Behind the recycling bins at the end of the corridor, the sting of disinfectant pierced my nose. Jaeheon grabbed my forearm; his fingertips were ice.
No, really, it’s not like that. I only wanted to be sure.
The red eye of the CCTV swept between us. Jaeheon swallowed a breath; its warmth tickled my ear.
“That day, too… you were the one who started it.”
I couldn’t speak. Last night, on the balcony alone with Changhyun, I’d brushed my lips across his forehead. Then I’d closed my eyes; now they stayed open. Can you kiss with your eyes open? Perhaps that’s a thief’s privilege.
I was seventeen, Changhyun twenty-three. Our mothers worked for the same firm; I was just the kid who played piano in the music room. He’d taken a leave from college and was camping out at the family house in the countryside. One rainy afternoon we shared an umbrella at the bus stop; he ran the back of his hand across my cheek.
You know it, don’t you? If you leave with me, everything will be perfect. No one will ever know.
My nod was the contract. The kiss was the signature. Yet signatures are always hidden at the bottom of the page. I pressed my seal on that invisible line.
At that instant I thought I had become a woman. In truth, I had become a thief—seventeen years old and already a thief. And a thief always steals twice: once the object, once the heart.
Jaeheon had been my shadow for ten years—same class since kindergarten. At lunch I’d slip to the music room and eat my box while he listened to my scales. Every time my fingers found do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do he nodded, proof that he knew me better than anyone.
“Why him…” The question snapped in half. Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do. My fingertips shook; Jaeheon read the tremor. He knew the real motif of my music wasn’t love, but the tension of larceny.
I was still nobody’s possession, and that was why I longed to become someone’s.
Changhyun handed me the contract; his autograph turned me into a “woman.” In reality it turned me into a thief—seventeen and already a thief. And a thief always steals twice: once the thing, once the soul.
“Why do you keep going to him?”
Jaeheon’s question fell onto the piano keys. Instead of answering, I played. A drop of blood mixed with the notes. Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do. When the phrase ends, Changhyun will appear; Jaeheon will leave by the back door.
No one can choose me twice, so I keep walking away.
Yet every path away is also a path back.
The moment I stole her first kiss, I became her man. But she was still seventeen, still a minor. Our contract stayed hidden, and hidden contracts always turn someone into a thief.
Changhyun steps closer, his hand stroking my hair—warm. Yet I know that warmth is no different from Jaeheon’s chill; both want to steal me, and I have let myself be stolen by each.
We were all thieves—of one another’s first kisses, of one another’s futures, of one another’s innocence.
The piano keeps sounding. Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do. The notes sing our secret contract. Seventeen: her name tag still reads “girl.” Yet that tag has been peeled off by one hand and stuck on by another, and in that exchange we all became thieves.