“This time I’ll run away with my body.”
3:14 p.m., Yeonnam-dong take-away café. Naeun sipped her iced Americano, then licked the stray drop from her lower lip. The corners of her eyes lifted, lipstick feathered like chalk. Twenty-two, yet today she felt it was the twenty-second and final time.
“I’m done. I won’t lose again—not with my body, not with my heart.”
This wasn’t romance. It was something too viscous, too searing, to be called by such a gentle name.
In the mirror, lingerie torn too soon
Why do they always leave first?
Naeun studied herself in the rear-view. One strap of her bralette was ripped. Five men, five nights out. Each time she had offered her body first—not a kiss, not a breath brushing a cheek, but flesh. And every man accepted, then vanished.
“Call me selfish. Fine. From now on I only take. I’m tired of speaking first.”
The rule was simple: whoever wants a body first gets to leave first. She had always surrendered her body early; her heart limped after, too late. So she always lagged behind, skin drying, heart hollowed.
Yuri, Jaehoon, and Chaewon’s gaze
Yuri was her club sunbae—twenty-four, 183 cm, eyes the color of early spring leaves. Naeun’s body reacted before her mind. Yuri stroked her hair.
“Let’s be close.”
That same night Naeun watched Yuri’s fingers drum on Jaehoon’s thigh. Yuri wanted Jaehoon. Naeun blocked her on KakaoTalk. Two days later Yuri confessed to Chaewon.
“I don’t date. Too exhausting.”
Chaewon’s fatigue, Naeun’s fatigue
Chaewon, her roommate—twenty-one, hair always tied back. Naeun asked,
“Why?”
Chaewon replied,
“I just want it over. I’ve always been the alternative, never the choice.”
For the first time Naeun absorbed another’s wound as though it seeped straight into her own skin. Listening, she realized her body had always been the alternative.
The wish to end, the desire that won’t
Love is a game that cannot be ended. The longing to finish is, in truth, an unfinished desire. In fantasy she shouts, I no longer want to be loved. In reality, the wish to be wanted first still smolders.
At twenty-two, Naeun declared love over. Yet the embers of craving glow: a tired heart waiting for someone to ask for her body again.
Declaring an end to love is, in fact, its opposite.
At the foot of the bed, a monologue
3:11 a.m. Naeun sits on the mattress edge, slides down her nude-toned panties. Outside, an unlit sign flickers. Wherever her fingers wander, she whispers:
“This time I’ll leave first. I won’t give my body, won’t give my heart. …But if someone asks, I might give it all again.”
She laughed alone. Twenty-two, yet she has been selling her body for ages. And tonight, she might sell it once more.