Free All Woman and Springtime by Brandon Jones

criminal; but even that she found attractive.
    She liked watching his muscles work underneath his shirt as he hefted the heavy food boxes. She enjoyed watching him walk out the door, his trim backside flexing and relaxing in his confident stride. Most of all, she loved inhaling his earthy aroma as he stirred the air when he walked past her. She counted the hours until she saw him again.

12
    I L-SUN PRETENDED NOTHING HAD happened, and so Gyong-ho did too. It was easier that way. Gi did not understand her feelings and could not even begin to explain them. They woke up, performed their morning rituals, dressed, and walked to work as normal, but the gulf between them seemed impassable. They each tried lobbing words into it, like “good morning,” and “it’s cold today,” but the phrases echoed unnaturally in their ears. They gave up and walked in silence. This time it was Gi who was dragging her feet from lack of sleep.
    Gi felt as though they were being pried out of girlhood: herself unwillingly, Il-sun enthusiastically. They were on a threshold and all their priorities were changing at once. It was too fast. Il-sun seemed to be running toward it with open arms, impatient for the knowledge and the sophistication of the womanhood fitting her new body. Gi shrank from it. She had just gotten comfortable here.
    Things had begun changing when they found the book John and Daisy. They had come home early because the electricity at the factory had gone out. When they walked into the kitchen to check in with the mistress, she was standing and staring wistfully at the back door with her hand on her cheek. She seemed in a pleasant daze. She turned and smiled at the girls, then excused herself to her bedroom.
    “What’s with her?” asked Il-sun.
    “I don’t know, but she looks happy.”
    “Hey, what’s in here?” Il-sun asked, noticing a box on the counter. She lifted one of the lid flaps.
    “It’s not ours. We should leave it alone,” replied Gi.
    “I’m just curious,” Il-sun said, peeking inside. “There’s food in here!”
    “Today must have been a special ration day or something,” Gi said, peeking into the box.
    “Maybe we should put it away for the mistress,” said Il-sun.
    They began sorting through the contents of the box: a few ragged- looking onions, a bulb of garlic, several potatoes, a bag of rice, and a bag of red beans. As they removed the items, a rectangular bundle wrapped in a stained cloth and tied with a string tumbled onto the counter. Gi picked it up. It was not a food item and she was conflicted about what to do with it. Should she unwrap it, or leave it on the counter for the mistress? She was inclining toward the latter when Il-sun noticed it in her hands.
    “What’s that?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe it’s for the mistress. I think we should leave it.”
    Il-sun snatched it from her. She turned it over, prodded and bent it. “It feels like a book to me.”
    “It’s not for us. We should leave it like we found it.”
    “We can look and then wrap it right back up.” Her eyes had taken on a mischievous glint.
    “Il-sun, no! We could get in trouble.”
    “For what? Unpacking the food box? The mistress always tells us we need to take the initiative when it comes to helping out. Don’t you want to see what it is?”
    “But it isn’t ours!”
    “If we get caught, here’s what we’ll say: We were unpacking the food box, we picked it up by mistake, and the wrapping came undone. See? It’s not even tied very well.” With that she pulled at the string and the cloth fell open. “Oops,” she said with exaggerated indifference.
    In her hands was a book unlike she had ever seen before, a paperback with a graphic cover. The cover illustration showed two Caucasian people, a man and a woman, in a mad embrace. The woman had blond hair and was wearing a gauzy dress that appeared to be falling off, slipping over her overly large breasts. Her head was back, her very red lips seductively