“Right now. Hurry.” Seorin whispered into her husband’s neck, her breath hot and urgent. The baby had just dropped off—fifteen minutes left, maybe ten. Her body screamed for it: no story, no kissing, just fingertips and speed.
Suyeong smiled and shook his head. Not yet, we have time.
Time. The word clawed down her spine. There is no time; if not now I’ll die of want. The craving swelled until the room shimmered.
When We Opened Our Eyes, We Had Changed
What are we even doing?
Seorin sat on the edge of the bed, tugging at her lashes. A thermometer reading 38.5 °C, the kindergarten cancellation text, the mountain of unwashed laundry, the yogurt porridge spilled by a careless kick—fragments of a day that had ground her to dust. Among those shards, desire cut sharpest: a single, clean stroke to tear away the stress clamped to her like a bulldog clip. Fast, fierce, absolute.
Suyeong was different. After a day locked in his office, home was the first place he could finally feel time. Slowly, meticulously, as if relearning every inch of her.
The difference drove her mad.
Ten Minutes Later the Baby Would Wake
“He has no idea what waiting does to me.”
Seorin kept a hidden diary in her notes app, logging every failed attempt.
21:47 — baby cried
22:13 — Minjun threw up
23:05 — he got sleepy
One night she paced outside the nursery in a miniskirt, rubbing the soles of her feet while willing Minjun to stay asleep. Suyeong, now. The urgency throbbed, yet he stroked her stomach as though he’d just discovered it. Boredom climbed her throat.
Everyone Makes It Sound So Easy
“Talk it through,” her friend Hyeji chirped—mother of two who boasted of lightning-quick sex while her children were hypnotized by five-minute cartoons. Seorin envied her, but Suyeong said he’d rather skip it entirely than make love like a convenience.
“Isn’t finishing fast a kind of sexual assault?”
His question stunned her. She had wanted relief, not violence, yet to him the line looked thin.
The Night I Disappeared
Minjun coughed and woke again. Seorin leapt up to soothe him. Even after the cough quieted, her son whispered, Mom, sleep with me.
At that moment she understood: her desire was less about sex than about fleeing motherhood, about clawing one breath out of the endless swamp.
Tears blurred her vision. Suyeong cracked the bathroom door. “You okay?”
“No.” She kissed Minjun’s forehead and stood. Her steps back to bed were leaden. When the door shut, Suyeong whispered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t see how exhausted you were.”
Why We Crave What We Crave
A baby’s cry strikes the prefrontal cortex like a gong. A switch flips that won’t let a mother stop caring; cortisol cascades, adrenaline floods the jaw. In that state, slow foreplay is torture. A fast orgasm is the snap of fingers that ends the spell—done—and returns her from captive caretaker to human being.
Suyeong doesn’t know the speed of that liberation. For him, every night begins like a ritual: read her body slowly, lovingly, as proof of devotion. Yet that very slowness is cruelty to her now.
So How Do We Survive
One dawn, while Suyeong slept, Seorin touched herself in silence—swift, soundless, swallowing even her breath. In that hush she realized her desire was not something she had to delegate. Still, a small dread whispered: one day she might miss his languor. When the child is older and time is a wide lake, she might want slow love again.
Will she remember how she endured this moment?
When I want it fast, who—or what—are you touching slowly for?