“Do you like me?”
Tuesday, 2:17 a.m. Hyejin lay in bed and tapped open the private Kakao chat. The name read: Joon-soo (31), marketer, 6'0". In his profile picture his slightly pouted lips were an unnaturally vivid red. The conversation that had blazed only minutes ago had already cooled. She flicked upward with her finger: 124 messages. The last sender was, as always, Hyejin herself.
Three days of being left on read.
Still… he said we’d meet tomorrow.
The sound of a heart falling
Why do we lose our minds over relationships that slide open and shut like paper doors? Specialists explain that uncertainty excites the brain’s reward circuitry. Yet the explanation feels arctic. The real reason is more tenebrous.
Only when the other vanishes do we imagine we possess him completely. As long as a phantom lingers on the screen, he becomes flawless in the theatre of my mind. My heart is bruised, yes—but simultaneously I reign over an infinity of possibilities.
Joon-soo, and then Jae-hoon
First ghost
The night before he disappeared, Joon-soo told Hyejin:
When I’m with you, I can breathe again.
It’s been ages since I was this curious about someone.
Hyejin pressed her cheek to the screen. That night, too, he had marked the message read at 3:14 a.m., then fell silent. Still, she knew: he had not yet hidden his online status. That single green dot ruled her night.
Second ghost
Jae-hoon messaged not on Slack but on Jandi. Introducing himself as a designer, his first DM was just two lines, sent Saturday at 4:12 a.m.
[Image: an empty staircase, nothing left but shadows]
Hyejin zoomed in—only a blurred grey silhouette. Jae-hoon had never once revealed his face. Yet every night at midnight she opened Jandi. He was always "online" two minutes later, then gone within five. A summons that answers only with silence.
Chemical traces ghosts leave
Psychologist Adam Alter says the absence effect outlasts actual love. We are more violently stirred by what is missing, because dopamine surges under uncertainty. Yet even that is surface.
The deeper terror:
Am I the one turning him into a ghost?
Hyejin wondered if she, too, was someone else’s specter—more cruelly than a simple read-receipt. She had clicked off her own green dot, rehearsed the art of never adding “~ing” after her name.
The aesthetics of shadow love
App conversations always end the same: the one who professed interest first is the first to submerge, melting away like sugar in rain. We ask no questions.
It’s fine—I wasn’t that serious either.
The wound returns twice as deep. Perhaps that is why Hyejin now keeps her "online" status off. Instead she unconsciously steals a glance at the other’s last seen. A ghost is invisible, but its footprints are not.
Final question
Tonight, again, Hyejin woke at 3:27 a.m. Yesterday Jae-hoon had sent a new photo: an empty chair. She switched the screen off, then on again. Still unread.
Has he truly vanished—or have I?
Are you, right now, quietly and endlessly waiting for someone?