"That child was never mine."
Jisoo couldn’t make sense of Min-su’s words. On the table, two pregnancy tests flaunted their stark minus signs, and the world fell mute. Was this a mistake twenty-five years in the making, or had a truth from twenty-five years ago finally detonated?
The Night He Vanished
Which emotion should I pull out first?
Rage, betrayal, desolation—none would fit her hand. Only the sentence she had carved into body and mind for twenty-five years—“Pregnancy is impossible”—drifted away like dust.
That was when it began. She had pretended to accept a childless life as something beautiful, believed they had consoled each other through the years, yet from Min-su’s mouth a serpent uncoiled.
"I meant to tell you long ago. Too late now."
Jisoo lowered her head. Min-su’s voice carried justification before remorse. At that instant she wanted his hand, but his fingertips receded beyond reach.
Ah, so that’s why I lay on the sofa last winter too.
The Anatomy of Desire
There had been no child, but the desire for pregnancy had never left. Between black conception and white loss Min-su had turned her womb into scar tissue.
What had been the real reason he had avoided making love for twenty-five years? Side effects of infertility treatments? Or the calculation to keep another woman’s scent from surfacing?
Jisoo remembered the medicine packets Min-su hid in the bathroom each night. Viagra? Or perhaps birth-control pills. The promise not to conceive had been ironclad—so why reveal the truth only now?
Desire still flickered in Min-su’s pupils, yet she could not be sure its object was still her.
Stories That Might Be True
Case 1: Su-hyeon and Jeong-guk
Su-hyeon, forty-five, gave up on pregnancy with her husband Jeong-guk, forty-eight, nineteen years ago. Jeong-guk had concealed a child he met while volunteering in college. The child grew in another woman’s womb, and for nineteen years he feigned ignorance, just as Min-su had.
Last Chuseok, Su-hyeon found a photograph in Jeong-guk’s childhood home. The child’s eyes were unmistakably his.
"Why didn’t I cry then? Even while weeping, I pictured the child—the child I couldn’t bear, yet the child of the man I loved."
Case 2: Eugene and Do-hyun
From their very first night together, Eugene, forty, received an infertility diagnosis. Do-hyun, forty-two, accepted her polycystic ovaries without flinching. Ten years later, an affair with a colleague gave him the child he claimed he never needed.
Eugene saw the infant at the hospital. It already bore a faint resemblance to her.
Perhaps what I wanted was not to give birth to Do-hyun’s baby, but to imprison Do-hyun inside my own womb.
Why We Are Drawn to This
Pregnancy is not mere reproduction; it is the trace left by binding another. Jisoo saw in Min-su’s eyes the glance that hid her. All those years he sought to control her, and she sought to keep him. They both spoke of love, yet love kept turning into scar.
A taboo is what is natural to one and impossible to another. Pregnancy had been taboo for Jisoo, but for Min-su it had remained a secret possibility. Only after twenty-five years did she realize the door had never opened for her.
A Door That Will Not Close
Jisoo took Min-su’s hand. The hand was already a stranger’s, yet she asked:
"Do you still want me?"
Min-su could not answer. Instead Jisoo pressed her lips to his forehead. On them lingered the body heat of a child she had never tasted in twenty-five years. Now that warmth belonged only to her.
Twenty-five years of lies, and still the desire burns.
This night is not over.
What secret do you cradle in the womb of the one you love? And the moment you learn it, will you truly be able to forgive?