A cold droplet from the sink slid down my thigh. Spring sunlight spilled through the glass and grazed my porcelain-white skin. One line from the message he sent still flickered behind my eyes.
‘I’ll come straight up when I ring the bell.’
When his car stopped outside our house
My husband was sunk deep in the living-room sofa, eyes fixed on the news ticker scrolling past: Seoul Medical Center surgical team reaches 1,000 robotic operations. All day he opens and closes human hearts, yet mine closed long ago.
I stand at the kitchen sink, pouring a glass of water. The pulse in my wrist races. What if I let him in right now? My husband wouldn’t even blink. He would simply keep staring at the television, discovering us too late, wordless. The thought slides across every nerve.
I dip a spoon into the water and lift it out; the cold metal licks my fingertip. This is madness. I grip the edge of the sink and steady my breath, but my heart has already decided.
How I taste shame
Why does the mere thought of touching Jun-yeong in front of my husband set a slow fire beneath my ribs? Why do I long to be found again in that gaze? After seven years we have become each other’s routine. My husband cannot recall the lipstick I wore yesterday; I no longer ask who shared his lunch at Seoul Medical Center.
Jun-yeong is different. He notices a single strand of newly dyed hair. When one blouse button is undone he murmurs, you look stifled today. A gaze that discovers the woman I am, a gaze long vanished from my husband’s eyes.
So perhaps that is why I want my husband to turn his gaze once more. Only when he watches us, only then will he see me again. A desire so wretchedly fierce it scorches.
A living room of glass
Last Friday, a high-rise in Gangnam. With her husband away on a business trip to Ulsan, thirty-eight-year-old Jeong Yu-jin invited Jun-yeong inside. Thirty-four, an art director at an advertising firm, 183 cm tall, curls grazing his forehead, arms too thick for T-shirt sleeves.
They stood before the living-room window; the Han River glittered below. Jun-yeong stepped behind Yu-jin and brushed the back of her hand with his thumb.
“So… this is right above your bedroom.”
Her tongue turned to paper. If my husband were here now. The fantasy crackled down her spine. Two bodies exposed beneath showy lights, beyond transparent glass, observed by her husband’s cold stare. In that stare she believed she would shine again.
How to turn my husband’s gaze
Jun-yeong exhaled quietly behind Yu-jin. “Here… I smell only you.” His breath tickled the rim of her ear. She closed her eyes for a moment. The cold sink, the news channel, Jun-yeong’s warm breath. Three sensations tangled and made her shudder.
He turned her shoulder gently. Yu-jin glanced toward the empty sofa where her husband might sit. The vacancy burned hotter than any presence.
The moment he sees me again
Jun-yeong’s fingers combed through her hair. “This color… I like it.” She shut her eyes. We should stop here. Yet every time his fingertips grazed the nape of her neck, the illusion grew that her husband’s gaze would return.
Yu-jin caught Jun-yeong’s hand. “Not… any further.”
He smiled and nodded. But beyond the glass the river kept flowing, and in its current Yu-jin pictured her husband’s eyes finding her once more.
When that gaze turns to me again, I will finally be whole.