Chapter 4
If love announces itself loudly, I missed it.
What I noticed instead were the smaller things—the way Sundays began to feel divided into before Kim and after Kim, the way my body relaxed the moment I heard the bell ring and knew it was him, the way my chest ached on weekdays with a dull, persistent longing I didn’t have language for.
We never said the word love.
We didn’t need to.
It lived in the spaces between us, in the pauses that stretched too long, in the way we learned how to stand near each other without touching and somehow made that feel more intimate than anything I’d ever known.
The restaurant became our cover story.
To everyone else, we were just two boys working side by side, quiet, polite, efficient. To my parents, Kim was helpful and respectful and easy to overlook, which felt like a miracle and a curse at the same time. To the customers, he was kind and patient, and I was the serious son who never smiled.
Only we knew how charged everything was.
Only we knew how dangerous it felt.
One Sunday, during a rare lull, Kim leaned close to me behind the counter, his shoulder brushing mine for a second longer than necessary.
“You’re thinking too hard,” he murmured.
I stiffened. “About what?”
“About everything.”
I glanced at him. “That’s my personality.”
He smiled, soft and fond in a way that made my chest ache. “I like it.”
The word like hit me harder than it should have.
That afternoon, when my parents stepped out to pick up supplies, the restaurant fell quiet in a way that felt unreal. The sunlight shifted, dust floating lazily through the air, and for once, there was no shouting, no orders, no expectations pressing down on me.
Kim stood near the window, watching the light.
“Do you ever wish,” he said slowly, “that you could just stop being who everyone expects you to be for a day?”
I swallowed. “Every day.”
He turned to look at me then, really look at me, and something in his expression softened into certainty.
“I don’t expect anything from you,” he said. “I just want to know you.”
The words cracked something open inside me.
I moved without thinking, crossing the space between us, stopping just short of touching. I could feel his warmth, his breath, the quiet steadiness of him.
“I don’t know how to be that person,” I admitted. “The real one.”
Kim reached out slowly, deliberately, giving me time to pull away.
I didn’t.
His fingers brushed my wrist, light and careful, like he was afraid I might shatter.
“You’re already him,” he said. “You just don’t let anyone see it.”
My throat tightened painfully.
I leaned in first.
The kiss was nothing like the one I’d imagined in moments of weakness and longing. It wasn’t desperate or rushed. It was slow, hesitant, almost shy—our lips touching softly, parting, meeting again like we were learning a language neither of us had spoken before.
I felt everything.
The way his hand trembled slightly where it rested against my arm. The way my own heart felt like it might burst out of my chest. The way the world narrowed down to this one moment, this one boy, this one impossible truth.
When we pulled back, we rested our foreheads together, breathing the same air.
“I’ve never—” Kim started, then stopped, shaking his head.
“Me neither,” I said.
He smiled, radiant and fragile and completely undoing. “I’m glad it’s you.”
So was I.
That was the Sunday everything changed.
We didn’t become reckless—we became careful in a different way. We stole moments instead of touches, shared looks instead of words. We walked to the end of the block together after closing, just far enough that the restaurant couldn’t see us, just close enough that our shoulders brushed.
Once, he played an Elvis song quietly from his phone while we sat on the curb, knees touching, neither of us speaking, the music filling the space where fear usually lived.
“I draw better when I’m happy,” he said casually.
I looked at him. “Are you?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I really am.”
I wanted to tell him that I was too.
I wanted to tell him that he felt like something I hadn’t known I was allowed to have.
Instead, I said, “You should be careful.”
He smiled sadly. “I know.”
The next Sunday, my mother watched us too closely.
I noticed it immediately—the way her gaze lingered, the way her mouth tightened when Kim laughed quietly at something I said, the way she interrupted us more often, creating distance with small, sharp commands.
Fear crept back in, cold and familiar.
Near closing, Kim slipped a folded piece of paper into my pocket when no one was looking.
“Later,” he whispered.
That night, alone in my room, I unfolded it.
It was a drawing—not of us this time, but of a road stretching forward into sunlight, two figures standing side by side at the start of it, hands almost touching.
On the back, he’d written:
Whatever happens, I don’t regret this.
My chest ached so badly I had to sit down.
The following Sunday, everything unraveled.
The restaurant was busy, loud, chaotic. My parents were stressed. I was distracted. Kim was quieter than usual, his smiles smaller, his movements tense.
At one point, I caught my mother watching him with something like suspicion instead of indifference.
I should have known then.
I should have pulled back.
Instead, during a moment of exhaustion and relief, when Kim passed me behind the counter, I reached out without thinking and squeezed his hand—just once, just briefly.
But my mother was watching.
Her sharp intake of breath cut through the noise.
“Moon,” she said, her voice dangerously calm. “Come here.”
The room felt like it tilted.
Kim’s hand slipped from mine.
My mother’s eyes flicked between us, cold and precise.
“What is going on?” she asked.
The question hung in the air, heavy and inescapable.
I opened my mouth to lie.
But Kim spoke first.
“I love him.”
The words landed like an explosion.
The restaurant went silent.
And in that moment, I knew nothing would ever be the same.
