A Drop of Blood on the White Wedding Dress
- Sujin, the venue just sent the photos.
- They’ve locked in the baby room for the hanbok changes too.
I couldn’t focus on Sujin’s voice through the phone. Standing in front of the wedding hall, a single raindrop landed on my shoulder. No—not rain. Something black and viscous.
A month ago he had said, "Whatever happened before us, I don’t care. We only look forward."
I couldn’t believe the words, so I kept asking. Are you sure? Will it really be fine until the very end? Each nod of his head only widened the fissure of dread—because his gaze was too clear.
Desire Is an Endless Confessional
Why do we feel compelled to prove ourselves? I did, too. Every night the thought burrowed under my nails: If I bare everything I own, maybe he won’t run. So I lifted a past I could have let drift away, tore open a scar that had nearly healed.
It wasn’t a confession. It was an exam.
Are you still okay? Look at me—look at all of me—and tell me you’re still okay. If the answer were yes, it wouldn’t be love; it would be terror. Every story ends anyway.
“I never meant to leave you. I meant to make you leave me.”
Two Lies Written Like True Stories
The First: Min-jae’s Table
Min-jae knew I was the woman who smoked outside the kindergarten gate at nine each morning. The same kindergarten our child attended. The child knew there was no father, only a stepmother. Min-jae knew I had spent one suffocating month entangled with my husband’s friend, and that my husband, knowing it, tried to take his own life.
After the engagement dinner we sat across from each other. Min-jae never lifted his coffee.
- Did you ever tell him you loved him?
- No.
- Then why? Why did you?
For an instant—an excruciatingly brief instant—the fingertips of a burning man felt more real than my dying husband. That was all. And that single choice followed me for the rest of my life.
That night Min-jae packed. “It’s not unforgivable to refuse to see someone’s past. I just can’t see it.” No tears. Only relief.
The Second: Na-young’s Watch
Two weeks before her wedding, Na-young confessed to her fiancé: at nineteen she had served six months for drug possession. The fiancé studied the probation-completion certificate and said,
- Your mother asked me to look at this, didn’t she?
She understood at once: the black envelope from her mother, containing every shard of who she had once been. The fiancé nodded.
- If your mother had shown me first, maybe I’d never have had to know.
That night he didn’t drive home. Two days later Na-young learned he had left—texted only, “Heading overseas on business. Forfeit the deposit.” Then silence.
We Love the Forbidden
Psychologists say the more stained we feel, the more we crave the immaculate. Not contradiction—compensation. The blemish in us demands equal transparency from the other. The moment we speak our past, we hand over the reins.
“If you can forgive me, it means you stand on higher ground.”
So Min-jae, Na-young, and I—we wanted our scapegoat. Now you know everything; you may leave. Yet what we truly wanted was for no one to leave. Because staying would legalize our past.
The Question Still Finds Me
At the welcome desk the usher asks: Has the groom not arrived? I smile. No, he’s right here—the man who fled me still lives inside me. The fact that he left because he knew my past shelters me longer than any vow.
After all, the certainty that no one can love me will keep anyone from ever leaving.
Did you really wish he had never known? Or did you, in fact, long for him to pretend to know and then walk away?