“This should be enough.”
The room had been scrubbed until not a speck of dust remained. 11:57 p.m.—the promise we had sealed was a single line: “Only until today.”
Dohyun sat on a moving box, re-fastening and un-fastening the Velcro on his bag for the third time. Each faint rip echoed through the empty rooms. Whenever the door creaked, footsteps followed.
Me: May I come in? Dohyun: … Me: It’s over now, isn’t it.
Before the words finished leaving my mouth, my hand moved first. What touched me wasn’t the back of his hand but the breath that moistened his cracked lips. The phrase only until today crumbled on the tip of his wet tongue.
A broken thermometer
To feel the ending, we had to touch—eyes, fingertips, ribcage. Words alone were never enough to break an addiction.
“I was afraid I’d forget if I didn’t touch you—so I held on tighter.”
That night we twisted the way we once mapped each other’s bodies. To remember the sweetness, we needed a trace of bitterness; we drew blood from that exchange.
This is the last time. Yes, this makes it final.
Two layers of lies slipped between whispers and moans and chained us to each other.
The cuttlefish tapping on the window
Even the nickname was absurd—“Cuttlefish.” She coined it. Exactly two years earlier, in a motel somewhere in Seoul.
Cuttlefish had promised her boyfriend the night before: “Today is the end.”
At 4:12 a.m., the digits flipped and she opened her eyes. The man’s arm was still locked around her waist.
This can’t go on spun in her head like a broken record.
Boyfriend: It’s not over yet. Cuttlefish: …What? Boyfriend: It’s not over—the taste of this.
After that, Cuttlefish returned to the same motel once a month. Same room, same promise, same lie: “This time it’s really the last.”
Another story belongs to a man nicknamed “Gap.” After parting with his ex, he kept one set of keys.
Gap: Just this once. Ex: Okay.
But each night the hand that turned the key grew rougher. While they “visited” one another, they built a different body between them. In the end they stopped calling, yet Gap still carried the key on him everywhere.
He searched not for the words “I’m sorry,” but for the way never to have to be.
Desire leaves traces like sweat
Why do we try to erase the word end with our skin? Psychologists speak of anxious attachment. When we are certain we can end something, we often cannot. Uncertainty turns the key.
Because I can’t know the real last moment, I want to check one more time.
Dig deeper and you meet the bait of obsession. My body remembers best the other’s temperature and rhythm. To forget, I must brand it again with the same intensity—so I mime the ending.
A prison with no bars
Since that night we have never let our skins meet again. Yet every time the doorbell rings, the tremor I once felt on the back of my hand returns, vivid.
The promise broke, but doesn’t the heat still smolder inside you?
If you have ever lived through such a moment, this question is inescapable. On the day we vowed it was over, what exactly were we trying to finish? And how much longer can you hide from me the truth that the end has not come?