First Breath
- We shouldn’t, Jun-hyeok said. Yet his hand was already clamped to the woman’s lower stomach.
A single bedside lamp. The drip of water from the bathroom. In forty-three years Jun-hyeok had never once used a condom. He and Min-jeong had started sleeping together in ’99, back in college. Not then, not in the newlywed years, not after the children arrived.
Birth control is Min-jeong’s job, he’d told himself.
Now, 2:17 a.m., 12 May 2024. The new hire, Yujin, crawls onto his lap on all fours. A woman twenty years his junior. No silicone scent, only flesh and breath left in the air.
The Hidden Calculation
Why had Min-jeong refused condoms for twenty years? Why had Jun-hyeok never asked? Like a shared mistake, they had erased each other’s desire.
Let’s keep it simple, Min-jeong had said. If a child comes, we have it; if not, we don’t. What’s the problem?
The problem came afterward. The pleasure of accepting his wife’s decision. The relief of off-loading every risk onto her body instead of his. Jun-hyeok mistook that for love.
Simulated Truths
Case 1. Seungha, 38, pharmacist
For twelve years she and her husband have never used protection. She logs her ovulation days in Excel. On the most fertile ones she always complains of a sudden headache. Her husband believes her body is merely tired.
Last year, a single time with Jeong-woo, the neighborhood trainer. When he produced a condom, Seungha turned away, laughing. Don’t worry—I won’t get pregnant. Jeong-woo’s eyes wavered. Seungha wanted to drink that tremor like wine. The instant I control you.
Case 2. Doyoon, 45, attorney
For eighteen years with his wife, condoms have been replaced by pills—whose name he cannot recall. Once he swallowed a stray tablet that had fallen between whiskey glasses. It became habit.
One day in a rented officetel, client Jiyeon asked, Do you use condoms, oppa? For the first time Doyoon realized he had no answer. When she pulled one from the drawer, his throat tightened. This isn’t me. Yet he surrendered to the rip of the green foil as if spellbound.
The Law of Dead-End Desire
Why insist on opening the lid we ourselves sealed? Psychologists call it loss of control—the ecstasy of smashing, in a single night, what we have managed for twenty years. Or the opposite: the relief of handing the wheel to someone else.
If I’m the one who gets hurt, you don’t have to touch the wound, his wife once said. Jun-hyeok called that love, too.
Twenty-First Shock
Yujin cupped Jun-hyeok’s chin.
- If you hate it, sunbae, you can leave.
The pulse in her fingertips. He understood that his entire twenty years were packed inside that beat. A lifetime without condoms, a tremor as alien as his wife’s body once was.
Silence deepened. The moment her skin met his, Jun-hyeok forgot sensation itself.
Emptiness.
Beyond the Mirror
When Jun-hyeok opened his eyes, Yujin was gone. A green packet lay on the counter—unused. He reached for it, tore it open, phoned his wife.
- Min-jeong, today I…
She cut him off, laughing.
- It’s fine. But you have to take the blame.
He sat motionless long after the call ended. Still he does not know whose name he wishes to write on the account.
Can you unbuckle the seat belt of twenty safe years?
Or do you long to hand the buckle to someone else entirely?