Chapter 8
For several days after the swapping, the relationship between the two of them had seemed to come back to life on the surface.
Every time Taehyun held Seojin, he remembered the way she had moaned beneath Jeonghun, and that decadent fantasy let him forget his erectile dysfunction for a little while.
Seojin was the same. Whenever she thought of that secret shower with Jeonghun, heat flooded her whole body.
It was a secret that belonged to her alone, something she kept pressed deep inside her chest.
Perhaps it was the effect of the swapping, but even their daily lives began to change.
Taehyun, whose vitality had been deadened by thoughts of swapping, finally seemed to be coming back to life.
His mistakes had dropped dramatically compared to before, and he had regained a sense of confidence in their sex life.
As a man, Taehyun felt full of confidence.
At work, when he was praised and thought he had finally returned to normal, there were also times when the traces of those twenty minutes Seojin had spent with Jeonghun, and the image of them having sex, sent him through a hellish stretch of torment.
Really? You only washed together? I heard sex noises with my own ears...
The trigger cared nothing for time or place.
Even in the middle of a solemn report in the conference room, if the image of Jeonghun’s large hand gripping Seojin’s white thigh flashed through his mind, Taehyun’s lower body would rise up pathetically hard.
Again and again, Taehyun was being crushed by the ugly instinct hidden behind his social mask.
Meanwhile, Seojin also felt the changes that had come over her after the swapping.
She sat in the Accounting Team, staring at the Excel work spilling from the cold glow of her monitor, yet the shower sex that kept surfacing in wisps like steam continued to stir her.
“Hah...”
She bit down on her pen and shut her eyes tight, trying to forget it.
Forget it... Han Seojin... It was a mistake... just a mistake... right?
Stay calm... calm down... this is all for Taehyun...
Seojin kept telling herself that the sex in the bathroom had been a mistake, something Jeonghun had done all by himself, and she tried to steady her breathing and calm her nerves.
But when she looked at and felt the bruise left on her thigh, it was as if that moment began playing again inside her head.
Thinking back on those pleasurable moments of sex behind her husband’s back, she crossed her legs.
The lower part of Seojin’s body was betraying her mind and growing wet.
No... stop... stop...
She kept denying the thoughts of sex, but they kept returning, and Seojin’s efficiency at work began to fall.
But the benefit of that swapping did not last long.
“...I’m sorry. Why is this happening again all of a sudden?”
A few days later, Taehyun lowered his head again on the bed.
Even when Seojin stroked his body, there was only so much that the lingering images in his memory could do.
Seojin fell silent, looking at Taehyun’s limp member. Disappointment and emptiness mingled in her eyes.
Taehyun’s composure was falling apart again.
Instead of looking at the Excel window, he kept going to the bathroom and searching for photos and couples posted on the Open Sex Club site.
And as he read the reviews, his longing only deepened.
He could no longer be satisfied by ordinary stimulation.
Day by day, he found himself searching for a stimulus that could restore his self-esteem.
If I just do it one more time... one more time and it’ll be perfect.
That thought kept moving through his mind.
Then one evening, the two of them sat on the sofa after dinner. In the silence, the nine o’clock news rang out emptily.
“Honey.”
“...Mm?”
Taehyun spoke first. His gaze stayed fixed on the TV, but his attention was on Seojin.
“Last time... at the hotel... how was it? Tell me honestly.”
Seojin held her breath for a moment. The thick, intimate sensation she had shared with Jeonghun in the bathroom came back to her with vivid force.
“It was good... what about you?”
“It was good for me too. But... was he better than me?”
Taehyun’s question was sharp. It carried jealousy, along with a twisted need to confirm the pleasure his wife had felt.
“No. Of course you’re better. You’re my husband.”
Seojin lied reflexively. But Taehyun did not miss the tiny hesitation in her voice.
“Then what did you do in the bathroom? Why did it take so long?”
Taehyun wanted an answer that would let Seojin’s mouth confirm the truth and validate his fantasies.
It showed on his face as well.
“...We just washed each other. That’s why it took so long.”
Her voice was small and trembling.
“Oh, really? You really just washed each other?”
There was suspicion in Taehyun’s tone. Her cheeks burned as if they might catch fire.
“Yes. I said we just washed each other... why do you keep asking?”
“I’m just curious.”
Seojin’s voice rose defensively.
In the end, she still couldn’t meet Taehyun’s eyes. Watching her trembling hands, Taehyun felt his chest tighten.
He sensed that she was lying, but instead of getting angry, he imagined his wife leaning against the bathroom wall, soaked by another man’s touch.
With that horrible image came a crushing hard-on, pathetic and unavoidable.
“Seojin. If I ask you to do it one more time... could you?”
“What? Swapping... again?”
Seojin turned her head and looked at Taehyun. His eyes were desperate. No—he was yearning.
“I’ll... think about it...”
Seojin spent several painful days after Taehyun’s renewed proposal.
She remembered the look on his face a few days earlier, when he had stared in despair at his penis, which refused to rise.
She had tried to comfort him, but she had also been badly hurt herself.
Her pride as a woman had taken a terrible blow.
And in that moment, she could not deny that strangely enough, Jeonghun’s rough hands had come to mind.
She couldn’t understand why she had thought of that.
It was a different feeling entirely, something more than mere sex, something different from the sexless marriage itself.
In that moment, Seojin realized that her relationship with Taehyun could never return to how it had been by normal means.
The method called swapping was a way to keep their relationship alive, but it was also a dangerous lifeline.
For the sake of her relationship with Taehyun, she could not let go of that line. But was that all there was to it?
She found herself asking that question.
The touches and stares she had felt starting at the reunion, and Jeonghun’s gestures during the swapping, had all been terrifying and unpleasant.
And yet, between that discomfort and fear, there had also been a strange thrill. It had been embarrassing, and she had felt her senses sharpen without even meaning to in that situation.
She still didn’t understand that feeling. She only thought that something about her had become a little strange.
Inside her, several thoughts were locked in fierce conflict.
One said she had to sacrifice herself for her husband. Another warned that if she did this one more time, there would be no coming back. And a third wanted to confirm that dark, nameless feeling she couldn’t explain.
To be honest, there had been nothing particularly special about the man named Jeonghun.
And yet, the moment he had pressed down on her wrist, the moment he had grabbed her hair and forced her head down—
that insolent touch had left a feeling she couldn’t erase.
What Taehyun gave her had always been warm and gentle.
That was unmistakably love.
But this had been a pleasure fundamentally different from love, a pleasure rising from somewhere deep inside her that she did not even know existed.
Why did I feel that way...?
It was humiliating. Her husband had given his permission, and in front of him she had sucked another man’s cock—and even done it in secret. The image of herself gasping like an animal in those moments felt foreign now.
What remained was not longing for Jeonghun, but a question and a thirst for the unfamiliar version of herself.
If she felt that sensation one more time, just once more, would that thirst finally be quenched?
Seojin was afraid. But more powerful than her fear was the filthy expectation rising toward that unknown hunger.
For several days, the two of them lay turned away from each other. Neither could sleep.
Every night, Seojin felt Taehyun’s back against hers and shivered with guilt.
At the same time, she caught herself imagining what would happen if they did swapping again, and the realization sent her reeling.
The vitality and sensation she had never felt in her dry relationship with her husband as a woman.
The new situation she would face with a stranger, and the feelings that might come with it.
After days of hesitation, Seojin finally opened her mouth quietly in bed.
“Are you asleep?”
“...No...”
Taehyun hadn’t been able to sleep either.
“You know what you said earlier...”
“Mm?”
It felt as if Taehyun’s body had gone rigid.
“If you really want it, then let’s do it.”
A wave of guilt crashed over Taehyun before joy could even reach him.
I’m doing this again...
And yet even that guilt only made his body harder.
Seojin’s voice was calmer and firmer than usual.
But beneath it lay a faint tremor, as if she had already given up on everything.
She kept telling herself, over and over, that this choice was nothing more than the noble sacrifice of a wife to cure her husband’s illness.
Only then did it feel as if she could keep herself intact.
But behind that justification, Seojin could feel her heart racing on its own.
Am I really doing this for him...?
The truth hidden beneath the excuse of sacrifice was ugly.
A twisted desire to taste again the unfamiliar sensation and pressure she had felt before was already instinctively soaking the lower part of Seojin’s body.
Shame at deceiving herself, fear of crossing a line she could never return from, and, overpowering them all, a nameless anticipation.
Seojin bit her lip and forced those tangled emotions down.
Taehyun, knowing nothing of her inner turmoil, wrapped her in a crushing embrace from behind as if he had been granted salvation by his wife’s surrender.
Taehyun swallowed hard.
Relief that he had won his wife’s consent was immediately followed by self-disgust at the fact that he would have to cast her again into another man’s arms.
But Taehyun could not stop.
This dangerous lifeline was the only way they could keep breathing as a married couple.
“Really?”
“Mm...”
“Thank you, Seojin... truly.”
Taehyun held Seojin tightly from behind. Seojin closed her eyes as she felt her husband’s warmth.