The Scent of Youth
The second young man spoke carefully in the room where they were working on Eunju. “There’s a workshop nearby that we use.”
“It’s a small space where we keep our camera equipment and organize photos.” He glanced at Eunju once, then looked back at Minjun. “No one else is there.”
“If it feels uncomfortable, you can come right back out,” the first young man added. “It’s not a nice place.”
“It’s just a space we rent instead of a monthly room.”
Eunju looked at them as she listened. A workshop. The word sounded far more dangerous than a café. Lighting. Cameras. Equipment. A small room. And two young men. Between those words, Eunju’s body tensed quietly for a moment.
These boys didn’t look like they wanted to take her somewhere and do whatever they pleased with her. They waited, eyes on both Minjun and Eunju, unsure whether she would go or stay, enter or not.
Minjun made his judgment in that brief pause. It was the look of one man reading another. It was fine. Then Minjun turned to Eunju.
“Are you okay with it?”
Eunju didn’t answer right away. After a moment, she spoke softly.
“Let’s go.”
Minjun studied her face. Eunju spoke again.
“To that workshop.”
The faces of the two young men brightened just a little. Expectation. Tension. Seeing those expressions, Eunju understood. These boys weren’t yet fully men capable of handling a woman. Yet in front of a woman, they were trying hard to be courteous rather than led by desire. Strangely, that opened something in her heart.
The four of them walked deeper into the alley. The lights from the main street gradually faded behind them. The signs for bars and restaurants grew fewer, replaced by the dark staircases of old commercial buildings and closed iron doors. The first young man led the way. The second walked half a step behind Eunju and Minjun. It was a protective stride.
Eunju felt it. The boy clearing the path ahead. The boy watching their surroundings from behind. And beside her, the husband quietly holding her arm. In that strange formation, Eunju confirmed once more that she wasn’t being dragged somewhere—she was walking there herself.
As they walked a little farther down the alley, the two young men finally introduced themselves properly. The one who bowed first was the one who had struggled to hold her gaze for long.
“I’m Hyeonwu.”
“Kang Hyeonwu.”
His voice was as cautious as his face. Eunju nodded.
“Hyeonwu.”
When his name came from her lips, Hyeonwu looked down, flustered for a moment. Then, in a very small voice, he said, “Just… call me Hyeonwu, please.”
It was barely louder than a mosquito. Eunju almost laughed. The man who had said he wanted to see her so badly couldn’t even lift his eyes when asking her to use his name.
Eunju tilted her head slightly.
“Alright.”
“Hyeonwu.”
At that, the tips of Hyeonwu’s ears flushed red instantly. His reaction looked so boyishly young that Eunju almost smiled again.
The other man, who had been watching their surroundings from behind, spoke up.
“I’m Doyun.”
“Park Doyun.”
Doyun didn’t avoid her eyes when they met. He simply didn’t hold them rudely long. Eunju didn’t avoid his gaze either. Meeting it, she said softly,
“Alright.”
“Doyun.”
Doyun’s eyes flickered for the briefest moment. But he didn’t bow his head or look away. Instead, as if confirming the name had truly reached him, he looked at her once more.
Eunju felt the difference. Hyeonwu was cautious in front of her, while Doyun, even as he looked at her, didn’t lose sight of the situation.
“Hyeonwu and Doyun.”
Eunju murmured the names under her breath. Once she knew their names, strangely, they stopped being just the men in the photographs. They were no longer unfamiliar bodies trapped inside a laptop screen. They became young men walking the same night street as her.
The workshop was on the third floor of an old commercial building. The staircase was narrow. Patches on the walls showed where old flyers had been torn away, and a little dust had gathered on the landings. Eunju climbed slowly in her high heels. Her footsteps echoed louder than she expected.
Hyeonwu entered the passcode at the door. He didn’t cover it with his hand. The sound of the numbers echoed softly in the narrow hallway. Eunju tried not to look, but her eyes were strangely drawn to his fingertips. Hyeonwu didn’t seem unaware of it either.
Just before the door opened, Hyeonwu hesitated a little and said, “We don’t change the passcode often.”
Only then did he seem to realize what he had said; the tips of his ears turned red. “No, I didn’t mean it like that…”
“I meant that if you ever come later, you wouldn’t have to wait outside.”
Eunju didn’t answer. The words sounded polite. But they were more than politeness. They sounded like Hyeonwu’s clumsy, earnest wish that someday Eunju would open this door herself.
Minjun glanced at Eunju. Then he said quietly, “That’s for Eunju to decide whether she remembers or not.”
Eunju’s face warmed quietly. Hyeonwu quickly opened the door.
“Please come in.”
“It might not be very tidy.” He spoke as if embarrassed.
Doyun added softly, “Still, it’s not a weird place.”
That actually made Eunju smile a little. She took one step inside.
What greeted her first was the smell of men. It wasn’t overpowering. But it was unmistakable. The scent of fabric softener and dust. Old coffee. The leather and plastic smell clinging to equipment bags. Somewhere, there was even a faint trace of a towel that hadn’t been dried properly after washing.
It wasn’t a tidy space. In the corner stood a foldable cot, with a thin blanket half-folded on top. On the small desk, a laptop, external hard drives, and chargers were tangled together. Several camera bags lay on the floor. A rolled-up backdrop leaned against one wall. Two lighting stands stood folded upright, and by the window, empty convenience-store coffee cups and cup-ramen containers were stacked.
It was a room where men lived. Young, poor, and a little clumsy at keeping things organized. The moment Eunju stepped into that space, her eyes went first to the cot. So that’s where they sleep. And that’s where they take photos too. The thought made her chest sink ever so slightly.
Minjun saw the cot as well. His eyes deepened for a moment.
Hyeonwu spoke hurriedly. “Ah, that’s just for sleeping.”
“If we work late, we crash here and…” He trailed off, realizing how it sounded, and closed his mouth.
Doyun said quietly, “We didn’t bring you here to do anything today.”
“It was just too noisy outside.”
Minjun didn’t answer immediately. He slowly scanned the room. The cot. The lights. The cameras. The cramped space. Two young men. It was a combination that demanded caution.
But then Minjun’s gaze stopped on the wall. Photographs were pinned there. Only then did Eunju notice them too.
At first they were dark alley shots. After rain, neon signs stretched long across wet asphalt. Next to that was a deserted bus stop at dawn. An empty bench and a hazy streetlamp. A faint face, as if someone had just passed, reflected in a glass window. On the other side were photos of worn staircases. Light rising from below, the upper part swallowed in darkness.
There were supernatural-feeling images too. A foggy mountain path. A red cloth hanging before an old shrine. Light caught in the windows of an abandoned building. Shadows that looked like someone standing there—or like nothing at all.
Eunju stopped in front of the photographs. They were better than she’d expected. These weren’t just shots taken for atmosphere. They were the work of someone who had looked at things for a long time.
Lower on the wall were portraits. A smiling friend’s face. A young woman sitting by a window. An old man holding a plastic umbrella. The profile of a child with their head bowed. The people in these photographs weren’t stripped bare. They weren’t being consumed. Instead, they were captured with care. The moment just before an expression crumbled. Lips swallowing words. A face that had gone briefly empty while staring out a window. Things like that.
Eunju drew a slow breath. These boys might not be the type who used pretty words about photography just to get a woman to undress. The thought settled quietly inside her.
Doyun said carefully, “We took all of them.”
“They’re not that great, though.”
Hyeonwu gave a small laugh. “They’re not that great, but we couldn’t bear to throw them away, so we put them up.”
Still looking at the wall, Eunju said, “They’re good.”
Both young men stopped talking at the same time. Eunju looked at another photograph. It was the back of a woman standing under an old motel sign, sheltering from the rain. Her face wasn’t visible. Yet just the slope of her shoulders conveyed exhaustion and resignation.
“The photos are better than I thought.”
Both young men stopped talking again. Seeing their reaction, Eunju smiled a little sheepishly.
“To be honest…”
“Before coming here, I thought there would be a lot of those kinds of photos.”
Eunju looked at the photographs on the wall again. “I thought it would be full of shots of women’s bodies, stripped naked.”
“But it’s not like that.”
Hyeonwu’s ears turned a little red. Doyun couldn’t answer either and simply looked at the wall.
And in that moment, a strange imagination flashed through her. What if someday one of her own photographs hung somewhere on this wall? Not a photo with clothes on. A photo where she was revealed fully as a woman. One such image hanging among these shots of alleys, fog, and old staircases.
Eunju’s face warmed quietly. They wanted her. That hadn’t changed. There was desire. It was simply that no one in this room was voicing it aloud.
If Eunju said she wanted it, that imagination could become reality right here, right now. But this room held more than just desire. There was the youth that had stayed up all night choosing photos, unable to discard failed shots, pinning them to the wall, and lying on the cot still thinking about the next image. There was the heat of people who didn’t have much but kept going because they wanted to capture something. That raw heat filled the room along with the scent of men.
Today, somehow, it felt like simply feeling that heat would be enough.
At first Eunju found the smell a little unfamiliar. But soon she thought she understood. It was the smell of young people who lived, slept, took photos, and went out again.
Minjun was also looking at the photographs on the wall. He looked at the lighting stands, the backdrop, then back at the photos. And then at the two young men.
“You’re serious about photography,” Minjun said.
Even after speaking, Minjun couldn’t take his eyes off the photographs for a while. What he had imagined until now had been relatively simple. His wife being placed as a female in the gaze of other men. Being set before the desires of males and consumed by them. That was the inclination Minjun had known in himself.
But the photographs in this room were a little different. There wasn’t only animalistic desire here. There was a gaze that found some beauty within the subject it observed, interpreted it in its own way, and tried to express it.
For the first time, Minjun felt a little confused. That even within the words “my wife being consumed by other men,” there could be many layers. That his wife’s body might not simply be consumed as an object receiving the lust of males, but could be interpreted and expressed as a beautiful female form inside someone’s lens.
That possibility was unfamiliar to Minjun. It didn’t make his arousal disappear. If anything, it became more complicated. The image of his wife’s body placed before other men’s desires still stimulated him. The ultimate pleasure Minjun had imagined until now was clear: his wife crushed beneath another man’s desire, falling apart and moaning as she crumbled.
But the photographs in this room showed another possibility. His wife’s body not being consumed merely as an object of lust, but being interpreted as a beautiful female form inside someone’s lens and reborn as a single scene. That, too, could arouse Minjun. Only the direction was different.
Minjun looked at the two young men again. It didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. It didn’t mean there was no desire. It simply occurred to him that what these boys wanted might not be as simple as just seeing Eunju undressed. That feeling reached Eunju as well.
Doyun quickly unfolded two folding chairs.
“Please sit here.”
“The cot is… a bit much.”
His words trailed off awkwardly. The awkwardness almost made Eunju laugh.
“Alright.”
She sat in the chair. Minjun sat beside her. She glanced once toward the cot.
“Just because I sit on the bed doesn’t mean you two will get that look in your eyes and push me down, right?”
Hyeonwu and Doyun both lost their words at the same time. Eunju smiled softly at their reaction.
“So you don’t have to be so careful.”
She spoke as if joking, but Eunju’s own face had grown a little warm. Hyeonwu and Doyun didn’t sit directly across from her right away. First they cleared the charger cords scattered on the floor, tidied the cups on the table, and pushed the cup-ramen containers by the window to one side. It was clumsy. But the clumsiness wasn’t bad.
Eunju looked at the photographs on the wall again. Supernatural landscapes. Quiet portraits. Worn, dark, yet somehow living spaces. And the thought that someday she might be placed among them. Standing before the lights, their cameras pointed at her, Minjun watching from the side. That imagination was still embarrassing.
But here, it seemed she wouldn’t remain merely a photograph to be flipped through or a body already seen naked. She still didn’t know how these boys would look at her. But at least this space felt like a place where she could try asking that question.
Suddenly Eunju thought of actresses in movies. Women who shot bed scenes completely naked in front of countless staff and cameras. In the past she wouldn’t have understood. How they could undress in front of so many eyes and act out someone else’s gestures and breathing.
But now she thought she understood a little. If it wasn’t simply about exposing the body, but about entrusting herself to become one scene. If it wasn’t about being carelessly consumed by someone’s desire, but about being reborn with different meaning inside a lens.
In front of these boys, Eunju thought she might be able to take off her underwear herself, even if she felt ashamed. The moment the thought arose, her face burned. She had only imagined herself undressing before art, yet ironically her body was accepting it as the most private kind of excitement.
Eunju breathed in quietly. The room smelled of men. And it smelled of youth. Poor, clumsy, a little messy, yet strangely sincere. In that scent, for the first time, Eunju let a corner of her heart settle just a little.