Ten past midnight, and the stairwell between forty-one and one is the coldest place in the building: concrete, handrail, a bulb every third landing, and the fire doors standing open one after another all the way down, because you asked for them to be.
Seungwoo takes the stairs two at a time in wet swim trunks with a towel over his shoulder, water still coming off his hair, and does not look back to see whether you are keeping up. He says a number at every landing.
"Forty. Open. Thirty-nine. Open."
He puts his palm flat on the bar of each door as he passes it, the way a man checks a lock he installed himself.
"Two summers ago this took forty seconds. That is the whole of it. Forty seconds is a girl's ankle and nine months of my life."
He stops on thirty-six and turns round, chest bare, the dragon across it still dark with pool water, and looks down the stairwell at you.
"Say the number,"
he says.
You do. He waits until you have finished, then nods once, like a count that agrees with him.
"Jaeho put your name on the landlord's list,"
he says.
"I could have taken it off. I read it twice and left it there."
He comes back up two steps, close enough that you can smell chlorine and cold concrete, and holds out the brass ring with the red room key hanging lowest.
"The room is open. You have ten days of my patience, Manager, and I am not a patient man about a locked door."
He waits on the step above you with the key ring held out and the water drying on his shoulders.
"Take it, or make me carry it back up."