“Let’s have one more,” and then our lips brushed
While Min-seo was in the bathroom, Ju-an sat across from me. Through the strands of hair that had fallen across his face, the nape of his neck was suddenly too close. As I tipped the last glass, my hand moved on its own. The moment my knuckles grazed him, his breath settled on my fingertips.
—Hey… Min-seo will… No, are you okay?
His voice rang twice: once in my ears, once deep in my chest.
The knot I’d kept hidden finally slipped free
It had started long before. From the first day Min-seo introduced him, the first time he smiled and spoke my name. This is wrong, I told myself a hundred times, yet every time the three of us met I couldn’t shake the memory of his fingertips, his voice, his gaze. Tonight the liquor melted the last lock.
Min-seo, me, and Jun-hyeok
Kim Min-seo and I have been inseparable since high school—twelve years. Last winter she brought Lee Jun-hyeok, her senior from the office club, to meet me. An ordinary evening: grilled pork belly, two bottles of soju, chart-toppers blaring in the background.
But I knew. When Min-seo stepped out to the restroom and Jun-hyeok tilted his beer glass toward me, the look he gave me was more than friendly.
“I’ve heard so much about how close you two are,” he said. “Min-seo’s eyes light up every time she talks about you.”
I smiled. Behind the smile, the quiet greed: Is it her eyes that sparkle, or something else?
The second time was last night—Min-seo’s birthday party. After everyone left, the three of us remained. Min-seo passed out drunk; only Jun-hyeok and I were left in the living room.
He laid a hand on Min-seo’s forehead and asked, “Will she be okay?” Instead of answering, I caught his wrist. A pulse leapt—and it was already too late.
Sin blooming over her sleeping body
Jun-hyeok carried Min-seo to her room. I followed. Beside the bed where she slept, we looked at each other in silence. When he touched a finger to his lips, I kissed the back of his hand.
Stop. This is wrong. Walk away now.
Yet the soft sound of Min-seo breathing under the cold quilt drove me further. To covet her man while she slept—what deeper betrayal exists?
Jun-hyeok slipped out to the hallway. I followed. The instant the door shut, he pressed me against the wall. Breath gone. His fingers brushed my hair aside and I closed my eyes.
—Sorry. —…Me too.
We kissed for fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds—long enough to collapse twelve years of friendship.
Why does the forbidden scorch us so?
Psychologists call it “reactance” or the “forbidden-fruit effect.” But that explanation feels thin. Somewhere deeper, we test how thoroughly we can destroy ourselves.
How bad a person can I become?
The sin committed under the very eyes that know us best is as fatal as Narcissus kissing his own reflection. Worse, Jun-hyeok’s interest lay not with Min-seo but with me. That certainty was poison.
If not me, he could pretend to love Min-seo.
Driven by that corrosive faith, we tried to prove a mistaken conviction: that we wanted each other more than anything else.
No one knows—yet
The next morning Min-seo woke clutching her head.
—So… what happened last night? —No idea. I can’t remember either.
I smiled. The truth: every second is carved into me, as clear as the single line Jun-hyeok later texted.
[Let’s forget last night. I know I won’t.]
We are still friends. Will the three of us meet again? And on that day, will Min-seo laugh, knowing nothing—or will her eyes have seen everything?
Part of me prays she never finds out; another part aches for her to know. A sin once committed never returns to zero.
If you were certain you could possess your friend’s love with a single kiss, could you have stopped yourself?