A Date
An indirect kiss.
It refers to the situation where, instead of lips touching lips directly, something else touches the lips first — and then touches yours.
Say, sharing a straw, or drinking from the exact same spot on a cup, or using a spoon someone has already eaten with.
Granted, the name sounds grand, but honestly it's nothing much. Most people would say you'd have to be a little kid to even notice such a thing, and yet…
Now that I'm actually experiencing it, I can't stop noticing.
Meaning — the spoon that Kim Hyewon had just been chewing on in her own mouth was being offered straight to mine?
It wasn't a matter of it being dirty or anything like that.
It was just… am I really allowed to eat this?
Truly?
Swoosh—
"My arm's getting tired. Eat."
Kim Hyewon pushed the spoon closer to my lips as if to say hurry up and take it.
In the end, I had no choice but to accept it.
Because if I got self-conscious here and refused to eat, I'd be the one who ended up looking strange.
And even setting that aside, it was hard to turn down such kindness.
"…Mm."
"Good?"
"Yeah. It's really good…"
And it truly was delicious.
So much so that it made sense why Kim Hyewon kept going back for bite after bite.
"Right? It's amazing, isn't it."
With that, she glanced at the spoon I'd just eaten from, scooped up another mouthful of bingsu, and carried it to her own lips.
The sight of it, somehow… mm.
…Why does something that small keep pulling my eyes toward it?
Maybe that's why.
Swoosh—
"Here, say ahh."
On impulse, this time it was me holding out a spoon to feed her.
Naturally, the one I'd been using.
And after a brief moment of hesitation, Hyewon—
"…Ahh."
parted her lips slightly, tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and took the bite of bingsu.
A spoon that had been inside her mouth once, then come back out.
The tips of her exposed ears had turned faintly red.
"……"
"……"
An ambiguous atmosphere hung between the two of us.
And then it happened.
Bzzt—
"……?"
The phone vibrated, and when I checked it, a message had come in.
I excused myself from Hyewon for a moment.
"I'm going to text someone real quick, Hyewon."
"Okay."
I waited a moment, and another round of messages arrived from her.
I couldn't help but let out a small laugh at the absurdity of it.
I could feel Hyewon in front of me wondering what was so funny.
Look who's talking about shameless.
She was the one who started this whole joke in the first place.
Apparently deciding there was nothing more to squeeze out of this angle, Sohyeon switched gears.
Hmm.
I hesitated for a beat before answering.
Wondering whether I should be honest about this.
…Is that so.
While I was processing that, a flood of messages poured in from Han Sohyeon.
That was the last of them — nothing more came in.
I put the phone away.
"Sorry. Did I take too long?"
"It's fine."
I'd worried it had dragged on, but fortunately Hyewon let it slide without fuss.
"So who was texting you?"
"Ah, nothing much. It was Sohyeon."
…A pause.
Han Sohyeon set down the spoon she'd been eating her bingsu with.
"…Sohyon? You're talking with Sohyeon?"
"Huh? Yeah."
"…Since when?"
"Uh, since yesterday?"
I answered somewhat dazedly, thrown off by her suddenly changed demeanor.
"Since yesterday?"
"Yeah. She messaged me yesterday, so we played some games together."
"…I see."
I began to wonder if I'd done something wrong.
Because for some reason, Kim Hyewon's expression had gone stiff.
Then, after a brief stretch of silence, she asked quietly.
"What did Sohyeon say?"
"That we're together right now, and she said have fun on our date?"
"…Date?"
Kim Hyewon paused again.
Then this time, her expression brightened instead.
To anyone else it probably would have looked no different from her usual stoic face, but I, who had by now learned to read her expressions to a degree, could tell.
"She called it a date?"
"Yeah. She said a guy and a girl being together like this is a date — what else would it be."
"I see. A date… a date…"
Hyewon, murmuring that word over and over, was in a good mood almost instantly.
We finished eating and stepped outside.
I found myself wondering what we should do next.
I'd been trying to deny it until now, but as Han Sohyeon said, if you wanted to split hairs, this very moment — right here, right now — was a date between Hyewon and me.
Setting aside whether we had romantic feelings for each other or not, the very format of what we were doing — hanging out together — couldn't be called anything but a date.
So what does a couple do after leaving a cafe?
While I was mulling it over, Kim Hyewon tugged at my sleeve.
"Baek Seojun."
"Yeah?"
"Over there."
She pointed at a spot.
"Let's go there."
Turned out it was a four-cut photo booth.
"Sure?"
"Yeah."
I followed her inside the booth.
And just as we were about to take the pictures—
"……"
"……?"
She looked oddly awkward.
Seeing her fidgeting, I couldn't help but ask.
"You've never taken these before?"
"…No."
"Not even with Sohyeon and Areum?"
"…No."
"I see."
That was genuinely surprising.
Don't girls usually goof around taking these together? Or had she developed some kind of trauma around photos?
"No."
"Nothing like that?"
"No. I just never took them. Never did with Sohyeon or Areum either."
Excluding Sohyeon's modeling shoots, she added.
"Then you're okay taking them with me?"
"Yeah. I'd actually like that."
"You'd like it?"
"Because you're you, Baek Seojun."
…What was that supposed to mean.
But Kim Hyewon showed no intention of explaining further, and simply closed her mouth and started fiddling with the basic settings — photo frame, number of cuts, and so on.
Frankly, I was puzzled.
Something about today felt a little — no.
It was unmistakably ambiguous.
I found myself second-guessing things today, as if something in the air had changed.
Even if she didn't like me, at the very least, didn't she have feelings for me of some kind?
But it wasn't yet the point where I could come out and ask directly. If I'd misread all of this, things between us would turn painfully awkward.
So for now, I simply focused on taking the photos with her.
Except there was one problem.
"……"
"…Hyewon?"
"…Yeah."
"Your pose is way too stiff."
Kim Hyewon on the screen looked unbearably awkward.
It wasn't like we were taking an ID photo — she was just standing there, motionless.
"…Sorry. I've never done this, so I don't know what to do."
"…Mm."
I understood, but it was a bit of a bind.
The timer kept ticking, after all.
"I'm just going to put a hand on you for a second."
"…Huh?"
Swoosh—
I gently wrapped an arm around her waist.
Then arranged a rough pose and—
Click!
Once the first shot was taken, I pulled my hand away from her.
"…How was it? This is how you take these."
"……"
Instead of answering, she averted her eyes.
That made me wonder if she'd been put off by how much I'd touched her.
But then—
"…I still don't really get it. Help me."
Apparently not.
This time it was Kim Hyewon pressing in close against me.
"Okay."
And so we began taking our eight shots in all.
Some were ordinary, fingers framed in a V. Others, like the first, with my arm around her waist, bodies pressed close. And in another, I stood behind her, posing like a back hug.
"……"
"……"
Pressed this near, I inevitably became conscious of her.
The sweet scent of shampoo mingled with her skin, and the line of her collarbone peeking out from the tank top beneath her leather jacket.
The sound of a swallow, and a heartbeat — impossible to say whose it was.
Photos, booth, none of it mattered. It felt as though Kim Hyewon and I were the only two people left in the world.
Only after we took the final shot facing each other, eyes locked, did we finish all eight frames.
"…Shall we pick the photos now?"
"…Yeah."
And then.
As I went through the shots to choose which ones to print, I realized something.
These weren't photos friends took together — they looked uncannily like photos a couple would take.
Naturally, I studied Hyewon's expression.
Taking the pictures was one thing — it was as if some spell had come over us as we arranged the poses — but afterward was another matter entirely. If she felt even a hint of discomfort now, then whatever this had been, it was a failure.
Not that I had any idea what kind of failure it would have been.
But fortunately—
"Done picking."
"Yeah? Then print them as is?"
"Yeah."
She didn't seem to dislike it at all, and that was a relief.
If anything, Hyewon stared at the strip of photos we'd taken together the moment it landed in her hands, gazing at it for a long while.
"…I like them."
"You like them?"
"Yeah. Do you?"
"I like them too."
"Good."
She tucked the photos carefully into the inside of her handbag, as if they were something precious.
"Let's take these again next time."
"Just the two of us?"
Kim Hyewon was silent for a moment, then smiled.
"Yeah. You and me, Baek Seojun. Just the two of us."