“No, really, this is my first time.”
The last step of the café’s brick staircase underground. Min-woo pulled me down as if shoving me into something. The mingled scent of cigarette smoke and breath reached me first. Then, suddenly, my cheek trembled as though brushed by wind. This isn’t it. I didn’t want to stop being a first-timer. Still, my lips moved before I could stop them.
Tall Min-woo bent his head. A single bright flashlight flared between us. In that instant his fingertips traced my skin—so warm I had to close my eyes. Fifteen years old, a still-sealed first moment burst open like a crime.
Brazen outside, trembling inside
I can’t remember who leaned in first. All I know is that for the 0.3 seconds Min-woo’s mouth covered my upper lip, every circuit in my body shut down.
“What if… what if this really is the first time? No, impossible. I’ve seen it all—movies, novels, friends’ stories.”
Yet my heart lurched. Why? I could almost hear the word purity fleeing me.
Min-woo whispered, as if he knew or didn’t care:
“Is this truly your first? …All right, then close your eyes.”
The moment I obeyed, a deeper darkness fell. His breath slipped inside me—sweet melon, neither cigarette nor coffee, the taste of nothing at all.
Three versions of me dancing
- The façade: “So what if I kissed a college guy? Life won’t flip upside down.”
- The truth: A black stamp has been pressed into me. What happens to my first-kiss fetish now?
- The guardian of my pupils: “It’s fine. No one has to know. It’ll stay ours alone.”
They wrestled while Min-woo moved gently, irises flashing across mine. You wanted it to be your first, too. His fingers combed through my hair—so tender I nearly cried.
And I understood: the notion of “first” is itself a fiction we invent.
A story that feels real: Hye-jin, 24
Hye-jin has been in a situationship with Jaeyoung for thirty-seven days. After every date she cranes her neck at the bus stop, gauging his reaction. Today? Maybe the kiss. No—wait. The first moment has to be special.
Jaeyoung merely waves.
Hye-jin calculates inside her head: a slight smile—four seconds; a blink—two seconds; parted lips—zero seconds. That night it was zero again. Jaeyoung checks his phone.
“It’s late. See you tomorrow.”
Back home, Hye-jin lies on her bed, switching her phone on and off. The algorithm tosses up a video: First-Kiss Tips! She skips it. Instead, the lost first moment circles her skull like a lullaby of absence.
Another story that feels real: Doyoon, 27
Six months ago, at a company dinner, Doyoon kissed his senior, Sejin. Or rather, Sejin kissed him—against a bar’s back-alley wall, her hand clamped on his waist.
“First time? …Then remember: I’m your first lover.”
Sejin vanished with a laugh. Next morning she tapped his shoulder.
“Yesterday was a mistake. Sorry.”
Something inside Doyoon dropped and shattered—the word first in pieces on the pavement.
Why are we obsessed with “first”?
Psychologist Robert Sternberg calls the “first experience” the fuse effect. Once that switch flips, the brain clings to the memory like a photograph. But we overlook one fact:
The first moment is manipulable—malleable as stage scenery, not purity incarnate.
So we keep pressing rewind. Take it back. No—pull it forward.
One last sentence
That night Min-woo texted:
“It wasn’t either of our first kisses. Still, I want to insist it was.”
I nodded. When the screen went black, I touched my lips in the dark. The ghost of the kiss still lingered.
What are you calling “first” these days?