I closed the fridge and heard Yoon-jung’s voice.
Why did you cube the potatoes like that? You know I hate squares.
She set a glass plate on the table and smiled. But it never reached her eyes; exhaustion pooled beneath the curve of her lips. I said nothing—one word and her face would stiffen again. So I simply flipped the fried egg. The hiss of oil sounded like the only living thing in the room.
A bed still warm with vanished heat
Night after night we occupied the same mattress but lived in different time zones. She streamed Naver web-novels; I scrolled YouTube highlights.
Rough day?
Yeah. You?
Yeah.
End of conversation. She docked her phone and closed her eyes. Eight months ago a single breath could make our bodies answer one another. Now I only checked for the warmth at her side.
I let a fingertip rest on the back of her hand. Under the winter quilt, skin brushed skin and the sensation still burned. Yet her black pupils never wavered. Even the tremor of her lashes subsided into sleep.
I inched one finger toward the soft hollow of her wrist. A pulse thudded—not fast, not slow, merely normal. The instant it touched my skin she released a sigh so small it might have been the room exhaling. Then she rolled away, my hand slipping off as naturally as a leaf falls. Rejection was accomplished not with words but with a single, economical shift of her body.
Perfect feeds, imperfect reality
Her Instagram remained a festival of happiness.
Breakfast made with love—five side dishes for my husband♡ #newlyweds
In the pictures we were laughing. Reality differed. While stacking the dishes she murmured, half to herself,
Once the photo’s taken, the food barely gets eaten.
I heard her but pretended not to. From the living room I watched the back of her head as she cleared the table alone. By the third clink of cutlery I noticed her eyes were wet. She swiped the tears away as if brushing off dust, then smiled again—reborn as the perfect wife.
Two stories that sound like fiction
Minsae & Jaehyuk, 29 & 31
Minsae woke every day at four. When her mother-in-law was due, even earlier. Jaehyuk drifted back to sleep to the sound of her flipping eggs one by one. One dawn Minsae realized tears were falling the instant an egg turned. Another mistake. I don’t want to cook, so why am I cooking? That morning Jaehyuk double-tapped the breakfast photo on SNS. Nothing more. She left for work without tasting a bite and vomited in the office restroom—her breakfast, and maybe her marriage, gone.
Sujin & Do-hyun, 27 & 30
Sujin discovered Do-hyun’s diary one night—clearly camouflaged as something else. It contained no complaints about her.
Today again: 7 minutes in the bathroom, 3 in the living room, 0 in bed with the wife. Then 43 minutes alone. While Do-hyun slept, Sujin sat on the edge of the bed and quietly wet herself. Tears would have been too dramatic; urine was absurdly comforting. She slipped back to sleep in the damp clothes. In the morning Do-hyun smelled it, said nothing, and silently started the washing machine. It was neither their first fight nor their last conversation—simply the absence of both.
Why we are addicted to perfect
The game called marriage was rigged from the start. How do you manufacture happiness? We typed the question into the search bar.
Top 5 ways to make your husband cry (happy tears) on your 100-day anniversary Algorithm for a fight-free marriage
The algorithm’s answer was simple: more declarations of love, more gifts, more photos. So we purchased larger lies—not affection for each other, but the version of affection people expected to see. We built flawless mornings, and those mornings erased our faces. We wore happiness like a mask, and behind it our real faces quietly rotted.
At the foot of the bed she holds her breath
2:17 a.m. Yoon-jung sits on the edge of the mattress and eases her underwear down, slowly, soundlessly. The room seems fully asleep, but his breathing is too close, so she holds hers. One finger slips inside. She is wet, yet the moisture began not with memories of her husband but with a delivery man’s stray drop of sweat that had slid down his neck that morning. The image looped all day.
Her finger moves faster; her breath thins. She swallows, the other hand clutching the quilt. A tremor travels through the blanket—that tremor is everything. After seven months, her first orgasm detonates in total silence.
She stays crouched, finger still inside, breath leveled. Withdraws it slowly, brings it to her nose. A faint smell of damp cotton, a trace of sweat, a hint of something sour—oddly soothing. Before sliding back under the duvet she studies her husband’s cheek, blank in sleep. She parts her lips and calls his name once, soundlessly.
Jun-yeong.
No answer. So she lies down again and becomes the perfect wife. At seven she will plate today’s breakfast for the feed.