Side Story — Han Mi-jung (5)
"May I come in?"
Without waiting for an answer, the woman strode in and sat down on the sofa. Not that an instructor could have refused her in the first place. Everyone who had come to see me so far had been men, but that didn't mean I had the right to turn away a woman's orders either.
"Got any beer?"
The room had been stocked with all kinds of drinks and alcohol from the start. As I reached for a can, the woman said, "Bring one for me too. We'll drink together." So I brought back two cans and sat down on the sofa.
"Surprised to see a woman instructor?" Ah-hyun asked as she poured her beer.
"Yes, a little..."
"The men come often, I take it?"
"Almost every day."
"Men, honestly..."
Wiping the beer from her lips with a faint smirk, she was captivating even to me, a woman. She couldn't have been older than her mid-thirties. With her sharp nose, full lips, and a figure whose volume showed even through her clothes, it was impossible to see her as a teacher.
"From what I've seen, you and one other seem to be the most popular here."
The other one — could that be Jeong In-ae?
"I'm relieved, honestly. The caliber of the students is high. Quite a few heavyweights are coming in this year."
"Heavyweights?"
"Yes. The son of Jang Jun-gu, chairman of XX Group, is enrolling this year."
XX Group? The son of the chairman of South Korea's number one corporation?
"So if you play your cards right, Seh-hwan could gain an extraordinary network. Of course, he'll never actually be their friend, but still."
"..."
"The man who came on interview day wasn't your husband, I heard. What happened there?"
"My husband is in a nursing home."
"What happened to him?"
I took a sip of beer and gave her a rough account of my relationship with Yoon-gyu. I didn't particularly want to share the details, but Ah-hyun pressed persistently, and little by little I found myself opening up. She had a knack, somehow, for unlocking the locks on a person's heart. Looking into those piercing eyes, it felt as though nothing could be hidden. By the time I'd confessed even the most shameful parts, tears had welled up, and by the time I drained my first can I was sobbing outright.
"Aiish, you've suffered so much. I understand — I'm a mother too."
"You have a child?"
I had ended up crying in Ah-hyun's arms at some point. I lifted my head and asked, looking at her face.
"Yes, still in elementary school. A son."
"And your husband?"
"There's no such person. To be honest, I don't even know who the father is. I was raped."
"..."
I pulled out of her arms and looked at her face. Her expression still held that faint smile, unchanged, yet I could tell she too had lived no easy life.
"I used to be a schoolteacher with big dreams, once (laughs). But somehow I ended up going through that. From my own students, no less. Children I truly adored — and it turned out that in their eyes I was nothing but a plump, appetizing female. They were punished by the law, of course, but compared to the suffering I endured it meant nothing, and I could never teach again. I was devoured, plain and simple. Even after I learned I was pregnant, somehow I couldn't bring myself to end it. And when I found out it was a boy, I actually felt something like a small thrill. Men and women, in the end, are eaters and eaten. There are herbivore men in this world, but women like you and me are fated to be devoured by the carnivorous ones. So my little revenge is to raise my son into one of the strong. Not to end up in a cell like those boys did — but to become a man with the real power to take any woman he wants, freely. Then, while working as an academy instructor, I found my connection to this place. It felt like I'd found the only road that could give my son genuine power. Even now, I can do far more for my son than the other mothers can. Things outside the law, too."
"So you also..."
"You're asking if I give my body like you do? Yes, I do. Not to the instructors, though. Not that the male instructors look at me the way one looks at a colleague. More like — 'she's just a woman who spreads her legs anyway, four years or no four years.' And I don't give it to ordinary students either. But soon a few special students will be entering this building, and for them, I serve. Because those boys are my Masters."
"..."
Broadly, I understood. There seemed to be three ranks. Master, servant, and slave. I was a slave. Which was why I had to give my body not only to the Masters but to the servants — or those aspiring to be servants. Boys in Seh-hwan's position had, in the end, sold their mothers as slaves to become servants. Whether the other boys knew it the way Seh-hwan did, I couldn't say. But even a servant, if he was servant to men with the power to shake this whole country, was worth something. This instructor, Ah-hyun, was a servant. Which was why she didn't give her body to fellow servants.
"Shall we begin, then?" Ah-hyun said, setting down her empty can.
"Begin what?"
"What do you think? Sex, obviously."
"What?"
I froze, my blood running cold.
"Why did you think I came here? To gossip? I got so tired of the junior male instructors leering at my body like sleazes that I came to exercise my own authority. You know orders can't be refused, don't you?"
I had never done such a thing with a woman. Sometimes when the men talked dirty, they mentioned taking several women at once, but the mere thought made my face burn. Multiple men I could bear — another woman besides me, I could not. Having another woman watch what was done to me by men was doubly humiliating.
"I've... never been with a woman..."
"You'll end up doing it often enough once you're here. Some of them like taking several women at once, and some like watching women together. Think of it as practice. I've done it plenty of times, so I'll teach you properly. There are advantages over doing it with men, too."
With that, she took my face in both hands and kissed me. It felt impossibly strange. Goosebumps raced over my whole body, and I stood frozen with my fists clenched tight, unable to move a muscle. Ah-hyun's soft, full lips sucked alternately at my upper and lower lip, and then her tongue slid slowly in. Along with the scent of beer came a sweetness unlike the mouths of men — lipstick, perhaps. In that pleasant, languid sensation, the tension slowly drained from my body.
Having known only one husband my whole life, every man who had coveted my body since I began selling it had fucked roughly, violently. To them I was a tool for dispensing semen — a toilet, in effect. Their kisses existed to lick and suck at the inside of my mouth, to taste it, to shame me — nothing like the kisses I shared with my husband, meant to exchange feeling or give each other pleasure. I couldn't know what was in this woman's heart, but under her kiss, as her tongue slowly entwined mine, I somehow felt my wariness dissolving.
Her hand began to caress my breast.
"Touch mine too."
Haltingly, I laid my hand on her chest. But this was entirely different from anything I had learned so far. I knew men's pleasure points inside and out — but their bodies didn't come with this.
"Just do what I do."
Mirroring the way she touched mine, I caressed her breasts. Hers, which looked twice the size of mine, were plump and soft. It was my first time touching another woman's breast. So this was why men loved a woman's chest so much.
Ah-hyun took my hand and led me to the bed. There, standing beside it, we undressed each other. What emerged was a woman's body that was voluptuous without being fat — truly what you'd call ideal.
"You're so beautiful..."
"You're the beautiful one, unni. No wonder the men can't leave you alone."
She laid me down on the bed and climbed on top of me. With hands and mouth she caressed my nipples and armpits, my flanks and my clit, my knees and even my toes — places I had never even imagined could feel good. This wasn't right. I had come here only for my son. I couldn't let my son's teacher — a woman, no less — see me truly feeling it. But unlike my reason, my body was kindling more and more. It was genuine arousal, the first in so long. When her lips touched between my legs and her tongue flicked my clit, moans spilled from my mouth before I knew it.
"Ahhn... haa... there... more, right there... uungh..."
After I came lightly, this time it was my turn to caress her body. Exactly as she had done for me, exactly as she had taught me. Ah-hyun demanded actively, telling me where and how. I studied hard and gave her what she wanted.
And at the end, we entwined our legs and pressed our sexes together, grinding. Pressing our most sensitive spots against each other's bodies, hands clasped, eyes locked. Ah-hyun's face, contorted with pleasure, looked even more beautiful slick with sweat, and the bestial moans coming from her were no performance to please a man — they rose from somewhere deep. And the same sounds were spilling from my own mouth without my knowing. The moment I felt her grip on my hands tighten with tremendous force, everything went white before my eyes, and a hot fire — the first of its kind I had ever felt — spread from my lower body through my whole being.