spread flat, heavy and certain. I close my eyes against the precise, agonizing detail of it—his breath against my hairline, the scratch of stubble, the warm pressure of his lips.

When I open my eyes, he’s already looking back at the screen, completely unbothered.

I stare at the sharp line of his jaw. The realization hits with the clean, surgical precision of a blade sliding between ribs: I am in serious, goddamn trouble.

I have spent seven months building a case for why proximity is not attachment, why the distance I maintain is sufficient armor. It is not sufficient. It has never been sufficient.