The Man Who Didn't Look
A notification chimed from somewhere in the room.
"Haa..."
There had been a close call in the hallway — two men, appearing out of nowhere — but Suhee had still managed a thoroughly satisfying session on the Emergency Staircase. Now she was home, and she tossed the dildo, slick and glistening with her own juices, into the sink.
It never even occurred to her that the other person might have seen the dildo she'd been carrying.
Though if they had noticed... well. If it was Suhee, she would only have had an even better time.
"What's this... Mom sent me a text?"
She had worked her hips so hard her legs had gone weak, and she all but collapsed onto the bed before picking up her phone.
"Ah, right. The driver's license."
Back in school she had sworn, every single vacation, that this time she would finally get it. And every single vacation she had let it slip away, too busy with one lewd little adventure or another.
A text from her mother telling her to get her license while she still had time before starting work was not something Suhee could simply ignore.
"Oh..."
There was a condition attached, after all. Pass the test, and they would buy her a compact car.
"A car... hmm. It would be nice to have one, wouldn't it?"
Whenever she went out she had always hitched a ride in someone else's. Thinking about it now, driving herself actually sounded like fun.
It wasn't as if she had much else to do.
Well — that wasn't quite true. She had plenty of thoroughly entertaining plans already. But with a car, she could get around even more, and that thought was starting to appeal to her.
"Eh, I'll get it in no time, right?"
From what she remembered of school, the guys had always gone around saying how easy it was.
The new city was still unfamiliar, but luckily there was a driving school right near her building.
From what she had looked up online, if you just worked through a practice book a few times, the road test itself was easy.
Suhee took that at face value. She bought a study guide and nothing else, then sat on the bus home staring blankly out the window.
"Hey, you see that?"
"Shh. Keep it down."
A familiar sound, no matter where she went.
The gazes of men had become so routine by now that Suhee simply leaned her head against the glass and paid them no mind. Once upon a time she might have thrown them a little provocation, just to enjoy the reaction — but cheap thrills like that did nothing for her anymore.
Besides, it was broad daylight. Not as if she could actually do anything about it.
Even the way she squinted slightly against the sunlight pouring through the window seemed to strike the men as beautiful. Normally they would sneak glances, quick and furtive. This stare was blatant. Open. She could feel it crawling over her.
Hah... well...
It didn't feel bad.
Suhee slowly turned those long, narrow eyes of hers. She looked toward the men, and their gazes locked.
"Hup."
"Ahem."
Watching them flinch and snap their heads away, Suhee let out a tiny snicker that no one else could hear.
She had come to a brand-new city where nobody knew her name. And yet a reaction that familiar still managed to settle something in her chest — a strange little sense of relief.
"Haa. Maybe I should actually try this study book."
She got off the bus and started toward home, and that was when a small cafe caught her eye.
She was certain it hadn't registered when she left the apartment. On the way back, it suddenly stood out.
Not a chain — just a little neighborhood place. Still, it had everything it needed. A small display case with a few cookies and cakes. And...
"What? There are so many people in there."
A tiny local cafe should have had one or two customers at most. The one Suhee was looking at was packed — and packed entirely with women.
She had been about to walk past. Then she stopped.
Something had felt off, and up close she could see it clearly: every single customer was a woman. Women in a cafe wasn't strange in itself. The problem was that every last one of those gazes was locked on a single point.
The man who appeared to be the owner.
The part in his hair that left his forehead bare didn't look old-fashioned — it sat naturally, almost effortlessly. And he was, even by Suhee's standards, extremely clean-cut and handsome.
She found herself nodding without meaning to, then started looking for an empty seat inside.
This was a different feeling from the men on the bus who had been leering at her. To be honest, it was more accurate to say that clean, handsome face had simply piqued her interest.
The bell above the door jingled as Suhee stepped inside, and every gaze in the room swung briefly toward the entrance.
A hush dropped over the murmuring cafe.
The women seated at the tables went on guard against her by pure instinct. The goal of every woman camping out in this place was obvious: to exchange even one more word with the handsome owner. And in that regard, Suhee was a very, very serious problem.
She was dressed casually, barely any makeup on that pale, luminous face — and even that alone felt devastatingly powerful.
"Welcome."
"Ah, hello."
But as Suhee returned the greeting with a bright smile, she felt something strange. A sensation she couldn't quite put her finger on. What was it? She sat down turning the question over — and then she understood.
He's not looking at me?
It wasn't merely that he wasn't looking. The cafe owner's gaze had come her way for a moment, and then he had turned his head as if she weren't there at all. Not a lingering glance. No flicker of surprise at the sight of her. No lecherous once-over. Nothing.
To be fair, there were men who didn't react to Suhee. But the instant they looked, there was always at least a little spark in the eyes — and Suhee had seen those looks so many times she prided herself on catching them immediately.
Hmph...
"I'd like to order."
"Yes."
She set her things on an empty table and walked up to the counter, coming face to face with him.
His eyes were as long and narrow as Suhee's own. Not small. She could see her reflection in those pitch-black pupils. Thick eyebrows, a clean open forehead. His age... even being generous, mid-thirties? Maybe early thirties? Something in his atmosphere made it hard to pin down.
And it was being proven all over again that the feeling she'd had a moment ago was no mistake. His gaze was so plain, so utterly unadorned, that he almost looked like a man without emotions at all.
"Ready to order?"
"Ah, yes. Sorry. One iced americano, please."
"Sure."
Even when he took the card she handed him and rang her up, there wasn't the slightest tremor in his fingers, no sticky leftover glance trailing after her. Suhee looked at him with a faint sparkle in her eyes, and it made no difference. Men who pretended to be indifferent always, always snuck a look — but a man this thoroughly uninterested was almost a first, even for her.
She sat back down at her table to wait, and still his gaze never followed.
Ohh...
Suhee, who had spent her whole life on the receiving end of sticky stares or at the very least a flicker of interest, found this man fascinating.
Is he gay?
She had gone so far as to wonder whether his inclinations simply ran in a different direction.
"Your coffee's ready."
"Ah, thank you."
As she took the cold americano, the paper sleeve already fitted around the cup, Suhee let her fingers brush lightly against his.
"Enjoy."
"Ah. Yes."
The attempt was met with a non-reaction so complete it was almost embarrassing. Feeling awkward, Suhee sat down and fidgeted with the cold cup, then gently lifted a hand chilled by the ice and pressed it to her cheek.
Hot. She was probably flushed red. The reaction she had taken for granted hadn't come, and it seemed that had gotten her a little heated.
Even so, it didn't feel entirely bad. More like she had discovered an interesting new toy — or maybe that she had found something worth challenging. A response so different from all the men who came running at her like dogs in heat... Suhee could feel her body warming, just slightly.
A strange excitement. A low thrum of anticipation. A giddy lift almost like the start of sex itself rose slowly from her toes, flushing both cheeks and throwing off heat.
She swallowed. She tried the cold coffee. Her body refused to settle.
Still, there was nothing she could do about it right now. There were simply too many customers. Thanks to that handsome face and the cool atmosphere he carried, the place was drowning in women.
But it was a cafe right in front of her building. She could come back anytime.
The problem was...
"Haa..."
The problem was Suhee's overheated body.
On top of everything else, she had just moved to a new place and didn't know a single man, so she hadn't been able to properly work off her urges. The best she'd managed was that session on the Emergency Staircase last time. She ran her pale, slender hands over herself, touching here and there, but far from cooling down, the heat only climbed higher.
It was so frustrating.
"I can't take this."
Suhee, who had been lying on the bed after tossing her bag aside, sat up. She had been rolling around with such filthy thoughts that she had already slipped her bra off from under her shirt.
A wet sound. The hand she pulled out of her shorts was coated in a slick, viscous fluid.
"Hnh."
She pulled the bra off completely, and her prominent nipples rubbed against the thin fabric of her shirt. The rough texture of the cloth against those hard peaks sent a tingling jolt straight through their owner.
"Aah."
Halfway through sitting up, she caught one between thumb and forefinger and gave it a light pinch. She trembled, holding back the urge to buck her hips. She needed a bigger stimulus than this. She couldn't see inside her panties, but she could tell by feel alone — her juices had soaked through the thin fabric and run down between her thighs.
She threw on a light cardigan to hide the nipples standing out against her shirt, then picked up the dildo she had used last time. She was going to do the most stimulating thing she could manage alone, as a stopgap.
The front door creaked as she eased it open and checked left and right. As a consolation prize, Suhee intended to masturbate on the Emergency Staircase one more time, and she moved quickly. It couldn't compare to actual sex... but doing dirty things in secret, in an open space, delivered a pretty intense kind of pleasure.
She was walking toward the Emergency Staircase door at the end of the hallway when she heard a front door open and close behind her. Her body was already burning as hot as it could get, though, and she had no intention of looking back. It would just be someone who lived on the same floor, and this was hardly a situation where she could expect anything from them.
"Hm?"
The man who had stepped out of his door, however, seemed to feel differently.
It was the same man Suhee had run into last time, on her way to the Emergency Staircase for that first session. The man who lived on her floor had already been watching her closely. The truth was, the cafe owner was the abnormal one — any ordinary man would not have been able to look at a woman like Suhee as if she were a rock in the road. On top of that, he was still turning over what she had dropped last time. A dildo. Something he never would have imagined a beauty like her would be carrying around.
"Um... hup."
As if possessed, he started to call out to her, then clamped his mouth shut. The faint scent of shampoo and warm skin left in Suhee's wake, that long slender line of her from behind — he had almost spoken without thinking.
Hah... am I out of my mind. What was I going to do if I called out to her.
He stared blankly at her retreating figure. The way those long white legs moved, the way her ass tensed with every step, the outline visible right through the thin fabric of her pants — the man, Dongkyun, could feel the blood rushing to his cock. The scent of her body and her shampoo still lingering in his nose was like some kind of drug, pulling even more blood down into his dick.
I'm going crazy.
He fumbled a hand into his pocket to adjust himself and was about to turn away when Suhee reached the Emergency Staircase door and looked back toward him. Only then did Dongkyun, sensing something was off, tilt his head.
But... that woman, last time too — why...