Chapter 483 | Galbi Needs Twelve Hour

Chapter 483: 483 | Galbi Needs Twelve Hour

Jordan slid his palm down to the small of Kumiko’s back and pushed heat straight into it. Kumiko’s spine bowed so hard she nearly toppled off him. "Hyaaah! No, no, too much, it’s too good, Jordan, I’m gonna, I’m, ahhhh!"

She came screaming. Her walls clamped down on him in hard rolling squeezes, milking him so tight his vision went white at the edges. Her thighs locked around his hips, and her nails raked down his chest. She sobbed his name twice without the honorific, which was how he knew she meant it.

That pushed him over too. Jordan groaned into her neck and spilled inside her, and Ceaseless Discharge kicked in with its usual zero chill. Pulse after hot pulse flooded into her, and Kumiko’s eyes rolled back as she gasped "Ah, ah, it’s still going, why is it still going, hnnngh!" against his ear. By the fifth wave she was clinging to him and whimpering, her body twitching every time another surge hit.

When it finally stopped, she collapsed onto his chest like a puppet with her strings cut. A slow warm trickle ran out of her and down his thighs onto the cushion.

Chloe sighed and picked her tea back up.

"Called it on the warranty."

"I’m so sorry," Kumiko mumbled into his sternum. "I’ll pay for it. I’ll sew a slipcover. I’ll sew the whole couch a new identity."

"Jordan pays for it. Your rate went to ninety-six this morning, so it’s practically a free couch."

Jordan held Kumiko’s limp body against him and stared up at the exposed ceiling beams. Somewhere in January there was a version of him crying into a Red Bull can, and if anyone had shown that guy this exact scene, he would have assumed it was a fever dream.

His Morning Person trait yanked him awake at 6:41 on Sunday, which was rude.

Chloe was already downstairs. Jordan could hear her through the open loft rail, the clack of a knife on the cutting board and the hiss of something hitting a pan. The whole apartment smelled like garlic and soy and charred sugar. Kumiko lay sprawled diagonally across the mattress beside him with Mr. Snuggles crushed under one arm and her mouth wide open against the pillow.

He slid out from under her leg and pulled on a shirt. Downstairs, Chloe stood at the stove in his black henley and leggings, her blue streak clipped back off her face and her glasses fogged from the steam. Six bowls of banchan already sat lined up on the island in a perfect row. A big glass dish of galbi was marinating beside the sink, glistening dark and sticky under plastic wrap.

"You’re making a feast for seven o’clock tonight. It’s not even seven in the morning."

"Galbi needs twelve hours minimum, or it tastes like shoe leather and regret. Sit down and eat your eggs."

He sat. The eggs were already plated in front of his stool, folded and steaming, with the handle of his coffee mug turned toward his left hand. Jordan stared at the mug for a second longer than he meant to.

"You turned my handle."

"You always reach left. Eat before I count your bites out loud."

He ate. Chloe kept chopping scallions, and every few minutes her free hand drifted to her lower back and pressed before she pulled it away again. He watched her do it three times before he got up, walked around the island, and set his palm against the knot sitting above her hip.

She sucked in air through her teeth.

"Don’t you dare. I have a knife in my hand and a timeline to keep."

"You have a baby in your stomach and a muscle trying to strangle your spine."

He pushed heat in. Chloe’s knife clattered onto the board, and she grabbed the counter edge with both hands. "Mmmhhh, Jordan, you absolute, ahh, I hate you, don’t stop." Her hips pushed back into his hand. The knot gave way under his thumb with a little pop she felt all the way down, because her knees buckled and he had to hook his arm around her waist to keep her standing.

"Hate you less now," she mumbled into the steam.

"I’ll take it."

By noon the apartment looked like a magazine shoot. Kumiko had woken up, cried about the couch, then spent two hours fixing it with a fitted slipcover she sewed from a pink bedsheet. She laid out three pairs of silk pajamas on the bed in Unit 403 as backup options, plus the cat onesie folded neatly on top.

"She said silk, obviously," Chloe told her, staring at the onesie.

"Obviously is a starting position, Chloe-chan. Everyone revises."

Jordan’s phone stayed face down on the counter most of the afternoon. When he finally flipped it at five, the golden app sat glowing in the corner of the screen, and he flipped it right back over. Whatever number Alexis was sitting at could wait until she was standing in front of him.

At 6:15, Chloe started grilling. The galbi hit the cast iron with a loud sizzle, and smoke curled up toward the brick ceiling while she cracked a window. Kumiko set the table four times. She folded the napkins into swans, then into hearts, then back into swans because the hearts looked desperate. Jordan changed his shirt twice, and both times Chloe sent him back upstairs.

"The navy one. She’s seen you in grey. Grey is what she sleeps in."

"How do you know what she sleeps in?"

"She told the group chat at one in the morning. Then she deleted it. Then Kumiko screenshotted it before she could."

"I’m a documentarian," Kumiko announced from the table, adjusting a chopstick by half an inch.

At 6:58, three knocks landed on the door. Each one came evenly spaced and polite, and none of them were loud.

Kumiko dropped a swan.

Chloe set her tongs down on the counter and wiped her hands on the dish towel, once and then again. She took off her apron and hung it on the hook. Her face went flat and smooth, the composed mask she wore for camera lights and leasing agents, and then Jordan watched her deliberately set it aside. What remained looked tired and nervous and real.

"Answer it. You’re the host."

"It’s your dinner."

"It’s your door. Go."

Jordan crossed the concrete floor and opened it.

Alexis Van Der Berg stood in the hallway in a camel trench coat cinched tight at the waist. Her honey-blonde hair fell loose over her shoulders for once, with no chignon and no clip. A bottle of sparkling cider hung from one hand, and she held it like a shield. Under the open collar of the coat, he could see a flash of champagne-colored silk and the frayed grey edge of a henley cuff poking out past her wrist.

She had worn his shirt under the silk.

Her blue eyes went to his face, then past him to Chloe at the stove, then to Kumiko frozen at the table with a napkin swan crushed in her fist. Her chin lifted half an inch out of pure habit before it came back down.

"I brought cider because Chloe can’t drink, and wine felt aggressive."