The Words That First Set Me Aflame
"I just… lost the feeling," Kim Jun-hyeok said.
In that instant my fingers on the café table seemed to turn a queasy green. Sunlight slanted through the Hongdae windows, falling between us like a shard of ice.
The “feeling” he spoke of should have been ours, not his alone.
From that second I wanted to smash something—his phone, his face, the photos in which we smiled like accomplices. Too literal. Instead I chose another path.
How to Erase the Traces of Desire
That night, after he had named the reason for leaving, I opened Instagram and began to filter every picture of us. I stripped the color, pushed the contrast to its limit, drained the warmth until the images looked like stills from an old black-and-white film.
Then it struck me: I wasn’t editing photographs. He had called my desire a burden, and I was erasing its traces.
Like a witch scrubbing away her cauldrons.
Yujin’s Story
“Why are you so obsessed with me? What even is that…?”
When the words struck, Yujin hurled her coffee cup to the floor. Perhaps it slipped; she prefers to remember it as deliberate.
Park Min-su from her office—situationship, romance, whatever it had been—was announcing his departure. At the moment he branded her feelings obsession, she watched herself become a cautionary tale.
Does desire always mutate into obsession? Or has everything I ever felt been obsession all along?
After that day the office whispered that Yujin had lost her mind. She checked Min-su’s chat, tracked his calendar, hunted for the new woman in his life.
“She’s really gone crazy,” colleagues murmured.
But Yujin knew the truth: she was simply in love. And love, in this society, is indistinguishable from madness.
Terms and Conditions for a Modern Witch
Why does speaking the reason for a breakup instantly turn the other into a witch?
Psychologists call it the negation of desire. The moment I declare I no longer want you, your wanting becomes taboo. Whoever violates a taboo must be punished—like the witches of the Middle Ages.
In 2024 the witch still walks among us. Her crime is merely wanting too much.
Too much, and therefore unsettling. Too much, and therefore terrifying. Too much, and therefore oppressive.
What Burned Me
A month later I ran into Jun-hyeok by chance. He was with someone new—quiet, muted, the kind of woman I could never become. In that instant I understood.
It was not the breakup itself that made me a witch. It was the texture of my desire: too raw, too turbulent, too incandescent.
Modern culture licenses only moderate desire: like moderately, hurt moderately, forget moderately. Yet none of us ever loved in moderation.
And so we became witches.
When Did You Become One?
Have you ever been told, Stop acting like this? Have you ever frightened yourself with the size of your own wanting? Have you watched love reclassified as obsession?
Then you may already be a witch—singed by someone else’s glance from the moment it branded you.
And still we love: that scorching, forbidden emotion no one will forgive.