At Lunch Today, I Was Wet Again for Your Scent

The instant I pushed open the conference-room door, my skull vibrated. Min-jae’s breath from last night still seemed to linger on my collarbone. I buttoned the white collar tight; my colleagues’ eyes flashed. --- ## Where his fingertips had paused “Something on you here?” While we were choosing lunch, Su-jin beside me pointed at my neck. In the restroom mirror, a small crimson dot. A hickey. The exact place Min-jae had sucked hard at the end. His signature left inside me. > Why, after three morning hours, has it still not faded? Or rather—do I truly wish it gone? --- ## Dissecting desire In truth, we were nothing. Only after the company dinner, in the elevator, his arm brushed my waist. Yet the pheromones rising from the nape of his neck, the weight of our mingled breaths for over an hour, could not be sliced away by daytime logic. An afterimage is no simple memory. - The dampness my palm left on the back of his hand - sheets twisted because at the edge of the bed we could not let go - the first silence between us at 2 a.m. in the darkened room Every sense still lived beneath the skin. --- ## Case 1: Ji-hoon and my 47th secret Last winter, as an intern, I carried on a secret affair with team leader Ji-hoon for forty-seven days. We believed we had done nothing. In the conference room, the brush of our toes. In the P1 parking lot, leaving with a five-minute gap. In the elevator, silently smoothing the other’s bag strap. Forty-seven days like that. On the day Ji-hoon resigned, I insisted we had never once kissed. Yet our skin had memorized each other. My palm retained the feel of his tie’s knot; the back of his hand held the faint medicinal scent of my hormone pills—an afterimage. Three years after his resignation, Ji-hoon married. I quietly keep his watch, the one he unfastened for me in the elevator that night. The scent on its leather band has not vanished; I inhale it daily and relive the forty-seven days. --- ## Case 2: Yuri and our emergency exit Yuri was an executive from another division. One Friday evening, after a fire drill, we met on the emergency stairs. We laughed at the siren, then suddenly kissed. From the 11th floor to the 1st, descending 78 steps, we exchanged six kisses. From then on, every Friday at 7 p.m. Yuri waited for me on the stairs. Three months, twelve meetings. We never spoke each other’s names. At the bottom we only said, “See you next week.” Then Yuri announced her marriage. Instead of “See you next week,” it was “Let’s stop.” Since that day I have been unable to walk those stairs. My ankle remembers the accumulated weight of twelve kisses. --- ## Why we are drawn to this Neuroscientists say a single kiss raises dopamine by twenty percent. But what they miss is that afterimages are not dopamine—they are the chemistry of guilt. We tread on taboo yet cannot lift our foot, because in that moment we feel most alive. Accountant Min-jae, team leader Ji-hoon, executive Yuri—these were daytime names. At night they were only hot breath. Obsession is simply the recoil of memory. We try to erase the afterimage, yet we cannot part from it because, for that instant, we met a self who was not ourselves. --- ## The mark you left does not blur each morning Heading out to lunch, I looked again in the mirror. The hickey had already paled. But I knew: when that spot heals, I will vanish with it. On the way back to the conference room, Min-jae stood at the end of the corridor. We never met each other’s gaze. Yet I felt it—the touch of his eyes on my collarbone, still damp. > Tonight, and the morning after next, will I be able to shake off this afterimage? Or do I, in truth, want to keep it?