“She undid my first button”
My ankles froze in front of the convenience-store cigarette rack; the asphalt’s summer heat bit into my skin. Across the street, at the vegetable stand—Minseok. He still rubbed the back of his neck with both hands, a habit I had shaken off in a single day yet lingered on his body. But my eyes slid past him.
To his left, the new woman. In her hand, a plastic bag. I knew at a glance. Folded inside were the jeans that, until last week, had clung to me like skin. A small hole above the right knee—made by my playful fingertip pressing in again and again. That hole had resisted every wash; it was the residue of our time together.
She lifted the jeans and gently popped the first button. Zzzzip—I heard nothing, yet the sound sliced cleanly through my skull.
“She rummages through the seams of my body”
The papers we signed no longer contained the word “we.” Still, my chest felt not cracked open but peeled. The dry-cleaning plastic, stiff and starched, swept over my body like a cold hand.
Perhaps she is sliding into my jeans right now.
And perhaps Minseok is behind her, fingers on the zipper, pulling it down once more.
On the bed I abandoned, does my scent still linger? Will she lead his fingertips to the hollow I used to occupy? Imagination should have stopped there—must stop there—yet my toes trembled.
“Underground parking, the second encounter”
Jihye, 34, ninety-seven days divorced. I moved—part accident, part design—into the same neighborhood as Minseok and his new woman.
First sighting: the underground lot. Minseok’s car glided past my BMW. Through the window, the back of his head; one step behind, her silhouette. I braked; my foot shook on the pedal.
Second: the elevator. The doors slid open and there she was. “Oh, Jihye-ssi?”—a smile. When Minseok passed my name to her tongue, how did the tip of hers curl around it? Just before the doors closed, she lifted the bag in her hand. My jeans flashed into view.
“The empty space in the wardrobe”
People call jealousy a feeling aimed at another person. But this is an issue of power. The moment the space I ruled, the time I inhabited, the memories I created are occupied by someone new—he is not replacing me, he is erasing me.
I drove through the parking lot again; my foot still shook on the brake. Outside the elevator she smiled once more. “Oh, Jihye-ssi?” I couldn’t answer. The vision of her wearing my jeans beside Minseok—everything replayed inside my head.
“She fills the void I left”
Back home, I slipped off the coat that hung on the doorknob. A magnet note clung to the fridge, a single hair rolled under the sofa—each time she clears one away, I disappear a little more.
The door closed. The elevator’s metallic clang echoed down the corridor. She and Minseok—and my jeans. I am still standing there.
Temperature: 34 °C
The beer can I took from the fridge chilled my palm. The sight of her in my jeans beside Minseok—this is not simple jealousy but witnessing my own erasure.
I stepped onto the balcony and lit a cigarette. Window by window, the lights below went dark. Which one is theirs? The moment she slips into my jeans and Minseok’s arm circles her waist—the thought still makes me shiver.
I set the beer on the bedside table. The knowledge that I can no longer enter that house hollowed my chest. She fills the void I left; he fills the void she will leave; we go on living without each other’s traces.
The temperature remains 34 °C. Summer night; cigarette smoke drifts along the ceiling. The instant Minseok’s hand encircles her waist—I see it even with my eyes closed. And to that extent, I am erased.