Full Moon

            Sungmin met me at one of the restaurants in town, now that we no longer had a café.  That was the downside of discovering that the town barista was a murderer.  He was unfortunately the best coffee maker in the area.  It wasn’t to say that the restaurants in town had bad food or service.  But there were no gourmet cinnamon rolls and the coffee seemed a little watered down in comparison to Yesung’s.  I was on my third cup of coffee and still felt exhausted and confused.  Or maybe it had nothing to do with coffee at all.

            “You were dreaming,” Sungmin said decisively, taking a bite of his scrambled eggs.

            “What about the hot chocolate?”

            “You probably woke up in the middle of the night and drank it without remembering.  Then, when you thought he kissed you and you your lips, it was really what was on your own lips all along,” he pointed out.

            I leaned forward and covered my face with my hands.  “What if you’re wrong and he’s just been ing with me this whole time?  What if he can touch me?”

            “What if he can?  What would you do?”

            “I’d kiss him.  Then I’d sleep with him.  Over and over until I dropped dead from exhaustion.”

            He laughed at me.  “Maybe that’s why he’s withholding.  Maybe he isn’t interested.”

            I shook my head.  “He’s in love with me.”

            “He was seventeen or eighteen when he died.  He isn’t used to being in a mature relationship.”

            I thought this over a moment, adding some cream to my coffee and stirring.  “You think I might be moving too fast for him?”

            “Well, he didn’t have any choice about you moving in.  Maybe that’s the one thing he can exercise control of.”

            “I don’t think I was dreaming, but he promised to talk to me more about it tonight.  Unless that was part of my dream,” I said, shaking my head.  “Damn, this is so ed up!  I’m not going to know if I was awake or asleep until he shows up tonight.  I need to quit thinking about it.  How’s Saeun doing?”

            “Really well!  She’s so excited about the baby.  We started some preliminary designs on the nursery.  We’re going to do an African theme with little giraffes and stuff.”

            “Cute,” I said, pretending to take more interest than I felt.  He kept talking about their plans until I got a text from work.  They wanted some marketing material earlier than planned.  I was thrilled to have an excuse to leave because I could only stand to hear about the baby for so long without dying of boredom.  I apologized for having to cut out early, but told him that I wanted to get a head start on it.  I drove home and sat down in my office, losing track of time the remainder if the day as I plugged away at it.

            I didn’t even notice the room growing darker as I continued to work, squinting at my screen.  “You’re going to ruin your eyes that way.”

            I smiled at the sound of his voice in the room with me.  “Probably.  I’m almost finished with this part and then I’ll stop.  I didn’t realize it was so close to sunset already.”

            “You didn’t notice that you could hardly read the notebook you’re writing on?” he asked as I scribbled a few notes down in a notepad with my pencil, eyes still glued to my screen.

            The light in the corner and I wasn’t too shocked.  Ever since that night a couple weeks back, I noticed that he occasionally played around with his power over electricity and managed to get the right light.  Didn’t happen too often, but there were two lights in the room.  His odds were a little better.

            “Thanks.”

            “You’re welcome.”

            I looked over my screen a little more and began jotting down a few more numbers, when I suddenly heard the sound of footsteps.  My fingers halted as I heard a creak in the floor and my eyes flew over to Ryeowook, who was walking towards the desk.  He stopped to glance out the window, not noticing me staring over at him.  He sighed heavily and I watched as the curtains moved from the force of his breath on them.

            My hand began to shake violently and I dropped the pencil I was holding.  It rolled across the desk, fell off, and then hit the floor.  Then it rolled until it hit Ryeowook’s foot, stopping once it hit his sock.  Ryeowook leaned down and picked it up.  Then he walked over to me.  I could feel his jeans and the slight warmth of his thigh beneath as it lightly touched my forearm.  Then he handed me the pencil.

            I stared at the pencil in disbelief for a long moment—what felt like an eternity but was probably a couple seconds—before grasping Ryeowook’s arm and pulling him down onto my lap.  He dropped the pencil.  I kept my hand tightly gripped to his arm to make sure that he wouldn’t leave or vanish.  I ran my other hand ran over his face and chest.  He was as solid as anything else in the room and I felt my eyes begin to sting with water.  I immediately cupped his face, leaned in, and kissed him.  He began laughing at my reaction, but his hand was on my chest, lightly grasping my shirt.  I could never tell you how long that kiss lasted.  It seemed to go on forever.

            Eventually, I wrapped my arms around him and pulled away slightly.  “How?”

            “I’m able to touch on the night of the full moon.”

            I kissed him again.  Once. Twice.  “All night?”

            “Yes,” he said, kissing me.  “Usually starts a little the night before and lingers a little the next day, but it’s more sporadic those days.”

            I pulled him against me and kissed him for a very long time, until we were breathless.  Or rather, I was.  Ryeowook couldn’t suffer from it too much, being already dead.  “You…you kissed me…yesterday.”

            “I kissed you many times while you were sleeping yesterday,” he confessed.  “You only woke up when I was leaving.”

            “You should have woken me.”

            “My ability was hit and miss yesterday.  You would have been frustrated by it,” he assured me.

            I shook my head.  “I would have been happy with anything,” I claimed, running my fingers through his silken hair.  “Are you telling me that I can touch you once a month?  Every month?”

            “I’m telling you that you can only touch me once a month.”

            I pulled him close, nuzzling against his neck.  He certainly didn’t smell like a corpse.  He smelled of sandalwood and some his own alluring, natural musk.  I pressed my lips against his soft, warm skin.  “That’s so much more that I thought I’d get.”

            “You’re okay with being with a ghost?  Unable to tell the rest of the world about our relationship and unable to be with me twenty-seven out of twenty-eight days?” he asked, pulling away to stare me down.

            “Oh, hell yes!”

            “I can’t leave the house and go anywhere with you.  No one else can hear me and you’d be crazy to tell people about me.  I can’t help you around the house.  I don’t age.”

            “Is this a bad thing?  You’re ridiculously hot!” I pointed out.  “Did you forget?  Are you unable to see yourself in mirrors or something?” 

            Ryeowook smacked my chest.  “Behave yourself.”

            I leaned in and kissed him thoroughly before pulling away again.  “I will behave if you really want me to, but I’d rather not.”

            Ryeowook wrapped his arms around my neck.  “Right now, I’d really like you to cook with me.”

            “Really?” I asked, feeling frustrated by the answer.

            He nodded.  “Aside from drinking your hot chocolate last night—which was like liquid heaven—I have not eaten food in years.”

            I remembered what Sungmin said earlier, about Ryeowook technically being young and that he might need time still.  “Okay.”

            He jumped off my lap, keeping ahold of my hand, and then helped to pull me up.  He pulled me close, rising up on his tiptoes, and kissed me again.  “I promis