“You swore you couldn’t last a day without me—yet you’re the one who turned away.”
The underground garage glows with the sickly light of fluorescent tubes leaking between cars. Jian repeats my sentence, stepping back a single pace. I pull a cigarette between my lips but never strike the lighter; the words spill out anyway.
“So you’re exactly the same. All of you. ‘I love you’? It’s as cold as yesterday’s coffee.”
That night Jian neither cried nor raged. She simply nodded, climbed into her car. The slam of the door echoed like a distant drum. I bit down on the still-unlit cigarette.
The vicious little pleasure I keep hidden
I knew the moment the words left me I’d regret them. Yet my mouth refused to stop—because some craven part of me was relieved to have ruined everything once more.
‘It’s over now. No more chances to disappoint, no promises left to break.’
As a child watching my parents fight, I understood: it hurts less to drop the glass yourself than to step on the shards after someone else shatters it. If I break it first, the pain is at least mine to command. A lethal miscalculation, but at twelve I mistook it for wisdom.
Every new romance began with me picturing its end. In that imagined ruin Jian’s face always appeared, vivid. Better I smash it first—then I become the one who walks away, not the one left behind.
Min-seo texts every three months
Case one: Min-seo, 33, advertising strategist. Each message is identical: “How’ve you been?”—a greeting steeped in self-loathing.
Five years ago she met Hyun-su, a senior from her university club. The day she failed her driving test, he materialised as if summoned. Their first kiss happened inside her car, the indicator still blinking.
From that night Min-seo sought Hyun-su daily. But at the three-month mark she was seized by dread: What if he meets someone else? So she detonated the bomb herself, resurrecting stories of Hyun-su’s ex and declaring, “You’ll never be enough for me.”
Hyun-su wept, protesting his innocence. Min-seo watched his tears and whispered inwardly, Now he’ll leave—thank God.
He didn’t. He kept calling. Unable to invent sharper cruelties, Min-seo settled into a ritual: dramatic reappearances every three months, then vanishing again.
Case two: Jae-hyeok, 35, barista. He records every break-up conversation—his own voice delivering the coup de grâce—and archives the files on his phone. On the subway he listens to them alone, on repeat.
“I can’t even breathe because of you. Let’s end this.”
At twenty-six he lost his first love, Hye-jin. In truth Hye-jin delivered the news, but Jae-hyeok has edited the memory so he appears the executioner. Because I severed it, I’m the one who left, not the one abandoned.
Since then every relationship ends the same way: jealousy, suspicion, insecurity scripted into a premature finale. Yet he never deletes the recordings. They feed the delusion that he authored every ending.
Why we cannot stop
Psychologists call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nothing has happened, yet fear drives us to act and thus summon the very doom we dread.
But beneath it lies a darker craving: the sweetness of guilt. When I wound first, I can later return begging forgiveness. Forgiveness places me once more at the centre.
‘If I take you back, you’ll owe me.’
We believe leaving is nobler than being left. The abandoned have no story; the one who walks away still owns the narrative. And we are not ready to surrender that stage.
Are you still waiting in that place?
Last week Jian came to my door while I was alone. I pretended not to notice, but her shadow stretched too long to miss. I couldn’t open the window. I put a cigarette to my lips—this time I lit it. Smoke pooled against the ceiling.
‘If I apologise now, will she return? Or have I shattered everything past repair?’
I’m still sitting in that car where we first kissed: the tick of the indicator, the soft radio, Jian’s fingertips brushing the back of my hand. If I could go back, could I choose differently?
No—almost certainly not. I would shatter it all the same. Because without that excruciatingly familiar ache, I cannot feel myself at all.