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“Once upon a time there was a boy who lived by the sea.
“Every evening after supper, he would sit by the ocean, listening to the crash of the waves and the cry of the gulls, and then watch as the sun dissolved peacefully into the water, leaving behind a mesmerizing array of warm coloured hues, like a vermillion bird leaving behind scattered feathers as it flies away.
“And each night, after the sun was finally laid to rest, the line between jet black skies and dark inky waters would blur until it faded away altogether. It was then that the boy would rise from the rocks, and a swarm of crabs would come to his aid, laying down a way for him to walk forward. He would climb up into the sky, stepping on their hard shells one at a time, until he reached the end of the path that the crabs set before him, finally reaching the moon.
“You see, every day the moon was quite different. Sometimes, it was light and thin, and the boy could place it on his tongue, where it would dissolve like rice paper and the taste would linger when he woke up in his bed the next morning, the sun already up again. But other times, the moon was bigger, and warmer, and the boy could only take for himself a small slice, like eating cheesecake for dessert. And once in a while the moon was so full and so round the boy could only wrap his arms around it partway, and return after the hug with an empty belly.
“So that is how the moon disappears some mornings, but others it remains hanging in the pale blue sky at daylight.”
“That’s not a real story!” Saerom cries, shaking her head with indignation. “You can’t just walk up to the moon!”
Her storyteller gazes at her calmly and tilts his head. “Who said you can’t?”
“My dad!”
“Well, that wouldn’t be the first thing Kim Mingyu was wrong about,” he says, with the weary weight of first-hand experience.
For as long as Saerom can remember, Uncle Wonwoo has been a guest to their family on special occasions, although he’s no stranger the other days of the year either. Whenever Saerom’s grandparents are at home in Anyang while they’re living in Seoul, he’s the person Saerom’s parents are most likely to ask to act as her babysitter. It’s not because Wonwoo is the most convenient option, not when Uncle Myungho lives down the street, but he is the most likely to be available.
Saerom had once asked if it was because Wonwoo wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids, but her father had replied, “Well, not having kids is probably why he likes you so much, but he is kinda married…It’s complicated, you can ask your uncle yourself when you’re older.”
The thing is, Uncle Wonwoo isn’t even her uncle, not the way Aunt Minseo is her aunt. But still, he’s family, and spoils Saerom maybe a little more than he should, not that she minds.
“Tell me a real real story,” Saerom requests, knowing she’ll be indulged.
Wonwoo tucks a stray lock of hair behind Saerom’s ear and looks over her head, getting a faraway look in his eyes. “Well,” he says and hums lightly, “I was telling you a real story, so I suppose I can continue it.”
“Go on then,” Saerom huffs impatiently, used to adults being like this. “What happened to this moon boy?”
“He’s not the moon boy, you know. There is a moon boy but he comes later. First, our protagonist has to abandon the crabs and the ocean and the sunsets and the moonrises because his father’s business expands to a big city, in the middle of land, a long distance from the sea.”
“Does he get to see them again?”
“I don’t think so.”
Saerom pouts. “That’s a sad story.”
“Are stories so easily categorized?” Uncle Wonwoo laughs at her pout, without any malice. “It’s not completely terrible. The boy never liked seafood much anyway.”
“You said he was eating the moon, not the crabs! Why would he eat his friends?”
“Mm…you have a point there. He did rather like watching them crawl over the sand.”
“I’m always right,” Saerom says, doing her best approximation of her father’s voice whenever he gets in a row with just about anyone. “Now when does the moon boy show up?”
“Our smart little Saerom…” Wonwoo trails off. “Should I fast forward to their meeting? Well, thinking about it now it wasn’t as remarkable as it seemed.
“Like the moon itself, moon boy wasn’t something you noticed most of the time. Hidden, quiet, and unassuming. You feel the heat on your back when sunlight shines down during the daytime no matter where you are, but if you live far from the ocean, you never feel the pull of the moon on the tides, tugging the water towards it.
“So crab boy did not notice him for a time. But the moon, once a month, is fully illuminated to earth, and the brightness of its reflection far outshines the stars and planets in the sky. And one day, in the darkness of night, when crab boy could no longer see the way forward, moon boy shone with full luminosity, guiding the crab boy, helping him in his hour of greatest need to find his way again.”
“Is that it?” Saerom asks.
Wonwoo swallows his drink of tea. “There’s more if you’d like to hear it.”
Saerom looks toward the kitchen, and decides dinner seems a way off yet. “Please. What happens to crab boy and moon boy after that?”
“They become friends, I suppose. Well, as much as a crab and a moon can be friends. But even though one may be a crustacean and the other a celestial object, they have more in common than meets the eye. They’re both round, are they not? And the belly of a crab is as white as the pale moon at night. Neither are much talkers, of course, but the crab boy can swim the distance to the moon and use his pincers to poke and prod at him, while moon boy can roll over crab boy with his size, and like that they can become closer, you see?
“Maybe,” Wonwoo posits, “the way the come together is by chance. But after that they remain together. Maybe crab boy had enough ocean inside him that he didn’t need to live by the sea to be drawn to the moon. But over months and years, although they each had their sea and space friends respectively, some things never changed: on dark days, moon boy would accompany crab boy silently, providing him much needed light, and on days when moon boy could not shine so brightly, crab boy would use his shell to shield him from the rest of the world until he was ready to face others once more.
“So their friendship ebbed and flowed, sometimes a close bond, sometimes distant, but always connected to each other. More years passed and moon boy, who was now less of a boy and more of a man, had grown steadily in size and brightness, and all of that, plus his beauty too, attracted the gaze and interest of all who ever passed near him. As others gravitated toward him, the distance crab boy needed to cross to reach him lengthened and lengthened, keeping the two of them separate.
“Crab boy, who was also less of a boy and more of a man at this point, realized that the days without the moon were too dark and lonely to bear. He invited the moon boy to live with him so that their companionship could continue. Their first night sleeping under the same roof, crab boy thought to himself for the first time that the moon boy was quite beautiful. Well, it may not have been the very first time, but it was the first time that he was aware of the thought.”
“Did he tell him?” Saerom interjects eagerly.
“No. There were many things crab boy did not say, like the fact that he wanted to spend the rest of his life sharing a roof with moon boy and no one else. But he saw no point. They were already living under one roof, were they not? He was satisfied, he was content, and now even when the skies were thickly draped with clouds or the earth blocking the sun, the crab boy could see the moon boy night after night without fail.”
Saerom giggles. “Did he eat the moon boy, like he ate the moon before?”
“Not quite, but the moon boy must have looked very tasty because crab boy never seemed to take his eyes off him, at least whenever they were in the same room. Even when others were speaking, the crab boy would watch moon boy, entranced. Even in his dreams, crab boy saw visions of the moon dancing in the night sky.”
“He was in love, wasn’t he?” Saerom asks sagely.
“Yes,” Wonwoo agrees, “He was. Although he did not know to use that term to describe how he was feeling – the swooping drop of his stomach whenever he saw moon boy, the urge to smile when moon boy was smiling, the tightness in his chest listening to moon boy’s voice. It was all very mysterious to him and much more inexplicable than climbing a path of crabs to the sky at night as a child.”
“By the way, if the boy left, how is it that the moon continues to have phases?”
“Another one took his place I suppose.” Uncle Wonwoo laughs. “I’m not really a writer, you know.”
“I know,” Saerom says. It’s a common misconception among her cousins that her uncle is an author by profession. Although she doesn’t know what the words mean or what he does exactly, she does know that he’s actually an industrial engineer. Uncle Wonwoo is a reader who works with numbers, not a writer who conjures up words. But after reading so many books it’s easy to have many stories to tell, and so he played the role of their storyteller rather than one of the old grandfathers or great uncles. “Don’t tell me that’s the end of the story.”
“You’ll know when it ends, I think,” Wonwoo tells her. “As I was saying…
“Their cohabitation was comfortable for a while. They bade each other good morning and good night, sometimes they dined together, or watched television, completed chores, read side-by-side on the sofa. Sometimes they took the train together, chatting while waiting in the bus shelter, sharing an umbrella on days of rain. But crab boy had to fight off the need to comb his fingers through moon boy’s hair, or to hold his hand when they were walking so he wouldn’t trip over cracks in the sidewalk and fall on his face. He resisted these thoughts and feelings thinking they would make moon boy uncomfortable, and because they made him uncomfortable as well. And from that resistance, the bond they shared began to strain, causing them to spend less and less time together.
“It was low tide. He was a crab on the sandy beach, while moon boy was hanging over the water. But the trip from shore to sky was one crab boy had made often as a child. Daily, in fact. So, he took it upon himself to climb to the moon one more time, harnessing his last remaining crab friends, arms reaching out to moon boy, skin crackling with sparks when their fingers brushed.”
“They kiss, don’t they?” Saerom asks.
Wonwoo nods.
“Of course they do. Can we skip that part?”
“Sure. No kissing. Well... What happens next is that the crab boy asks moon boy to marry him.”
“Not after just one kiss!”
“I skipped all the lovey dovey parts in the middle, since you didn’t seem to want to hear it.”
Saerom nods, accepting this explanation. “It was just dragging. We both already know they were in love with each other for ages beforehand.”
“Sounds like you were there too, huh?”
“It’s just obvious. You read enough romances and it becomes easy to predict. They fall in love, get married, and all’s well that ends well.”
“I didn’t know you were the type to read romances.” Wonwoo raises an eyebrow.
Saerom crosses her arms. “It’s every fairy tale princess story ever.”
Wonwoo laughs softly. “They aren’t married yet in this story though.”
“Why not?” she demands.
“Well,” Wonwoo explains, “The crab boy has to successfully complete ten challenges before the wedding.”
Saerom puts on an angry expression, indignant that the heroes in this story can’t yet have their happily ever after. “What kind of challenges?”
“First, the moon boy was born of celestial parents, right? That meant that crab boy had to learn to speak the celestial language to communicate with his new family members. He also had to learn to cook, so he could sometimes make dinner for his moon fiancé.”
“That’s not a real challenge,” Saerom protests.
“Cooking is extremely difficult,” Wonwoo replies evenly.
“Yeah, but I was expecting him to have to fight off a demon or something.”
“That’s challenge nine,” Wonwoo explains. “I’m glad I don’t have to convince you demons are real.”
Saerom rolls her eyes but indicates for him to continue.
“Well, challenge nine gave him 21 months to complete a knight’s quest. It was the toughest challenge of the ten, not only for crab boy, but also for his moon fiancé who missed him the entire time and didn’t know whether his crab was okay or not. But during the ninth challenge, while crab boy was away and unable to use his hard shell to protect the moon, someone broke into their shared abode. And trying to escape, moon boy did the only thing he thought he could. Being the moon boy he was, he flew away, as far as he could, all the way to the sun.
“But unlike the crab, the moon fiancé could not swallow a star on his own. And in the morning, he did not wake up in his own bed. Try as he might, the moon boy could not return to earth, and the crab boy could only gather enough crabs to travel to the moon, not to the sun. The two spent the rest of their days staring across the sky at each other, separated by distance, but together in thought and spirit.”
After a sombre silence, Wonwoo added a final, “The end.”
“I was right,” Saerom says quietly. “It was a sad story.”
“It was a real story,” Wonwoo tells her, “Like you asked for.”
“Real stories don’t have to be sad.”
“That’s true. But I suppose this one is, a little bit.” Wonwoo clears his throat. “Your mother beckons, I think it’s time to wash your hands before dinner now. If it’s still early we might fit in another story later.”
Saerom doesn’t get her second story, at least not that day. Uncle Wonwoo leaves soon after dinner, with Saerom’s mother pushing a basket of fruit into his hands as he’s trying to head out the door.
“For the jesa, from us.”
“I’m not going to fit all this on the table with what Myungho brings too,” Wonwoo says, trying to hand an entire melon back.
“Junhui was our friend too,” Mingyu says sternly.
Saerom follows the adults outside, waving goodbye to her favourite uncle with her parents, until long after his car has disappeared past the horizon. She looks up at the nearly full moon in the sky, and watches it twinkle for a moment before heading back inside.