The day I cinched my belt two notches tighter, Tae-jun reached across the café table and covered the back of my hand. “You’ve… changed so much.” His fingertips trembled, and it had nothing to do with temperature. Across the seventeen kilos erased from my forearm, his gaze moved like fingernails—scraping over flesh, counting the bones beneath. I read the response I had never seen before, and asked myself silently:
Do you want me, or the hollow I have sculpted?
The Temperature of Frenzy
I already knew. At seventy-two kilos, Tae-jun’s eyes had always hovered slightly above my head; he listened without listening, tossing glances to the television behind me. Last November, Sang-woo—met on a work trip—was more candid: With a body like that, shouldn’t you at least look healthier? The Americano he pushed toward me was a pale, decaf thing. So even the caffeine was to be leached from me.
One Bite Less, One Inch More
Perhaps what he adored was not me but the moment of completion. As my silhouette shifted, invitations poured in—Tuesday in the supermarket car park, Thursday at the rear exit of the gym. Jun-hyeok, whom I used to pass in the underground locker room, finally spoke my name.
“Ms. Hye-won, shall we really have dinner this time?”
I didn’t answer. I simply nodded. His eyes widened, and he laughed—every tiny crease at the corners of his eyes seeming to tally the days I had gnawed away those seventeen kilos.
The Weight of a Vanished Shadow
Has even my shadow turned to flesh?
The sharper my waistline became in the mirror, the more threadbare I felt. When last year’s skirt hung loose, friends cheered: “Now the market’s bigger for you!” In front of the word market I became the commodity.
“Hye-won, coming tonight?”
What does it matter who sees—I’ve already displayed everything.
Whispering Numbers
What they read was not height or weight. The altered digits were etched with the language of control: stomach cinched, calories counted, desire subdued. To bestow a gaze on such a body is, at once, to pardon one’s own indulgence. Yes, you endured—so now I may devour you.
Me in the Pupil, Hunger in the Pupil
Last summer, three months after finishing my diet, Kyung-soo clapped me on the shoulder at a gathering. “Hey, Hye-won, seriously impressive. You’re in the ‘dateable’ category now.” I set down my glass and smiled. Dateable—the word cut deeper than human. Kyung-soo produced a pen and sketched in his notebook: an S-curve from shoulder to waist.
“What are you eating these days? Let’s grab a meal—my treat.”
He said meal, but the you at the end had been silently dropped.
Perhaps What We Crave Is Emptiness
Psychologists claim weight loss is vicarious atonement, a game of craving someone while tasting the thrill of betrayal. They knew how long I had starved; that may be why their gaze burned hotter. The illusion: merely looking at a famished body can sate one’s own hunger.
A Twisted Compliment
“Hye-won, you’re really pretty now. You stand out so much since you got slim.”
Stand out. Does that mean eyes that were never there before have suddenly sprouted? Or is it a confession that, once, no gaze reached me at all?
People Who Have Lost Their Shadows
What they wanted was never me. It was the me that could have been, the me if only a bit more. Somewhere inside that expectation, I vanished.
A Final Question
When he moves closer, are you being touched, or is his hunger being stroked? Whichever it is, those fingertips may already belong to someone who is no longer you.