This morning, while she painted on beige lipstick, I clenched the bedsheets. Each soft sweep of that muted nude across her lips left something inside me slick and dripping. I hadn’t bought that shade. Someone else—probably him—had. When the cap clicked shut, I stopped breathing. She smiled at me, not out of joy, but as one greets the dawn.
“Who did you have lunch with today?”
I watched the nape of her neck as she chose lipstick in front of the bathroom mirror. Pale beige. A color she rarely wears. So not with me, then. The question climbed my throat, then slid back down. What left my mouth instead was, “Beige suits you.” She dabbed the corner of her mouth with a tissue and answered, “Lunch with the office club.” Her voice was calm, but her fingertips trembled. The lipstick had bled to the edge of her chin, staining it completely.
Min-seo on Line 2, 7:42 p.m.
Min-seo always boards the same car—third door from the front. The spot where her boyfriend is most likely to be waiting. Or, more accurately, least likely; that’s the trap. Why isn’t he here today? Right, a meeting. She checked the group chat. A photo posted in the "Our Oppas" thread: her boyfriend laughing with other women at a pojangmacha. Even while sipping soju, Min-seo sensed it. No—she’d known long before. She hovered over the like button, then simply screenshotted and deleted. The next morning he texted, as always, “Did you eat breakfast?” Min-seo replied, “Yeah,” and something quietly crumbled between them.
Jun-hyeok’s Sleepless Night
Jun-hyeok visited his ex-girlfriend’s Instagram daily. He had blocked her, of course, but stalked her through a secret alt account. In the photos, she glowed beside a new man on a European tour: sunset in Florence, cafés in Paris, a Berlin nightclub. Expressions she never wore with him. Lying in bed, Jun-hyeok raised his phone to the ceiling. His eyes in the dark screen were unfocused. Slowly, he double-tapped to like a photo, then immediately undid it. He went to the bathroom and plunged his head into the sink. Cold water ran over him.
Why can’t we lift our foot at this traffic light?
Jealousy is really the ghost of a missed chance. The happiness someone else enjoys without us is the life we might have lived. That’s why it hurts. We don’t hate the other person; we hate witnessing our own insufficiency.
6:30 a.m., an empty café
I checked her profile again today. Still that same photo—sunlit café, probably taken by someone, I don’t know who. I vomited in the bathroom. From the morning cigarette, or maybe just pain. I looked in the mirror and wondered: What do I actually want? It isn’t to win her back. Perhaps for her to delete that picture. Or to post nothing at all—nothing that excludes me. Yes, the truth is I never hated her happiness. I hated her happiness outside of me.
Final question
Have you ever watched someone like this—witnessed them shining perfectly without you and still been unable to look away? If so, whose profile are you leaving open right now, and what are you hoping to find there?