“Six months, mostly at a motel near Suwon Station…”
As Joon-young let the words trail off, the glass slipped a fraction between my fingers. The soft tok of porcelain against the table. In that instant something flared up through my stomach—not anger, but heat. Why am I trembling at this?
A scarlet flower blooming over a grave
What expression had she worn? When, at high noon on a motel bed, Joon-young brushed the nape of her neck. A woman I had never once met on the subway could make that face?
The images unspooled in slow motion. Joon-young’s hand cupping another woman’s breast—more practiced, I imagined, than when it cups mine. Breath snagged in my throat. The beer glass shook, droplets falling to the floor. Joon-young noticed nothing; he was still murmuring apologies. I quietly drew out my phone and searched: motels near Suwon Station. “Couples’ Spa Zone,” “Mirror Room,” “Urban Style.” The booking buttons glimmered like temptation itself. The same room, the same position, the same woman—no, not her. Someone else.
Her name was Min-ji
Six months earlier I had seen the name on his phone. Min-ji. The message had been gentle, almost chaste: Thank you for today. Just knowing you were beside me made everything bearable.
That night I stared out of the window for thirty minutes, the birthday lotion Joon-young had given me cold in my hand. I hated it now. Had Min-ji breathed this scent too—on her wrists, the hollow of her throat? At 3 a.m., while Joon-young slept, I slipped to the living room and opened her Instagram. Her latest post: a café near Suwon Station, retro filter, strawberry latte in hand. After that latte she would have gone straight to the motel.
I refused to let the reel stop. Corridor 307. The electronic beep of a key card. A leather sofa at the foot of the bed. Joon-young’s discarded tie swaying like a pendulum. I sketched the scene endlessly, as though I had been there myself.
Second testimony: Eun-ji’s story
“I didn’t know, honestly,” Eun-ji said, setting down her glass. “The night I caught my husband cheating, I thought of my office manager for the first time. A man I’d never noticed before. But that night I remembered him tapping my shoulder at the company dinner. So you’re human after all, I thought.”
Two weeks later she was in the manager’s car. They kissed in a parking tower in the same neighborhood where her husband had strayed. “It was tangled,” she said, a tear falling to the tabletop. “I was betraying because I’d been betrayed. But—truthfully—that was the hottest moment of my life.”
The honeyed bait of taboo
Humans are drawn to prohibition. Jung called it the Shadow: the darkness we deny yet cannot erase. When we are betrayed, we long to remain the pure victim. Beneath that wish, however, seethes a scalding appetite. I too can do this.
The instant the affair is exposed, we are caught in a dilemma:
- primitive impulse: immediate revenge
- social restraint: that would make me the bad one
In the gap a fire catches. The moment the internal ban—I would never—collapses is strangely, dizzyingly sweet. Neuroscience explains it: betrayal stress detonates cortisol while dopamine spikes. Agony and ecstasy overlap.
Fingertips still trembling
Even now Joon-young does not know. That night I sent Min-ji a DM: You did it too. I think I’m about to. My heart hammered as if it would burst; I expected to be blocked. Instead she answered: Shall we meet and talk? I’ll take responsibility.
My fingers quivered. The word responsibility was impossibly sweet. Since that day I can no longer look at Joon-young’s phone—because now I have something of my own to hide.
Have you ever felt it? The instant you hear of a lover’s past affair, the surge of desire you never knew was in you?