“These are real pearls, genuine.”
B1 parking lot of the department store. After he popped the trunk, Ji-hwan closed one hand around my wrist. Cold metal grazed my skin. A pearl bracelet. 7.5 mm Hong-Kong pearls—thirty million won per bead.
- It suits you perfectly.
- What are you doing right now?
- Just a gift.
Inside the car everything blurred. He was my friend Su-jin’s husband. The man Su-jin boasted about was clasping this around my wrist.
A gift is always an envelope of desire
I shook the bracelet in front of the mirror. Each swing flashed a shard of light.
This isn’t a simple gift. This is an invasion. It’s wedged itself between you and me.
Gifts are never just objects; they are incursions of relationship. The instant someone’s money, choice, and desire touch my skin, the contract changes.
What will Su-jin say when she sees it?
Hide it? Or throw it away?
Two tales of gifts from another woman’s man
First tale: Min-ji, 29
“Min-ji, here.” Café terrace. Min-ji’s friend Jia’s boyfriend held out a small box.
- What is it?
- I bought it for Jia’s birthday, but the size is wrong. I thought you could use it.
Jia was in the restroom. Min-ji opened the box: tiny diamond studs. 0.3 carat, G color, VS1.
- Isn’t this too expensive?
- Not at all, just a little thing.
Min-ji put them on. Light sparked behind her ears. From that day on, whenever she visited Jia’s apartment she removed the earrings. “People might think Jia gave them to me,” she explained. Then one evening:
- Where are those earrings?
- Oh, I lost them. Sorry.
Min-ji had flushed them down the toilet. As the water swirled away, she cried. She still doesn’t know why.
Second tale: Eugene, 34
“Hello?” A bouquet arrived. Ninety-nine red roses.
- Who’s this from?
- Anonymous.
Three days later Eugene found out: it was from her friend’s husband. Six months earlier she and that husband had shared a midnight kiss.
- I’m sorry, it was a mistake.
- No, I was wrong too.
When the bouquet came, Eugene texted him.
- Why send this?
- I just… kept thinking of you.
- We can’t do this.
- I know. But…
She hid the bouquet in a dresser drawer and sniffed its scent every night. Three weeks later she met her friend for dinner.
- My husband’s been strange lately.
- How so?
- There’s a bouquet at home I never received.
Cold sweat ran down Eugene’s back.
The sweetness of forbidden fruit
A gift is the mark of taboo. It belongs to someone else. Another woman’s man. Another woman’s love. Yet why do we accept it?
“The moment I took it, I became special— more special than my friend. He had chosen me.”
Psychologists call it “competitive motivation”: the instinct to rival a friend for the same object of desire. But something deeper lurks.
“A gift from my friend’s man is power to injure her. I now possess something stronger than she has.”
A gift is a transfer of power. A seal of betrayal. A waxen stamp on desire.
What will you do with it?
I lay the bracelet on the page. All night I tossed. Throw it away? Conceal it? Return it?
That small thing from your friend’s man is tightening around your wrist.
What will you do with it?
And why, even now, do you still keep it?