<aside> 🖊️
“Mångata” (“moonlit road on water,” in Swedish) is a nocturnal dialogue between Luna and Tae, where intimacy, desire, and fear unfold in the suspended space between dream and waking. The text oscillates between tenderness and rupture, light and dissolution, carrying the reader into the fragile boundary where love becomes both revelation and threat.
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— Are you asleep?
— I wish I were, but I can’t…
— Same for me.
— So what do we do?
Luna pulled the curtain aside and saw her, clear, immense in the sky. On the Han River, her reflection lay fractured. The city lights had dimmed; only the sound of the night could be felt.
A week earlier, Luna had asked him to explain a formula she couldn’t grasp. Too many words, his voice lowering, the hint of a smile, a goodnight that never came. Distance, forced before the holidays, had made them live more at night than by day. Their talks grew heavier—not for the heart, but for the mind.
— I can never sleep when there are too many things in my head.
— Is it your head or your heart that keeps you awake?
— I don’t know. Maybe both.
Taejun was silent for a moment; then his voice grew softer.
— You know, at night it feels like the right time to say what I can’t say in the daylight.
— And what is it you can’t say?
— So many things. Too many.
Luna smiled faintly. Sleep wanted to claim her, but she didn’t want to lose a single breath.
— Try. Tell me. We’re in the dark anyway.
He drew a deep breath, but did not bare himself entirely.
— All right. I’m afraid.
— Of what?