Mouth Only
Let me suck it with my mouth only.
It had already been more than a year since quarantine and working from home became part of daily life because of COVID-19.
As quarantine rules were gradually relaxed, the world outside the window was slowly regaining its energy. The sweet, almost blissful rest the pandemic had granted at the beginning was long past its expiration date.
It had been a year now since I’d been sent over from a global American company under the grand excuse of helping break into the Korean infrastructure market.
I’d been working from home under the pretexts of the time difference with headquarters and local quarantine rules, legally coasting along and enjoying the slack, but after being trapped in a quiet, regulated world for so long, my whole body had started to itch.
In that island-prison of perfect freedom, all I felt each day was a savage thirst for something that would stimulate me.
That night was no different. I was sitting around in the usual way, checking the progress of a server update in a room where I’d posted keywords like the local city I was in, voice chat, and relationship counseling, and waiting for the work to finish.
Because the servers ran twenty-four hours a day, overnight work was inevitable, and there was no real need for me, as a headquarters manager, to stay up and watch over it.
But using my flipped schedule and my responsibility for the Korean infrastructure setup as excuses, I kept an eye on the local outsourced system engineers’ progress, and the dull waiting period while the system churned away drew me once again into the virtual world inside my smartphone.
At 3 a.m., with the bluish glow of the screen lighting my face, a new message notification broke the silence.
[Hello.]
[Nice to meet you. Where do you live, and how old are you?]
[I’m twenty, and I live in XX.]
My fingers froze for a moment. Meeting someone from the exact same neighborhood in this region—not Seoul, but a provincial city—was about as rare as winning the lottery.
[Wow, you really are a local. That’s amazing. Are you a college student?]
[Yes. I’m a freshman.]
[Ah... That university over there? But I’m quite a bit older. There’d probably be about a twenty-year gap.]
I expected that once she realized the age difference, she’d say, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and leave the chat immediately. Instead, her reply came without hesitation.
[Then you’re an old man. The age gap doesn’t matter. Do you not like me because I’m too young?]
[Not at all. I’m grateful. Should we speak casually?]
[Yes, speak casually. I’m fine with that.]
And so our late-night conversation began. For someone who had just turned twenty, she was calm and sharp. More than half her classes were non-face-to-face cyber lectures, so her days were spent staring at a monitor in her room like some gloomy shut-in freshman. She talked about a campus life in which she’d never even seen a club activity or an MT, about worrying over living expenses, and even about a somewhat heavy family situation.
She said that her grades had originally been good enough to get into a private university in the Seoul area, but because her family’s circumstances were difficult, she had chosen a provincial national university where she could receive a scholarship. Even from the short text messages alone, it was obvious how diligent and thoughtful she was as a student.
By the time the conversation had grown so dense that our age difference seemed meaningless, a sentence appeared on the screen that made me doubt my own eyes.
[But...]
After a brief silence in the messenger window, her next message came up, and what it said was beyond anything I’d expected.
[I kind of want to take it in my mouth once.]
My brain simply stopped. I had to wonder if this really was the same proper young woman who had just been discussing textbooks and scholarships and planning for the future.
[In your mouth? What do you mean?]
[Not the doing part... just with my mouth.]
For an anonymous chat, it was absurdly startling. The serious life advice we’d been exchanging had been swallowed at once by the sticky air of desire. Right away, suspicion lifted its head: Could this be someone’s prank?
A man pretending to be a woman, maybe. Or some nasty trick meant to lure in a gullible older guy and make a fool of him.
[Can you do a voice call?]
I had to confirm that she was really a woman.
[My roommate’s asleep, so I can’t right now.]
Her saying she couldn’t call turned my suspicion into certainty. It felt like a textbook net-cam trick.
[Can’t you come here now? You could just sneak out.]
It was suspicious as hell. It was already after three in the morning, and yet she wanted to meet right away while refusing to let me hear her voice.
It felt like a high-level scam—luring me out onto a dark road to rob me, or maybe filming it live and branding me online as some perverted old man who got hard at dawn. I decided, like a mature adult, to recover my composure.
[It’s too late right now. Let’s do a voice call tomorrow when you wake up and can talk. Then we can talk about it.]
Wasn’t this the sort of thing that happened all the time on apps and in open chats? I had plenty of phone-sex experience—hundreds of times over, certainly—and with that came even more disappointments and pranks. After passing through so many online encounters, I’d built my own rules.
Anyone who wouldn’t even confirm their voice got cut immediately. And no matter how much I liked them, I made a point of contacting them every day for at least two weeks before meeting in person, just to figure out what kind of person they really were.
That was enough time for the other person’s true colors to show, and the minimum line of defense against being swept away by a fantasy attached to a face I didn’t even know. I ended the conversation and forced my eyes shut.
The next morning, dragging myself out of bed with a heavy head, I checked my phone and found a message from her.
[I can talk on the phone now.]
That was unexpected. So she really is a woman? I’d grown used to countless anonymous voice calls, but my fingertips trembled slightly as I pressed the call button. After several rings, it connected.
“Hello?”
From the other end of the line came a voice that was far younger and shyer than I’d imagined.
“Ah, hi.”
We started awkwardly. After exchanging the usual greetings, I honestly admitted that I’d been a little suspicious last night because of how things had looked, and she laughed brightly, saying, “You old men really are careful, aren’t you?”
She went on to complain that she only had practical classes once or twice a week, that she had to go to campus for those and then couldn’t even grab a proper meal with her classmates because gatherings of more than five people were banned, so they all scattered. Compared to the boldness she’d shown in text, she was much shyer over the phone, but she naturally laughed at my jokes, and that unexpected charm melted away my doubts from the night before like snow.
Normally I would have needed a long time to assess her, but the clear, harmless voice coming through the receiver shook my rigid principles in an instant.
Before I knew it, my defenses had collapsed, and an irresistible curiosity to see her in person had begun to rise. Without bringing up anything sexual on purpose, we agreed to meet that Saturday and have lunch together.
At last, Saturday arrived. As I drove toward the meeting place, my mind was a mess. To be prepared for any possibility, I stopped by a convenience store and bought a pack of condoms. The feeling of surely not mixed with the thrill of what if.
I reached the entrance to the residential alley she’d given me and switched on my hazard lights while I waited.
The moment I saw a female student walking toward me from far away, I caught my breath without meaning to. She was one of those so-called “bagel girls,” cute face and sexy body together. Her face had almost no makeup and looked so youthful, so innocent, that she could have passed for a high school student; I had trouble hiding my surprise. But the curves visible beneath her thin white T-shirt proved without question that she was indeed a twenty-year-old adult.
She’s prettier than I expected... My mouth felt a little dry. She strode toward my car without hesitation and greeted me with an awkward smile.
Once I’d seated her in the passenger seat, the air inside the car changed, becoming denser somehow. I tried to break the awkwardness with useless little jokes and headed for the upscale restaurant in the neighboring city that I’d reserved in advance.
When I ordered steak for her, her eyes widened. “Wow, this looks so good!” she said, delighted like a child as she ate, and it was genuinely pleasant to watch.
She shyly said that she had no real campus life to speak of—no MTs, no festivals, no proper familiarity with upperclassmen—and that she could never have afforded a meal like this because of her living expenses.
All through dinner, as if we had forgotten the secret proposal from the app, we spoke only of ordinary things, like gossiping about professors we’d only ever seen on screens. I could feel the glances from nearby tables and the whispers they passed between them, but rather than feeling embarrassed, I finished the meal with a strange sense of superiority.
After eating, we went back out and sat in the car again. The noon sunlight poured through the windshield. As our conversation stayed ordinary and wholesome, a thought rose in some corner of my mind: maybe I should just take this kind and innocent student home safely, and that should be the end of it.
The age gap itself honestly didn’t matter to me; I’d had experience, after all. But seeing her in person, she seemed so pure that I felt an unexpected twinge of guilt. To settle my complicated feelings, I started driving aimlessly toward a quiet riverside road on the outskirts of town.
When I parked in a secluded lot overlooking the river, she had been staring out the window, then finally opened her mouth with weighty hesitation.
“But...”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“I knew there was an age gap, but seeing you in person... honestly, it’s a little overwhelming. My final exams are about to start too, so I’m really anxious.”
A chill settled in some corner of my chest. So that’s how it is, I thought, and a bitter smile touched my lips.
“So I don’t think I’ll be seeing you again. Thank you so much for lunch today. It was delicious.”
Her rejection was clear. My conscience agreed that this was the right ending, and I was just about to nod calmly and say something like, “All right, good luck on your exams...” in the tone of an older man pretending to be magnanimous.
“But that’s why...”
She took a breath, then looked straight into my eyes and said,
“Could you really just do it with your mouth only?”
“...What?”
“Absolutely not the doing part.”
I went blank, as if someone had swung a hammer into the back of my head. Still confused, I asked again to be sure.
“Here? Right now, in the car?”
“The car might be seen by people passing by, or by other cars, so that’s a little... I want somewhere quiet where nobody can see us.”
Her composure only made me more flustered, and I began launching into a long, desperate attempt to talk her out of it. This isn’t right, you’re still too young, you’ll definitely regret it later, this isn’t a proper way to meet someone... the kind of stale lectures an older man might be expected to give poured out of me.
She listened to my sermon in silence, then answered without changing expression, as if it meant nothing to her.
“I’m fine. Since it’s come to this, I just want to feel something properly with someone experienced. You don’t seem like a bad person, either... and anyway... we won’t ever see each other again. Do you not want to?”
At that provocative question, the last thread of my reason snapped.
Was she pretending to be innocent, but actually just a slut?
I wanted to know. And the surest escape route, one that would let us keep this hidden from other people’s eyes, flashed through my mind.
In the end, I couldn’t break her stubbornness—or rather, I couldn’t overcome the desire inside me—and I turned the wheel.
The destination was not her apartment, but a hotel nearby where the noon silence hung heavy in the air.
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