"Even if I stop breathing in this car, I would still choose to die in the passenger seat beside you." Fluorescent lights flickered at the far end of the office’s underground garage as Ji-hoon brushed his thumb across Min-jung’s hand and whispered. The instant his fingertips grazed her skin, a tepid electric current slid along the inside of her thigh. So black a death, and yet it arrives as gentle warmth.
The fact that he was dating a male colleague on their team felt, at that moment, less like a ticking bomb than a brilliant fireworks display. When Ji-hoon slipped off her crooked glasses, even the chill that had settled against her forehead melted into syrup.
The moment the word die touched my ears, I felt the rebellion I had always hidden inside me stir. Men like Ji-hoon know: once death is used as shorthand, a woman’s brain floods with every chemical imaginable. Death = absoluteness = eternity = a man who is only mine.
A childish equation, yet in front of it everyone dissolves like children.
At first it was only curiosity. Min-jung happened to overhear a conversation between Ji-hoon and his ex in front of the convenience store, the air stale with cigarette smoke, and a single sentence from him: "If I lose you, I’m finished. Really." She was deceived by that one line. From the instant she heard it, Min-jung began directing a private film inside Ji-hoon’s gaze. He whispered that it was not a performance but the truth, and that truth slithered down her ear and coiled around her heart.
Min-jung’s diary, March 12. Today Ji-hoon held my legs like a small bird and said, Even if I die, you are all I have. That sentence resurrected me from the dead. I become a secret wife, someone who loves you while holding her breath behind your back. How tragic, how beautiful.
Two months later, she broke up with her team-leader boyfriend and kissed Ji-hoon for the first time in the underground garage. When Ji-hoon’s tongue teased the roof of her mouth, he whispered again, "I can’t live a single day without you." Min-jung believed she had been chosen as someone singular. In truth, that evening Ji-hoon received a call from the team leader, who sobbed that Min-jung wanted to break up. Ji-hoon offered the same sentence to him: "Hyung, I can’t go on either."
Seo-hyun is Ji-hoon’s high-school friend; for six months she has been hidden inside his wardrobe. Ji-hoon’s official girlfriend is actually Ji-a, a junior from the company club. Ji-a believes Ji-hoon has rebuilt his life for her.
Ji-a’s diary, April 3. Today Ji-hoon fought with the team leader. The team leader was drunk and said something to me, so Ji-hoon grabbed him by the throat. He’ll really die if I’m not around. Still, something feels off—Ji-hoon keeps avoiding my eyes.
Ji-hoon has always been like this. Terrified of losing anyone, terrified of never possessing anyone completely, he wakes and sleeps in anxiety. So he repeats the same sentence to everyone: "I can’t do this without you. Really." The more he repeats it, the more women he can keep captive, each waiting for him in her own private room. He wants to lose no one, so he deceives them all.
Saying I’ll die is actually handing over the desire I cannot relinquish to him. Because I can’t give myself up, I demand that he die for me. Psychologists call this phenomenon death mobilization: engraving the other’s death in order to justify my possessiveness. Probe deeper and it is not desire but fear. The fear that if I truly love someone, I might lose that person and go mad. So we close our eyes. Even while knowing Ji-hoon repeats himself, we bet our lives on the 0.1 % chance that this time the words are real.
The delusion that I am special, the fantasy that I am the last.
Seo-hyun now understands. Ji-hoon loves no one. He is only a child trembling at the terror of loss, and that is why he wants to keep every woman caged. To avoid losing.
Last night Ji-hoon said the same words again. Over the phone, he spoke her name: "I can’t live without you." At that moment, what rose in you? His trembling voice? His desperation for you? Or the uneasy suspicion that those very words might be echoing in someone else’s ear right now?
Do you ache to believe the words are true? Or do you not believe him at all, and that is why you rush toward him even faster? Listen: the tremor in the voice you are hearing now may not be on your account. Perhaps the shiver is not tenderness for you but guilt toward someone else.
So if the words you want to whisper are I can’t live without you either, wait. Before you let them slip from your lips, first ask yourself whether the person you truly want to stake death on is him—or merely the fantasy you cannot bear to lose.
Ji-hoon is probably somewhere repeating the same sentence even now. And you, in this very moment, may still be praying that those words are meant for you alone. That is why we incline our ears once more to that lie as sweet as death.