“Tonight?” “Sorry, I’m exhausted.”
When those words fell like a note taped to the door, I opened the bedside drawer once again. Forty-seven condoms lay hidden beneath a cotton handkerchief—one purchased every Wednesday for forty-seven weeks. The first packet had already yellowed with dust, still unopened.
Instead of a fluttering heart, a metronome that would not sway
For two years we had lived by referring to that night. After weaning the baby, after the first birthday, after the toddler settled into preschool. Inevitably, that night became a future endlessly deferred.
So it finally arrived.
That evening, Min-seo showered and stepped into the bedroom. A towel wrapped around her looked so unfamiliar that I averted my eyes. Her husband, Jun-hyeok, lay scrolling through his phone, burying his face in the pillow’s scent—an unmistakable signal after two years. Still, my fingertips trembled.
“Tonight?” I asked. Jun-hyeok nodded. We sat on the edge of the bed in silence. When our eyes crossed over each other’s stomachs, laughter burst out. Laughter bred more laughter. We laughed for a long while, then lay wordless for just as long. When Min-seo’s hand brushed Jun-hyeok’s waist, he drew back—gently, unmistakably.
The first kiss we had dreamed of
Two years earlier everything had been different. Three weeks after childbirth, we wordlessly enacted a curfew. Nights reeked of blood on the steering wheel, baby milk, the pain of sore nipples. Jun-hyeok once reached for Min-seo’s breast, then withdrew. Was it the baby’s cry? Or had the breast in his hand felt less like a woman’s and more like a mother’s?
From that night on, Min-seo silently begged whenever she saw Jun-hyeok’s hand. It’s all right—wait two years and everything will return.
So she waited. While pushing the stroller through the apartment complex each night, she studied her reflection in the elevator mirror and fantasized: Jun-hyeok tracing the nape of her neck, kisses breathing with sighs. That fantasy gripped her ankles and kept her standing on two feet.
Forty-seven weeks in a dark laboratory
Every Wednesday after work, Jun-hyeok stopped at the convenience store and bought a single condom. It was a pledge to Min-seo. The cashier always scanned the barcode with the same smile; Jun-hyeok felt recognized and quietly ashamed.
After a month, he came home and held the packet out to Min-seo. “Next week I think we’ll really manage.” Min-seo had already booked a babysitter. The next week, and the next—still prepared, still believing.
The first piece collapses
That night, Min-seo stroked Jun-hyeok’s back. She could count every vertebra; it felt foreign. Jun-hyeok rested a hand on her shoulder. Not the scent of shampoo, but of a damp towel. We touched, yet our eyes never met.
“Are you okay?” he asked. Instead of answering, Min-seo closed her eyes. This is not the place.
Jun-hyeok’s fingertips searched for the memory of two years ago: below the breasts, the inner thighs. But Min-seo’s chest had hardened, the baby’s suction marks still faint. Jun-hyeok brushed the traces, then let go.
What rose in Min-seo’s mind were the baby’s first cry, her soles racing through the night, the tears she shed at 4:00 a.m. while staring out the window. Nothing more.
The first, and the last
Jun-hyeok took Min-seo’s wrist and approached slowly. When their lips touched, Min-seo opened her eyes. In Jun-hyeok’s pupils she saw not fatigue but weariness—not of the body, but of the relationship itself.
We moved gently, yet Min-seo’s body could not locate who she had been two years earlier. Jun-hyeok recalled Min-seo’s old responses, then looked at the expressionless face before him.
The moment Jun-hyeok entered her, Min-seo nearly wept—not because it was Jun-hyeok, but because she smelled, for an instant, the baby. It was not her husband; it was the name “Mom.”
An empty room
Afterward we held each other—bodies close, hearts distant. Jun-hyeok kissed Min-seo’s forehead; Min-seo laid an ear to his chest. Neither spoke. One condom had been used; forty-six still waited in the drawer.
Why are we drawn to this?
Psychologists speak of emotional real estate. While waiting, we re-cast the partner as an investment in the future. At the final moment we try to redeem the investment, only to realize it was never one.
That night we sought not an investment but a person. Yet two years had been too long. Min-seo had become a mother; Jun-hyeok, a father. We were no longer spouses—only parents.
The last question
That night Min-seo could not meet Jun-hyeok’s eyes. In them she could not find herself from two years earlier. So she asked him:
“What exactly are we doing right now?”