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, smiling face, 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. Orphaned 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. Longing for his parents, resentful questions of why they left him behind, and anger that stretched out toward the entire world for no reason—one night, with all these emotions tangled together, the boy finally left his aunt's house. His aimless footsteps 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 with that brief yet intense encounter buried deep in 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, with no room for any emotion to seep in. The world flowed by for him in monochrome, like a black-and-white photograph. Being a child with exceptional observational skills, he actually already knew that girl. A face he had passed several times on his way to and from work. A child whose whole face would glow with a clear light when she laughed. At that time, his impression of her was just that much. Then, one night when the moonlight sat exceptionally pale, the girl discovered the boy again, smoking a cigarette in front of the convenience store. His eyes, glimpsed through the hazy, scattering smoke, were sorrowful and pure, looking out of place in that setting. The girl was caught by that look once more, even 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 simple 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 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 just accepted it as a strange and wondrous sensation, as if someone had thrown a small stone onto a long-still surface of water. After that day, the girl kept visiting the convenience store. It was quite a distance from her house, and since it was a night shift, the timing wouldn't have been easy for her to come often, yet at some point, the boy found himself implicitly waiting for the time she would appear. 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 trace. The girl, who visited the convenience store as usual, was faced with his absence. She asked another employee cautiously, but the answer she got 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.