57 — It’s Just Us, Jae-il. Like Always

"Jae-il?"

"Hmm?"

I turned towards my sister. We were both out of the pool, and out of breath. The way her cheeks flushed pink, the way her eyes sparkled as she stifled back a giggle that I'd been pulling out of her for the past ten minutes.

God, it did something funny to me. I really needed to get away from here, fly as far as I could and never come back, because I felt that door inside my head, slowly creaking open, bit by little bit.

The lights around it seemed to dim, while the crimson lights inside seemed to shine brighter. Beckon me further. Call out for me. "Come in. You've done so well until now, haven't you...?" It said, in a familiar voice, a soft voice, an angel's whisper. A familiar disguise to let my guard down.

Worse of all? I was slowly, inexorably, letting it down.

Shit.

By the time I came back to reality, Mia had scooted closer to me, slightly adjusting her hair. She gave me a look. "Let's go back to my room." She said. "I know you've been raring to go back and everything, but..." A shrug. Nonchalant. A slight smile—damn hypnotic red lips. "Let's watch something together. Like old times."

Mia's gaze lingered on mine, and I could swear that, at least once or twice, I caught her flickering down, before quickly looking back at my face again.

"We still have all night, and it won't take long. I promise."

You see, Mia didn't mean to make everything she said sound like an invitation. A dirty one, at that.

So why, oh why did everything coming from her pretty little mouth sounded like she wanted to—

I stymied my flow of stupid thoughts.

"That sounds about fine, actually. A movie, or something, and I'm back on the road."

She blinked in confusion, then in genuine happiness. "Oh. You don't mind? I mean... I thought you'd say no, what about practice, I don't have time and bla, bla, bla…"

I smiled. "No, Noona. You wanted to see me off before I went overseas for games and stuff, right? Besides, I do want to spend more time with you."

I wished to spend time with Su Ah and Eun Ha as well, but—

Mia took my hand and dragged me along, and the touch, so familiar, so nice, so comforting, made my brain forget all about anything and anyone but her. This never happened to me. The influence this young woman had on me was as ridiculous as it was concerning. She'd seen me disarm an armed, broken kid with less hesitation than a last-minute penalty.

Yet she could achieve the same effect on me with a single point of contact with her body.

And so she led me back inside, past the entrance, into the living room, then up the stairs. Throughout, she was holding my hand and squeezing it from time to time, her eyes fixated straight ahead, on the way forward. The situation felt familiar for some unique reason, even if it was nothing short of the strangest circumstances I ever found myself in.

Like that one time one of my girl friend's invited me over for a 'coffee'. I never did like coffee.

Still...

I couldn't help myself. Walking behind Mia, my gaze kept tracing the lines of her body. She was so pale she might have been carved from ivory. An apparition, half statue, half ghost.

Some sort of fetishized specter out of a Japanese horror porn.

The horror part was that this sexy apparition was my sister.

The japanese part was that I found her attractive nonetheless.

I found myself wondering why and how the idea that it could've been okay started to loosen up. I also found myself wondering why—as we stood in front of her bedroom door—we were still semi nude and wet. "Noona."

"Yeah?"

"Did it... cross your mind to dry ourselves? At least a little? Or, I don't know, get dressed?"

Mia didn't respond for a moment. And when she did, she didn't answer me. Her grip on my hand grew slightly firmer as she pushed her bedroom door open and guided me into it.

"No, really." I resisted, breaking off from her grasp. It wasn't hard, no matter how hard she squeezed. She blinked, tilting her head. Her room was dark, and she was half engulfed in it, still slightly tugging my wrist, trying to pull me into it.

It felt like a prank. Some sort of spell, that only now did I manage to free myself from. Mia's eyes were darker than usual, though her haughty demeanor was quickly right back in place. "What are you saying, little bro? We can dry ourselves here."

I hesitated at the threshold, sighing. The darkness of her room spilled out like smoke, beckoning. "That's not the point." I said, staring straight into her eyes. My voice came out quieter than I intended, but no less resolute.

Mia smirked, brushing damp strands of hair behind her ear. "You think too much. Always have." She said, as if it were a bad thing. Then she stepped inside and leaned against her desk, arms folded, as if daring me to cross. The wet fabric clung to her skin in ways I didn't want to notice. But I did anyway. She tilted her chin, imperious and teasing at once. "It's just us, Jae-il. Like always."

"You're stubborn." I told her, arms now crossed over my chest.

Mia's lips curved. Her voice softened. "And you love me for it."

"Noona…" I began in a warning tone.

"You're leaving tomorrow. Off to prove yourself to the world again. Can't your sister steal a little more of your time? Is it so wrong?"

My resolve began to falter, bit by bit, as her eyes bore into mine. They shone in the darkness. She uncrossed her arms. One hand moved up to play with the string on her hip. I forced my gaze back up to hers.

What kind of power game were we playing?

One wrong move could end badly.

She watched me intently, almost like a hunter watching their prey.

The only question is; was I the hunter?

Or the hunted?

I'd have never thought, one day, that I'd be standing on the precipice of my older sister's room. Wet, almost naked, with the full intent of... spending time together. A bit of brother and sister time. Nothing out of the norm. What could go wrong, you know? Maybe some light chatting over coffee or soda. Maybe a movie. Whatever would keep us from just sitting in a room in silence.

But the way my sister stood there. A devilish smile. A finger idly fiddling with her bikini. The door wide open for me to step into.

I saw that red glow, those lights. Heard that sweet, angelical, inviting whisper.

"Come on. We'll watch a movie. I won't try anything funny. Trust your Noona, hm, Jae-il...?"

I blinked, snapping out of my daze. And when I came back to reality, for the second time, all I could see was Mia still standing there, blinking back at me with an innocent, but slightly haughty, completely normal and Mia-like expression on her face.

God, I was going crazy.

"Come in." She repeated, walking around the desk to settle down on her bed. She grabbed her laptop and sat on the edge. As the laptop lit up, the soft, ghostly light illuminated the contours of her body in the most sensuous of ways. "There are a lot of fun movies. Or maybe a documentary... about football, if you really, really want." She said, giggling as she looked back to the screen.

She patted the space next to her.

"Yeah... just, you know, let me get properly dressed and dry before we watch anything. And I suggest you do the same." I told her, gesturing towards her own state of dress... and undress. "I'm going to take a quick shower and then we can meet up downstairs. We can watch it there, if you want."

That was my bottom line. I knew that I was probably being paranoid. Maybe looking too deep into it. I didn't care. Some part of me told me that it was perfectly fine the way it was, that even if there was a degree of perverse wrongness to an otherwise innocent circumstance, I should say fuck it and step in. Step in that room, and whatever happened, happened.

Even though, logically, nothing would happen.

However, I refused to put myself in a situation where outside influences could lead me astray. Mia was an outside influence.

I didn't come back to life from an untimely heart-attack just to ruin my career with bad decisions and even badder, questionable bed partners. Seriously. I was starting to react to something I shouldn't have, ever, even remotely considered reacting to.

"...Alright." Mia nodded and turned her back on me. "A movie downstairs."

"Yeah."

And with that, I turned and walked back down the hall to my room.

I locked the door. I could smell chlorine on my skin. I ran a hand over my hair and pushed the damp bangs away from my forehead.

Things were spiraling out of my control, not that things ever were in the first place. Still, I should clean myself up.

And, in all honesty, a cold shower was just what I needed. Not just because of the smell of chlorinated water. I quickly grabbed a change of clothes and headed to the bathroom.

The coolness of the shower made me feel human again. I could feel the sweat and the chlorine of the pool wash off me, down my torso, over my thighs and down the drain. My eyes closed and the cool drops hit me with an icy stab in my shoulders, running down, down, down.

A shudder coursed through me as I imagined something else touching my skin...

Something else. Someone else.

I opened my eyes in the freezing cold. No. Not a good idea to entertain the devil that lurked at the edge of my brain. So, I took the shampoo and squeezed it over my head. I scrubbed at the hair with an almost desperate need to distract myself, before the shampoo ran into my eyes.

"Damn…"

Wiping my face with a towel I found on the side, I rinsed myself off, toweled myself dry, and quickly got dressed. A plain t-shirt, a pair of pants, and I was out of the bathroom, making my way downstairs, where I assumed Mia was waiting for me.

The movie hadn't even begun, yet I was already tired and ready to welcome tomorrow.

I walked down the stairs, and indeed, Mia was already there, slouched on the sofa. A tank top. Dolphin shorts. Bare arms and legs. Unfair. I stopped briefly—she hadn't noticed me yet, too busy scrolling through Netflix's selection.

'I should stop making a mole out of an anthill. I won't live to see 20 like this. I should just… enjoy it, I guess.'

Really. It felt like my composure was nowhere to be seen with Mia. I took a deep breath.

"Got the film already, Noona?" I asked as I approached the sofa.

Mia looked over at me and gave a smile and patted a hand on the space on the couch. "Don't worry. You'll like it. The title? The Girl With The Ball." She said, pointing at the TV. There was a picture of a woman, standing in a sports field with a football in her hand.

"You know, just because I like football, it doesn't mean that I'll like everything that is at least slightly related to it."

"Really?" Mia heaved a deep sigh of relief. I rolled my eyes, slightly offended. "Then let's pick another movie!" She clicked the next option. A very dark scene came on. A guy, a bloody knife. The camera zoomed out, a woman's corpse at the end of the knife.

Ah, one of those movies.

"You like horror, don't you, Jae-il? What do you say... The House Of Death?" She suggested with a ghost-like echo to her voice.

"As long as it's not one of those cheesy k-dramas, we should be fine." I sat down on the couch and let my body slouch backwards.

And Mia was… very close. She wasn't as close as when we roughhoused in the pool, but it was easy to lean in and make it seem like we were more than siblings. She curled herself up, knees tucked in and everything, and scooted even closer. "Let's watch it then." She grinned.

She pressed the button. The scene faded. The movie began in earnest.

The movie was not bad, the budget must've been quite high. I found myself engrossed for a while.

However, somewhere in-between the female lead's screams of horror and the blackened blood that gushed out of the protagonist's eyeless face, I felt so drowsy that I started to nod off. Practice was hard, and after the shower my body relaxed too. I was more tired than I thought I was. I glanced at Mia, who was eagerly watching the gore unfold. Her hands gripped the blanket over us tightly, pulling against me slightly, enough for our thighs to bump.

She looked at me, as if to check that I was still awake. She let out a little laugh at the state I was in. "You can sleep if you want, y'know."

"What?"

"Sleep." Mia rolled her eyes, though her voice softened. "Sorry, Jae-il... I forget sometimes. You've been training hard for these past few weeks. You must be exhausted."

Her hand brushed against my arm in what could have passed for sisterly concern. I blinked slowly, struggling to keep my eyes open. "... 's alright, Noona." I murmured.

To be honest, she was at fault too. The mental gymnastics certainly contributed to the load.

"No it isn't!" Mia chided. "Sleep is a human right!" She shifted around. "Just relax... and don't let the scary movie keep you from slumbering, or else…"

"Or else what?" I chuckled. "Is Noona gonna be my guard?"

"Yes." Mia stated, matter-of-factly.

"Well that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence."

She elbowed my chest. "Jeez. Fine. You can stay up, then, smartypants." Her expression morphed into something softer. "But... do let your guard down."

A gentle touch, her hand on my forehead. It felt cool and pleasant. Her nails lightly scraped through my hair as the lights darkened, the movie becoming distant. She smiled at me, her face illuminated by the glow of the TV. She hummed, lulling me closer to the embrace of sleep. "Shh…" She said, soothing. "I'll wake you up when it's time to head back."

I was floating, then. Sinking, a deep, pleasant kind of sinking, in warm, honey-like darkness.

Mia's silhouette shifted. I couldn't tell if she was looking at the screen anymore, but my senses were starting to shut off. All that remained was the feeling of her nails on my head, gently stroking, gently relaxing. She parted the bangs on my forehead to place a gentle kiss on it.

The warmth of her lips lingered long after she pulled away.

Or maybe she never pulled away, to begin with.

One of my arms, with a will of their own, had slung themselves across Mia's waist. I didn't know if I did it for more comfort or if I did it because—

My head, in its journey for maximum comfort, ended up leaning sideways and on something. That something, also coincidentally, had been so, so near, before.

The warmth of her skin. Her hips under mine. Her hair tickling my face. The weight of her body pushing against mine.

I could hear, distantly, a pleased whisper. "That's it."

By then, I was out cold