A kiss had to stay behind the locked door
“Do you know who your daughter is seeing?”
I shook my head. In front of Min-ji I had to pretend ignorance, because no one else knew the man is 53.
The philosophy classroom, the click of the back door locking. Min-ji’s breath trembles. I used to insist it was all fine—love is personal freedom—but now I have nowhere left to run.
What he offers is ultimately the sweetness of fear
Women who date men thirty-three years older all say the same thing in the end: “I feel protected.”
Yet that protection soon mutates into the claim “I know you better than anyone.” He drills into every word Min-ji utters, pretending to design her future while quietly erasing each of her options.
Min-ji says she grows most intense when he calls her Daddy. The word coats the inside of her mouth even while kissing, even while undressing.
Daddy, daddy, daddy.
The repetition drags her father’s face into view. The same repetition gives her the illusion of utter freedom—I belong to no one.
Two locked rooms, two truths
Case 1. Min-ji, 20
Min-ji confessed only to me. To her parents she said he was a 32-year-old office worker; to her younger brother she shrugged that it wasn’t time for introductions. Her roommate noticed only cigarette smoke drifting from the balcony.
“Senior… he knows everything I do.”
Min-ji’s voice shook. He had memorized her class schedule and knew which books she had borrowed. Checking library records is child’s play.
His living-room window: if the curtains are half drawn, the university gate is visible. Each time Min-ji steps through it, he lifts his coffee cup and smiles—pretending it’s coincidence.
On the days she visits him, Min-ji packs two sets of clothes. One is for her parents—the ordinary twenty-year-old who ponders philosophy and the future. The other is for his bed—the obedient younger lover. The moment she changes, Min-ji becomes two women.
Case 2. Ha-eun, 24
Five years earlier, Ha-eun lived through something similar. Today she is a corporate employee; then she was an art student. She called him Teacher, a titan of the Korean art world.
“He told me, ‘You haven’t found your color yet.’ When I changed my style, he said, ‘That still isn’t your real color.’”
Eventually Ha-eun lost her color altogether. For her graduation exhibition she painted the theme he chose, used the palette he selected. After the show he sent her a single message: Now you are a real artist.
Since that day she has been unable to lift a brush. Each time she tries, she hears: That isn’t real. Since that day her works have no longer been works—they have been his commands.
The hand that clutches the taboo
Why are we drawn to such hideous imbalance of power? “Because I want to feel safe” is a lie too sweet to swallow. What we truly want is to hand over the right to rule us so we can dodge responsibility. If we fail, we can claim the failure belongs not to me but to the me who chose him.
Min-ji suddenly asks herself: If I end this now, what will I lose? She already knows the answer—nothing. That is what frightens her.
A 53-year-old man is not simply older; he carries father’s time. That time has already walked the roads Min-ji has not, already tasted failures Min-ji has not. It slips her a note that reads: You haven’t come this far. A predetermined future is inscribed on the paper.
The moment she refuses that future, she will have to expose the ignorance of being twenty.
Whose time are you living in now?
Min-ji still texts him every night: What did you do today? He smiles even when he doesn’t reply, because the very act of sending the message is evidence she chose him.
Her family will never know. Min-ji keeps promising herself later. But that future will never arrive, because she has already discarded the innocent Min-ji who could have greeted it.
From whom are you seeking protection for the self you yourself cannot understand? And is that person truly protecting you—or manufacturing you so that he may rule?