“Take your hand off me. Do I look like some lost puppy?”
Ju-hee gave a dry laugh and swatted the back of my hand. At the same instant her palm grazed my wrist—rough to the point of desolation, skin like sand compacted by tides.
That was the first time I understood: a person’s past can linger at the tips of the fingers.
The Fourth Company Dinner, the First Flame
After a late-night round of drinks I wandered into a bar called Bad Marriage, a pojangmacha tucked in an alley. Ju-hee was a regular there. Alone.
- “It’s easier by myself. No one asks questions.”
- “About what?”
- “Why it fell apart, whether it still hurts like hell.”
Each time she lifted her glass she rubbed the pale groove where her ring had been. Twelve years married, nine months divorced. Only the cracked circle of a vanished band remained—and it pierced me.
Fingerprints
They say marriage is handing over every fingertip of yourself. Ju-hee’s ex-husband had been a film director. Every dawn he came home and pressed fingerprints onto her forehead, her shoulders, the backs of her hands.
“So you won’t forget I came back.”
Those prints were later found on another woman’s nape.
For a long time Ju-hee paused at her own doorway. The moment her hand touched the knob she heard the ghost of fingerprints blazing on her skin. So now she flung her hand out as if discarding it. She refused to be held or to hold.
“This time I’ll leave first—don’t you dare clutch at me.”
Two Men, One Dangerous Connection
Case 1: Jun-hyeok, 39, banker
Two years since his wife’s death, Jun-hyeok opened the door of Ju-hee’s wine bar after the children were asleep. She stood at the register; when he handed over his wallet she tapped his knuckles three soft times.
- “What do you want to kill tonight?”
- “…Sorry?”
- “The day. Your day.”
That night Jun-hyeok turned his late wife’s photo face-down on the night-stand. Ju-hee’s rough fingertips had coaxed only half a smile from him, yet the print still burned on the back of his hand while the woman in the photo kept smiling gently.
Case 2: Seong-woo, 42, high-school teacher
For ten years Seong-woo and his wife had sat on opposite ends of the balcony. Every Monday he passed the library and met Ju-hee. She always wore black gloves. One drizzly day she peeled them off.
- “Rain seeps through the gloves and chills me more.”
The instant Seong-woo saw her bare hand, his breath stopped. A scar ran from knuckles to wrist; the skin where the ring had been was white as frost. Those marks felt like a warning aimed at tomorrow’s me.
From that day on he could not hold his wife’s hand; its very smoothness unnerved him.
Why Are We Drawn?
A divorcee’s fingertips carry three scents: a moan, the glaze of someone who has seen enough, the vow never to trust again. The moment we take that hand we are secretly testing how fragile our own marriage is.
“She’s already shattered; I’m still intact.”
A false confidence. The ex-husband’s fingerprints will one day appear on all our hands.
Another desire is revenge. We sate ourselves by proxy, facing the unease we never felt from our own spouses in the unease of another’s past. A cruel wish to smash a love that has already ended—this time with our own hands.
Walking Out the Door
Since that night I have not returned to the pojangmacha. But whenever I glance at my wife’s hand, Ju-hee’s rough touch grazes me again. My wife does not know: after one taste, I became addicted to the temperature of a finished love.
Do you know whose fingerprint now rests on the back of my hand?