The Night I Was Left Alone
3:42 a.m. I was standing at the refrigerator, drinking water, when the screen lit up.
Still can’t sleep? Me neither.
This isn’t my phone.
It was his—plugged in, resting on the counter, locked yet pulsing with notifications. Again and again.
At first I told myself it was nothing: a late-night ping from a friend. But every night, at the same hour, the same line surfaced.
Anatomy of Desire: Why It Had to Stay Hidden
Why did I want to hide it?
She already knew the answer. The person hiding wasn’t him—it was her own desire.
The jealousy she felt over someone else’s midnight text. The nightly compulsion to confirm that jealousy. What began as accident soon became intention. She could close her eyes and still picture the charging phone’s exact spot, could feel herself opening the drawer for the cable with her right hand.
Ji Yujin’s Story: March 15, 4:17 a.m.
“It came again tonight.”
Yujin studied his phone on the bedside table. He’d been asleep for ninety minutes. Yet she remembered the message received exactly one year ago—March 15 at 4:17 a.m.—word for word.
I miss you. Right now.
Sender: Kim Seojun, his college junior.
That night she had heard his stifled sigh. At first she thought it was a dream—until his hand slowly, unmistakably, traced her waist. Next morning she found Seojun’s message. She wanted to hide it; instead her fingers took a screenshot. For a year she has opened that screenshot every night at 4:17 a.m.
Choi Minjae’s Story: September 22, 2:33 a.m.
“This… is different.”
Minjae ended the call and stepped onto the balcony. The Han River’s lights blurred beyond the glass. What caught her eye was a deleted message—the gray line in KakaoTalk reading This message was deleted. At 2:33 a.m., just as she left the bathroom, he had flicked the screen away. She saw only that ghost sentence, yet her mind filled in the rest: a name, a longing, someone else’s night.
Since then Minjae has obsessed over his deleted texts. Why erase it? What had it said? After he fell asleep she installed a recovery app on his phone. Another person’s living desire poured into her; she drank it, savored it, drank again.
Desire Turned Taboo
Why are we so sensitive to another’s longing?
Psychologists say the desires of others act as mirrors for the ones we bury inside ourselves. What we truly want to excavate is not their secret, but our own forbidden wish.
Reading Seojun’s message, Yujin felt it: the desperate ache in I miss you. Those were the words she had wanted to hear from him. Minjae despaired over the deleted message—a wiped longing that was, in truth, a longing that wanted to be found.
We are all drawn to another’s desire, knowing it is our own. Why?
Why We Still Cover Ourselves Before Sleep
What happens if I never open that message?
Yujin checks the screenshot on day 365. Minjae rereads the recovered text on day 120. They know the moment they truly read it, the story ends. So they don’t. They only pretend to.
None of us can let go of the thread of taboo. Release it and we may never meet that desire again. So we toss endlessly, telling ourselves the lie that we must look at the message to fall asleep. Tomorrow, the next day, the week after—we will repeat the same lie at the same hour.
Final Question
Tonight, will you rise to check someone else’s message?
Or will you lie awake, unable to confirm the desire you cannot name?