Poisoned Chalice (1)

There are only twenty-four hours in a day, no matter how you slice it.

And so, having resumed serializing my novel, I had no choice but to cut back on the amount of sex I was having with Team Leader Hye-jeong.

When Team Leader Hye-jeong said "working late," it was sex wrapped up in our own little euphemism. I had begun to gradually distance myself from her, desperate as she was for it, and so I replied like this:

It was still, admittedly, a little thrilling to watch the usually aloof Team Leader Hye-jeong act cute over messenger — but I couldn't spare the time I needed for writing.

Human Guilty, my newly launched serial, was showing unprecedented reader growth. In the ten years I'd been publishing novels, I had never once seen numbers like this.

Looking at the view-count graph, it shot upward starting from the day I uploaded the third installment. Most likely word had spread around the web novel community site around then.

And I didn't think it was simply because it was an adult title. I'd published adult web novels before — Doing My Paladin Party's Loli Members and Doing Them Hard, for one.

That one, a harem orgy unfolding inside a fantasy setting, got comments complaining the descriptions were too unrealistic, one after another, and I ended up dropping the serial.

Human Guilty, by contrast, was set in the real world rather than a fantasy one. Yet the content was so stimulating that readers left comments of disbelief like "this feels more fantastical than actual fantasy" — racking up more than two hundred likes.

And there wasn't a single complaint about unrealistic descriptions. Which made sense — I'd poured everything I had actually done, exactly as I'd done it, straight into the novel.

The protagonist's name is Han Jae-yu, a rank-and-file employee at a software development company. Having joined the company later than most, he hit it off with a supervisor his own age — a woman named Kim Jeong-hye.

A workplace couple sneaking off to have sex behind their coworkers' backs hardly qualifies as makjang on its own. So I added another layer: Han Jae-yu was a married man, and Kim Jeong-hye a home-wrecker.

On top of that, I gave the main female character Kim Jeong-hye a gap-moe gimmick: at the office she's aloof and brimming with charisma, but in truth she's a self-proclaimed slave, a femsub who hungers for her Master.

Han Yu-jae — no, Han Jae-yu — and Kim Jeong-hye enjoyed their workplace sex. They were going at it hot and heavy in the stall of the women's restroom on the ninth floor when, in the next stall over, Assistant Manager Seo Hyun-a was peeing. It was this third installment that sent reader reactions through the roof.

"This Seo Hyun-a… you don't mean Assistant Manager A-hyun, do you?"

Hye-jeong said it while peering down at my phone screen, and her voice was by no means quiet. Before answering, I had to scan our surroundings first.

Thankfully, no one from our company was in sight. At least, no employees I knew by face.

We were in the middle of a date at a coffee shop near the office building. The only reason we could slip out mid-shift and lounge around like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this was that we'd borrowed the once-every-two-months one-on-one meeting slot.

The phone screen I'd pushed toward Team Leader Hye-jeong displayed the third installment of Human Guilty. I stopped scrolling and answered.

"That's right. The CEO's girlfriend, her."

"Then what is this name? Kim Jeong-hye?"

Hye-jeong furrowed her brow.

Was the problem the sloppiness of swapping her own name around one dimension to get Kim Jeong-hye? Or was she worried that if any of our coworkers were readers, they'd figure out not only that Kim Hye-jeong was in the book, but that Han Jae-yu was, in fact, employee Han Yu-jae?

I wondered which it was — and it turned out to be neither.

"What kind of name is Kim Jeong-hye? Sounds like some old-fashioned name. It's weird. Just make it Kim Hye-jeong. It's a common name anyway."

Team Leader Hye-jeong said this with the boldness of a warlord. It was I, the writer, who was the one shrinking back.

"Then we'll really get caught… If this novel gets any more famous, people at our company might read it."

"So what? Without any proof, who's going to step up and expose it?"

She had a point.

Dear Sir, I regularly enjoy adult web novels. And while reading one, I discovered that it depicts real, living employees of this very company.

Just who, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠exactly, was going to march in and say that? And anyway, there was the perfectly rational counterargument that anyone writing a novel to slander Han Yu-jae and Kim Hye-jeong wouldn't be accusing anyone of anything. And yet…

"Still, it'd be uncomfortable knowing employees suspect us in their heads…"

That worry was mine alone. Hye-jeong just looked back at me as if to ask what the problem was.

"So what? Honestly, it's fun."

Truly. The depraved Teacher Kim Hye-jeong.

I drew great inspiration from her that day too. As thanks, I had sex with her for the first time in a while — rewarding her with a heated massage for her poor little thing. For her crotch, I mean.

Since it was Thursday, ahead of a Friday public holiday, no employees were staying late. So our sex venue naturally settled on a conference room in a corner of the eighth-floor office.

The room had originally been a side office where the finance team worked. For security reasons it had never been fitted with CCTV, and apparently no one had bothered to install one even after the finance team moved to a different floor.

Thanks to that, we were able to enjoy some outrageously bold sex in a room with clear glass overlooking the desks of Development Team 1 — our own team.

"Haa… haa… Put this part… hah! …in the novel too… aah♡ …all of it."

Hye-jeong spoke with great difficulty, her upper body draped over the conference room table. Being relentlessly pounded from behind by me, she had little choice in the matter.

But wait. A slave, daring to make a cheeky request?

As her Master, I delivered the punishment she so rightly deserved — seizing her right buttock in a grip that threatened to make it burst.

"Haaugh!"

Hye-jeong gasped out a moan like a squeaky squeeze toy.

"What was that? Say it again."

Asking this, I simultaneously ramped up the tempo and force of my thrusts.

"Like! …This! …Hngh♡ Hee… huk! Thiiiis—"

Hye-jeong performed her staccato vocals in time with my thrusts. The entertainment value was considerable.

"You'd better speak properly," I said — and then kept pounding her in a way that made it absolutely impossible for her to do so.

"In the conference room! …Nngh♡ I'm… being—aaah…"

I yanked my cock, buried deep inside her, out at high speed. I loved the distinctive moan Hye-jeong let out every time I did that, so it was a thoroughly premeditated draw of the blade.

"Haaaang♡"

Then I turned her body to face me, and immediately lifted her up to sit on the desk.

"So what you're saying is — you want me to put this, Kim Jeong-hye getting pounded in a conference room, into the novel… something like that, right?"

Hye-jeong, perched on the conference room table, wrapped her arms around me. And then she whispered into my ear:

"Yes, Masterr… put it in your work… lots and lots…♡"

I gladly granted that delightfully double-edged request.

I filled the mouth of that work I had personally trained with plenty of my semen, and after work I wrote, recalling that day's sex as I went.

Whenever I ran out of material while writing an installment of Human Guilty, I always went to Team Leader Hye-jeong. It was to attempt new varieties of sex with her.

We worked our way through a private-room bar, a manga café, a coin karaoke booth, and a board game café, savoring the thrill of it all like collecting stamps.

In an elevator packed with coworkers, I boldly grabbed a handful of her ass.

About an hour before she gave an important presentation to the company executives, I offered my encouragement by sliding an egg vibrator inside her pussy — the remote control for which was, of course, resting in my hand.

Having faithfully rendered all of this true-story material, Human Guilty achieved the feat of cracking the top ten on the web novel site's adult rankings.

But around that time, one comment came along and soured things, and it stuck in my eye:

I left this reply:

Having closed my laptop, I let out a deep sigh.

Kim Jeong-hye, criticized for lacking a narrative of her own. And Kim Hye-jeong, the Team Leader who was her real-life model.

Looking back, I realized I knew nothing at all about the actual person that Kim Hye-jeong was.

Why, rather than picking a suitable boyfriend, had she lured in a married man like me? How had she fallen into BDSM in the first place? Why on earth did she leave her home looking like a pigsty while pouring all that passion into her work?

I didn't know the reason behind a single one of them.

I picked up my phone and sent Hye-jeong a text.