The Discovered Videos, and a Confession
Hope, after a long wait, had ended in despair.
Late at night. The smoking area on one side of the apartment complex.
I exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke as if casting out the netorare desires that lived inside me, letting them ride away on the haze.
The arrangement had to allow for regular contact without overlapping with family, friends, or acquaintances. Junho, I had decided, was the perfect fit.
He came by the house periodically to service the water purifier, the air purifier, the bidet. I hadn't known him long, but through that process I had done my own quiet vetting, and I judged that Mijeong would grow comfortable around him too.
Over the course of ten months, Junho visited during the day any number of times for appliance maintenance. Sometimes he ate the lunch Mijeong had prepared before he left. Sometimes he and I drank together at a bar. On weekends I invited him to dinner, and we spent the evening as a group.
But nothing progressed beyond that. Mijeong had merely grown used to dressing casually in front of him. Junho, for his part, only stole the occasional sidelong glance at the exposure her comfortable clothes allowed.
I drew another lungful of pale smoke deep into my chest and let it go, the frustration rising again.
The line I was permitted seemed to stop at anonymously posting my wife on social media. That was about it. Hunting for an unverified stranger through SNS carried too much risk on its own. I decided to simply think of it as having gained a good younger brother.
I resumed the SNS activity I had neglected while focusing on Junho and Mijeong's relationship. If anything, unable to quench my netorare thirst in reality, I sank deeper into the online world. My meetings with Junho grew fewer. Life returned to its ordinary rhythm.
Then the accident happened. Accident may not be the right word — it was the turning point that changed everything between us.
"Turn on the computer and send me the files I organized in the folder."
"You want me to compress the files?"
"Haa… I'm going crazy."
I had left the files I had finished organizing at home over the weekend sitting right there, and now I needed them for the afternoon report. Because I had completed them over the weekend, I had carelessly assumed I would just check for typos after lunch. Only when time was nearly up did I realize the final files were still at home.
My technologically hopeless wife could not send them based on my instructions alone.
Ding-dong.
I heard the doorbell through the phone.
"Looks like Junho's here."
"He was supposed to change the filter today. Put him on."
The sound of the front door opening came through, and then Junho's voice.
"Yes, hyung."
I told him the folder location on the computer, which files I needed, and asked him to send them. In less than five minutes the files arrived in my company email.
"I'm saved. Thanks. Drinks are on me."
"Yes… hyung. Hang in there."
I thought that was the end of it.
The next day I tried to treat him to a drink out of gratitude, but he wouldn't answer. Worried, I texted him asking what was going on, saying I couldn't reach him. Several days later, just before I left work on Friday, Junho finally messaged me.
He said he wanted to talk. Anxious, I suggested we meet at a bar, and he agreed.
"Mijeong, I'm going to have a drink with Junho tonight and then come home."
"Okay… You were worried because he hadn't been answering for days. So he finally got in touch."
"He says he has something to tell me. Probably nothing serious."
"Have a good time."
When I arrived at the bar, Junho was sitting in a corner seat. The moment he saw me, he looked restless, unable to sit still.
"Kid. What's going on that you wouldn't even answer your phone?"
Junho hesitated for a moment.
"Hyung. Please change your assigned technician. I'm sorry."
"What are you talking about all of a sudden?"
He said he couldn't face me. That he had no right to look me in the eye.
"Order some drinks first."
For a long while, neither of us spoke. We clinked glasses and poured liquor into empty stomachs.
"I'm sorry, hyung. That day… I saw it."
"You're cutting out the beginning and the end — what are you—"
"Well…"
Junho confessed that he had seen the sex videos of Mijeong on my computer.
It was my mistake. No one used that computer at home but me. The moment the browser opened, the SNS account that stayed automatically logged in would load first. There was no way Junho hadn't seen it. That day I had been so frantic I never even thought of it. In my rush I had even given him my email ID and password — and with those, logging into the SNS was possible too.
And there on the desktop, sitting plainly: a work folder, and a video folder. If he had already seen the SNS, he would have been able to guess what was inside the video folder.
Phone recordings. Homecam footage. Date by date, a record of every time I had sex with Mijeong. And not a single mosaic — Mijeong's bare face, captured in full.
At Junho's words, my heart dropped.
The first thing that hit me was the fear of a leak.
"For a second I must have lost my mind, because I copied the videos and took them with me."
"…"
I couldn't say a word in response to his confession. I tipped the full glass to my mouth and drained it. The sharp bite of alcohol washed over my tongue. The liquor slid down my throat and lit a fire in my empty stomach.
The words that came out of me next had nothing to do with reason. Maybe I just wanted to act tough.
"How was Mijeong?"
"…"
Junho stared at my face in shock.
"You've been divorced and starving for over three years, right?"
"…"
"Bet you got rock fucking hard watching that."
"…"
"Did you go home, look at Mijeong, and jerk off?"
At that, Junho lowered his head and said nothing. I poured liquor into his empty glass.
"I'm the one who screwed up. What the hell did you do wrong?"
"Even so…"
"Just don't leak them. Wipe them clean."
"Yes."
I filled my own glass, lifted it, and tapped it lightly against Junho's where it sat on the table. He hurriedly raised his in return. I knocked mine back, and he drank with me.
"Fuck…"
Junho flinched at the curse. I let out a long breath, trying to shake off the alcohol.
"You know what netorare is?"
"Netorare?"
"Sharing your woman with another man."
"……"
Junho looked at me. On an empty stomach, with nothing but liquor in him, his face had gone bright red.
"That's my inclination."
"I… already knew, hyung."
I explained the situation from his first visit to the house — how Mijeong had greeted him without underwear on, and everything that had followed.
"Weren't you nervous? Not knowing how I might react…"
"Of course I worried about the unknown. But human desire is what it is…"
I paused and drained the water bottle beside me.
"You only ever watched. You never acted. In the end, you gave up."
Listening to me, Junho looked startled one moment and thoughtful the next.
"Does hyungsoo know?"
"Mijeong's the type who ends up going along with things."
"Going along…"
"Once the atmosphere is set, she adjusts herself to it."
"I see."
"Even so, persuading her, filming, posting — it took six years."
Junho crossed his arms and leaned back against the table. Head bowed, he seemed to think for a while. When he looked up again, he let out a sigh.
"Hyung. Please hear me out without misunderstanding."
"Go ahead."
I focused on what he was about to say.
"But are you really okay with it?"
"With what?"
"Hyungsoo… being with another man."
I hesitated for a moment.
A turning point. Whatever choice I made here would change everything that came after — I could feel it. In the end, I decided to tell Junho the truth.
Expectation and anxiety. Worry and excitement. A heart I couldn't get a read on. But more than the fear that I might regret it, the curiosity about an unknown I had never experienced was stronger.
"I told you I lived pretty wild in the past, right?"
"You did."
Junho had run around like a thug back in his hometown, but the neighborhood was small and even his rebellions had limits. A place so tight that even a minor slip reached his parents' ears. That was why he had never caused real trouble during his school years.
But after he and a friend moved up to Seoul, things changed.
"I mentioned I had this one friend, right?"
"The one who came up to Seoul with you…"
Once that friend started dating, the number of times he brought girls back to the one-room they shared kept climbing.
"We were twenty, full of hormones, and neither of us had money for a motel — so he just brought them to the place."
At first Junho, out of consideration for his friend, would clear out. But as the frequency rose, even the trips to the PC bang started to wear him down.
"At some point it pissed me off. We each paid half the rent, and I was getting kicked out every single time."
"So then."
Fed up, Junho had been driven out of the house again that day. Seething, he downed soju at a convenience store and walked straight back home.
The moment he opened the door, the sight of his friend and his friend's girlfriend having sex hit him full in the face. His friend hurriedly yanked the blanket over both of them.
"You fucking bastard, why the hell are you coming in?"
"You piece of shit, I pay half the rent too — does it make any sense that I get kicked out every damn time?"
"Fuck. Your friend's trying to have a relationship here."
"Crazy bastard. Relationship my ass — you're just fucking."
Junho sat down against one wall of the one-room. He turned on the TV, and a faint light spilled into the dark room.
"You insane? You're not leaving?"
"Fuck it. Screw or don't screw — I'm watching TV."
I wanted to know what happened after that. I pulled myself closer to the table and asked.
"So what happened?"
"That bastard was just as crazy."
"…"
"He pulled the blanket over his head and kept going with his girlfriend."
"Huh…"