Thursday, no promises made. In the bestseller aisle you waited, turning a page and saying, “The sound of a leaf turning… it’s like someone swallowing.” I didn’t laugh or answer. I simply caught your wrist and led you down the back stairs to the emergency exit. Beneath the dim green safety bulb, the nape of your neck trembled. This is betrayal, I thought. We were nothing. Hadn’t even tried to be. Still, I bit your lower lip hard. You closed your eyes, opened them, closed them again. Then your fingers slipped inside my belt, as though no one would see—or as though it no longer mattered.
The lips spoke first
Why did we insist on exploring each other without ever naming it? No talk of “a thing,” no pretext of a date.
If we’d labelled that kiss with today’s jargon… would we have let go, or sunk in deeper?
A kiss without promises is a clandestine contract. We are nothing, yet for this instant the closest thing in the world. Unsigned, unstated, it was sealed instead by lips, fingertips, breath—terrified that words would shatter it.
Four kisses scribbled in the margin
March 2022, a gathering near Hongdae. It’s one a.m.; Min-seo is toying with the piercing of Jun-hyeok, whom she’s met only tonight.
“I quit smoking,” he says, “because you hate the smell,” and presses his mouth to the back of her hand. No one notices. Min-seo whispers to herself: Mistake, or beginning? No reply. For two months they meet at the same hour, the same spot. No conversation—just kissing. One evening Min-seo cups the back of Jun-hyeok’s head.
“I think I like you.”
He removes his piercing for the first time. “Sorry… I just liked that moment.”
The cold taste of metal fills her mouth—his apology.
Another night, another you
July, same year. A plastic-tabled tent bar in the back alleys of Itaewon. Yujin shares a bottle of soju with long-time friend Dohyun.
“Why do you keep laughing?”
“No reason… just remembering.”
Dohyun slips his finger—not the glass—between Yujin’s lips. Salt on skin. Raindrops start to fall. One umbrella, two bodies, shoulders brushing. Who started it? Probably both at once: the glance, the kiss. Seven years of friendship, first time.
Next morning a message: [Sorry about last night.]
Yujin types, deletes, types, deletes. Sends nothing. After that day, they drift apart, as if the kiss never happened.
The spell of the unnamed
Psychologists call it transgressive pleasure—the thrill of a bond that refuses naming, or even denies it exists. A jolt that pierces old heartbreak, that renders tomorrow’s responsibilities momentarily void. For that instant we behave as if we are nothing to each other. And so we indulge.
Perhaps what we wanted wasn’t the kiss itself. Only proof that someone still craved us—without needing to know what came next.
The aftertaste
I haven’t returned to the second floor of that bookstore. Yet sometimes, idling in the elevator, I catch the papery scent near the emergency exit. Your hair. Your breath. Or the lingering ghost of whatever I wanted.
So I replay that day: the kiss without the word date. When no one called us lovers, or even a couple. What did we truly want—your mouth, or the wordless, vanishing possibility it contained?
When you remember that day, a faint metallic taste returns to your tongue. Was it desire, or the hollowness left after desire dissolved into thin air?