"Tomorrow is your exam, and you’re breaking up now?"
The cram-café reading room. Jihoon sets his phone on the table in the air-conditioned second-floor café where every seat faces the KakaoTalk open-chat window.
- Why romance cools: ‘Breakup the night before the exam’ is trending #1. 4,000 comments. YouTube thumbnails scream DEMON in red.
Jihoon scratches the back of his neck. The apartment she lives in is a three-minute walk from here.
Why did it have to be the night before?
That night I knew nothing. I was simply bored with six months of dating.
When the words Let’s end this slipped out, I felt a small jolt of electricity. Twelve hours before the exam. I sensed he would toss all night. The fantasy that the seed of anxiety I planted might bloom by morning was as sweet as the last card you play at love’s end.
Maybe that’s why. Was I afraid he’d blame me with I failed because of you? Or did I secretly hope he would crash and burn?
Dawn of the exam day, a name surfaces in the group chat
The name ‘Park Saegyeol’ appeared on an Instagram story at 3 p.m. The photo: an answer sheet for the college-entrance math section. Scrawled in black marker: Saegyeol, I’m sorry.
Saegyeol is a nineteen-year-old retaking the exam. At 1:47 a.m. she received a text from her boyfriend:
I’m really shaken tonight. I want to end things between us. Good luck tomorrow.
Saegyeol told her parents she had diarrhea. She cried in the bathroom for forty minutes. Tears kept falling on the bus to the testing site.
That afternoon Saegyeol scored 30 on math. A post went up on the cram-school forum:
‘Park Saegyeol’s ex-boyfriend’
What psycho dumps someone the night before the exam?
She’s not innocent—she probably drained him emotionally.
Retaking is a personal choice.
Saegyeol screenshotted the thread and sent it to him:
- Because of you I’m the witch now.
- Because of you my life is ruined.
Three years later, they came looking for me
Junhee, twenty-six, third year at a chaebol. Last winter she ended a year-and-a-half relationship. Her boyfriend was studying for the civil-service exam. Two weeks before the first round.
The reason was simple: I’m not attracted to you anymore.
Both knew the pass rate was five percent. He failed the first round. Six months later he left a comment on her SNS:
I failed because of you. You ruined my life, bitch.
Junhee deleted the comment, then restored it. A year later she confessed:
Breaking up the night before an exam—I think I chose that unconsciously. I wanted him to fail.
Why do we play this card?
Psychologists call the night before an exam the only moment you can manufacture weakness. We sense our lover’s powerlessness and the final struggle for control ignites. The delusion that I can destroy you. And the moment that delusion becomes real, it turns us into the monster.
Haven’t you, too, once eyed your partner’s exam date?
College entrance, promotion tests, certifications. Haven’t you once delayed—or rushed—the breakup because you knew what tomorrow meant to them?
Look back to the end of your last affair. Recall which day was your own private exam. Then ask: was the one who left you the witch? Or were you the witch all along?