[Oscar D'León – "Cuando Ya No Me Quieras"]
The tempo was much faster than the previous track. From the very beginning, the trumpet melody whipped through the air while layers of percussion drove the music higher and higher.
Just as Yoojin was about to take Dongha's hand, she hesitated and pulled back.
"Sorry, can we just listen to this one and dance to the next song instead?"
Unlike when she used to do ballet, her cheeks were flushed with nerves. It was a side of Yoojin he'd never seen—not back in arts middle school, and not even today at orientation.
Cute.
Dongha simply nodded without a word.
For some reason, even though it hadn't been that long since they'd met again, these unexpected sides of Yoojin kept popping up and carving themselves deep into his mind.
Daeho walked up to Hong with easy elegance and held his hand out. Hong chuckled playfully and set her hand in his.
"Watch those two dance. You're going to like it."
At Dongha's words, it was like the dormant blood of a dancer inside Yoojin finally woke up.
Her eyes tracked every tiny movement the pair made, almost obsessively.
Standing in the middle of the floor, the two of them started with basic steps, hands joined.
In time with the music, the salsero's upper body swayed naturally while the salsera's hips rolled smoothly from side to side.
They looked into each other's faces, trading glances and sharing that taut pre-battle tension before a fierce dance.
Soon the salsero led the salsera into a CBL, then crossed their joined hands overhead and gently guided her into a turn.
As the salsera spun quickly, he used the tension between them to turn with her, then casually reeled her back in so she slid right back to face him again.
"Wow…"
Their movements were explosive in those brief bursts, but the choreography never once broke outside the small space around them.
Watching their joined hands maintain that light, constant tension, Yoojin kept trying to predict what move would come next.
But instead of what she expected, the salsero lifted both of the salsera's hands and then let them drop with a soft "thunk." The moment he released her, her hands slowly floated down, and her body rippled in a smooth front-to-back body wave.
She kept the basic step going, riding the rhythm with those waves, arms and hands always framing both herself and the salsero. On top of that, there were the turns.
Before she knew it, Yoojin was completely sucked into this salsa that kept defying her expectations.
The tension in their linked hands rose another notch, intense enough that even onlookers could feel it.
The salsero took the salsera's left hand and turned her so that arm wrapped around her own body. She spun quickly on the spot, then snapped forward.
Just when the momentum of her powerful turn threatened to fling her away from him, the salsero gave her left arm a gentle tug, then nudged her slightly to the right.
Her long hair fanned out as she whipped through three fast spins to his right, only to land neatly back where they'd started.
Yoojin tried to memorize the pattern, but from the moment the music began, they hadn't repeated a single sequence.
Some of the people doing social dancing around them were marching through the same moves over and over, but those two were real salsa dancers.
And the turns in salsa were nothing like the ones in ballet.
Ballet turns meant tightening your core, hard-locking your leg muscles, and spinning without a single break in your line.
Salsa turns, born from the tension between partners, were like miniature whirlwinds.
Yoojin swallowed without thinking. Instead of wondering Can I do that? her whole body thrummed with I want to try that.
From there, their moves only got flashier. A light sheen of sweat gathered on both the salsera's and the salsero's faces.
Salsa—the passionate dance of a man and woman to fast Latin music, a love story told in rhythm. Depending on the slightest glance, a flick of the hand, a shift in expression, the possibilities for expression were endless.
In ballet, under the demand for precision, your path was strictly set. Salsa, by contrast, was a dance born from the raw, impulsive heat between a man and a woman.
To Yoojin's eyes it felt vivid, primal, almost too raw—and that made it all the more daunting.
She'd lived as a ballerina for over thirty years across two lifetimes. How had she gone all that time without ever knowing about this dance called salsa?
Dongha watched her quietly, seeing how completely she'd fallen under salsa's spell, then spoke up beside her.
"Daeho and Hong are salsa partners—and they're a famous sibling duo, even overseas. What do you think?"
Yoojin looked up at him, eyes shining.
"Yeah. They're amazing."
Out on the floor, Daeho and Hong were still dancing with dazzling complexity, and Hong, the salsera, spun through another rapid turn.
"They've got salsa choreography carved into their bodies, so they can mix and match moves however they want. See everyone else? Most of them are just running through memorized steps—so they break the flow in the middle."
Only then did Yoojin see it clearly: Daeho and Hong's salsa wasn't following the music; it was leading it.
Perfect, and yet just offset enough in the right places that it never drifted away—that was Latin music and salsa, intertwined.
At last, the second song came to an end.
Smiling brightly, Daeho and Hong stepped off the floor, and the people gathered there broke into applause tinged with awe.
As Daeho gave the crowd an embarrassed grin, he spotted Yoojin and began walking straight toward her. Hong, flustered, grabbed his arm.
"She only started learning today."
"I know."
Daeho and Hong were a famous brother-sister duo who had been teaching salsa together for a long time. They performed and ran their salsa teaching program side by side.
As salsa instructors, they had one firm rule: students had to train for at least a month before dancing salsa at a salsa bar or social club. Otherwise, they risked picking up bad habits that would be hard to fix later.
"Let's just try the basic and a CBL."
The professional salsa dancer chuckled as he looked at Hong, then started toward Yoojin, about to slowly offer his hand.
In that instant, Dongha grabbed Yoojin's hand and pulled her out onto the floor.
Huh? Daeho's eyes flashed sharply.
Yoojin, not understanding what was going on, glanced around in alarm.
"The next song hasn't even started yet."
"It will in a second. I have to dance this one with you."
Dongha's gaze, gone cold, fixed on her. His left hand held her right.
Making sure no other salsero could offer her his hand.
When Daeho looked down at their joined hands, he let out a disbelieving little laugh.
At the same time, he found himself irritated by how little salsa-floor etiquette Dongha was showing.
He stepped closer to Dongha.
"You don't normally dance salsa, remember? If you keep holding on to a salsera like that, how are the other salseros supposed to ask her to dance?"
"I am dancing the next song. And I'm the one who invited her here, so the first dance has to be with me."
Speaking to someone clearly older than him, Dongha answered in clipped phrases, eyes hard and predatory.
He and Daeho had known each other for years, close enough to casually call each other hyung and dongsaeng.
But to Yoojin, who knew none of this and was just listening to their exchange, the whole thing felt awkward and confusing.
It wasn't just the way he spoke to an elder. At some point, his hand had wrapped around her right one and refused to let go.
Yoojin wriggled her fingers, trying to slip out of his large hand, but there was no space to escape.
Turning his head away from them as if to remove himself from the scene, Daeho muttered under his breath,
"Didn't know the guy who dances like a beast had that side to him."
Ignoring him completely, Dongha focused only on Yoojin, and Daeho could only shake his head.
When the next track started, the earlier awkwardness vanished, replaced by nothing but the bright rush of music.
[Saned Rivera – "Prohibido"]
A woman's smooth, velvety vocal opened the song.
As the conga drums quickly filled the space, trumpet, bass, and piano wove in over the top.
Escorting her, Dongha led Yoojin by the hand to the center of the floor.
The center, when she was a complete beginner. She should be off to the side somewhere, just doing basic steps. This wasn't right…
Her cheeks burned hot. At the same time, every eye in the studio fixed on them.
The newcomers were staring because the two of them were just that striking to look at, and the intermediate and advanced dancers were focused on one person: Dongha.
The fact that that Dongha was standing in the middle of the floor, about to lead a salsera in salsa himself, was almost unbelievable.
Even here, just a hobby dance club, he always kept a cool mask on and drew a hard line with people.
Chances were he'd never formally trained in salsa either—just danced it on instinct.
The room was split half and half between people eager to judge how he danced, and people simply excited to see it.
And the salsera facing him was a rare beauty. Most salseras wore casual skirts or tight-fitting bottoms. Yoojin, fresh from her first day at work and the company orientation, was still in a suit.
A jacket that hid her body line and wide-legged slacks—completely out of place in a salsa bar setting.
And yet her slender neckline and porcelain-doll features shone all the brighter for it.
Maybe that was why, as the music kicked in, no one else stepped onto the floor. Only the two of them stood there, facing each other in the vast open space.
Dongha held his torso upright, and Yoojin mirrored him, spine lengthening upward, upper body taut with the posture drilled into her by years of ballet.
He held his hands out; she lifted hers to meet his.
"Before the dance starts, the way you take hands is called the hold. Keep the tension in your upper body."
He softened his gaze as he explained, then silently counted, one, two, three.
Then he sent her back and began to lead the basic step.
Compared to the beginner class earlier, the basic step was much faster. Dongha's body rocked lightly from side to side.
Watching his broad chest move, Yoojin instinctively understood that his sway never went too far—his whole body stayed in perfect balance.
Soon she matched herself to his movement, maintaining the tension between them while letting her body flow flexibly with the rhythm.