Ante Mortem Read Online Free PDF Page A

she?”
    “ Her name is Mai. You’ll like her.”
    “ Who cares if I like her?” Joon poked Hyun playfully in the ribs. “Do you like her?”
    “ Yes. We’re living together.”
    “ So soon? Ah, you were always the romantic type.”
    They sat at the kitchen table and Joon became serious.
    “ So you’re not moving back in?”
    “ Does it bother you?”
    “ Be with your woman.” Joon patted Hyun on the back. “We’re grown men, right?”
    Hyun nodded, grateful.
    “ Is your father still angry at me?”
    Joon sighed. “He always likes to blame others.”
    “ What did you tell him?”
    “ What could I say? He’d think I was crazy.” Joon took a napkin and began to nervously shred it into tiny pieces. “You saw it too, right? Sometimes I feel like I went insane that night.”
    “ I saw it. So did Mai.”
    “ That was Mai?” Joon looked thoughtful. “I remember her, a little. How did she know to come help?”
    “ I was with her that night.”
    “ That’s why you didn’t hear the window break.” Joon muttered, more to himself than to Hyun.
    “ I’m sorry.”
    “ It’s not your fault, you weren’t doing anything wrong.” Joon chuckled. “Is that why you were in a bathrobe? I thought I imagined that!”
    “ My clothes were wet from falling in the lake.”
    Joon howled with laughter. “You fell into the lake? Oh shit, you have the spend the night. I need to hear everything I missed.”
    Hyun agreed and made a quick call to tell Mai. She told him to have fun and say hello to Joon for her. Meanwhile, Joon stood a few feet away and pretended to make out with a pillow. Hyun gave him the finger; it felt like old times. They ordered pizza and beer and spent the night talking about easy topics. A few times Hyun noticed a sense of discomfort on his friends face, but Joon waved off his concern.
    “ It’s fine, much better than before. When they first took me to the hospital, I couldn’t shit for a week.”
    It was the closest he came to talking about the incident again. Once the pizza was finished, Joon put in a “Girls Gone Wild” DVD and they played “real or fake.” With no way to know for sure, it was a silly game, but it was their tradition. If they had eaten take-out Chinese, they would have put in old Kung Fu movies on mute and made up their own dialogue. Around midnight, both Hyun and Joon were starting to nod off, despite the barrage of “barely legal” Spring Break breasts on the wide-screen TV.
    “ I think I’m going to call it a night,” Hyun said.
    “ OK, but where are you going to sleep? My douchebag father took your bed.”
    “ The couch is fine.”
    “ The couch is shit. Come on, my bed is big enough so that we can sleep without bothering each other.”
    Hyun shrugged. As kids, they had sleep-overs all the time. It wouldn’t be the first time they shared a bed.
    “ All right, but don’t hog the covers.”
    “ Right,” Joon winked, “you need your beauty sleep for your woman.”
    Because it was a pleasantly warm night, both men stripped down to their boxers before getting under the sheets. Hyun noticed that Joon’s abdomen was swollen and bruised. He quickly flipped over, so Joon wouldn’t catch him staring and become self-conscious. He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.
    At first, Hyun thought the hot breath in his ear was Mai. When his eyes opened to Joon’s bedroom, he jolted awake. A strong arm pushed him back down on the mattress.
    “ I’m sorry Hyun.”
    Joon’s voice was ragged and trembled over the words. His hands grasped the edges of Hyun’s boxers and pulled them down.
    “ What are you doing?”
    Joon put his hand over Hyun’s mouth.
    “ I’m sorry,” he said again. “But I need it out of me.”
    Hyun struggled but Joon took his arm and contorted it painfully behind his back. Hyun yelped against his friend’s hand.
    “ Don’t fight,” Joon hissed. “It hurts more if you fight.”
    The skin of Joon’s stomach burned the