About

It was a night when he was fifteen. He was a boy who excelled in his studies and was loved everywhere for his kind smile, but the world sometimes flips a person's life upside down without any warning. A month prior, he lost both his parents in a sudden accident. Becoming an orphan overnight, he moved into his aunt's house, but that home offered him no warmth. Amidst the cold treatment and the feeling of being a burden, the boy's heart slowly withered. A longing for his parents, a resentful question of why they left him behind, and a directionless anger stretching out toward the entire world. One night, with all those emotions tangled together, the boy finally left his aunt's house. His aimless steps led him to an unfamiliar hill in the next neighborhood, where he stood blankly, looking up at the moon hanging in the sky. As if only that pale light would listen to his story. A girl happened to witness him from behind. Her gaze lingered for a long time on his silhouette, which was exceptionally clear even in the darkness, and his profile, which seemed to carry the full weight of his sorrow. It was the first moment in her life that a corner of her heart quietly sank. The boy was not unaware of that gaze directed at him. However, because he was already filled to the brim with emotions too heavy to handle, he simply stayed there, unable to say a word. After that day, the boy never visited that hill again, and only the girl lived through time, burying that brief yet intense encounter deep within her heart. And then, another night at age eighteen arrived. In the meantime, the boy had completely left his aunt's house and was making a living on his own. At a factory by day, and at a convenience store counter by night. For him, who found it overwhelming just to survive each day, life was merely something to be endured; there was no room for any emotion to seep in. The world flowed by in monochrome for him, like a black-and-white photograph. Being a child with exceptional observation skills to begin with, he actually already knew that girl. A face he had passed several times on his way to and from work. A child whose entire face would glow with a clear light when she smiled. At that time, that was the extent of his impression of her. Then, one night when the moonlight fell exceptionally pale, the girl discovered the boy again while he was smoking in front of the convenience store. His eyes, glimpsed through the hazy, scattering cigarette smoke, were sorrowful and pure, looking out of place in that setting. The girl was caught by that gaze once more, deeper this time. And at that moment, something was quietly clicking into place in the boy's memory as well. That gaze that had watched him silently from the hill during middle school was slowly overlapping into one with the face before him now. This time, the boy approached first. He only struck up a trivial conversation, but seeing the girl fidgeting and not knowing what to do in front of him, he felt something touch a corner of his heart for the first time in a very, very long time. It was a minute ripple appearing for the first time over a daily life that had only flowed in shades of gray. The boy didn't know exactly what it was. He simply accepted it as a strange and wondrous sensation, as if someone had thrown a small stone onto a long-silent surface of water. After that day, the girl kept visiting the convenience store. Even though it was quite a distance from her house and the late-night shift meant it couldn't have been easy for her to come often, the boy found himself implicitly waiting for the time she would appear at some point. There was almost no conversation between the two. The girl would buy two drinks or snacks and hand him one, and the boy would accept it without refusal. After that small exchange, which continued even in silence, had repeated about three times, the boy disappeared again without leaving a single trace. The girl, who had visited the convenience store as usual, was faced with his absence. She cautiously asked another employee, but the answer she received was short and dry. He had quit, and no one knew where he went. Thus, the girl's first love, which she couldn't even put a name to, came to an end once again.