“To be honest, lying next to you suffocates me.”
Min-jae pulled his body to the very edge of the mattress as he spoke. For seven years Hee-yeon has turned that single sentence over and over in her mind. At dawn, at lights-out, on that bed filled with nothing but the sound of each other’s breathing.
A scorching first night, a cooling bed
The hottest moment was unquestionably their wedding night. Min-jae took each of Hee-yeon’s toes between his lips. The tremor in her thighs whenever his breath grazed them, the way her arms—once floating in mid-air—slid to grip his shoulders, remain vivid even now.
But when did it change?
“Late meeting tonight.”
“I have to leave early tomorrow.”
“Ah, my neck’s stiff again.”
The excuses, tossed off like jokes, hardened into ritual until Hee-yeon fell asleep clutching the blanket alone. Min-jae dozed off on the couch, two cervical pillows braced around his neck, television flickering.
At first she stitched together the usual alibis—his bad back, work stress—never voicing them to anyone, least of all herself.
What did I do wrong?
She inhaled the sheets. The scent no longer belonged to Min-jae.
The hidden scent on a shirt
Two years and three months in, Hee-yeon lifted one of Min-jae’s dress shirts from the laundry basket. He favored white—always crisp, he said. That day, inside the collar, she found a mark. A faint pink smudge. Too pale for lipstick; only a greasy sheen remained.
She brought the collar to her nose. Perfume? Shampoo? In any case, the sweetness was cloying. She had never smelled it on him.
In that instant she understood: He doesn’t want to lie with me; he wants to lie with this scent.
Yoon-jeong’s fingertips
Her name, in fact, was Yoon-jeong. According to the company intranet: Kim Yoon-jeong, twenty-seven, new hire in General Affairs.
On a night Min-jae came home late, Hee-yeon glimpsed his phone reflected in the dark window:
Min-jae: Thanks again today. I can breathe when I’m with you.
Yoon-jeong: Haha, you make me feel at ease too, Min-jae-nim.
In the lightless room the bed grew colder. Hee-yeon clenched the blanket. Min-jae snored on the sofa. He had struggled to distance himself; she had mistaken it for stress.
No, he’s simply tired of me. He wants out.
The truth after seven years
Finally, after seven years, Min-jae had a fender-bender on the way home. The car was totaled, the injuries minor. Hee-yeon rushed to the emergency room. Min-jae stared blankly and murmured:
“Sleeping alone feels easier.”
Hee-yeon narrowed her eyes. He went on:
“When you’re beside me, I can’t breathe. I know you too well… you know every part of me.”
She was stunned. Because this was no ordinary affair.
What Min-jae had hidden was neither Yoon-jeong nor a smear of lipstick.
The void of desire
For seven years, Min-jae had suffered what the doctor labeled sexual anhedonia. The diagnosis sounded foreign even to his own ears. Whenever he touched Hee-yeon, he felt himself shrinking. Her breath, her gaze, every gesture were so familiar they no longer stirred him.
So he invented Yoon-jeong: a colleague he had never once met in person, a conversation carried only over work chat. Through those exchanges he felt alive again—pure curiosity sustaining him.
I didn’t desire Hee-yeon; I desired the empty space she left.
Why we yield to this pull
Without a word Hee-yeon closed the hospital room door.
“Then I will too,” she said.
Min-jae blinked.
“May I also keep someone—if only in my mind? Someone whose breath beside me feels suffocating in a different way. Sometimes I want to become that person too.”
Min-jae caught his breath. Hee-yeon smiled quietly.
We keep seeking others to fill each other’s gaps, only to deepen them.
Is your bed warm?
Min-jae was discharged. They still share the same bed, but under the quilt their toes no longer brush. Hee-yeon asks him nothing now.
Only one question remains:
In the space where no one lies, whose desire burns hottest in you tonight?