A Rosy Chin Slips into the Hollow Cheongdam-dong, third-floor bridal suite. The mirror reflected a dress so white it hurt my eyes. While I lifted each lash with a black silicone tip, I thought of Hye-jin. One button of her gown was already undone, and between the parted silk she clutched Super—the kitten we adopted only two days earlier. Whenever the cat’s paw tickled her sternum she tilted her pale throat back and whispered,
"Ji-hoon, the cat is too hot."
Until a moment ago I had been his fiancée. Spring number twenty-eight; when Seoul’s sunlight knocked at the third-floor window, we posed for saccharine happiness in a studio. Now I am the most transparent ghost in the room. Another button slipped free; Super’s damp nose prodded her skin. Ji-hoon’s hand settled on the cat’s head, fingers trembling just above the hem of the dress.
White Dress, Hidden Flesh
"Super seems to hate you," Ji-hoon murmured. The shiver riding the tail of his laugh was as artful as the cat’s paw on her breast. Hye-jin pressed the animal closer, muffling its feverish breath against her ribs.
"He’s just sensitive. Is it all right?"
"It’s fine. Both of you are."
While he spoke, his thumb—ostensibly scratching behind the cat’s ear—traced the slope beneath her collarbone. I remembered the three seconds they had looked at me. The cat had parted its mouth in a silent mew; Ji-hoon swallowed my name inside it. That night, when Super’s claws grazed my ankle, Ji-hoon took one step back from the bed. A single claw severed what remained of us—or the last thread that still pretended to bind us.
In the Bride’s Arms: Silicon Tips of Taboo
Hye-jin is twenty-four, six years younger, her face bare of make-up. Yet when she cradles Super the heat that seeps through the silk is fiercer than the cat’s. Ji-hoon strokes the kitten’s head, fingertips grazing her skin as though it were fur. At the vanity I dropped a silicone tip; it rolled to a stop at her foot.
"I’ll take the photo. You and Super."
"Could you… take one of me too?"
"We need the photographer for that," he said.
At that moment the cat half-closed its eyes and tapped her breastbone once, twice. I reached to fasten the button, then froze: the pale swell between buttons, the cat’s paw resting there, and Ji-hoon’s gaze—already cold to me.
The Cat Knew
On the wedding night I stood outside Ji-hoon’s house. Through the window Super stared back. The cat knew me: the woman it had ignored, the woman it had replaced. It said, You are not like me; therefore you can leave.
Ji-hoon chose the cat that might leave, and discarded the woman who could.
Whose Arms Do You Lie In Now?
Why do we long to become the cat? Or why is love weaker than a cat?
Super, who nestled his chin in Hye-jin’s hollow; Ji-hoon, whose fingertips combed the forbidden fur. They already knew each other’s taboos. I was the woman who could depart; the cat was the animal that might. Ji-hoon embraced the latter and erased the former.
Between the bride and the cat, it was I whom he would abandon.
At this precise instant—whose arms are you lying in? And who, exactly, is the one you are ready to discard?