“Yuri, was that good for you?”
The bedside lamp spills a sickly yellow light across her chest. The moment the question leaves his lips, the air turns to glass. She draws one theatrical breath, lets her eyelids sink.
Now.
A subtle shiver travels down her spine; her body appears to come alive. Her abdomen tightens, toes curl.
“Ah… mm…”
A low, clipped gasp. Enough.
Her husband buries his face in her neck, breathing like a storm that has spent itself. It’s already over, yet Yuri keeps her eyes shut. She stares at the ceiling and summons a future she cannot see.
I fooled him again.
At first, it had been kindness. “I feel bad finishing alone,” he said, restraining himself. But two years, three, seven—time isn’t paint, it’s acid. The counterfeit climax has become her second skin. Not a mask; skin.
If I told him I never come, would he think me frigid? Or would he feel impotent?
Fear hollowed out a small room inside her. No light. Only stifled laughter circles there.
3 p.m., Mina’s living room. Thirty-eight, mother of two. Last night her husband reached for her while they watched TV—no warning, no kiss. Instantly her body locked: shoulders up, stomach clenched. She smiled.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing… just love you.”
He withdrew, sheepish. Mina turned back to the screen, but the picture blurred. What leapt into her eyes first was that kiss from Yuri, seven years ago.
Seven years earlier, same living room. Yuri was visiting. While the husbands went to buy barbecue charcoal, the two women sat side by side on the sofa. Mina rested her fingertips on the back of Yuri’s hand.
“Yuri, you—”
Before the sentence could finish, Yuri clasped Mina’s hand, threading their fingers. Startled, Mina’s eyes widened. Yuri tilted her head and brushed Mina’s lips—brief, scalding.
“What… was that?”
“Just wanted to.”
The air quivered. Mina couldn’t let go. Yuri rose, smiled, and walked out without looking back.
The kiss etched itself into Mina’s skin. Whenever her husband reached for her, it flashed. Where Yuri’s mouth had once rested, his hand grazed and her chest ached.
That night, after her husband slept, Mina slipped from the bedroom. She sat on the living-room sofa and texted Yuri:
Why did you do it then?
No reply came. Instead, at the very spot where Yuri’s lips had touched her, Mina cried quietly. It wasn’t betrayal, not exactly longing. It was fear of the desire she hadn’t known she possessed.
Meanwhile, at the same hour, Yuri lay beside her husband staring at the ceiling. She deleted Mina’s message. What couldn’t be deleted was the trace of that kiss. It carved a new room somewhere inside her—lights on. In that room her breath came without any performance.
Morning. Her husband stroked her hair.
“Last night was good.”
Yuri smiled. “For me too.”
Yet her body was already elsewhere: Mina’s living room, the air of that day seven years ago. Only there could she breathe without a script.
In the end, none of us ever really knew the other. The husband never knew Yuri; Yuri never knew him; Mina never knew herself. And Yuri never knew Mina.
Every mask was never meant to deceive the other. It was meant to deceive oneself.
That evening, after her husband slept, Yuri slipped from the bedroom again. On the living-room sofa she texted Mina once more:
You never really knew me. How much I wanted you.
As the send tone sounded, Yuri closed her eyes. Mina didn’t answer. But she understood: the performance was over.