Gynophobia Patient Kim Cheolsoo

In that instant the darkness dissolved, and my eyes snapped open.

I was staring at wallpaper with a familiar pattern.

"Haah…"

With a sigh, I slowly pushed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my upper body upright. Daylight had broken at some point.

Damn it… was it because I went on that blind date?

After all this time, I'd dreamed that dream again. A memory I ached to forget — and yet, just when I'd almost managed to bury it, it always came crawling back like this to intrude on my life…

"Hoo…"

I let out another long sigh and shook my head. Time to get to work. Just… work.

"Team Leader Kim, come over here a minute."

Even after a blind date gone wrong and a nightmare that had dredged up the very memory I wanted buried, I had still clocked in as usual. That friend of mine had called all evening, but I never picked up. It would have been pointless anyway — gynophobia was not the kind of illness that healed so easily…

The illness was one thing; the job was another. A man still had to make a living.

"Yes, Manager."

At his call I answered in my most deferential tone and came around to his desk. I was a gynophobia patient — but nobody at the company had any idea.

Around men, I was always the earnest, hardworking, well-mannered salesman with plenty of affability — the newly appointed team leader who handled his subordinates well. The gynophobia may have been acquired later in life, but the social graces drilled into me over thirty-five years remained fully intact among men.

That was why every male employee in the office liked me. With the guys I laughed, traded jokes, and got along without a hitch.

The women, on the other hand, clearly couldn't stand me.

Well… naturally. Knowing nothing of my condition, all they could see was a male chauvinist who deliberately froze out the female staff…

My exchanges with the female employees mostly consisted of curt commands, or took place without my ever properly meeting their eyes. And whenever we did come face to face, I would inevitably wrench my head away. From where they stood, hating me was the only reasonable response…

The psychiatrist I'd once consulted diagnosed my symptoms as a trauma internalized since adolescence — the residue of the rigid principles I'd been raised under. He went on to say that a subconscious conviction that men and women must be kept separate had erupted all at once in my adulthood, triggered by a single event.

I never went back for another session after hearing that. I couldn't bear the idea of a stranger seeing straight through my subconscious in the space of a few sentences.

And so, for nearly fifteen years now, I had lived with this gynophobia.

"Team Leader Kim, you'll have to make a trip out to Factory 1."

"Factory 1? Why all of a sudden…?"

The manager's grave expression drew the puzzled question out of me.

"No idea. Those Factory 1 bastards… first they want the supply rates renegotiated, now they're saying they'll halt the machines."

Factory 1 was in-house slang at our company. We owned no factories of our own; we were purely an industrial software developer — a mid-sized firm that spent its days ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠building the operating software for machinery in the fine-process stages of home-appliance production lines, for major domestic conglomerates and overseas corporations alike. Twenty-odd years since its founding, the company was little known to the general public but held its own respectably within the industry.

But where in South Korea is it ever easy to live off software? Squeezed between conglomerates that treated us as barely more than a subcontractor and foreign clients steadily swapping us out for their own homegrown technology, we had finally begun producing the machines that went into those production lines ourselves, all in a desperate bid to survive.

Of course, lacking the capital to erect a factory of our own, we had entered manufacturing by farming the machine production out to other plants.

To put it plainly: a conglomerate stood above us as Party A while we became Party B, taking orders for the machines used on the lines of specific appliances. Then we in turn became Party A, treating other machine manufacturers as our Party Bs, procuring their machines and delivering them up to the conglomerate that was our own Party A. A company stuck forever in the B slot of an A-to-B-to-C hierarchy.

Through that arrangement we ended up monopolizing the supply of both software and hardware to the conglomerates, pulling in more profit than we ever had before. And operating beneath our company under this scheme were the plants we called — in that same in-house slang — Factory 1, 2, and 3.

Factory 1 in Ansan had been the very first plant to sign a contract with us, and at some point rumors had begun circulating that it was quietly lining up contracts to deliver machines to clients on its own. It baffled me where they imagined they'd source software without us — but either way, the structure had flipped on its head: now it was Party C throwing its weight around at us, the Party B. In the end, we were the ones caught in the middle who had to stay on the big man's good side…

"Factory 1 again? Whew…"

"Those sons of bitches, honestly… When this contract runs out, we ought to just refuse to renew. Why is it a whole circus every single time!"

At my sigh the manager grumbled along with me and clamped his quit-smoking e-cigarette between his lips. This was already the second rate adjustment Factory 1 had demanded this year alone.

"Couldn't we just pull more machines from Factories 2 and 3 in the meantime?"

At my question the manager shook his head, side to side, vapor rolling out of the e-cig wedged in his mouth.

"You know how it is — 2 and 3 are both running flat-out on the MG project. They've got no capacity to spare. So you go meet with the Factory 1 president yourself and talk him around. He's your old high school schoolmate, isn't he? And the man's always been rather fond of you."

The manager spoke between irritated puffs on the weak, nicotine-less vapor.

"Understood. I'll give it my best shot. I suppose this has to get solved if you're going to keep that no-smoking promise of yours, Manager."

I nodded with confidence and flashed him a smile. Only then did the manager's face ease into a grin of its own, and he tapped his e-cig against the floor out of old habit.

"That's it, that's it. You're the only one I trust, Team Leader Kim. Oh — and one more thing…"

The manager grabbed my ear, pulled me close, and whispered.

"Take Miss Seonju along with you. The Factory 1 president loves his women, you know. Tell her to put that pretty face of hers to work — a little honey trap never hurts. Got it?"

Miss Seonju, who had joined the company on a contract earlier this year, wore a scowl the entire drive to Factory 1. Her face made it plain that she couldn't fathom why a contract employee was being hauled into a negotiation with a subcontractor. And with the male employee she probably hated most of all, no less.

Any other man would have tossed out this quip or that remark to soften her mood, but I simply kept my focus on the road.

Fresh out of university that very year, Miss Seonju flaunted her youth as if determined to prove the saying that youth is power — a fearless young miss, through and through. The long, waved hair, the meticulous makeup — everything about her announced just how confident she was in her own beauty. Her wardrobe was no less audacious. Even in winter she wore tiny miniskirts over leggings, parading her long, shapely legs, and as the weather warmed her clothes only grew shorter and lighter.

The figure revealed between those lightened layers was an hourglass S-curve every bit as striking as her face.

My gaze flicked, briefly, to her legs. Today, too, she was in a pair of barely-there black hot pants. Seated in the passenger seat, her white thighs jiggled with the vibration of the car right around the gear stick. The thighs of a woman of twenty-three — so milky was her skin that you could feel their firmness by sight alone.

Damn it… if it weren't for this gynophobia, I might have made a play for Miss Seonju myself. At least once.

"Ahh… wouldn't mind a taste of that, just once."

Whenever the men gathered for a smoke break, their customary rating of the female staff never ran without her — a permanent fixture of the conversation. And yet to this day, not one man had managed to conquer Miss Seonju. All you ever heard were stories of rejection. Teasing men with those revealing clothes, and yet to every one of them she stayed haughty and untouchable. As if to say: You really think you could have me? Never! So drool over this all you like!

"Doesn't matter anyway — put Seonju in a bed and she'll be squealing under a man same as any of them."

As always, the smoke-break talk about Seonju ended on my sneering note.

Women were all the same in the end. Pressed down beneath a strong man, writhing and moaning in the pleasure he gave her — that was the duty of the animal called woman. However much they strutted and postured and played aloof, in front of a man they were all identical creatures.

Kim Seonju.

You'd be exactly the same, you bitch!

Had Seonju ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠read my thoughts, somehow? Still scowling, eyes fixed straight ahead, she pulled the document envelope she'd set between herself and the door onto her lap, covering the sliver of bare thigh.

She made it look utterly casual, but there was no mistaking it — she had caught my gaze, and she was reacting to it.

Damn it!

Why the sudden show of modesty? Women wear clothes like that because they want to be looked at — every last one of them! And now she's playing the innocent?!

Damn it!

This is exactly why I hate women.