You're Not Who I Knew (2)
Never judge a person by their appearance alone. That exterior is not the whole of who they are. You have to look at what's inside.
That was what my father always told me, ever since I was little.
People were constantly circling him, angling for his money. Watching that parade of opportunists left him thoroughly disgusted, and so he drilled the same warning into me again and again: be careful who you trust.
"First time I've seen you here. Just starting?"
"······Ah, no. I used to come regularly. Just been busy lately."
"Ahh. I always used to come in the evenings, but I've switched to daytime for a while now. Guess that's why we never crossed paths."
"Yeah······."
Even while we talked, my attention kept snagging on the number floating above her head.
87
We hadn't even held hands. That meant the number of men she had been with was already eighty-seven.
With that pure, innocent face, she had been meeting that many men all this time.
"Since fate brought us together······ want to work out together?"
"S-sorry?"
"Exercise. Doing it alone is boring, right?"
"Y-yeah······."
Once, when Seoyeon and I had passed her in the hallway, Seoyeon had muttered something.
That woman gives me a bad feeling······.
What? Out of nowhere?
She······ looked you up and down.
Come on, she just glanced while walking by.
·········.
Looking back now, after hearing Seoyeon's past, I could have dismissed it as more of her weird jealousy. But seeing the number above this woman's head and the look in her eyes right now, I finally understood what Seoyeon had meant.
That gaze. I knew that gaze.
It was the same look Seoyeon used to give me when she was trying to fuck me.
Maybe I was imagining it, but the resemblance was uncanny.
"Alright, let's go."
She switched off the treadmill and tugged me toward the stretch mats.
"I already stretched, though?"
"Uh-uh! Stretching has to be done constantly! You keep at it!"
She put on a stern face, but it didn't look scary so much as awkward—like someone who couldn't actually get angry trying to look fierce. That only made her seem more pure and innocent.
To my eyes, though, the gap between that face and the number floating above it only grew wider.
"Sit here."
"Okay."
I followed her onto the mat, stretched my legs out, and folded forward.
"You need to go lower. I'll help."
"W-what? No, I can—"
"Don't be shy. I may not look it, but I've done yoga and Pilates for four years!"
"What does that have to do with—"
Before I knew it she had hopped up, moved behind me, and started pressing firmly down on my back with both arms.
I'd been working out consistently myself, so this much was easy enough. But then she did something I never saw coming.
Soft. Squishy.
"·········!"
The sudden soft pressure against my back made me try to sit up, but she leaned her full weight into me and pinned me down.
"You're doing great! Hold it ten more seconds!"
"H-hey······ w-wait······."
Her breasts—neither small nor large—pressed into my back. She shifted them deliberately, rubbing back and forth, and my cock sent up an immediate signal.
Fuck······!
Even in a situation like this, my body remembered everything it had learned with Seoyeon and reacted on its own.
"Done! Sit up and breathe!"
"············."
We hadn't even started the real workout and I was already exhausted. My mind more than my body.
A woman I'd only ever exchanged distant nods with was suddenly this close. It felt awkward as hell.
How long did I endure her "stretching" that was really just thinly veiled sexual appeal?
"Alright, shall we get into the real thing?"
"Y-yeah······."
"Wow, your stamina's terrible! Stretching's over and you're already wiped?"
"·········."
I had plenty to say, but I kept it behind my teeth. Who do you think made me this tired······.
"What were you planning to hit today?"
"Nothing specific······ I've been off so long I figured I'd take it slow······."
"Then let's start with chest and shoulders."
"Yeah······ sure······."
Already drained, I just let her lead me around. Dealing with her one-track energy made me want to go home immediately.
"First, grab these dumbbells!"
"Okay······."
"And lie back against this!"
"Okay······."
Like a robot with commands hardwired in, my body simply obeyed whatever she said.
"Slowly up······ and down······."
Her hands came up onto my chest. Checking whether the right muscles were firing was standard form correction, but the memory of her soft breasts from the stretch still lingered.
······Shit!
Feeling myself start to get hard again, I snapped my spread legs shut.
"Uh-uh? You can't do that! Come out here!"
"Yes!"
Thankfully she hadn't noticed. I shot up off the bench at her words, angling myself so she couldn't see, and looked at her.
She lay back on the bench the same way I had, set the dumbbells on the floor, and pointed at her own chest with both hands.
"Here. Touch."
"············What?"
"You need to feel how the muscle moves. Hurry!"
"O-okay······!"
Pushed by her urgency, I had no choice but to rest my index finger on the upper part of her chest.
"Come on. Not there—here! And what are you going to feel with just one finger?"
"W-whoa—!"
"Keep your hand right there! Got it?"
"Y-yeah······."
With that pure, clueless expression, she placed my hand on her breast, picked up the dumbbells, and started the same motion I had been doing.
······Keep your hand right there! Keep touching!
Forget muscle movement. The words she had just spoken kept looping in my ears.
I was touching the chest of a woman I had spoken to for the first time today. That single fact wiped every thought of the workout clean out of my head.
"·········?"
"······Y-yeah?"
"What are you doing?"
"Ah···! Sorry!"
For a second I thought her eyes flicked down toward my crotch, but I apologized first. Without realizing it I had been completely absorbed in the feel of her breast.
"Huh? Suddenly? What are you sorry for?"
"Huh? Ah··· n-nothing!"
"Pfft··· What was that. Anyway, you get it now, right? How to engage the muscle?"
"Yes! Got it!"
Desperate to escape the moment, I answered like an overeager student and let her drag me through the rest of the session.
There were plenty of close calls along the way. During bench press she offered to spot me, but the way she gripped the bar put her right over my head. She stepped in with her legs spread, straddling my face—supposedly helping, but nearly killing me instead. The sudden proximity of her crotch made me almost drop the bar in shock.
Somehow I survived and we finished.
"I'm gonna shower real quick. Wait for me?"
"Huh? The elevator goes straight to our floor. No need to—"
"Oh my. We just worked out together! And we live right next door. Don't be so cold."
"R-right! I'll wait!"
"Hehe. Be right out!"
I had been about to head home after the workout, but she stopped me. Since the elevator went straight to our floor there was no real reason to shower here, yet······.
"Hey, Hajun."
"Yes? Oh—Manager."
"You know Jeong-a?"
"Huh? Jeong-a···? Ah, yes. She's my next-door neighbor."
I sat in the chair by the front desk waiting for her when the gym manager wandered over and struck up a conversation.
"Oh. Go for it. You know how many guys in this gym are after Jeong-a?"
"Sorry?"
"They come to work out and then just stand around staring at her, timing their whole schedule around her. You should snatch her up already so those bastards stop showing up!"
"·········Hahaha. Y-yeah······."
The manager's head was full of nothing but gym talk, so I just played along with an awkward laugh.
Come to think of it, the other people working out nearby had been watching us with something like hostility the whole time.
While I made empty conversation with the manager—
"Did you wait long?"
"Ah, no. Let's go."
She came out of the locker room and walked over. As we left the gym together, the manager behind us gave me a big thumbs-up and a grin.
It's not like that······.
He was probably just hoping Jeong-a would get a boyfriend so the guys who only came to hit on her would disappear. But we weren't anything like that.
"Oh right! What's your name, by the way? We never even introduced ourselves. I'm Han Jeong-a!"
"Ah, I'm Lee Hajun."
"Mmm. Hajun, then."
She said my name with a strange little smile just as the elevator arrived. We stepped in and I pressed the floor button.
"Let's keep working out together from now on!"
"Huh?"
"It's so boring always going alone······ You don't want to···?"
"Ah, no. Yeah. Let's do it together······."
"Yes! I got a workout buddy! Hehe."
Her pure, bright smile left me confused. Was this her real face? Or was the number floating above her head the real her?
My father's words: never judge by appearances alone.
But I was looking at two different exteriors. Which one was I not supposed to judge so freely?
While I was turning that over, the elevator stopped.
"I'll head in first! Today was fun!"
"Ah, yeah. Go ahead."
We got off. I shook the hand she offered, then waited until she disappeared into her apartment before turning around.
But someone who absolutely should not have been there was standing right in front of me.
"······Seoyeon."
"Hajun·········."
She was crouched in front of our front door, looking up at me. The expression on her face was not good.
"What the hell were you doing with that bitch just now······?"
Haa.
Today had been way too mentally exhausting.