03:17. The headphones that had covered his ears slid off
A hunk of plastic brushed my fingertips and clattered to the floor. My head lolled sideways, and I saw it: the half-raised laptop screen, a woman’s dancing décolletage, and Min-su’s eyes—unable to look away.
“They make me smile instead of you.”
Even her breath was scripted. On-screen, she sits on the edge of the bed and traces her own abdomen with slender fingers. Min-su’s right hand has vanished under the duvet. I tried to tell myself it was a dream, a nightmare, but the spasms in his bare feet were brutally real.
Hundreds of bodies enjoyed in place of mine
Next morning he kissed my cheek, light as ever, and left for work. The instant his silhouette vanished, I opened the laptop. A private window. Browsing history wiped clean—but inside the “Favorites” folder, forty tabs unfolded like dominoes.
Redhead’s First Time
Milkmaid’s Secret Clip
With a Married Woman Behind His Wife’s Back
Each title promised Min-su a woman who was not me. I measured their cup sizes, the curves of their waists, the pitch of their moans. I noted which angles he preferred, the tempo of the hand he favored. Night after night he erased our seven years and kissed these women in secret.
Case study: Ji-eun’s husband and his 47 “virtual wives”
Ji-eun, 35, stumbled across her husband’s diary in their fifth year of marriage.
Day 23—Blonde Jenna made me kneel while she kept her glasses on.
Day 47—Asian Mini couldn’t hold her voice in; it turned me on more.
She was shattered to learn he masturbated every night to a fresh name. The diary never once mentioned the real Ji-eun. Instead, forty-seven imaginary wives took turns rocking his bed.
“When he touched me, he always closed his eyes. Behind those shut lids, who was really there?”
Case study: Mi-yeon’s husband and the AR housewife
Mi-yeon, 32, found a VR headset in her husband’s drone-club bag. Beyond the lenses stretched a 180° scene: a woman ten kilos heavier than Mi-yeon, her hair in dark braids, lying on their living-room sofa coaxing her husband’s response.
Mi-yeon superimposed her own name on the woman’s belly.
This is me—yet you still don’t want this body.
Why are we drawn to substitutes?
Porn is not mere stimulus; it is a mirror of lack. When I replay the look in Min-su’s eyes, I realize he was not seeing the real me. He wanted an actress who never exits the stage. When the clip ends she returns to 00:00, repeating the same gasp, the same arch of back.
We dread inevitable change. Real bodies age, sag, sometimes hurt. The women on screen freeze time, looping only perfect moments. Min-su chose unchanging flesh. No—he chose them to avoid change itself, to avoid me.
Have you ever chosen someone’s image over someone’s body?
On the bed where you disappeared
Tonight, again, I watch Min-su’s back and ask:
Whose breasts are you picturing while you hold me?
Do you climb on top of my body only to scrub away their traces?
We no longer embrace each other’s bodies; we cradle each other’s absences until sleep comes.