That night, he smelled another woman’s perfume on the nape of my neck. The memory was crystal-clear—cigarette smoke, peppermint, the bitter aftertaste of soju and blood. We hadn’t parted yet, but the perfume already carried the ghost of a love that had finished long ago.
He drew a ragged breath, the sound a silent scream. The skin at my nape felt scorched. I closed my eyes. In the darkness that swallowed even the next inch, I summoned another pair of lips—those of a man I’d met in a back-alley bar in Gangnam. He had whispered into my ear,
“Do you already belong to someone?”
Instead of an answer, I bit the back of his hand. For a brief, glittering moment, I became nothing—no name, no past, no future—and I liked it.
We still lay in the same bed, but our bodies were as distant as alien moons. He said, “I made up my mind—there’s only you. If you leave, I’ll forget how to breathe.”
I clutched the edge of the blanket. The word decision lodged like a burr in my chest. I had never decided anything. I simply needed a stranger’s skin, a stranger’s breath.
His gaze met mine. Black sparks flickered in his irises. “But you’re already looking at someone else besides me.”
I said nothing. What I wanted was never a person. I always wanted the next person. With trembling fingertips, I pictured tomorrow night: a nameless kiss in a Hongdae club.
The door closed behind him. A dull silence filled the room. I pulled a cigarette from the nightstand. The first drag brought tears. Hot smoke curled deep into my lungs. In his despair, I finally saw my own desire.
“What the hell do you want?” he had asked. The question still rang in my ears. I didn’t know. I only wanted to witness the instant someone realized they were losing me. So I kept searching for new faces—same eyes, same voice, same fingertips—but never the same hunger.
A month later, he left a message:
“I still smell it on your neck—cigarettes, peppermint, and someone else’s skin.”
I started to reply, then stopped. My half-written words floated above the screen like guilty ghosts. I’m sorry. Even while I was leaving you, perhaps I still wanted you.
Even now, whenever hot water hits my neck in the bath, that night returns—his last sentence, and the far side of the desire that won’t let me go. I have never wanted just one person. I exist only in the hollow carved out by another’s absence.
We met to fill each other’s emptiness, and in the end left each other emptier still.
One day, after he had gone, I ran into a stranger. He looked into my eyes and smiled. “Your eyes look sad.”
I laughed softly. “No, that’s not sadness. I’m just practicing how to lose you.”
He tilted his head. I went on. “Love isn’t forever. It’s the endless practice of letting go.”
That night I received another unfamiliar kiss. His lips were sweet, but his eyes wanted me. In that moment I remembered the man who had once vowed to want only me. And I understood how brutal a single person’s desire can be.