Hook – You were still dressing, and I was already undressed. The hiss of a belt threading twice through its loops; at the foot of the door, my blouse collapsed where his shoe had been.
“I’ll come a little later tomorrow.” He didn’t even turn to look; the words sliced the air and I bowed my head to a scalding shame.
When the door clicked shut the room dropped into a silence like death. While the last warmth seeped from the sheets I knelt inside the blanket and whispered, I’m on fire again, alone.
Spring rain outside, volcano inside
What I wanted wasn’t simple sex. I wanted to rip the hollow he left into shreds. “Let’s keep some distance” was his slogan, and every time I stepped across that line I felt the live wire snap against my skin. My hair slid forward, slapping my face; I imagined his mouth at the ends of those strands and my thighs melted. I pressed both palms to the small of my back and arched until the spine nearly cracked. Plank of hell. A bead of sweat rolled from my nape to the base of my spine and I understood: this was a ritual to burn myself clean.
A story that feels too real: Sujin & Doyoon, and a lukewarm thermometer
For six months Sujin had maintained what she called a “torso relationship” with him—kisses, but shallow; hands, but only above the waist. Doyoon’s answer never varied: “I’m still measuring the temperature of my feelings.”
Each time, Sujin turned on her doorstep, scuffing her toes, then walked away.
That night, back home, she stood before the bathroom mirror and slowly lifted her skirt. On the inside of a thigh no one had ever touched she drew a crimson scratch. The woman in the mirror looked so wretched that Sujin dug her nail in again. What seeped out wasn’t blood but a sob wrapped in breath.
Another story: Hyein received texts from Huijae twice a week.
“Too tired today. Next time.”
She parsed the sentence by every space: today meant delay, a little meant pain, tired meant because of me.
That night she scrolled Huijae’s Instagram back to April 2019 and found a necklace worn by an old girlfriend. Hyein ordered an exact replica overnight. When the box arrived next afternoon she felt not the necklace but herself folded inside the parcel.
Why we are drawn to this doomed blaze
When someone keeps distance, the one who burns stakes the entire temperature of her body. Psychologists call it the scarcity illusion—the more we are pushed away, the lower the probability falls, yet paradoxically the value skyrockets.
Here we confront an uncomfortable truth: what consumes us is not the emotion called love but the experimental apparatus called rejection. Rejection fires up the nucleus accumbens, the brain’s pleasure center, twice as fiercely as you imagine.
So chemically speaking, I was already torn apart.
Final question
After you closed the door and left, I am still hot. Because you never look back, no one will cool this heat.
Will I finally commit a small suicide of flame on your doorstep, or vanish as smoke?
Your distance is merely the oxygen my fire needs to burn.