"Oppa, over here." At his voice I thought I’d misheard.
Saturday, 2 a.m., a cramped back-alley pojangmacha in Hongdae. The woman beside me tapped ash from her cigarette and answered.
Ah, Su-jin, you want another drink?
No, I’m already tipsy.
She shook her head, laughing. A short bob, a tiny mole beneath her left eye. Only then did it strike me—this was Su-jin’s unnie.
Su-jin, my junior at work, twenty-five, always calling me “Team-lead-nim.” And beside me now sat Ji-ah, her sister, thirty-one.
You’re the team lead my little sister keeps talking about?
Ji-ah looked at me. Her voice was low, aged like a vintage whiskey.
Why did her age sound so sweet in my ears?
While Su-jin was in the restroom, Ji-ah asked quietly,
My sister—am I making things hard for her?
Not at all, she’s doing fine.
Don’t lie. I can see it in your eyes.
She took the soju glass from my hand and drank from the exact spot my lips had touched. In that instant I understood: this was no simple attraction. Between me and Su-jin’s sister, a silent contract had already been signed.
Three weeks later, in her living room
Su-jin was on a business trip in Busan. Ji-ah texted:
[photo] This is my sister’s room—something feels off. Could you tell me what?
Forty minutes later I was at her door. We paused outside Su-jin’s room.
May I?
Of course. I want to talk about my sister.
Pink curtains, white bed. On the bedside table lay a sketch of me.
Every night she looks at this and whispers something, I think.
What does she say?
Team-lead-nim… Just like that.
Ji-ah’s fingers trembled as she grasped my arm.
Anatomy of desire: why we are bewitched by the unnie
Jung spoke of the anima, the feminine within a man. But Ji-ah was something else: the forbidden, untouchable other, defined by a single phrase—Su-jin’s sister. Those words corrupted everything.
- The subtle power play of a six-year age gap
- The honeyed sweetness of knowing she is someone else’s
- The irony of being close yet eternally unreachable
Second mistake: the night I recorded her voice
The following week was Su-jin’s birthday. Ji-ah asked,
Got her a present?
Any ideas?
She likes your voice, she said.
I deleted the message, but it was too late. We had begun decoding signals meant for no one else. That night Ji-ah called; Su-jin had dozed off.
Just for a moment—tell me stories about yourself while she sleeps.
I recorded her whispered replies, knowing I would erase them at dawn. I didn’t.
Psychological angle: the sweet poison of taboo
Why do we crave what belongs to another? Helen Fisher notes:
Dopamine spikes the more uncertain the reward. Taboo is uncertainty distilled.
What I felt for Ji-ah was not simple lust. It was the liberty granted by certainty that I could never possess her. Because reality was impossible, imagination burned all the brighter.
Final mistake: the moment she took my hand
At Su-jin’s birthday party, drunk, she murmured,
Team-lead-nim, you like me… I’m sorry.
I know. It’s because you’re her sister.
Everything froze. Ji-ah’s eyes wavered; then she clasped my hand.
Should we leave?
Where?
Anywhere. Just away.
But we didn’t move. Behind us, Su-jin was crying. Someone’s sister was still someone else’s.
So, what taboo do you cradle tonight?
Right now, whose name are you whispering inwardly, lips sealed? Is it another’s lover, another’s kin—or the life you can never live? Why do we burn for what we can never hold? And after the flame dies, what will we have left to look at?