“I’ve erased everything,” I said that night
Even buying a three-thousand-won plate at Daiso made Soo-jin agonize for thirty minutes. The day she turned down my twentieth confession, I tore the bedsheets to shreds. An old stain on the white linen—whether it was coffee or something else, I no longer recalled—had begun to glare at me. That night I typed a single line in my phone:
‘From now on, I love no one.’
It was never love; it was interior design
After the proclamation, only one habit survived. Every subway ride, AirPods in, I scrolled the Instagram of a freshly split couple. Yet I never lingered on their faces. I studied the headboard. The color of the cushions. The angle of the lamp’s glow. Above all, the pattern on the sheets beneath their bodies. That wasn’t affection; it was a showroom for bedroom décor. What I had wanted from the start was not an embrace but the mood of the room itself.
Min-jae’s pillow, Min-jae’s scent, Min-jae’s direction
I met Min-jae the day I got my layoff notice. Drunk on a single can of beer, I missed the last bus and found him in front of a restaurant whose taste I already loathed. That night we were shockingly rude: no names, no numbers, just a silent walk home. His bedroom was immaculate, every corner in order, yet I couldn’t bring myself to disturb a single fiber. The clock read 2:17 a.m.; he warned he would be gone before I opened my eyes. All he left was a hoodie tossed on the bed. I still keep it buried in a drawer, unworn—the scent too alive.
Again, Soo-jin’s story
A month later I heard Soo-jin was getting married. In the wedding-hall photos, the bed she had chosen was the ceiling-canopy style I had dreamed of, the sheets deep navy.
- Don’t live too well.
- Don’t post bedroom photos.
Two emojis, sent. Then I went to buy another plate—this time the five-thousand-won one. After all, dishes are made to break.
How to embrace the forbidden
The instant we declare we’ve given up on love, we are already nursing another desire: the trespass into forbidden space. Someone’s bedroom is the most intimate map of that person. Once the door clicks shut and the lights go off, the night reveals the true scent, the true habit, the true face left behind at the day’s end. To lie in that room is to steal their night. The affair may have ended, yet the urge to steal keeps blooming. We who boast of discarding love know the truth: what we threw away was the heart of the person; what remains is the imprint where their body once lay.
I ask you one last time
You trumpet that you have renounced love, but the reason is singular. What you truly want is not your lover’s smile but the bed still warm with their scent and body heat after they’ve fallen asleep. If that is so, tonight you too will drift off dreaming of someone else’s sheets.