“Can’t you just look at me?” he asked.
“Can’t you just look at me?”
Minseo shook Jaeyoon’s phone beside the bed.
On the lock-screen, Soo-jin’s dawn message still blinked.
I keep crying because I miss you. The nights with you were the warmest.
Instead of answering, Jaeyoon seized Minseo’s wrist—the faint scar there.
Last week, while picturing Jaeyoon with his other lover, Ha-rin, Minseo had carved it herself.
You say you want me whole, yet you can’t feel a thing unless you imagine me split between other bodies.
Which of us is more deranged?
The trembling weight of a heart
We are forced to choose a single label.
Mono-heart: a pulse loyal to one, a Chanel No. 5 of exclusive scent.
Poly-heart: a black-hole that keeps opening new vacancies, an ever-expanding god of desire.
The trouble is most of us ache to be both.
With one arm we beg for exclusive love; with the other we plead to be sliced and shared.
The gap is hairline-thin, yet precisely wide enough to trap and kill us.
Case 1: Eugene, Do-yoon, and Na-hyun—the woman who belonged to everyone
Eugene had lived with Do-yoon for three years, certain she was a mono-heart.
But Do-yoon kept a USB stick labeled Na-hyun in his desk drawer.
Inside: hundreds of photos from their past, and a love-journal still being updated.
The day Eugene found it, she raged—then collapsed.
Why does this turn me on?
That night, for the first time, Eugene reached for Do-yoon.
She asked to be fitted into Na-hyun’s empty seat.
When Do-yoon recoiled, Eugene sank deeper into despair.
Case 2: Ji-a’s night, Min-jae’s morning
Ji-a was seeing two men at once.
Min-jae knew she was poly-hearted, yet loved her.
“Date someone else too—so it’s fair,” Ji-a offered.
“I don’t want to,” Min-jae said.
“I like it when you look only at me. That’s what feels fair.”
At those words Ji-a’s heart dropped.
Maybe what I really wanted was for you to be poly—so I could steal your freedom while claiming all of you.
Hands clutching the forbidden
The gap between poly-heart and mono-heart is not a menu of choices.
It is the exact address of culturally exiled desire.
Humans are mammals wired for multiple attachments, yet we have legislated love down to a single name.
The moment we defy that law, we are branded adulterers, traitors, the fallen.
Hence the gap sharpens.
The more taboo, the clearer the picture:
your lover’s body with someone else, the face you will never witness.
Because it must never be, it replays in ruthless clarity.
In truth we want both.
To own you completely, and to watch you divide yourself for me.
Therefore no one remains intact
Minseo set Jaeyoon’s phone down and stood.
“If you belonged to me alone, I’d stop wanting you.”
Silently, Jaeyoon kissed the scar on her wrist.
It will never fade.
Nor can Minseo erase Soo-jin from Jaeyoon’s lock-screen.
As long as the gap exists, we can neither fully possess nor wholly give ourselves.
A final question
So which prayer will you carry longer?
“Make me their everything.”
Or
“Take only a piece of me—just keep looking till the end.”
Which one?