“At the time, I didn’t realize that every step I took was, for him, the scene of a crime.”
A narrow alley in Mykonos. Afternoon light spilled over white walls heavy with roses, and I was wearing a sky-blue linen dress, nude sandals dragging at my heels. A cool wind grazed my collarbones; absent-mindedly, I lifted one thin strap back into place.
That moment—
Footsteps behind me. Someone’s breathing. Then Jun-hyeok was there, wrapping my waist in a tight, wordless embrace.
“This place is crawling with strangers.”
The ecstasy and terror of being seen
That night, Jun-hyeok looked haggard. Between drags on the terrace cigarette, he asked:
“Every time I go to the bathroom, I have to find you. When I see you laughing with men, my heart drops. It’s not exactly jealousy… I’m afraid of strangers recognizing you.”
On the road I was brighter than usual—long hair sun-bleached, skin salted by the beach. Each stranger’s glance sent a small shiver through me; the world felt, for an instant, on my side. But to Jun-hyeok every detail was a flare of danger: the flutter of my dress, the stray smile—scenes another man might want.
The gaze that wants you, the gaze that ruins me
We both knew it. The place we had reached under the name “travel” was a borderland where every limit had loosened. I knew how alluring it is to walk unknown streets alone. So Jun-hyeok guarded me with increasing frenzy.
Leave the bright blue dress in the closet. Let’s dine only on our balcony. I’ll take the pictures; don’t hand the camera to anyone.
He became obsessed with making me unseen. The blurrier my outline, the safer he felt.
Second stop: Santorini
“Ms. Mia, would you like a glass of wine?” A stranger at the poolside bar—Spanish-tinged English, sunlit blond hair. I smiled and shook my head.
At that instant, Jun-hyeok appeared behind me. The two mojitos in his hand crashed to the tiles and shattered. Heads turned.
“Sorry—clumsy,” he murmured, bowing with counterfeit humility, but his eyes were alive. The Spaniard stepped back, flustered. I caught Jun-hyeok’s wrist.
“Are you insane?”
“I have to be. Every time you lock eyes with another man, I feel this urge to pull you to me so hard I could die.”
That night, on the bed
The white Santorini bed became our battlefield. Jun-hyeok pinned my arms above my head against the headboard. His breath was scalding.
“Hear that? When you smiled at him, I imagined the sounds you’d make here. Other men might want to hear them.”
He grazed my ear—not painfully, but enough to raise gooseflesh. I shuddered at his words, yet a dark delight seeped through me.
“You don’t know it, but you’re most beautiful here. In the dark. Only for my eyes.”
Why do we cherish this strange taboo?
Psychologist Robert Greene writes: Obsession is the dark sibling of love. Jun-hyeok’s fear goes beyond simple jealousy; it is the terror that I might dissolve under another gaze—and the perverse pleasure he takes in that very terror.
Travel renders us anonymous. No one knows our names; we are only “lovers,” only “the foreign woman.” So Jun-hyeok grows wilder. The instant those men desire you—that is when he can be certain he still possesses you entirely.
The last night
On the plane, Jun-hyeok whispered, “Will we be all right when we’re home?”
Instead of an answer, I pressed my lips to the back of his hand. Perhaps we have already lost the way back; the forbidden pleasure we christened “travel” will follow us into ordinary days.
Haven’t you, too, secretly savored the temperature of obsession when someone murmured, “Only I truly see you”?