The Village's Hidden Festival (9)
A few days had passed.
Contrary to what he'd expected—that everything would change after that night—nothing had. Not really. It was almost unbelievable. Everything remained exactly the same.
When Suho returned home that day, he'd assumed his entire world would be upended. His once ordinary daily routine, the relationships between people, everything he thought he knew. After experiencing that kind of festival, how could things possibly stay the same?
Take the couple next door, for instance. They'd lived right beside him since he first settled in Gwichuok-ri at the age of five—a full fifteen years of familiarity. They weren't just casual acquaintances. And yet on that night, Suho had witnessed the neighbor's wife entangled in passionate sex with a man who wasn't her husband. He'd watched the neighbor himself thrusting vigorously into a woman who wasn't his wife. He'd even locked eyes with the neighbor's wife in that very moment.
How could things possibly be the same after seeing something like that?
'It'll be impossible to interact with them as comfortably as before.'
They'd probably start avoiding each other. If they happened to cross paths, he'd be reminded of what he'd seen her doing that night, and she'd remember that he'd seen her like that. It would be awkward. They'd keep their distance out of embarrassment. The once-kind neighbors would become distant ones.
The same went for all the other familiar faces he'd spotted at the festival.
All of them.
…But that wasn't what happened.
When he ran into the neighbor's wife while passing through their yard, she greeted him with a bright, casual smile. "Suho-ya~ Where are you off to?" It was as if she'd completely forgotten what happened the day before.
The others were the same. Far from avoiding him after what he'd witnessed, they welcomed him just as warmly as always. If anything, it made him feel like he was the weird one for still feeling awkward about it.
Against all his worries, Suho's daily life hadn't changed at all. Gwichuok-ri was still the same village it had always been.
Yes. It was exactly the same ordinary, boring village he'd once thought it was—before experiencing the festival.
Now that he knew what lay beneath the surface, even that ordinariness felt strangely special. It was as if every resident of Gwichuok-ri was wearing a mask.
After that night, he sometimes had visions. Over the smiling faces of neighbors who greeted him without a care in the world, a blank white mask would superimpose itself—its expression impossible to read.
Which one was real?
'Their everyday faces? Or the ones I saw that night?'
It was confusing.
One day, two days, then several more. Eventually Suho came face to face with a simple truth.
A two-eyed person born in a village of one-eyed inhabitants had no choice but to live with one eye closed.
What a two-eyed person saw wasn't just objects. It was morality. Immorality. All the concepts formed while growing up inside the fence of society.
If there had been a choice, maybe things would have been different. But once he'd stepped in too deep to pull back, it didn't take long at all.
In fact, it took only a few days for him to realize that the second eye wasn't actually necessary for living—and that closing one eye didn't make life uncomfortable. On the contrary, it made things easier.
Just as he'd always been.
Naturally.
Suho was adapting.
As a resident of Gwichuok-ri….
"Deokgu, you here?"
"Yeah— I done come."
It had been a while since he'd seen Deokgu. When Suho pulled a can from the plastic bag and shook it, Deokgu snatched it immediately and plopped down beside him.
This open-sided shack-like structure was one of Gwichuok-ri's rest spots. Villagers would stop by to relax while coming and going, and when Suho and Deokgu had nothing better to do, they'd come here to shoot the breeze.
The only real difference was that until recently they'd been sipping sodas here. Now that they were adults, they'd started bringing cans of beer instead.
Crack.
"Ugh— it's bitter as hell."
Deokgu took a swig and scrunched up his face. Suho followed suit, cracking open his own can and taking a sip. He fought back the unfamiliar sour, astringent taste wrinkling his features and tried to act all manly about it.
"Bitter? Come on, man. I learned how to drink with soju mixed with beer, you know."
"During the festival, right?"
"Yeah… Deokgu, you participated in the festival too, didn't you?"
"Course I did!… Hehe. Suho, you finally lost your virginity, right?"
"…Yeah. I did."
Deokgu asked with a sly, knowing grin, and Suho answered bashfully before taking another long pull from his beer. The two of them sat there for a while, sipping in silence as they watched the sunset slowly fade.
"Man… I never would've imagined. That the festival was something like that."
"Tell me about it. Never in my wildest dreams did I think stuff like that really happened."
"So when are you heading back to Seoul?"
"Uh… well."
"Why? Your mom isn't rushing you to go back to Seoul like she used to?"
"After the festival ended, Mom stopped pushing me to leave right away like before."
Just as he'd suspected. His guess had been right after all—that his parents might have been trying to send him away before he could participate in the festival. No parent would want their child to see them like that.
"So you're not going to Seoul anymore?"
"Hell no! I ain't going! I'm staying here forever, participating in the festival every month. It's a bit embarrassing to face my mom, but ain't it the same for her? We just gotta avoid each other during the festival, that's all."
Well, of course. In a way, if you could ignore moral and emotional concepts like that, Gwichuok-ri was basically paradise for men. Especially for Deokgu, who'd always been obsessed with women.
At least he wouldn't lose his last remaining friend. That was a relief.
"Really? That's good then."
"Right?! Who cares if there ain't any girls my age around. Whether I end up an old bachelor or whatever, I get to do it with all the village aunties every month…. Honestly, even if I never get married, I wouldn't have any regrets."
Deokgu answered with an excited gleam in his eyes, his face taking on a dreamy expression as if lost in thought. Then he blurted out:
"Sure wish next month would hurry up and come…."
"…Yeah?"
While Suho was also secretly looking forward to next month, he felt a twinge of unease. In contrast, Deokgu just looked thrilled.
"For real. Sex is… damn, it's really, really good…. Man, it was so frustrating that I couldn't get it up again right after the first time."
Deokgu spoke in a hazy, excited tone, clearly reminiscing. Suho could understand what he meant. Honestly, those two had been appearing in his dreams a lot lately. Hyejeong and her mother. After grinding against them in his dreams for what felt like hours, he'd wake up with his lower half swollen so hard it felt like it might burst. It was embarrassing, but sometimes his underwear would even be wet, like he'd had a wet dream.
But this guy Deokgu… he'd only done it once?
'I got hard again right away.'
Maybe his stamina was actually stronger than Deokgu's. Speaking of which, seeing Deokgu with that lovestruck look on his face made him curious. Who the hell had he done it with to look like that?
So he asked.
"Who'd you do it with?"
"…Hey! You can't ask that! They're from the same village…!"
Oh? That was unexpected. Suho looked at Deokgu with genuine surprise. Men were like that—when they were kids, they'd brag about their new game consoles to their friends. When they grew up, their conquests with women became the new thing to brag about.
'That's why guys always blab about who they did it with and how—it makes them feel cool.'
Especially since he and Deokgu had always been close enough to talk about anything without hesitation. He'd been sure Deokgu would brag about it, saying this and that about who he'd been with… but instead, he was acting like this?
This was the same Deokgu who'd bragged like it was his own experience when some older guy from the village who'd left told him about having sex with a woman?
Suho narrowed his eyes and tried one last time.
"Aren't you even curious about who I did it with?"
"…Not one bit! What would I do with that information anyway."
'He's serious.'
This guy was different than he looked, huh? Well, they weren't strangers—they were all acquaintances. Maybe it was better this way. If they started talking about who they'd each been with, he'd be the one feeling awkward. How the hell was he supposed to say he'd slept with a mother and daughter in one night? He'd have no defense if they called him a perverted bastard.
"Ah— what a shame…. I really wanted to try creampieing too, but they said that's absolutely not allowed."
"Hm?"
"I heard about it later…,"
Deokgu explained that as residents of Gwichuok-ri, there were rules they had to follow. There were three rules, and breaking them could get you banned from participating in the festival.
First: Creampies were forbidden unless the woman explicitly wanted it or gave permission first.
When he thought about it, that made sense. If creampies were the norm when you were sleeping with a different partner every month, how would anyone know whose baby it was if someone got pregnant? It was different if the woman was single like Oh Hyejeong, but apparently most women didn't want creampies either. They might enjoy the act itself, but no woman wanted to raise someone else's child any more than a man did. If you creampied without permission, you'd be punished immediately. So pulling out was the standard practice.
Suho scratched his head with an awkward expression.
'But… I already did it twice.'
He'd creampied Hyejeong noona. He'd creampied Hyejeong noona's mother too.
'She told me to cum inside, so I thought that was normal.'
And now he understood why the rule wasn't an outright ban on creampies, but only allowed when the woman wanted it or gave permission. No husband would like another man creampieing his wife, but those husbands were men too. When it came to sex without any "responsibility" attached, most men would feel the same desire to finish inside the women they were with. And honestly, if women didn't have to worry about getting pregnant, wouldn't they prefer creampies too? There were probably quite a few couples who secretly gave and received creampies during the festival, just like what had happened with him.