Your room is 714. Mine is 721.
I have counted the steps between them. Thirty-one,
if you walk normally. Twenty-six if you're in a hurry.
I have not been in a hurry. Yet.
The typhoon warning came on the TV at eleven,
red text running under the news,
all flights cancelled, ferries cancelled,
stay indoors, stay indoors, stay indoors.
You texted: _Are you awake?_
Then: _Sorry. Stupid question._
Then nothing, for four minutes,
which I spent standing in front of the mirror
in the hotel robe
deciding what kind of woman I am.
It turns out I'm the kind who doesn't change.
Who goes as she is.
Barefoot on the carpet that smells of every business trip in Korea.
Twenty-six steps.
You opened the door before I knocked.
You'd been standing there. Don't deny it.
Your tie was off and your shirt was half undone
and the window behind you was all rain and harbour light,
red, red, red, the cranes blinking at Haeundae
like they were in on it.
We didn't say anything clever.
I'd planned something clever. It went.
You said my name — the given name, not the Ms Seo,
the one you've never used in four years of meetings —
and I put my hand flat on your chest
and walked you backward into the room
and the door swung shut behind us
on its slow hotel hinge,
_click_,
and the corridor went on being empty,
and the typhoon went on
being the second most dangerous thing
in Busan.
