“Dude, I’d recognize her just from her fingers.”
At three in the morning, Sujin dropped the beer can she was holding when a friend’s message lit up her phone. The screenshot showed a men’s group chat in full flood.
[18-member group chat] Guy 1: the chick from our office lately Guy 1: (photo) look at the legs… Guy 2: lol did she crop her face out? Guy 3: why would she post that ㅋㅋ she already deleted the story Guy 1: it was up for like a second, I snagged it fast ㅋㅋㅋ Guy 4: damn, natural pose but that angle… seriously Guy 2: yeah, sticky-icky ㅋㅋㅋ
The photo was of Sujin: at the company dinner, bag balanced on her knees, legs slightly apart, smiling. She’d thought the bag hid her short skirt. Someone had slipped through the gap and clicked.
The Invisible Hand
They were measuring my body.
Shoulder width, waist angle, the sliver between her thighs. One wrote “size guesstimate,” another clucked, “a face like that in that pose, who knew?” Sujin counted how many times they had twisted her around. Forty-two. Zooms and crops not included.
By morning the chat had vanished. Yet in her phone remained seven screenshots, each underscored in red.
look here this part for real holy shit
Puzzle of Desire
Did they want me, or were they drunk on the thrill of tearing me apart?
For days Sujin drowned in the same thought. Their words were never about affection. “Pretty” never appeared. Only verbs of dismantling and reassembly.
They split my legs into halves, translated my waist into digits, negotiated my breasts in percentages.
It was not the language of love; it was the grammar of play. She was merely the scattered material of their game.
Nuna’s Blouse
Jihun, 31, accountant. He first saw the photo in the hobby-club group.
Jihun: isn’t that the girl from work? Friend: yeah, marketing on 3 Jihun: looks… refreshing ㅋㅋㅋ Friend: you too? I screenshotted yesterday Jihun: screenshot gang ㅋㅋㅋ
That night Jihun recalled Sujin laughing at the dinner table, whispering, “My face turns red after soju.” A fleeting thought: if only I had caused that flush.
But such sentiment had no place in the chat. He typed “refreshing” and everyone understood. “Refreshing” meant “worth undressing.”
Beyond the Photo
A month later Sujin and Jihun shared an elevator.
“Marketing team, right?” he asked.
His gaze felt familiar—the same eyes that had rotated her photo forty-two times.
“Yes… You’re accounting?”
“I see you on three a lot.” He smiled, something tucked inside the curve of his lips. He already knows how many drinks turn me red, which pose makes me most “refreshing.”
The doors opened on three. “There’s another dinner tonight. Want to come?”
His invitation felt cold. He’s summoning the photo, not me.
How to Drink the Darkness
Why are we drawn to stealing glimpses of other people’s images? Innocent answers—“curiosity,” “desire.” Yet we know the deeper truth: that photo could have been us.
When Jihun turned Sujin’s image forty-two ways, he wasn’t simply lusting. He was confirming he could never be her. A brutal reminder: I will never be photographed laughing like that.
So we keep stealing others’ possibilities, tearing them into wish-fulfillment pieces.
If only those legs were longer, that waist slimmer, that chest fuller.
In destroying the stranger, we find relief: I am still me.
Whose Photo Are You In?
Tonight, where is your image floating? While you sleep, is someone dissecting you in a group chat with “damn, look at that”?
In that moment, are you still you? Or did you die inside that photo a long time ago?