When he turned off his phone and let his brow rest against my shoulder, I already knew I had cast my final ballot. Reflected in the window we drifted like two islands. He spoke first.
“They say the country will collapse because of who you voted for.”
I traced his jaw with the back of my hand instead of answering. Before barbed words could carpet the bed, I had to silence them with my mouth.
That night we raised a bed instead of a sign.
1. Sejin & Dohyun ― March 11, 2:48 a.m.
One corner of the pillow had been ripped open—after he’d read my social-media notifications. I had left a single “lol” under a comedy clip he despised. The comment thread was pure him.
“Commie bastards.”
The blade in his hand was tiny. When the cotton spilled out he stuffed a fistful into his mouth. What came out first wasn’t language but breath.
“This taste is you.”
I shook the cotton away instead of replying. It clung to our hair and fell like snow all night. When he caught my waist, the torn seam slipped between us. Under a heavy dawn quilt we whispered politicians’ nicknames instead of each other’s names, testing how deeply the labels had lodged inside our mouths.
2. Minseo & Hyejin ― December 19, 6:12 p.m.
The rally square was a blizzard. Hyejin’s placard pointed straight at me.
Feminist = Communist
I shouted back, “You’re a woman too!” Sparks flew. She lowered the sign and came to me. Our first kiss fell between the snowflakes.
We had lived together for over a year, yet we hung that placard on the wall like art. She painted my candidate’s face; I erased hers. The more the features vanished, the more clearly we carved each other. One day my saliva flicked onto her cheek; I didn’t wipe it away. She spat onto the hollow of my neck. We bathed in each other’s spit. Our words, meanwhile, dried to dust.
3. Me ― Last night, 4:27 a.m.
In my dream I watched him leave. In waking life he pressed harder into my back. Between dream and waking we kept switching camps, hiding inside each other’s allegiance.
“If I stand on the side that has no you, who will I fall asleep with?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he gathered a fistful of my hair and tightened his grip. The pain made everything lucid. I never asked whom he had voted for; I could already feel yes or no in the force of his embrace.
4. Us ― a night still unfinished
We spoke only with our bodies; words always dragged politics in. Even while kissing we tucked each other’s candidate names against our palates. When the names collided we angled deeper, as if to settle the race inside the dark of a mouth.
Taboo was the doorway to desire. We made each other forbidden and hid inside the prohibition. Yet the door never opened. Standing before the unopenable door we only burned hotter.
What burned was not love but the instant of its vanishing.
Final scene ― 7:09 a.m.
After the dawn ballot the turnout was reported at 100 %. We had both voted for each other. Still, no one won. As he knotted his tie I pressed my mouth to his throat. Beneath the knot our camps overlapped.
“I have to go vote today,” he said.
I tugged his tie tighter instead of answering. We searched each other’s bodies for ballot slips. All we found were torn cotton and dried spit. On the bed we finally cast our votes—and swore eternal silence about the result.