[Tea, when done right, is not weird]

After dinner at Hyuntae's, there is beer or there is tea, but there can be no escape. 

Today, Sunny chooses tea, which seems to shock and flummox his host. But, he desperately needs it: an eye of tranquil normalcy in the maelstrom of strangeness that has been his overlong day. A day that started with his transcript surprise and avoidable eviction, then escalated to a literal ghost sighting, and has now arguably peaked with talk of latent supernatural gifts from the logical scholar who is supposed to be his lifeline. 

He plops down on the floor beside the magenta rose sofa, ceding the entire seating area to Soeun, and accepts a steaming styrofoam cup full of something that smells like a mix of oolong and citrus. 

"Not enough of the stuff for either," Hyuntae says, as if reading Sunny's mind. His giant hands close and open awkwardly over the open mouth of the jar of yuja peel, making a wheezing melody. "But, tea is already a pretty bizarre concept if you think about it."

"Sure is," Sunny says, not really agreeing. He puts his nose to it, and breathes steam and scent all at once. Then, downs the mixture in one gulp, in a way that makes his host worry that he had not been offered enough water. Pretty soon, a six-pack of Jeju Samdasoo slides towards him unbidden. 

"Thanks for all this. Um, if you're busy with work, you don't have to hang out..."

"You're half right. I'm busy with something that pays very poorly," Hyuntae says, swivelling his laptop around. He has about two dozen tabs open on his browser, most of which appear to be enthusiastically advertising gig work. The frontmost tab describes a multistep assignment involving the research and collation of detailed info on the Cayman Islands. Sunny imagines either an offshore banker or a highly motivated Geoguessr on the other end of the exchange.

"Oh...that seems hard." 

"Got anything you want to talk about?"

Sunny thinks seriously about this. Here is the one person in the world who would probably not bat an (evil) eye at the story of the mysterious apparition he saw this afternoon! Though so much has happened in the intervening hours, the bright moon-like figure continues to linger in the back of his mind - the sense of amazement still fresh, the need to unravel the sleight of hand gradually building. But, does he want to risk telling Hyuntae, and making it into way more than it probably is? 

"Any alien sightings?" Hyuntae asks innocently, not even looking at him. 

There! A cue from the universe.

"Actually there was this one thing," Sunny blurts out...and the rest of the conversation is all anxious momentum.

[A long day, trailing thoughts]

It is 9:48 PM and Hyuntae has not yet asked him to leave, so Sunny prudently decides not to remind him.

He sits on the heated floor and plays with the frayed ends of the fabric of the couch. Soeun curls up at his feet, perhaps feeling lonely atop her solitary perch. She puts her head on his lap, warm and undeniable, as he silently considers the events of the day. 

While listening to Sunny describe the apparition, Hyuntae was strangely quiet, making only a few polite utterances to indicate that he was still listening. Then, while muttering some cursory remarks about the unknowable mysteries of the universe (unbearably light), and uncharacteristically patting Soeun on the head (much too hard), he bid Sunny goodnight and retreated to the room that he called his "study", which was really just a partitioned booth on the other side of the drywall. And all was suddenly and inexplicably silent. 

Bizarre. Sunny has never known Hyuntae to hold back his true opinions, or to leave others for extended periods while he goes to have a think. But then again - Sunny rarely encounters his friend actually thinking - the long hard kind of thinking that he knows Hyuntae is capable of, and that explodes across the pages of his thesis. 

Maybe, the story triggered something, and Hyuntae's true genius is emerging for the first time, along with all of its attendant tics and foibles. 

"It's hard to imagine him getting any weirder," Sunny murmurs, more concerned than truly annoyed, as he retrieves the leash that he had unceremoniously draped over the empty newspaper stand. He and this messy makeshift guest room like each other just fine. "But I guess that's not our business, is it Soeun? I mean, who else would house us out of the blue? Can't count on normal people, can we?"

"...Still," he adds, after a pause, "I wonder what's got him acting so distant. Did I see the alien he was looking for?"

Soeun's earnest brown eyes reflect his image back to him, and he shakes his head. 

"No, you're right. He seemed super unimpressed...so...what...do you think I saw an alien he already knew?"

Soeun is now tugging restlessly at the leash. 

"All right, girl - walkies. I've got you."

[Descent into darkness]

The night is full with a dark that sucks light dry. It is black and blue and rife with the whistles of invisible insects, braying with bursts of gale, drawling with the rounded mouths of unseen waves. Here, straddling the vast emptiness of the beach, it signals only itself, only more night. 

Standing at the fringe of Hyuntae's empty backyard, with only starlight casting over barbed chicken wire and blades of grass, Sunny no longer feels that he is in the city. The house stands a little apart from the rest of the town, their artificial lights barely reaching. It is a lone sentinel - practically at the ocean's door, it balances on a precipice that looks down upon the scant scattered grey buildings and trees and tree-lined coastal pathways, a cliffside that descends sharply into nothing at all. 

Sunny thinks that the ocean's character at night is just as true as during the day. The basket of life is also a crucible of human fear: a harrowing place, dark and unknowable, extending unceasingly downwards, with a mouth broken wide open. All of this, all life, belongs to the sea, which can reclaim it if and when it wishes. 

As Soeun inspects the bush for a convenient area to relieve herself, second guessing her decision every few seconds and oblivious to any human impulse towards fear, Sunny's eyes drift skyward and land on the full moon. It calms him - his gaze lingers on it for a long moment. 

Earlier, he was so sure that the figure he saw was only a pale imitation of the moon. But now as he stands before it, it seems to have lost some of its incomparable luminosity, as if someone had carved out a hole in the middle that had been unconvincingly patched over with spackle. 

How can this be? Had he ever really seen the moon before? 

"Did he take the moon with him?" He wonders out loud, but only in the slightest whisper, giving it no wings to fly further. And even as he says it, he wonders how can be so sure that the figure is a "he". 

But I am sure, he thinks. 

He hums to himself to self-pacify and, seeing that Soeun is finally ready to move on, he gently tugs on the leash and directs her towards their temporary dwelling place. For a moment he wonders how, when he had prudently shut off all the lights save the one illuminating Hyuntae's study, and when there were neither yard lights nor wall lanterns to show him the way, he could still see where he was going.

Is it a sixth sense? Bioluminescent trees? Had his eyes adjusted so quickly to the dense darkness of their surroundings that they could be said to be glowing, like the coal-hot eyes of Son Ogong? 

No seriously, is he glowing right now?

"Shit," Sunny exclaims, nearly dropping Soeun's leash into the grass. He stumbles forward, suddenly disconnected from his legs, as if a switch had been mercilessly flipped. Soeun turns to him in alarm, yelping like a firecracker. 

And now it is clear as day to him that his hair, already yellow as a haystack, is emitting its own light - each strand broadcasting copper and bronze into the charged air, and dancing spectacularly like facets on a mirrorball. What appears to be a soft light at first explodes into the opulence of a drum chandelier - white, hot - followed by a world of nothing. He is on the ground and clutching his head. 

This agonizing spell passes, leaving the elemental sensations of darkness and coolness. Clay soil and crumbling asphalt. The soft pawing sensation of Soeun's forelegs. 

His eyes, like defective blinds, flitter open and then close. 

They close.