Does Mom know I’m kneeling in front of her dresser right now, fingertips tracing every silhouette?
Soo-jin, a third-year senior, cupped her mother’s pristine white bra in her palm. The stiff padding carried faint creases inside. A single breath of its scent convinced her: Mom wore this only this morning.
This is nothing. Just the beginning.
0. The Beginning, or the First Sweetness on the Tongue
Wednesday, 4:23 p.m. The house was empty. Dad on overtime, Mom ferrying the little brother to cram school, big sister asleep. Soo-jin slipped the hamster she raised with Ji-eun into Mom’s bedside drawer, nesting it on a soft cashmere sweater. A shy squirt of urine—drip.
“What is this?”
At the sound of Mom’s voice Soo-jin’s body flared with heat. That night Mom pulled on the same sweater. A tiny pellet of droppings slid from the chest. Mom looked away. Soo-jin saw it: the instant Mom’s eyes recalibrated her daughter into an unfamiliar beast.
1. The Creases of My Own Making
The lie was as sweet as a first kiss. The knowledge that she could shatter her mother’s world.
After that day, Soo-jin kept going. She drew a lipstick from Mom’s vanity and pressed a kiss onto the back of her hand. She grazed her wrist with Mom’s leather belt. Fingerprints of secret love no one would ever dust for.
“I’ll never do it again.”
Soo-jin repeated the same sentence seventeen times in front of her mother. Each time, Mom’s gaze clouded over. Like a baby who has misplaced trust, she could not look away from her daughter.
2. A Flavor Passed Down
February 2024, a study café in Daechi-dong. Chang-hyeon, twenty-eight, hides a cigarette from his girlfriend Yoo-jin. From the next room he once heard every nuance of his sister’s silence. The sultry current between Mom and Soo-jin—he remembers.
“Hey, who’d you meet at work today?”
Yoo-jin asks. Chang-hyeon flips his phone over. One KakaoTalk alert: Oppa, I miss you again today. Sender: Director. Did Yoo-jin see? A smile pretending not to know tickles the nape of his neck.
3. The Sweet Centrifugal Force of Dread
Psychologist Park Hye-shin remarks:
“Lies are chocolate-flavored poison in the game of power. The moment the other chooses to pretend not to know, the balance of the relationship tilts toward the liar.”
Soo-jin took her mother’s anxiety as proof of love. The more faith Mom lost, the more certain Soo-jin became of being loved. The larger love grew, the heavier the ballast of dread.
Chang-hyeon is the same. Watching Yoo-jin’s face, he realizes he is becoming the very image of his mother.
4. The Last Sentence, or the Pleasure of Repetition
Have you ever told someone, “I’ll never do it again,” and then felt the urge to break that promise?
What you truly wanted to hide was perhaps not from that person at all.
You simply craved the pleasure of watching the beloved’s unease.
And that unease always returns as a sweet, burning heat.