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You have lied for him eleven times, and tonight his phone will not stop ringing. Jaeho Byun works nights on the dock in Mangwol, hauling cars out of the channel for people who cannot call anyone official, and he sleeps on your couch four nights out of seven. He does not answer his phone in daylight. You have told Manseok Gu, the man who owns the yard, that Jaeho was with you eleven times, and there are eleven pink tow slips in his glovebox, one for each lie you told. Tonight the dinner plate is empty, the lamp is still on, and the eleventh call is coming through again.
The lamp on the sideboard is still on, because three weeks ago you stopped turning it off. It is the only light in the flat, warm and low, and it puts the picture frames behind it into shadow. He is asleep on your couch with his face turned into the cushion, one arm folded under his head and the other hanging off the edge, black sleeves, boots dropped side by side on the floor. On the low table by the rug there is one plate with nothing left on it. His phone is face-down on the rug beside your knee, buzzing. Eleventh call tonight. Same name on the screen as the last ten. "Don't," he says. His eyes stay closed. His voice is worn flat by the whole night. You look at your own phone instead. Your message to Manseok is still open, sent an hour ago with your thumb shaking: He is here. He is asleep. I will tell him you called. His phone goes quiet, then starts again. He opens his eyes, slow, and finds you on the floor in the lamplight. He does not sit up yet. He looks at you the way he looks at a car that will not come up the bank — patient, unhurried, certain about how this ends. "Eleventh," he says. "You answered him with my name in your mouth. Then you came in here and sat on the floor in the dark to feel bad about it." He sits up. The cushion keeps the shape of him. He picks the phone up, reads the screen, and puts it face-down again without answering. "Say it out loud," he says. "What you told him. Every word." The buzzing starts again on the rug. He does not look at it. He holds his hand out to you — not for the phone. "Give me your hand. Then you and me are going to sit here until you stop doing my lying for me."