"Today… it’s a little embarrassing, but I’ll tell only you, Doctor."
Before he even began, a soundless scream sparked in the LED light beside the exam table.
His zipper halfway down, his toes grazing the footrest, I snapped on gloves and thought: this flimsy screen is not just a patient divider—it’s the glass that keeps our hungers from touching.
I recognized at once that his gaze burned hotter than the surgical lamp.
The Necklace Bound in Black Fur
“If I let it out here, only he and I will carry it for life.”
He said, “My wife, since the wedding, never…” and the rest dissolved into a hidden sigh.
But the sigh was not for her.
My hand holding the pencil trembled.
I wanted to write low-back pain on the chart, yet the real ache was not in his spine.
On the exam table lay a small collar of pitch-black fur attached to a ribbon.
“Doctor… you know the taste, don’t you?”
The taste.
The word clung to the tip of my tongue like syrup.
It wasn’t pain; it was the pain of flavor.
I lifted the ribbon, then let it fall again, staring at him.
The fur still held warmth.
Who had fastened it round someone’s throat, and why had he carried it into my clinic?
Case 1. Breath Beyond the Stethoscope
Three years ago, during residency, I met a man called Min-jae at a discreet Gangnam practice.
Every Wednesday he arrived to display the violet bruises striping his shins.
“Better my wife never knows. I don’t even remember how it started.
But the moment the bruise blooms—that I remember.”
Circular scars, thin as wire, peppered his tibias.
Diagnosis: recurrent contusion.
On the back of the chart I had penciled:
“She prays I never hurt her, yet in the end I always do.”
His flat was high-end, yet behind the headboard dozens of nail holes scarred the wall.
His wife pretended not to notice; Min-jae secretly traced them with his fingertips.
Case 2. A Single Tear Across the Shoulder
The second case is different.
Seo-yeon, met on the seventh-floor dermatology ward, came for routine laser work—initially for facial flushing.
On her third visit she whispered, “Doctor, there’s something scratchy here,” and lifted her cheek to reveal faint nail marks on her forehead—scars no laser could erase.
The skin around them was mottled crimson.
“My husband doesn’t know.
Once, drunk, he said, ‘Even while you didn’t know, I kept searching for you.’
How could I not know?
I was searching for someone else while he wasn’t looking.”
She swallowed a single tear.
Under the clinic lights it gleamed like evidence.
I did not blot it; to wipe it away would wipe away her real wound.
Why Are We Drawn to This?
Taboo is sweet as a cluster of ripe grapes.
While keeping it, we lean our bodies against it.
A single nail mark on a brow, one wire scar on a shin—small, almost invisible.
Yet these traces find each other.
Sealed fingertips brush and whisper, this is our secret.
Psychologists say desire for taboo is not for the act itself, but for the mirage of being the only one who knows.
That mirage satisfies two hungers at once:
- I am special.
- I am a transgressor.
Where uniqueness and crime touch, there lies the clinic.
The white coat divides us all like scalpels.
Lifting the Collar Again
I slipped the black-fur collar into my pocket so he would not notice.
The door clicked shut behind the glass.
The ribbon still throbbed in my palm.
If I open my mouth this very moment, what will happen?
But if I speak, we both collapse.
I locked the collar deep inside a drawer and pulled out a fresh chart.
Yet somewhere in my mind the fire kept rising.
Should I guard the secret—or let it devour me too?
If it were you, could you bury another’s secret for life?
Or would it become your own forbidden hunger?