Once Every Full Moon
Sensing our bleak future, Kwon Hyun-jin muttered a curse under his breath and wiped at the corner of his mouth.
“You work hard too. I will as well.”
“Haa……”
He pulled me into a deep embrace and let out a heavy, complicated sigh. His breath, laced with the floral scent clinging to his clothes and a cool mint note, brushed against me in scattered puffs.
I really was thoroughly, hopelessly smitten.
He was so good—understanding my difficult position and falling silent as if he meant to heed my words. Even with his brows furrowed thick with discontent.
“Thinking about only seeing you once every full moon, Na-hee…… it’s already fucking stifling.”
The new semester began, and I grew busy. Every nerve had to stay taut for my first attempt at living alone.
University was nothing like high school. Here, the only person looking after me was myself. No one scolded me if I was late to a lecture or forgot an assignment.
A light sense of liberation and a vast, distant fear washed over me at once, as if I had been set adrift alone on an open ocean. This was freedom, truly felt for the first time. Only then did it sink in that I had crossed beyond the fence of minority.
Because I was a year older than last year, Kwon Hyun-jin listened to me better. Whether it was that damned “promise” or not, the boy had grown obedient. We barely contacted each other on weekdays.
But on the days we met, he tried to stick to me like a wad of gum and made a complete fuss about it.
“Na-hee, you’re wearing a skirt?”
“I bought it in front of school.”
It was a chiffon spring dress with soft floral embroidery. A completely ordinary design that had cost less than twenty thousand won, ready-made clothes.
“Weird……?”
“Fucking pretty.”
The moment we stepped into the apartment, Kwon Hyun-jin pulled me into his arms. He wrapped himself around my shoulders from behind, rested his chin on the crown of my head, and walked around stuck to me as if we were one body.
“I’m brushing my teeth. It’s uncomfortable. Stay a little apart……”
“Why brush your teeth.”
“I told you I ate with my classmates.”
I had even drunk coffee afterward; my mouth felt dry and thick. I had forgotten my portable toothbrush in another bag.
I naturally reached for the mint-colored toothbrush of the two in the bathroom. By now my things were scattered casually around Kwon Hyun-jin’s house.
“Why do you start with brushing your teeth the second you walk into our house, Na-hee.”
“……”
“Fucking sly, huh?”
The sly one is you, not me. I stared at the pathetic teenage boy reflected in the mirror and decided to ignore him.
I squeezed toothpaste onto the brush and put it in my mouth—only for Kwon Hyun-jin to suddenly sweep my hair to one side and bite the exposed nape of my neck with a soft ang.
“Ah!”
I flapped my hand as if swatting a gnat, but he was persistent.
“Don’t. For real.”
“You’re glaring at me, noona.”
“I told you not to.”
“Even the glare is cute? Na-hee.”
He grinned and showed no sign of stopping the teasing. Kiss after soft kiss landed on my cheek, deliberately getting in the way of my brushing.
“If you keep this up, I won’t come anymore.”
“Whoa, scary.”
“Kwon Hyun-jin.”
“I won’t. No more teasing.”
He raised both hands in surrender and left the bathroom.
It continued like that. How he had ever managed to restrain himself from skinship until now I had no idea; the clinginess was no joke.
Even while we sat on the sofa watching a movie together, his hands refused to stay still. He hugged me from behind, then from the side, making a private riot as if I were an attachment doll.
“You…… restrain yourself a little.”
I endured it until he tried to pull me onto his lap, and finally spoke up.
“If you keep this up, I can’t come to your house.”
“Threatening me? Not even letting me touch you.”
Being alone together inside the house yet unable to do anything to me because of “that promise” was hard on him. His exam preparation was going smoothly, yet his expression stayed dark because of me.
On top of that, even though I was living alone, my daily life had not changed much from before. Using Ji-yul as an excuse, I still went home early. Overnight stays were out of the question, of course.
Lying with his head on my lap, he glanced at me as I checked the time and asked carefully,
“Stay over? It’s the weekend.”
“No.”
“Who said we should do anything?”
Feeling preemptively guilty, Kwon Hyun-jin sat up with a jolt.
“Just sleep next to me with your eyes closed. I won’t do a single thing.”
“Will you be okay?”
I had come to trust him quite a bit. He was absolutely not the type to force something I disliked. If anything, he watched my reactions carefully.
His pride was so fierce that he would never break a promise he had made with his own mouth.
“Will you be okay? If I sleep right next to you.”
“……”
The eyes that had been staring straight at me wavered helplessly. The first to look away was Kwon Hyun-jin—the stormy adolescent boy whose every thought I had completely seen through.
“Ha…… shit.”
His face looked miserable.
Yeah. It must be hard for you too. Stressed to the breaking point, Kwon Hyun-jin declared it was no use and suggested we meet outside instead.
At first the dates followed ordinary routes. We watched movies and ate out. But after a kiss scene appeared in a film rated for ages fifteen and up, we never went to the cinema again. Dark couple seats were dangerous.
Searching for wide-open spaces, the Han River became our playground.
“Kwon Hyun-jin, your birthday is next week, right?”
“You knew?”
Madam Jang took care of every family birthday, so there was no way I could have missed it.
“Let’s go to the department store, Na-hee. Pick out a perfume for me.”
For someone earning pocket money through campus work-study like me, a birthday gift for him could not help but feel burdensome. If we followed his tastes, it would certainly be something expensive. But I did not mind the cost.
“Okay. Just tell me the price range in advance……”
“I’m the one buying it. You just go and choose. I’ll spray it whenever I meet you.”
It turned out Kwon Hyun-jin was extremely sensitive to scent. There was a reason a nineteen-year-old boy smelled that fragrant.
He even had a favorite brand. A musk of rose with a light touch of vanilla—while I buried my nose in that honey-sweet fragrance, he bought it.
The bottle itself was the sort of thing most men would find hard to pull off, yet it suited Kwon Hyun-jin. Blended with his natural body scent, it became strangely alluring.
The moment his birthday passed, he got his license and bought a car. He started driving right away.
His June mock exam scores came out better than expected, so we reduced our meetings to once a month and, in exchange, began going out of the city in earnest.
“Na-hee, before the suneung let’s go to Everland. I’ve never been to an amusement park.”
“What are you talking about. You went when you were little.”
“We went and just turned around and left. Because I threw a fit.”
Kwon Hyun-jin was extremely shy with strangers. He particularly hated situations where someone he had never met before spoke to him.
When he was small, a newly arrived nanny would try to get close by suddenly taking his hand or talking to him nonstop from the side; it had felt suffocating, he said.
Thinking about it, that boy had been raised in other people’s hands since he was a newborn. So every time a nanny changed, it must have been agony. The thought made my heart ache all over again.
“Shall we go right now? The amusement park.”
It happened to be the day Kwon Hyun-jin had submitted his first-round rolling application to S University.
“Suddenly today…… how?”
“We can just go somewhere close.”
Having never ridden the subway once in his life, he had no idea there was an amusement park inside Seoul.
In Jamsil we put on ridiculous headbands, ate churros, and drank Fanta.
Even under a sun that blazed like it had gone mad, we rode the outdoor attractions. Every time the ride cut through the air while we hung suspended, the hard wind wiped the sweat from our foreheads.
I screamed until my throat was raw and still rode again. Far more than the boy who had first suggested the park, I was the one having the better time.
Kwon Hyun-jin simply sat in the seat beside me and kissed my cheek without pause. He kept looking only at me, smiling like a deflated doll.
“Kwon Hyun-jin, do you like it too? Is it actually fun?”
“Fucking good. Being with Na-hee.”