“You really don’t know?” she asked.
She tapped the long cigarette in her left hand with the fingers of her right. A sentence of exile. Say it once—just once—and everything ends.
I couldn’t answer. Instead I watched a rose–colored bead of blood slip down the slope of her nostril. Tonight she had broken something. No—I had.
Red stippling on virgin white
We were in the family chapel of her house. Cold as a two-century-old wine cellar. Through the stained glass I could still see the hereditary gardener sanding a teak statue by lantern light. A single rose planted by her great-grandfather could not be uprooted; such was the house.
- No one but you is allowed to touch me. That’s why I like it.
- …
She spoke; I answered by catching her tongue between my teeth. Slender, aristocratic tongue. The flavor of every father, grandfather, and great-grandfather lingered on it. I bit—gently. One drop of blood fell onto the cork she loved to brag about.
Click.
The scent of pedigree
Why her, of all women?
Each morning I rode the subway among ordinary women: sagging handbag straps, scuffed black heels scraping the floor. Pretty enough. But she was different. At 8:15 she woke on the forty-fifth floor of a Gangnam tower overlooking Namsan. In her hand she held not only her own genes but her ancestors’—and the unborn children of her children.
And I, ignoring everything else, stared at the nape of her neck.
Everyone dreams, once, of soiling what is sacred.
Story as true as memory 1 — Jian and my twenty-six days
Jian was twenty-six. Her father chaired a pharmaceutical empire; her mother had pitched for the national baseball team. We met at a club. She was alone on the rooftop bar, sipping a Bloody Mary—red as real blood.
- Do you smoke?
- No, I just hold it to my lips. I like the smell.
For twenty-six days after that we devoured each other. On the library mantelpiece, on an eighteenth-century table her father had bought at auction, even in the basement storehouse where the housekeeper had once hanged herself.
Jian said: You treat me like a broken teacup.
I replied: No, I want to free you.
She laughed and scratched the injection bruise on her forehead. A bead of blood appeared. I licked it. It tasted of salt; inexplicably, I wept.
Story as true as memory 2 — Hayeon and my single day
Hayeon was a lawyer, thirty-two. In the voice she used to read verdicts she told me:
- I could press charges. Sexual assault.
- …Then why don’t you?
- Because I don’t want to. I want you to arraign me.
We met on the roof of her firm, thirty-eighth floor. She still wore her suit jacket. I peeled off her black stockings one by one. A small freckle dotted her ankle—the scar from a gene-test needle.
- My great-grandmother was royalty.
- I answered: Tonight I laid a king’s descendant on cold concrete.
That night Hayeon asked: What do you want to gain?
I thought: I only wanted to erase, in one instant, everything you possessed.
Why are we drawn to this?
Psychologists call it the pharmakon phenomenon: the pleasure of stealing what seems unstealable. Not mere envy. We crave the impossible others carry:
- A perfect network given at birth
- Wealth a lifetime could never amass
- A family name carved in stone
We want to touch it, strike it, stain it—only then does the impossible graze our own skin.
What do you long to defile?
I still carry a dried drop of Jian’s blood in my wallet, hardened like chocolate. Some days I slip it between my teeth. Salt, and again inexplicable tears.
But no regret. None.
Yet if you—yes, you—feel the sudden urge to tear someone, remember:
Whose bloodline do you wish to play with?
And what does its possessor think of you?