Given any µ 1 , µ 2 ∈ C and α > 0, we prove the local existence of arbitrarily smooth solutions of the nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation ∂ttu − ∆u + µ 1 u = µ 2 |u| α u on R N , N ≥ 1, that do not vanish, i.e. |u(t, x)| > 0 for all x ∈ R N and all sufficiently small t. We write the equation in the form of a first-order system associated with a pseudo-differential operator, then use a method adapted from [Commun. Contemp. Math. 19 (2017), no. 2, 1650038]. We also apply a similar (but simpler than in the case of the Klein-Gordon equation) argument to prove an analogous result for a class of nonlinear Dirac equations.