The Reply
Eunju asked him to check. For several days, no email had arrived. On the first day, she told herself it was only natural. The conditions they faced weren’t something that could be decided lightly. Sending photographs that revealed both face and body first meant they, too, would be sharing in the risk.
When the second day passed, Eunju realized she was waiting. She pretended she wasn’t, but every time Minjun’s laptop gave a notification chime, her body reacted first. Then she would quickly touch her cup as if nothing had happened. Minjun couldn’t possibly have missed it. That embarrassed her even more.
Still, Eunju didn’t ask. The moment she asked, she would be admitting that she was waiting for an answer from those two young men. Minjun didn’t press her either. He checked his inbox from time to time but said nothing. He knew she was waiting, and he knew what that waiting was growing inside her body.
By the third night, Eunju grew a little restless. She wondered if they had gotten scared and backed out. That should have been a relief. One dangerous proposal would simply disappear on its own. Yet strangely, the thought brought her closer to disappointment than relief. The words that two young men wanted to see her. That they had discussed it between themselves and gathered the courage to call. If they really had withdrawn, it felt as if that desire would vanish along with them.
Eunju was ashamed of that disappointment. But shame didn’t make it disappear.
The email arrived on the fourth night. A notification popped up in the bottom right corner of Minjun’s laptop screen. The subject line was dry.
The instant she saw that short subject line, Eunju knew what the email was. She knew the reply she had waited days for had finally arrived, and that they had not backed down after all.
Minjun did not open it right away. He remained seated in front of the laptop and turned to look at her.
“It’s here.”
Eunju couldn’t answer. All the days she had spent pretending she wasn’t waiting felt completely exposed by those two words.
Minjun asked, “Do you want to see it?”
Eunju lowered her eyes for a moment. Once they opened it, those two men would no longer be mere voices on the other end of a phone call. The two young men who had said they wanted to see her would step into reality—men with faces and bodies.
Even so, she had to look.
Eunju slowly sat down in the chair.
“Yes.”
“We should.”
Minjun opened the email. The body was brief. Both of them had agreed. They were sending the attached files. They also understood that filming consent had not yet been granted. Minjun checked the list of attachments. There were two files.
He glanced at Eunju once more.
“I’m opening them.”
Eunju nodded.
The first photograph opened. Eunju unconsciously held her breath.
Inside the screen stood a young man. His face was clearly visible, and his body was not hidden. His expression was stiff—the face of someone who knew exactly what kind of burden he was taking on.
At first Eunju looked away. Then she looked again. He was on the slender side. His shoulders weren’t particularly broad, but there was the firm tightness typical of a young body. His posture was awkward, and tension still lingered in his eyes. Strangely, that tension made her look longer.
The man who had said he wanted to see her was now showing himself first.
Minjun said nothing. He simply let her look on her own.
Eunju couldn’t keep her eyes on the screen for long and lowered her gaze.
“He’s young.”
Those were the first words that left her mouth.
Minjun looked at her. Eunju looked at the screen again.
“He’s the same age my daughters could bring home as a boyfriend without it seeming strange.”
The moment she said it, Eunju’s face burned even hotter. They weren’t simply young men. They were men close to her daughters’ generation. Men she should have seen with a mother’s eyes. And those men wanted to see her. They were curious about how far she could reveal herself. And now, having offered their own bodies first, they were waiting for her judgment.
That fact made Eunju even more ashamed.
Minjun asked quietly, “Do you dislike it?”
Eunju couldn’t answer immediately. It would have been easy to say she did. But while looking at the naked body of the young man before her, she strangely felt as if she herself had been stripped even more bare. Even though the other party had offered his body first, Eunju felt as though she had been placed in front of their eyes instead. Before they could see her, she was seeing their bodies first. That fact oddly reversed the order.
It was as if she weren’t the one judging them, but rather as if her own clothes were being removed one by one in front of those young bodies.
Eunju said in a low voice, “It’s embarrassing.”
Minjun waited. A moment later she added,
“But that doesn’t mean I hate it.”
Minjun turned his gaze back to the screen and opened the second file.
The second man had a slightly better build than the first. He looked straight at the camera without avoiding it. He was clearly tense, but within that tension there was a hint of greater boldness. And Eunju soon realized something.
He hadn’t simply sent the photo to meet the condition. He stood before the camera exactly as he was—already aroused—and had not hidden that fact.
Eunju’s face flushed crimson. The photographs had been requested as a safety measure. Yet the second man had placed his desire for her inside that very safety measure and sent it along.
Eunju drew in a shallow breath. It felt like she was seeing something she shouldn’t. Yet she could not turn her eyes away. That single photograph was far more explicit than the words that he wanted to see her.
That body imagined me.
The moment the thought rose, her face grew hot. As Eunju looked at the young man in the photograph, she suddenly imagined herself standing in front of him. Nothing had been decided yet. A filming appointment hadn’t even been made. And yet in her imagination she was already there before him.
He would be holding a camera. At first he would try to remain polite, but he would not be able to hide the desire revealed in that photograph until the end. And Eunju imagined herself gradually being uncovered in front of him. Where his hands would stop. From what moment she would no longer be able to lift her face. What expression she would make if she heard him swallow.
The thought was too shameful. But it did not disappear simply because it was shameful. Instead, it grew clearer.
Eunju stared at the screen for a long time. She knew Minjun was beside her. She knew he had noticed exactly where she was looking. Even so, she could not turn her eyes away right away. In the moment she looked at his desire, Eunju was already placing her own body in front of that desire.
Eunju felt strange about the woman who could have such thoughts. She wasn’t simply checking them as a safety measure. She was judging them as the men who would stand before her body. She was imagining what kind of eyes they would use, at what speed they would approach, and at what point she would surrender more easily.
That fact was humiliating.
Minjun asked, “What do you think?”
Eunju did not answer. The second man’s photograph still filled the laptop screen. Beside it, the small list of attachments was visible. The email body remained dry.
Those words somehow felt loud. Confirmation. They had shown themselves for her to confirm. Now it was Eunju’s turn to confirm. Whether she could stand in front of those men. Whether she could receive their gazes. And how much she could show when those eyes wanted something deeper.
Eunju folded her fingertips together.
“Both of them…”
Her voice was small. Minjun looked at her. Eunju spoke slowly.
“They’re younger than I expected.”
Minjun did not reply. Eunju looked at the screen again.
“That’s why it feels even stranger.”
“What does?”
“The fact that I’m imagining standing in front of them.”
Eunju closed her lips, then opened them again.
“They seem like an age I should see as a mother.”
“The fact that those people want to see me as a woman.”
Minjun’s eyes deepened. Eunju added, her face still flushed,
“And the fact that even after seeing all this, I can’t bring myself to refuse first.”
The room grew quiet. Minjun did not close the laptop. He left it open so she could look longer.
“Am I still at an age where I can stand in front of boys like that?”
Eunju spoke in a low voice. Minjun did not answer immediately. He gazed for a moment at her profile as she looked at the screen.
“Eunju.”
“Yes?”
“You’re still beautiful enough.”
Even after hearing those words, Eunju could not look at Minjun right away. He spoke even more quietly.
“It’s not just in my eyes.”
“Those boys contacted you first, didn’t they?”
Eunju’s face grew a little redder. Minjun glanced once at the photographs on the screen, then looked at her again.
“From the outside, you don’t look like their mother.”
“More like an older sister.”
“A slightly dangerous, pretty older sister.”
Eunju lowered her head.
“The choice is yours,” he said.
Eunju nodded.
“I know.”
She looked at the screen once more. The two young men in the photographs said nothing. Yet to Eunju it felt as if they were already speaking.
We wanted to see you, sister-in-law.
What we could see outside your clothes wasn’t enough, so we wanted to see the hidden flesh beneath.
Two young men imagined your body together.
Eunju closed her eyes, then opened them.
“I can’t decide today.”
Minjun nodded at once.
“All right.”
Eunju rose slowly from her seat. She took a step back from the laptop. But her gaze still would not leave the screen.
It was frightening, embarrassing, and strange. Even so, the two men before her eyes no longer felt like complete strangers. They were no longer voices on the other end of a phone. They were young men with faces and bodies who had said they wanted to see her body.
And Eunju had already looked at them.