The First Word That Slipped from a Kissed Mouth
As I pressed my lips to Chae-eun’s nape, she exhaled a fevered breath and whispered:
“You’re… absolute perfection.”
At that moment, the faint salt of her sweat on my tongue turned bitter. “Perfect” wasn’t aimed at me, but at the situation I had orchestrated. I wasn’t the puzzle piece; I was the flawlessly assembled puzzle board. My body was nothing but a mirror shaped to her desire—never the self I recognized.
The Mirror of Desire
We all secretly long for a scapegoat. Someone to absorb our wounds, a mask we can slip over another’s face. In Chae-eun’s eyes, I was the finished portrait of the man she had imagined: 189 cm tall, five years of disciplined lifting, voice low and resonant. A body that had never deviated by a millimeter—never once been me.
It’s fine, I murmured inside. If that’s how you need me.
Yet every exhale scratched at a hidden corner of my chest. I was no longer a breathing being, merely the apparatus that produced breath for another.
Case One – Hye-jin: What She Wanted Was My Scent
Three days after we met, Hye-jin brought me to her studio apartment. Dozens of pastel Post-its—yellow, pink, sky-blue—covered the headboard. One by one she peeled them off and pressed them to my nape, my wrist, my abs.
“Don’t sweat here. If the perfume mixes, I’ll feel guilty.”
The bottle she’d bought in advance was already evaporating in the steam above the tub. After my shower she misted me liberally, murmuring:
“Until my boyfriend comes back, I just want to breathe this scent.”
I was not her lover. I was a living perfume sample hired to fill the void left by a three-year relationship gone stale. Each time we kissed, she closed her eyes and called another name. I answered with silence, stroking her hair—no, my fingertips were no longer mine; they were simply moving fingers.
Case Two – Min-jae: What He Needed Was a Direction for His Rage
Min-jae was a senior in my college club. He laughed boisterously at gatherings, yet his eyes, whenever he locked himself in the restroom, told a different story. One night he summoned me to a back-alley bar.
“You know I went through hell because of her, right?”
The “her” he meant had dumped him two years earlier. My voice happened to resemble hers. Min-jae lit a cigarette and said:
“Say exactly what she said to me back then.”
I avoided his gaze and let the words crawl up my throat:
“I’m sorry. I’m just… tired of you.” “Honestly, I can’t breathe when I see you.”
Min-jae bowed his head; his shoulders shook—he was crying. I tipped a bottle over his crown. Cool beer soaked his hair, and the smell pierced me. I realized I wasn’t even the beer; I was merely the splash meant for someone else.
Why Do We Find Joy in Being Sacrificed?
Psychologists call this sacrificial instrumentalization—the pleasure of surrendering one’s identity to complete another’s desire. The more extreme the surrender, the more intoxicating it feels. I wanted to erase myself.
I vanish; only you remain.
The inversion—you are complete even without me. We all yearn to be supporting actors in someone else’s drama, dim silhouettes catching the protagonist’s light. Become the shadow, and at least we will not collide, will not shatter. Instead we are drawn in—toward the blazing center. Even if that light consumes us.
Can I Ever Say I Am No One’s Means?
Right now, are you not busy fulfilling another’s desire? Tonight, sitting at the edge of the bed, are you holding your breath to match the rhythm of someone else’s sighs?
So—whose Chae-eun or Min-jae were you?
And what name will the person facing you choose to call you? As their breath grazes your ear, which name do they wish to whisper instead of your own? It will not be your real name.
Whose perfume bottle were you, and whose beer glass?