angelus novus

yunjin never came home that night.

i stayed awake longer than i meant to. a book rested open on my lap beneath the bedside lamp, though eventually i realized i had been staring at the same paragraph for so long the words had lost their meaning. music played softly somewhere in the apartment. piano music. thin and distant. between songs, i could hear the building itself settling around me. pipes shifting inside the walls. water moving briefly through some unseen floor above ours. once or twice i thought i heard the elevator stop downstairs.

each time, i waited.

nothing followed.

by midnight the apartment had developed the stale warmth of a place sealed shut too long. i remember touching the bedsheets and finding them faintly damp against my fingertips. the air smelled strange too. not dirty exactly. just overused. as though someone had been breathing there continuously in my absence.

at some point exhaustion overtook me. i fell asleep sitting upright against the headboard with the lamp still burning beside me.

when i woke, daylight had already filled the room.

for several seconds i remained perfectly still.

i had the unpleasant feeling that something had changed while i was asleep. not the obvious thing. not yunjin’s disappearance. something smaller. harder to locate. the proportions of the room perhaps. or the silence inside it.

birds were singing outside the window.

the sound irritated me immediately.

yunjin’s side of the bed remained untouched. the pillow still held its shape. her summer pajamas rested folded neatly on the nightstand exactly where i had left them the evening before. looking at them made me uneasy in a way i could not explain. they no longer resembled clothing. they looked more like evidence left behind after some minor domestic accident.

i turned the bedside lamp back on despite the daylight.

the yellow light spread weakly across the room. instead of making things clearer, it seemed to flatten them. the wardrobe. the curtains. the glass of water beside the bed. everything took on the dull stillness of objects photographed for a catalog.

the apartment felt paused.

not empty.

suspended.

as though time had continued everywhere else but stopped quietly here during the night.

i got out of bed and walked through the apartment in my pajamas. first the kitchen. then the living room. then yunjin’s room, although i already knew she would not be there. i checked the bathroom too. the closets. i even pulled back the shower curtain, feeling ridiculous the moment i did it.

nothing.

still, the silence inside the apartment felt wrong. it did not feel natural for silence to gather this heavily around ordinary furniture. around shelves and lamps and coffee cups. it felt arranged somehow. intentional.

every sound i made seemed to disturb it.

the floorboards beneath my feet.

my sleeve brushing lightly against the hallway wall.

my own breathing.

standing in the kitchen, i suddenly became aware of the refrigerator humming. the sound had always been there of course, but that morning it seemed louder than usual. not malfunctioning. just more present. the low electrical vibration spread softly through the apartment until it no longer sounded mechanical at all. it sounded biological. like something sleeping lightly in the next room.

i filled the kettle and lit the gas.

while waiting for the water to boil, i noticed another sound beneath the refrigerator hum. a faint dripping noise somewhere inside the walls. slow. irregular. for a while i stood completely still listening to it.

then the kettle screamed.

the noise startled me badly enough that i nearly dropped it.

i made coffee and sat at the table.

there was half a sandwich from the previous night wrapped carefully in plastic inside the refrigerator. i ate it without appetite. across from me, yunjin’s chair remained pushed neatly beneath the table.

only then did it occur to me that this was the first breakfast i had eaten alone in years.

we had missed lunches before. dinners too. but breakfast belonged to us with the strange rigidity of superstition. no matter how late we slept, we always woke early enough to sit together for a little while before work.

that morning her chair remained empty.

i found myself unable to stop looking at it.

while drinking the coffee, i remembered the faint smell of cologne behind her ears the morning before. not mine. something colder. cleaner. the memory returned with uncomfortable clarity. the smooth porcelain line of her back beneath my hands as i pulled up the zipper of her dress.

without meaning to, i imagined another man unfastening it somewhere else.

the thought entered my mind quietly and remained there.

then i noticed the taste.

at first i assumed the cup had not been rinsed properly. the coffee carried a faint chemical sweetness at the back of the tongue. soap perhaps. or face lotion. i frowned and drank again.

the taste became stronger.

i stood up immediately and poured the coffee into the sink. steam rose briefly from the drain carrying a smell that made my stomach tighten unexpectedly. i rinsed the cup carefully. washed the pot again. smelled the tap water.

nothing.

still, when i poured another cup, the same taste returned at once.

not overpowering.

intimate.

that was what disturbed me most.

the flavor seemed less added to the coffee than already waiting inside my mouth before i drank it.

suddenly the entire apartment smelled faintly cosmetic to me. soap. moisturizer. damp fabric drying indoors without sunlight. i looked toward the hallway half expecting to find yunjin standing there silently watching me.