A Night Talk

Between secrecy and longing, the line blurred into confession.

Long ago, in the shadow of nuclear secrecy, my friend Dr. Shin worked at a research facility. It wasn’t the most classified site, but rules still bound them—permits, restricted communications, a single phone line in the director’s office. Researchers lived inside the perimeter for a week at a time, returning home only on weekends.

Dr. Shin was in love. And love, as you know, is not a steady climb toward happiness; it has cliffs and sudden falls. In one of those uncertain periods, he borrowed the secretary’s key, slipped into the office after hours, and dialed his girlfriend. They talked and talked, voices weaving through the night, until past 2 a.m....

Then, suddenly, another voice broke in:

“My dear lovers, please decide what you are going to do - my tape is running out on the recorder.”

And so the moment was sealed - intimacy recorded, surveillance confessing its own exhaustion, time itself asking for resolution before the reel snapped.