I still recite his first message by heart—the one that makes my body tremble. 2:12 a.m. on a Wednesday, outside the locked bathroom door. The cigarette ash still on my lips, your scent still on my skin. Don’t say you’re leaving. Three lines, no asterisks, as artless as a child’s scrawl. I know there was never an answer after that day. Still, I have read it 3,287 times. Each time the unread badge climbed, I swelled—no, I dried, grain by grain.
A Cold Flame
He asked nothing of me, and I allowed him nothing.
Days glide by like an antique Parisian clock. On the morning train, everyone stares at their phones; so do I. But I open and close his chat, open and close. I learned in my bones that if I linger less than 0.8 seconds, the read receipt never appears. Now I can do it with my eyes shut—at my desk, on the subway, in bed. No one knows I carry his silence. Or rather, the silence he gave me. It was my burning secret.
‘Why don’t I block him?’
‘Why don’t I finally reply?’
The answer is simple. Block him and it’s over. Reply and it’s over. The instant I choose either, I seize the live thread of a relationship. But how is the present state any worse? I am ceaselessly connected and forever severed. I pretend I have no say, yet the reins are entirely in my hands. That is the narcotic.
Two Stories Turned Myth
Min-seo, 34, runs a pharmacy. For four years she has messaged only one person—a patient she met by chance. He arrived toothless and never came back. That night he sent her a photo of his prescription. “I’m confused about the dosage.” Min-seo answered, “Don’t take it with soft drinks.”
Since then, 1,642 days. Every evening at 9:18 he sends a single photo: a hospital bench, the ginkgo tree outside the pharmacy, the Americano Min-seo favors. Only the image, never a word. Min-seo presses “like” and nothing more. They are content simply to confirm that the other exists.
Hye-jin, 29, is a game planner. For six years she has received messages from a senior she knew in college. During his military service he texted dozens of times a day: Roll call is over, What did you have for dinner, It’s freezing tonight. When she didn’t answer, the deluge grew. After discharge he appeared and asked to date; she refused. He vanished. Years later she glimpsed his social media: he was married, had a child. Since that day he has texted again—mundane vignettes of quarrels with his wife, his baby’s first steps, drunken truths from company dinners. Hye-jin has never replied, yet she keeps the chat open. She spectates his life; he entombs his past in her silence.
Names Written on Sand
Why do they not answer? And why do they not block? There is no correct reply. The cruelest fact is that even the protagonists do not know. It is merely a strangely comfortable pain.
The human brain is spellbound by the unknown. Uncertainty releases dopamine. Hence the word yet is the longest-lasting drug.
Another layer: through the other’s silence we interrogate ourselves. What sort of being am I? The moment we are left on read, we confront our shabbiest reflection—and grow addicted to fingering that shabbiness.
Finally, this is a secret that can be told to no one. The deepest desire keeps company with the deepest shame. So we suffer alone—his message, her photo, his anonymous heart. We hoard them in private.
Are You, Even Now, Someone’s Unread Message?
In the end, last night I entered his chat. For the first time I lingered five seconds. The blue check appeared. 3,287 became 3,286. I turned off the screen and slept. At dawn a new message waited.
Ah, sorry. Sent by mistake.
I drafted a reply. Not to him—to myself.
Even so, I’m still waiting for your next mistake.
This very moment, whose 3,287th unread message are you? And why have you still not pressed the block button?