The First Kiss Was in Her Name
“Yoo-jin.” My husband’s lips parted right in front of me.
Yoo-jin. A junior at his office, twenty-six, the porcelain curve of her neck I’d glimpsed at our wedding shoot. I stopped breathing. Yes—from this moment on, I am Yoo-jin.
When his trembling fingertips brushed my lashes and drifted downward, I closed my eyes without thinking. Yes, I want to be Yoo-jin too.
The Pleasure of Leaving Myself
This was no mere role-play. When my husband gripped my breast and murmured, “Yoo-jin’s chest is this small,” I became the owner of that smaller chest. My body became hers, and I rose above the bed as if levitating.
The instant I vanished, my husband grew fiercer. I witnessed how fiercely he wanted someone. That someone was me—yet at the same time, it was not me.
Mina’s Double Life
A café in Gangnam, Seoul. Mina, thirty-five, took a sip of Americano and whispered.
The first time with her husband had been accidental. Mid-sex he had blurted out an ex-girlfriend’s name. Mina froze. Instead of apologizing, he pushed deeper and repeated it: “Ji-yeon, Ji-yeon-ah.”
“At first I cried. But…” She paused and wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “But strangely my body grew hotter. The fact that he wanted Ji-yeon—and that I was Ji-yeon.”
Two months later, Mina voluntarily put on Ji-yeon’s wig and the lingerie he’d bought. Her husband laid her on the dining table and whispered, “Ji-yeon did it here too.” In her mind Mina echoed, In this moment, I do not exist.
Soo-jin’s Forgotten Name
An apartment in Haeundae, Busan. Soo-jin, forty-two, discovered by accident that her husband whispered “Eun-seo,” his first love who had died ten years earlier. The word stared at her from his diary.
Soo-jin hunted down an old photo of Eun-seo and placed it on the bedside table while he slept. At dawn he woke, embraced Soo-jin, and murmured, “Eun-seo, I thought it was a dream.”
From that day on, Soo-jin wore Eun-seo’s perfume. I had to become a dead woman. For him to love me, I had to cease existing.
The Psychology of Embracing Taboo
Why do we surrender our bodies to such scenes? Psychologists call it “the collapse of identity boundaries.” The instant we become the object the other desires, we are momentarily freed from the weight of reality.
Yet it is also a brutal self-immolation: pleasure purchased by erasing oneself. When the beloved loves the me who is not me, we taste a transcendental deprivation.
In the moment I vanished, my husband truly wanted me. No—he wanted me without me.
A Question in Silence
Tonight, when my husband again calls “Yoo-jin-ah,” what answer will I give? I will whisper Yes, I am Yoo-jin and truly become her.
But one day, if he speaks my real name, will I be able to answer? Where will I be then?