0. 0.7 Seconds Until the Door Shuts
"I think I’ll just go home tonight." The moment he stood, the air shifted. The door took 0.7 seconds to close. In that sliver of time I inhaled twice. His hand brushed my shoulder and the thermometer registered: 37.2 °C. The heat spreading up my neck was more than body temperature.
This isn’t about wanting sex. I just want closer, longer, until it hurts.
1. Yujin’s Wednesday Collection
There are no clocks at the wine bar ‘Monet’; Yujin’s timepiece is the back of a man’s hand. Again tonight, someone’s index finger lands lightly on her skin. Two, three, four… she counts silently.
"Your eyes are beautiful," the man says. Yujin smiles. Her eyes are not objectively beautiful; they become beautiful each time a man says so.
When the second glass is empty he asks, "How is tonight?"
"Just… tonight is tonight," she answers. After he leaves she collects the remaining warmth in her phone’s memo:
15 March, Kim ○○, 36 °C, 8 s
At home she sets an empty wineglass on the back of her hand, wondering if it still holds 36 °C. When the glass cools she opens the memo again and waits for next Wednesday. There was no sex, so she can keep them forever.
2. Sihun’s Elevator, 30 Seconds
The elevator starts at B3. Sihun and Jihoon are alone. Thirty seconds to the first floor. Jihoon texts his fiancée: I’ll call when I arrive.
Sihun watches the thumb of his left hand scroll the screen. When was it that that hand shook my shoulder?
A soft chime—first floor. Jihoon nods and steps out. In the 0.7 seconds before the doors close, Sihun draws a lungful of his scent. Then, ascending to the second floor alone, she closes her eyes.
He’ll never know: I’ll recall his wedding day, the day his child is born, even the way he’ll grow old.
3. Sihun’s Mirror, One Hairline Crack
The office mirror always leaves a ghost image. Standing before it, Sihun checks the feel of her own hair on her fingers. Does Jihoon’s warmth still cling to her?
She has lived without knowing his fiancée’s name. Instead she memorizes the motion of his hand turning pages, the shape of his lips on a coffee cup, the loosened shoelace he steps into at day’s end.
Colleagues ask, "Sihun, what’s wrong with you?"
"Nothing, just working together," she answers.
But inside she thinks:
I don’t want all of him. A small touch, a glance, a breath—enough. There was no sex, so I can’t forget.
4. 20 March, Sihun’s Diary
Today Jihoon is getting married. I wasn’t invited. Instead I watch the back of his head vanish down the office corridor. The instant he steps through the door I register the last traces of his warmth left in the room.
He will never know: I will stroke the wound his hand left on my skin for the rest of my life.