When Will the First Kiss Arrive
— You still haven’t had one? — No. — Really? Never? Lip to lip?
Kim Yerin nodded, staring out the café window on the second floor. Her friend opened a notes app. Twenty-eight years, seven months, fourteen days—kiss count zero. Figures that looked like a medical record filled the screen. The Americano cooled, forgotten.
The Heart Beneath the Lip
Each night she stands before the mirror and pushes out her lips, half-hoping someone might at last rush in and simply take them. Even alone, naked to the collarbone, she tenses as though exposed. The faint electric flicker when the tip of her tongue brushes her gums—that is her rehearsal for a kiss.
Could I still be someone’s first kiss, or have I come too late?
Two Memories
1. Age 19, Library Shuttle Bus
Lee Jin-woo. His name tag ribbon tapped the misted window with a clear, glassy sound. That night she’d stayed late for a general-ed assignment. Only the two of them were on the shuttle.
— May I sit here? — …Yes.
He dropped into the seat beside her. While the fluorescent lights of the underground garage flickered, Yerin fell into the illusion that this man would turn his head right now and deliver the first kiss. She held her breath.
— What are you doing after class? — Going home. — Wanna come with me—ah, no. Sorry.
Jin-woo shook his head and got off. As the door closed, Yerin bit her lip. A red, wet wound remained. Without a promise.
2. Age 26, Office-Tower Elevator
Assistant Manager Park Jeong-min. 2:14 a.m., after an office party, the dregs of soju still warm. The elevator they shared creaked wordlessly toward the seventh floor.
— Today… I mean…
His voice, blurred by drink, made her shoulders tremble. The doors were sealed, and with every rising number her heart hurt as though it might fall.
— Close your eyes. — …What?
Yerin closed her eyes. Between her fluttering lids something alive approached. The skin around her lips burned. When she opened them, Jeong-min was scratching his forehead, laughing.
— Sorry, just joking. Too serious?
The elevator doors parted.
Why Do We Thirst So for the First Kiss?
A first kiss is not merely the contact of two lips; it is the spell that places me at the top of someone’s list of desires.
Freud claimed the kiss extends oral-stage longing. Unconsciously, the first kiss received confirms: I am prey valuable enough to survive. The moment tongues touch, we shed the helplessness of our mammalian past.
For twenty-eight years, Yerin has missed that magical instant. Her desire has quietly shifted into an invisible form.
The Question No One Asks
Tonight, again, Yerin presses her lips to the mirror. On the far side of the glass, her own blurred mouth meets hers. If—truly if—someone whispered the question at this very moment:
— Have you ever been kissed?
How would she answer?
No, not yet. But even now I keep my lips parted for someone.
May those lips become someone’s desire; may I, just once, be another’s first experience. For twenty-eight years Yerin’s heart has lodged in her throat—red as the lips still waiting for a kiss.