Can You Work Off What's Built Up? (3)
Han Minah had married her current husband because she loved him.
He made good money working seven days a week — but that also meant he was endlessly busy. He should have been too busy. Too tired. Too put-upon. And yet, back when they were dating, he would drag himself over to see her after every shift. Moved by that devotion, Han Minah had gradually opened her heart, and by the time she came to her senses they were already talking about marriage.
Sex? Of course they'd done it plenty before the wedding. Afterward too — not as often as before, but still quite a bit. After two years of dating, sex with her husband had always been a rather sweet, cozy affair. They'd laugh. Chat. Kiss. And then, when he started to move, she'd scrunch her brow at the stimulation and let out a moan.
That kind of sex was Han Minah's default. Except—
Slap-slap-slap-slap-slap-slap-slap—!
"Haaaah… aaah, ha, ha, nngh, haah, haah, haaang, haaah, nnngh-hhh, ha, haaaaah…!"
Merciless was the only word for it. A coupling this intense shattered every frame Han Minah had ever built around sex. Looking at your partner's face. Meeting their eyes. Kissing. Talking. None of that existed here. This was nothing but two bodies devouring each other — sex that was, to put it crudely, animal — and Han Minah's mind was packed full of nothing but pleasure.
The pleasure itself wasn't unfamiliar. The problem was…
Slap-slap-slap-slap-slap-slap-slap—!
"Woojin… nngh, nnngh, haah, haaaang, haang, Woojin… haah, th-that's, ha, haaah, I'm gonna— ha, haaang, nngh, nnngh-hhh, haah, haaaang…!"
The problem was that the pleasure never stopped.
Laughing, chatting, kissing — during sex, those little acts served as dampeners, taking the edge off the stimulation you gave each other. And sex between Han Minah and her husband had needed those dampeners. When you only got one "chance," you had to lower each other's sensitivity if you wanted to enjoy it properly.
But Woojin—
Slap—!
His cock pulsed, throbbed, pumped—
"Haaaaaahhhhhh… nnnngh—!!"
"Hooo…"
He had already finished twice. And now, gripping Han Minah's ass hard enough to leave vivid red handprints, he started pumping a third load into her. With Woojin's semen filling her in thick, gulping pulses, all Han Minah could do was clutch the sheets in her slender hands and let out a breath that sounded like something had been carved out of her.
And Woojin, looking down at her like that—
Slap-slap-slap-slap-slap-slap-slap—!
"Haaaaaaaaang—!!"
In winter, the sun comes up late. If you fall asleep watching it rise, that means you went to bed that much later. And if you were having sex right up until the moment you passed out—
"Nngh-uuuh…"
—a strange languor rolls in right alongside the exhaustion. Wasn't there something about being so tired you actually sleep worse? After going to bed that late, I expected a yellow sun hanging in the sky, but the world outside the window was white. The clock said it was only around one in the afternoon. I'd woken up earlier than I thought.
And yet.
"Hn…?"
Han Minah had gotten up well before me. I was the only one left in the bed. I tipped my head and looked down the length of the mattress, and the evidence confirmed that everything I'd done with her last night had actually happened. The sheets were a wreck. Fluids soaked the bedding. I wasn't wearing a thing.
Part of me wanted to just keep lying there, but I figured I ought to find out where Han Minah had gone, so I climbed out of bed. The moment I stepped out of the bedroom—
"You're up?"
"Ah — yeah…"
"I'll toast some bread. Want to grab a shower first?"
I was still wrapped in that lingering haze, but Han Minah was smiling at me with a face that looked surprisingly bright. I decided I needed to get my head on straight, so I took her suggestion, ducked into the bathroom, and showered quickly. By the time I came back out, the apartment smelled richly of toasting bread, just like she'd promised.
"Over here."
"Yes, ma'am."
There was no way this place had bread sitting around. Milk, either, for that matter.
"You went out?"
"I did. I just grabbed a few things from the store right out front."
"Aigoo, you didn't have to go that far…"
"I have to stay on my examiner's good side. Just think of it as sucking up."
Sucking up to her examiner. All night long, Han Minah had drawn a clean, tidy line around everything we'd done: this wasn't an affair. It was part of a "test."
In other words—
"Oh, right, Woojin."
"Yes?"
"You know the new hires are coming in next week, right?"
"Ah… it's next week already. It's been two weeks since orientation ended…"
"I know. Two weeks already."
She wanted to insist that the two of us being here together was work. That was the only reason I could think of for her to suddenly bring up the new recruits.
"We're getting one in our department too, right?"
"Yes. One for sure… and there's another who may or may not be coming. It's a little up in the air right now. But yes — one is definitely coming."
"It'd be nice if we got both…"
"There's a good chance we will. You don't need to worry about that."
When she laid it out that cleanly, I was actually grateful. I chewed on the toast in front of me without thinking too hard and answered around it.
"And for now, Woojin — I don't know yet if we'll get one or two, but you're going to need to take one of them."
"Me?"
"Yes. From what I've seen, you're good at teaching the new people. You know a lot, too."
Ah. This was a bit much. I already had more than enough on my plate… Granted, the whole point of a new hire was to take work off my hands, but training was still training. No matter how impressive a recruit's résumé looked, what you learned in school and what you did in the field were completely different worlds, and it wasn't like they'd done an internship.
"I told you I don't know if it'll be one or two. And I told you one of them is already locked in. I skimmed that one's file, and you really don't need to worry."
"Why's that?"
"She looks like she'll be really good. Like she'll pick things up fast."
"You can't know that. You don't know until they're actually on the floor."
"No, no. I don't read faces or believe in that kind of thing, but people still give off an image, you know? Just looking at her, I thought, oh, she'll be good at her job."
I didn't put much stock in physiognomy either, but I understood what she was getting at.
"Want to see her picture?"
"You have a picture?"
"Of course I do."
"Already?"
"What do you mean, already? We're seeing her tomorrow."
"Ah. Right."
Han Minah smiled with the fresh brightness of a good morning and held her phone out in front of me.
"Well? You get what I meant now, right?"
"……"
And I was stunned.
"So this… this girl is definitely, I mean… so she's locked in as my junior, no question?"
"Yes. You just need to be this girl's senior — Min Seoeun."
Back at orientation, Kim Jinyong — my buddy from HR — had said there was one new hire who was genuinely gorgeous. Looking at this photo alone was enough to make something in me twitch. I had a feeling this was her. Min Seoeun.
"Don't you think she'll be good too? She's got this… dependable quality, I guess. It feels a little weird using that word for a woman, but…"
"Ah, no, I get what you mean."
"Right? She just looks so solid."
Han Minah had a point. Min Seoeun was… well. If you absolutely had to pick an animal type, she had a dog-like face. If you absolutely, strictly had to. But not a cute little Maltese or Pomeranian — more like a Doberman. The big, dependable kind.
That didn't mean her body looked big and dependable, though. The photo only showed her from the chest up, but what I could see looked less sturdy than taut. And her expression, exactly as advertised: calmly closed lips. A blunt, staring gaze. A clean, tidy hairstyle.
"So… she'll be getting her new-hire kit as soon as she comes in tomorrow, then?"
"I'd imagine so."
I didn't know about anything else, but with this Min Seoeun, I already had a clear sense of exactly how I wanted to use her through the HR Management App. And on top of that… I was starting to see how I should stage my "first meeting" with Ju Harin, too.
"Well? You're interested now, aren't you?"
"Interested?"
"Mm. See if you can make something of it. You said you don't have a girlfriend, right?"
"I don— …yeah."
"If you show her the cool-senior act, I bet Min Seoeun will start to like you. Looking at her face, she seems like the type who'd go for that."
That earned a quiet snort of laughter from me — which Han Minah apparently read as something else entirely.
"That's part of why I want to pair her with you, actually."
"Ah… well. Yeah. If it works out, it works out. That kind of thing."
"Really, give it a shot. And don't worry about the workload. I know your situation, so I'll regulate what comes your way."
"If you'll do that, then yeah — I can handle it."
If she was going to block some of the work pouring down on me from the team-leader level, I certainly wasn't going to complain.
After a brunch full of nothing but good news—
"Team Leader, I'll give you a ride when we go."
"Ah. But even if we're leaving, I think we should make the bed together first."
"The bed, ah…"
I could have done it myself. But Han Minah treated me like a kid brother who couldn't be trusted with chores. She stayed and helped me straighten the sheets, clean up, and get everything into the washing machine before we finally left the apartment.
We got in the car and I punched the area around Han Minah's apartment into the GPS. We hadn't been driving long.
"Woojin, I have a favor to ask…"
"Sure. What is it?"
"Well…"
What kind of favor needed her to trail off like that? We happened to hit a red light, so I could turn my head and look at her.
It was a strange little smile. Not the one I knew so well and liked so much — something that felt, just slightly, like a predator.
"…How was last night?"
"You mean your test results, Team Leader?"
"That's right. How was I?"
"It was good. I'm planning to give you a high score."
"Mm. That's actually why I wanted to ask a favor."
"What kind of favor?"
I figured she was about to ask me to give her even more points, since she'd liked it so much.
Instead—
"Could you… score me a little stingily?"
"Sorry?"
"I think I'd rather you didn't give me too many points."
"Uh, why? Normally if you want a promotion you'd ask for as many as possible?"
She'd said the exact opposite of what I'd expected, and then she just shrugged, as if she had no intention of explaining herself.
And then—
"Instead, I'd like to take the test a little more… often."
"Ah… so the strategy is to take a stable minimum score each time, and just take the test a lot more frequently."
"Mm. Yes. You can think of it that way. What do you think?"
The reason Han Minah was saying any of this was painfully obvious.
"So last night was to your liking, Team Leader?"
I didn't have to bring it up. I really didn't. But I did, and the face of a woman in her mid-thirties flushed so prettily I almost couldn't believe she was allowed to look that cute. The moment Han Minah turned that burning face toward the passenger window, I quietly reached over and set my hand on the skirt she was wearing.
It slid slowly upward…