Different from Me
Seoyeon almost never initiated sex. To be exact, in all the years we had been together, not once had she parted her lips to say she wanted me, nor had she ever reached out to undress me first. During the first few months of our relationship, I had no idea that was abnormal. I had simply assumed that every ordinary romance unfolded in this neat, orderly progression.
You held hands shyly. You shared delicious meals like everyone else, watched movies side by side in the dim theater, and walked her all the way to her door while swallowing your reluctance to part. On occasion, you shared a gentle kiss outside her front entryway. On the nights you longed to be closer, you swallowed dryly, nervously gauging her mood. When Seoyeon shook her head and said she was tired, you withdrew your hand and stopped. When she said she had to wake up early tomorrow, you hid your disappointment and let her go without complaint. And when she said she wasn't feeling well and reached for menstrual pain pills, you simply lay quietly beside her through the night, holding her in your arms. I believed that was gentlemanly consideration. I believed that was love. At least, until I began to grasp the miserable truth.
"Tonight?" Seoyeon asked in a low voice.
Flustered by a wave of unprovoked embarrassment, I paced aimlessly before awkwardly pulling open the refrigerator door. Inside the cold, desolate fridge, there was, predictably, nothing decent to eat: three clear plastic water bottles, leftover kimchi wrapped in plastic that had dried to a crisp, and a carton of milk swollen slightly past its expiration date.
"No."
"Hm?"
"Just..."
I nudged the fridge door shut with a quiet thud.
"I was wondering if you were staying over at my place tonight."
Seoyeon was curled up on the sofa, staring expressionlessly at her laptop screen. Behind the thick lenses of her glasses, the stark white window of a meeting document reflected coolly.
"I have to leave early tomorrow."
"What time?"
"Around seven?"
"Then you could still stay over. I'll call you a taxi in the morning."
At my tentative suggestion, Seoyeon's slender fingers clattering over the keys froze instantly. It was the briefest flicker of silence. Then, as if nothing had happened, she resumed her dry typing.
"It's just more comfortable sleeping alone at home."
"...Ah."
"What is it?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
It really should have been nothing. Sleeping over and taking her frail body in my arms to have sex were obviously two different things. Yet at some point, the two had become hopelessly tangled in my mind until they meant virtually the same thing. Sleeping over. Lying in bed together. Our bare skin pressing close, naked and intimate. Wondering if tonight, finally, I could shove my cock deep inside that tight cunt of hers. That was always the sequence of my desires. But for Seoyeon, it wasn't like that at all.
"Hey."
"Yeah?"
"Are you upset right now?"
My heart dropped into my stomach, and I shook my head at once.
"No, not at all."
Seoyeon pulled her gaze from the laptop and looked quietly up at me. Her calm eyes narrowed behind her glasses.
"Your face practically screams that you're dying to do it."
"Really, that's not it, Seoyeon."
"...Alright."
I hated that flat, dry "alright" more than anything in the world. She didn't get angry like I would have. She didn't offer a hug out of guilt, nor did she press me on why I was so desperate to get laid. Just, alright. And right there, like a clean cut from a blade, every trace of conversation and every possibility of touch came to a dead end.
It was from that day onward that I began pathetically tallying the number of times we had sex in my head. One week, once. The next week, nothing. The week after that, once. It wasn't as if I opened a calendar and circled the dates; I didn't want to turn myself into someone so wretched and grotesque. Yet regardless of my will, my body remembered those dates with razor clarity. The last time had been a damp, rainy Friday. Before that, a Saturday weekend. And before that, a void of over three weeks where I hadn't been able to lay a single finger on her. And strangely enough, the nights I was rejected—forced to choke down my lust—were burned into my memory far more vividly than the days we had passionately tangled together.
"I'm too tired today."
Once.
"I have an early meeting tomorrow morning."
Twice.
"Let's not. Let's just hold each other quietly and go to sleep."
Three times.
"I'm really exhausted tonight, so let's not do anything. Just sleep."
Four times.
There was nothing wrong with the words themselves. Maybe I was the freak, pitching a tent like a dog in heat every single day, desperate to fuck. Seoyeon had always been buried under an excessive workload. Even after coming home, she would open her laptop to review documents, and on weekends she remained smothered by her job. When exhaustion hit her, she fell asleep the moment her head touched the pillow with terrifying speed.
Whenever I swallowed my sigh and quietly pulled the blanket over her shoulders, she would murmur,
"Thank you."
Then she would close her eyes, her face pristine, devoid of shame or lust. Every time, I was left staring blankly at the pale, cold ceiling in the dark. Beside me, Seoyeon's petite, slender frame breathed in steady, even rhythm. Her delicate torso rose and fell faintly with each breath, lifting the quilt. Listening to that clean, quiet breathing—a sound entirely free of desire for me—a frigid alienation washed over the depths of my chest. Lying there holding my breath, watching that chaste, barren composure, I felt sickeningly like a pervert.
One Saturday, I went to the cinema with Seoyeon. It was a quiet, understated film she had personally chosen days in advance because she wanted to see it. The runtime dragged on for a little over two hours, and to me, it was agonizingly dull. By the halfway mark, I couldn't even remember the plot. It was all because, in the dark, her slender hand rested motionless on the armrest between us.
I slid my fingers over hers. As expected of her low body temperature, her hand was slender and cool, yet carried a subtle warmth. After about ten minutes, it grew clammy from the sweat pooling in my palm. Without a shred of hesitation, her eyes fixed firmly on the screen, Seoyeon slid her hand away.
I stared dumbly at the glowing screen. It was a rejection I was used to, but for some reason that day, every nerve in my body stood on edge, and a suffocating pressure tightened around my chest.
I couldn't even hold her hand comfortably for long. I couldn't draw out our kisses to tangle our tongues. Look as I might, she never once initiated contact or pressed her body against mine. When she came to my place, the first thing she did was change into baggy sweatpants and a shirt to cover herself. When we lay in bed, she always turned her back toward me to face the wall. If I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind and reached to cup her breasts, she would tolerate it patiently at first, but the moment our body heat rose and she felt warm, she would smoothly slip my hand away and brush it aside.
Every single one of those neat, small rejections pointed toward a single, unmistakable truth: she did not want me as a man. She felt nothing for the bursting sexual desire raging inside me.
The film ended. The theater lights snapped on, and people rose from their seats. Adjusting her glasses, Seoyeon turned toward me.
"Boring, wasn't it?"
"Huh?"
"I looked over and saw you looking miserable the whole time."
"Ah, it just wasn't really my style."
"I picked it, so you didn't like it."
"See, that's why I can't honestly say it was boring."
"Why?"
"I was worried you'd sulk."
At that, Seoyeon let out a small, amused chuckle.
"Why would I sulk over something as silly as a boring movie? I'm not a child."
Her neat, quiet smile was genuinely lovely to see. And that was why my heart grew infinitely more confused and wretched.
She was never someone who disliked me as a person. She undeniably cared for me deeply. She genuinely enjoyed sharing good food with me, and whenever I sent her short, funny clips on social media, she would text back warmly even late into the night. When I caught a cold and fell sick, she would rush over after work carrying medicine and hot porridge. On days when pouring rain caught me without an umbrella, she would walk out to the subway station holding one to meet me. For my birthday, she handed me a meticulously handwritten letter filled with stories from my elementary school days that even I had forgotten, alongside every good quality she saw in me.
She liked me. She loved me, truly and sincerely. It was just that rubbing our flesh together, pressing our genitals against one another, pouring out raw, unbridled lust—her way of loving through the body was fundamentally different from mine. And as her partner, I was expected to broad-mindedly understand that difference and endure it.
"Seoyeon."
"Yeah?"
"Do you... not really like this kind of thing?"
That night, we were standing before the front door of Seoyeon's studio apartment. It was a question I had lost sleep over for days, turning it over in my mind before finally gathering the courage to ask. Seoyeon's finger paused midair just before punching in the digital door lock passcode.
"Like what?"
Now that the words had left my lips, shame came rushing in.
"Just... having sex. Or deeper physical affection."
"Where is this coming from all of a sudden?"
"No, I'm just... genuinely curious."
Seoyeon fell into quiet contemplation. Those few silent seconds of thought felt as excruciatingly long as an entire year.
"It's not that I dislike it."
It was the exact response I had anticipated. Holding my breath, my chest tight, I waited for what came next.
"I just don't think about it as often as you do."
With a short electronic chime, the lock clicked open. Nonchalantly, Seoyeon slipped into the apartment first. I remained standing outside the door like an idiot, frozen in a daze.
I just don't think about it as often as you do.
It was barely a handful of words, no more than nine syllables. Yet in my mind, it drove in like a dagger, heavy and slow to fade.