Trying to Persuade Me More Seriously Than I Thought
Seo Hye’s KakaoTalk messages declaring that she would change the ‘rules’ kept coming.
She said it as if she were doing me some kind of favor, but if I had to describe how I felt right then, just hearing her call the two bastards who’d fucked my wife—Seung-woo and Young-hoon—‘the husbands’ was enough to make my blood boil.
Still, the fact that Eun-ho would no longer be sleeping with those two sons of bitches did bring a small sense of relief to my burning chest.
“Fuck…”
The curse slipped out before I could stop it.
Sensing violence, Ji-soo shrank back, trembling.
Who the hell said I was going to have sex with Ji-soo?
Did they think I was some horny dog in heat?
Ji-soo said nothing. She simply waited until I had finished reading every message.
In other words, if I took my anger out on Ji-soo, she would literally destroy my entire life. And Seo Hye had three clear ways to do exactly that.
First, the photo of me appearing to do something obscene to Ji-soo in the airplane bathroom.
Second, the sex video of me and Seo Hye that was filmed in France.
Third, my wife, Eun-ho.
The chat ended with a cutesy emoticon that felt completely out of place. A fairy character that looked like Seo Hye, wearing pajamas, was nodding off as she shuffled toward her bed.
* * *
The moment I closed KakaoTalk, a heavy sigh escaped me.
Haa…
Was Seo Hye still talking about ‘opportunity’ like it was nothing?
To me, this was nothing more than a lightning bolt that had stolen my wife right before my eyes.
“…Here, drink this…”
Ji-soo, who had quietly gotten up and gone to the kitchen, held out a steaming cup of yuzu tea.
“…Thank you.”
I didn’t even have the energy to tell her we didn’t have any yuzu marmalade in the house.
In the few hours I had been asleep, Ji-soo had gone grocery shopping, cooked rice, prepared countless side dishes, cleaned, done the laundry, and even made barley tea and yuzu marmalade.
Changing my clothes and putting me to bed had simply been something she’d squeezed in between all that.
On top of that, her beauty—hard to believe she was a mother—and those enormous breasts that any man would fall in love with…
Whether I wanted to admit it or not, this woman was clearly prime wife material. Even if a chaebol family was a stretch, she could have easily landed a doctor husband.
…But she wasn’t Eun-ho.
“How does it taste…?”
Her fading voice carried a hint of tenderness.
Was she worried about me?
“…It’s sweet.”
“…I’m glad…”
Ji-soo smiled softly, fingers peeking from her sleeves clasped near her lips.
Why was she trying so hard to be good to me when all I wanted to do was push her away and strangle her?
Did she really believe she could become my wife?
I wanted to tell her that would never happen, but as the warm yuzu tea heated my stomach, my cock—shamefully—began to slowly, gradually stir and lift its head.
How pathetic…
* * *
“Ji-soo, this situation… this situation isn’t normal. Sharing wives? It’s ridiculous.”
After drinking the tea and calming down a little, we sat facing each other on the living room floor.
Ji-soo knelt politely with her hands resting on her thighs. She looked like the very picture of a virtuous wife.
She took a sip of the yuzu tea she had poured for herself, let out a soft breath, and then opened her mouth with a look of determination in her eyes.
“I spoke with Eun-ho.”
“What did you talk about?”
Just hearing Eun-ho’s name made my heart beat faster.
“She said she wants a baby so, so badly. But you’re against it.”
“That’s Eun-ho misunderstanding things. With our income, raising a child is impossible. We’d both have to work, and there’s no one to watch the baby. Both sets of parents live in the countryside.”
It was a topic Eun-ho and I had been at odds about for a long time.
I expected her to argue immediately, but Ji-soo surprisingly nodded.
“You’re right. In Korea, it’s incredibly difficult for a couple to have and raise a child on their own.”
“I’m glad you understand. We barely managed to get this house with a jeonse loan. It would be nice to move to the countryside, but neither Eun-ho nor I can easily leave our jobs.”
I had to commute to Incheon Airport every day, and Eun-ho had no intention of leaving the Seoul metropolitan broadcasting industry. Neither of us wanted to live in the countryside.
“If you really wanted a child, you should have saved money and found stable jobs from the beginning. You can’t have everything you want in life.”
We had spent money freely on our favorite drinks and coffee, books, movies, performances, and cultural activities. We traveled overseas three or four times a year.
All of it had been possible because we had no plans to have children.
But after listening quietly, Ji-soo took another sip of yuzu tea, her eyes sparkling as she spoke.
“What if you could have it all…?”
“Pardon?”
Caught off guard by the unexpected question, I was left speechless. Ji-soo continued, her voice slightly firmer than before.
“What if you could have everything? A stable living environment, the freedom to spend as you like, the job you want, and… even a child.”
I actually laughed. It sounded so absurd.
“If that were possible, what would there be to worry about?”
There was a hint of sarcasm in my words, but Ji-soo’s eyes remained deadly serious.
“It is possible, Sung-won.”
“……?”
“It is. You can have it all. Your beloved wife, a beautiful baby…”
With a slightly seductive look in her eyes, she glanced at the smartphone where she had exchanged messages with Seo Hye.
“…And even the mixed-race beauty who’s close to your ideal type—the one you were secretly dating behind your wife’s back.”
“…We weren’t dating…”
Seeing my flustered expression at being called out for cheating, Ji-soo gave me a generous smile.
She seemed to want to put my mind at ease.
“As long as you agree to ‘wife sharing,’ that is.”
If only she hadn’t said that last part, it would have been perfect.
* * *
“If we share wives… how exactly does that make any of this possible?”
I had no choice but to ask.
If I was going to end this entire abnormal situation, I needed to understand what they were thinking.
Ji-soo quietly stared at her teacup, tracing the rim with her long, elegant fingers.
She seemed to be thinking about how best to explain it.
“…Among our husbands, Seung-woo is an incredibly wealthy man.”
“Huh, is that so.”
I had somewhat expected it.
It was the kind of thing only a rich, perverted bastard would do.
But Eun-ho, who had even participated in documentaries criticizing large corporations for harsh labor exploitation and environmental destruction, had an anti-capitalist streak. It was hard to believe she would sell her body to another man just for money.
“If he has that much money, he could buy any woman he wanted. Why would he mess with someone else’s perfectly normal married wife?”
“Seung-woo… has his own ideology, or rather, a kind of philosophy. What he considers important isn’t sexual desire so much as… creating an ideal society? He wants to spend his time on that.”
It was absurd.
What did taking turns fucking other men’s wives have to do with an ideal society?
The disgusting image of Seung-woo sitting in the airplane seat in his neat suit flashed through my mind.
To think a man who looked so normal would do something so insane!
Ji-soo, reading my expression, smiled gently.
“I used to be a teacher. A high school teacher. The subject I taught was history.”
Given her modest appearance and gentle personality, it was a perfectly believable profession.
Though I had never seen a female teacher with breasts that large at any school.
“And?”
“Throughout human history, when people had children… they always raised them collectively. You don’t have to look far—our mothers’ generation lived in large families where everyone helped raise the children together. In neighborhood alleys, parents would let the kids run around and neighbors would watch each other’s children.”
Having grown up in a small provincial city myself, I could nod along with that explanation.
“But?”
“But now, South Korea has become nuclear-family-ized at an alarming rate. People don’t interact with their neighbors. Schools, academies… none of them properly look after children. On top of that, housing prices, education costs, and medical expenses are all extremely high. Other countries face similar issues, but not to the same degree as Korea…”
Ji-soo set her yuzu tea down on the floor and spoke with truly serious eyes.
“Seung-woo believes that raising a child with only the power of two people—a husband and wife—has become the most difficult thing in human history here in South Korea.”