0.5 Second
“Right now, right here, when your breath and mine become one.”
In Jaehyun’s field of vision every color vanished first. The champagne’s fizz clinging to the tip of his nose, the low growl of her breathing, the glide of a fevered palm across a cool waist—everything turned to black-and-white film in 0.2 seconds. Ji-u’s lower lip trembled slightly. A brief interval, exactly 0.5 seconds.
In that gap Jaehyun smelled it first: the dust of soap, the cigarette ghost in her hair, the dense saliva—an unease overturned like a sigh expelled while bowing his head.
Suddenly, the lips parted. Cold air bored through. Just as a droplet on a hot iron plate vanishes into steam, Ji-u’s warmth grazed Jaehyun’s skin and left. A tiny air-hole revealed the shape of emptiness. The deeper the breath he drew, the more his chest caved. Jaehyun closed his eyes, opened them again. However long he looked, the hole remained.
After the Kiss, Her Words
Ji-u, panting, buried her face in the crook of Jaehyun’s neck. Her hot breath tickled his skin.
“You smell something here.”
“What?”
“Metal—no, it’s the scent of something hollow.”
Jaehyun laughed. The corners of his mouth he forced upward were crooked. “What kind of scent is that?”
“I don’t know. Your hair smells of perfume, your fingertips of sweat… but something flows from your chest. Like the sound when you press your mouth to an empty spoon. That’s it.”
Jaehyun laid a hand on Ji-u’s words. Yet she quickly pulled her body away. The crumpling of bedsheets stretched on.
“Let’s stop for tonight.”
“Why?”
“It just feels strange. Like you’re trying to fill me up.”
Beneath the Heart, One Missing Puzzle Piece
Jaehyun had known from the start what would remain once Ji-u left.
‘The me that isn’t me.’
At twenty, his sister vanished in a car accident. The funeral hall was steeped in the scent of blood-red chrysanthemums. His parents set only black plates on the table and stared at one another. Since that day, Jaehyun learned hunger. How to tear people into pieces and devour them. How to measure the size of the hole by scraping it with fingernails, how to wander in search of the silhouette that would fit exactly.
In the pub behind campus, Ji-u flushed after a single sip of cocktail. Jaehyun brushed her cheek.
“I think you can make me laugh.”
“What do you—”
“Just that. When you smile with your eyes, I feel… a little more at ease.”
One month, two. Ji-u’s manner of speech lengthened. When Jaehyun said, “I’m hungry,” Ji-u sliced him a roll of kimbap. That night he dreamed he swallowed Ji-u’s fingers instead of the kimbap. The more he ate, the more his throat hurt. When he woke, Ji-u’s ring glinted where it had fallen beside the bed. He pocketed it and slept again.
Serial Refills
Haeun’s method was different. Serial refills. The first man supplied ‘emotional intelligence,’ the second ‘audacity,’ the third ‘stability.’ Each fit perfectly in its place. Yet when the men left, the shape of the hole distorted. Circles became ovals, ovals tore into storm patterns.
Haeun lined glass bottles along one wall of the living room. Each held the scent a lover had left behind: first musk, second pine, third milky powder.
“Here, the loves I filled myself with.”
She shook a bottle. The scent changed. Musk turned to mold, pine to cigarette, milk to rusted blood.
“They’ve all changed color.”
The Empty Stage Called You
Emptiness rings like a song. We try to hush the sound, yet we secretly fear that if the ringing stops, we might vanish too. Thus love becomes ‘the curtain hiding me.’ Draw the curtain aside and an empty stage is revealed—one no one wishes to face.
So we look for the next person.
“This time it will be different.”
Final Question
The hollowness you feel after she—or he—has left: is it the scar of love, or the self you have hidden all your life?