Ah, honestly hilarious. Haji-won, you’re in full-blown panic mode. I burst out laughing, champagne sloshing in my glass. Three in the morning. The floor was littered with pulverized potato-chip dust and drained wine bottles, and six college friends lounged in exhausted merriment. For the first time in ages, the house pulsed with living laughter.
Then a prickle shot up the back of my skull—someone was staring daggers. I turned. Jihoon—my husband—sat on the end of the sofa. His gaze was alien: cold yet scalding, the detached curiosity of a scientist fused with the proprietary glare of a jealous owner.
The smile tugging at his lips was unfamiliar. An expression I hadn’t seen once in seven years. His eyelids drooped, pupils sinking into shadow; the corners of his mouth lifted, but it wasn’t a smile. It bordered on loathing.
“Hey, Min-seo. Still go red after one drink, huh?” Hae-jin brushed my cheek. The instant that touch entered Jihoon’s field of vision, his eyes narrowed to slits. My face burned—nothing to do with alcohol.
Marriage had become a warm indifference. We knew each other’s bodies so well we stopped looking. Yet that night Jihoon’s eyes examined me as though I were a strange woman. Not simple jealousy—something beyond it. The wife who had smiled only at him for seven years was doubled over at someone else’s joke, and the sight aroused him.
“It’s already half past three. Shall we call it?” Everyone rose reluctantly. I glanced at Jihoon. He remained on the sofa, gaze fixed on my waist—precisely where Hae-jin’s hand had briefly rested.
“Tonight was a riot. Next time, let’s do it at my place,” Hae-jin said, hugging me tight. At that moment Jihoon’s hand slid to his own knee, veins livid beneath the skin. He inhaled deeply, as though scenting the air.
Later, I heard two eerily similar stories. Eugene said that after drinks with colleagues, her husband Seong-jun bit the nape of her neck for the first time ever:
“It felt… like I was someone else. Not my husband, but a stranger craving me.”
Soo-hyun told me that at a club, her husband Min-ho grew strangely excited watching other men stare at her:
“That look—terrifying. Like I was another man’s woman…”
Marriage is an institution of ownership. Yet human instinct thrills at the prospect of being taken. The more others desire our spouse, the higher that spouse’s value soars. In that instant of watching, the beloved becomes an object. Psychologists call it the “Coolidge Effect.” A male kangaroo, seeing a female mate with another male, copulates more fiercely. Humans are no different—we simply remain unaware.
Since that night, Jihoon touches me as though tiptoeing through a wedding night. The unfamiliar gaze lingers. He shadows me when I move, observes when anyone speaks to me. And I—don’t hate it. For the first time in seven years, I burn again as a woman. Can we reignite only within another’s desire?
The door shut; silence descended. Jihoon approached slowly, whispering from behind me.
“Min-seo.” His voice was low. Fingertips grazed my nape.
“That laugh of yours tonight… I’d never seen it.” His breath brushed my ear, trembling.
“Next time… I’ll be the one who makes you laugh like that.”
Outside, the city lay under 4 a.m. darkness. Beneath it, we had become strangers discovering each other’s bodies for the very first time.