The Beginning
"Why do men go so crazy over younger women?"
Chae-rin let the words out with a sigh, then peered into the depths of her beer mug, long since drained. There she was, eyes pressed right up to the glass as if confirming its emptiness required forensic precision. Me, on the other hand — a bottle short of my usual limit, I was stone-cold sober.
Chae-rin had a boyfriend two years her junior. That boyfriend had cheated on her with a girl five years younger than him. With the breakup only three days behind her, she was the natural guest of honor at that day's drinking session.
The time was three years ago. Twenty-nine years old, I had just set my first foot into this drinking club.
It had started with a meetup app; two days later I was recruited into the group chat, and for the four days after that I worked hard to prove myself a safe enough person to attend an offline gathering.
It was a somewhat older crowd. With me, pushing thirty, anchoring the youngest end of the roster, that says it all. Fortunately, I'd only just joined my company at the time, so being treated as the baby of the group was old hat.
I typed away diligently, dutifully laughing at the older guys' dad jokes and egging on the older women's boundary-pushing talk alike.
My goal was one, and one alone: show up to the meetup, sweet-talk a suitable woman, and devour her.
With my fingers already busy grinding out their affection points, I could naturally promise my first attendance, playing the man overwhelmed by such warm hospitality.
The venue was a beer house in Jongno. Its low star rating made it easy to book a group table even on a Friday night. I stepped through its doors, my competitive hunger carefully concealed.
"Yu-jae, right?"
Perhaps because they'd already studied my profile photo, the guys and girls picked me out at once.
"Even more handsome than your pictures."
"Young and handsome — that's the winning ticket. Twenty-something... I'm jealous! Go on, take your welcome drink."
I hardly knew where to put myself beneath the downpour of compliments. Even so, I did my best not to look too pleased about it. The evening's main topic of conversation was hardly a cheerful one, after all.
Moon Chae-rin, '89, ENFP. I'd already read her heartbreak saga in exhaustive detail in the group chat.
About two hours in, the senior members — the guys who effectively ran the group — suddenly closed in around Chae-rin. Then came lines like these:
"Now's your chance. Get your revenge."
"Go date a guy five years younger, just like that bastard did."
"Hey, hey. If Chae-rin wants to beat him at his own game, she's gotta go six years younger, minimum."
And all the while they kept sneaking sidelong glances my way — they were dealing a rigged hand of Go-Stop, and it showed.
And lo, a newcomer six years Chae-rin's junior had conveniently appeared, decent-looking enough — clearly they meant to string us together.
There were five women in the group in total, and Chae-rin, born in '89, was the oldest. Judging by how readily the guys were tossing her out as bait, she was apparently the least popular of them, too.
Fools, the lot of them. Age was not what mattered.
To my eyes, Chae-rin was the most attractive woman there. Fresh off a breakup, her sorrow-drenched gaze only deepened the appeal.
Black track pants and a loose gray tee, topped with a carelessly thrown-on gray... no, wait. Had it been white to begin with? Call it a cardigan closer to a grime-faded white than any true gray.
Never mind the outfit — even her makeup was visibly slapdash, and she was still pretty.
She was, in the flesh, the very fantasy I'd long nursed about older women. Not the meticulously groomed "Dongtan MILF" style, but the understated, easygoing older-sister type.
Yet look closer at her features and the story changed. Done up properly, with real effort, she would radiate pure goddess. That high-bridged nose, those long, finely tapered eyes, those coolly haughty lips.
Her midface ran a touch long — out of step with what the current generation demands. But she summoned the Korean screen beauties I'd grown up watching in old films and dramas. Something in the vein of Han Chae-yeon or Lee Mi-yeong. A hint of Geum Sa-rang in her, too.
The other women the guys were busy fawning over, meanwhile, were closer to what you'd call the standard Gangnam-beauty template.
Lips inflated to bursting, button noses curled into a near-perfect J — nothing about it natural. Their plunging tops bared cleavage in full, and the implants nestled within looked fit to die screaming under the oppression of their push-up bras.
"Yu-jae... right? I'm terrible with names."
Chae-rin, freshly back from the bathroom, dropped into the seat beside me without warning. There was no piercing cloud of perfume about her. Just the clean scent of shampoo, and nothing more.
She even tacked on an apology for failing to look after the newcomer properly, seeing as she was a veteran of the group herself. That voice of hers was devastatingly seductive.
You know how some women are like that. Normally high-energy, but only when their mood sinks like this does their sexiness truly amplify — something along those lines.
Pressing down her naturally high-pitched voice, striving to appear quiet and demure — and that, in itself, was its own kind of delicious.
With a god-tier-delicious older woman now occupying the seat beside me, this was, unmistakably, my moment. I needed to deploy an effective tactic to keep her there.
Chae-rin's lament session had come and gone a while back. Somewhere in it, she had idly let fall a question.
'Why do men go so crazy over younger women?'
I had not let that question wash past me. I'd been biding my time for exactly this opening to answer it.
"Age has never really mattered to me."
At that, Chae-rin stole a sidelong glance at me.
"Really? I suppose you're a rather special man, Yu-jae."
She was edging into half-casual speech, and I didn't mind it one bit.
In place of a reply, I put on an awkward expression.
The dish of peanuts sat quite some distance from our end of the table. Chae-rin stretched her arm toward it, straining with everything she had, even letting out a little groan — hopelessly short.
"Nnngh...!"
Inwardly I wanted to lean in and savor that moan a while longer, but I delivered a flawless performance of a well-bred gentleman. I reached out, plucked up a few peanuts, and poured them into her open palm.
"Oh my, thank you."
Chae-rin looked down at the peanuts resting in her palm and went on.
"You know, Yu-jae, there's something a little awkward about you."
That reaction I had not seen coming. What part of what I'd just done was supposed to be awkward?
I stared at her, eyes gone round. She, by contrast, narrowed hers and continued.
"You could've just pulled the dish over. What is this sense of yours, portioning them into my palm like middle schoolers sharing snacks?"
Then, with a shy look, she added:
"It's cute."
She murmured it as if hoping I wouldn't hear, but it came through loud and clear.
Going by my not-inconsiderable history with women, I had clearly seized the upper hand.
"...Well, anyway, at least every man I've ever dated was like that. With older men, they were always the one more in love with me. With younger ones — like this last time — the man's heart was always the first to gooo~..."
'The first to gooo~.' A sulky face paired with that adorable whine of a drawl — from an older woman, no less.
This was a rare find. If I was ever to land my first older girlfriend, she would have to be precisely this kind of woman. Which was exactly why I'd never dated an older woman until now.
I threw the full force of my being into winning Chae-rin's favor.
At the singing bar for round two, I held down the seat beside her the entire night. I listened dutifully to her laments, and when she tore into her ex with venom, I gladly piled on.
Somewhere in the midst of it, she dropped all formality with me, and the older guys kept sneaking looks at the two of us, looking thoroughly pleased with themselves.
One booze-soaked K-ballad after another made it into the queue. The mood ripened to the brim.
Chae-rin suddenly pulled herself in close and said:
"This is Cobol, the dog my older sister raises. Cute, right?"
Pretending to study the photo of Cobol on the phone she thrust in front of me, I bowed my head — and gave my full attention to her armpit alone.
Her fault for shedding the cardigan because the room ran hot. Her fault for wearing, of all things, a gray tee with loose, drooping sleeves.
My gaze stayed nailed to the crease of her armpit, laid bare between that loose sleeve and a forearm soft as fresh tofu. And in that state, I answered.
"Cute."
The others just then were belting out Hype Girl by Yujins. Perhaps my voice drowned in the racket, because Chae-rin hollered:
"What was that!?"
I pressed my mouth right up to her ear and shouted:
"I said she's cute!"
At that, Chae-rin let a meaningful smile curl across her lips.
Both Chae-rin and I were pacing ourselves at the singing bar. I did it to keep my head in the game of seducing her; she did it because round one had already left her thoroughly pickled.
Perhaps the buzz was burning off and a migraine moving in, because Chae-rin kept pressing a hand to her forehead.
On my way back from the bathroom, I stopped at a nearby convenience store and returned with two jelly-stick hangover cures.
The others were screaming Love Dive by AIZ at the top of their lungs. Seizing my moment, I slipped one stick to Chae-rin and no one else.
Murmuring her thanks, Chae-rin tore the tip off the stick and sucked it down in long pulls. The sight was erotic enough that I barely stopped myself from producing my own stick on the spot.
"I've got somewhere to be tomorrow morning, so I'm heading off."
Just before the group moved on to round three at an izakaya, Chae-rin said this and took her leave.
"Leaving already? Ha... Normally there'd be no mercy for that. I'll let it slide, just because it's today."
Dong-jin, the organizer, saw her off with undisguised reluctance.
"Unnie! If you ever need a guy introduced, text me anytime!"
One of the Gangnam-style unnies hollered this at Chae-rin's retreating back.
Without so much as a glance over her shoulder, Chae-rin answered with an awkward little wave. That wave read, as clearly as words, as 'not interested.'
I felt no disappointment whatsoever. From the very day I'd first met her, I had never once expected the main event to happen that same night.
Less than three minutes after she left, I sent her a private text.
This, too, was not out of any aching longing. Truly.
And yet, back came this reply.
Come see them in person, she said. I replied:
Then, after a gap of about two minutes, my phone buzzed.
Inwardly, I let out a triumphant whoop.
Dong-jin, the organizer, had only just finished settling the bill at the singing bar.
I shot up from the bench across from the counter, walked over to Dong-jin, and said:
"I have somewhere to be tomorrow morning as well."