The moment my index finger glides upward across the screen, my breath stalls. Forty-seven weeks ago, that photo is still there. Yee-un, sunlight catching the loose strands of her hair in a café window. The day I almost deleted it returns again to imprison me.
- A firm press of my right thumb would do it. One tap. Why can’t I?
The Undeletable Evidence of Defeat
I know the truth: deleting the file won’t end the story. We are not erasing a photograph but amputating a part of ourselves. The glint in Yee-un’s eye, the temperature of that afternoon, the finger she shyly extended—each has become sutured into my own flesh. Drag it to the trash and the phone asks, Are you sure you want to delete? Translated, it means: Do you hereby sign the eternal certificate of your defeat? My finger trembles. I am not ready to surrender.
She May Have Deleted Hers Already
Donghyun opens his gallery every night at 2:17 a.m. One thousand eight hundred and forty-seven frames of a summer three years ago, a Jeju trip with Suyeong. He still recites the number.
“Hey, you still haven’t trashed those?” a colleague asked over drinks. Donghyun lifted his glass instead of answering. That’s not deleting, he muttered to himself. That’s me dying.
Suyeong has posted new pictures with her new man. She looks happy. Donghyun zooms in. The watch on her wrist is gone—the one he gave her for her birthday.
At least that’s one thing she threw away. The thought made him laugh. Yet in his own gallery the watch is vibrantly alive: 13 July 2021, 18:23, the instant Suyeong hugged him after unwrapping it.
The Hidden Fantasy of Victory
We tell ourselves we keep the photos out of sorrow, but a nastier desire crouches beneath: One day she might come back. She’ll be moved when I say I waited. She still remembers me sometimes.
These images are not memories; they are supply depots for a war that never ended. The subjects refuse to move at our command, yet we insist we can still animate them. At 3 a.m., alcohol rising, the word perhaps courses through every vein.
How to Savor Defeat
Psychologist Yoon Seok-jun says, “In truth we relish the defeat itself—the moral high ground of the wounded, the honeyed bitterness of injustice. The lover in the photograph is cast as the perfect perpetrator.”
So I chose to be the sacrificial lamb. Refusing to delete is an unfinished revenge no one will witness. Only I know I am the true hero of this war—measured by how long, how deeply, I have suffered. That suffering is my distinction.
Are You Checking, Too, Right Now?
Put the phone down. Even now your thumb may be grazing the screen. Top or bottom of the gallery, or a secret folder—somewhere the photo still narrates your defeat.
Yet the real terror is this: What if, at this exact moment, she is staring at the same image?
We all pretend to be soldiers who survived the war, but we are merely rehearsing the same maneuver on an endless loop. No armistice, no victor.
So every night I ask myself: “Shall I delete it today?” And the answer is always the same. “Tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow.”