The Realization

Of the twenty-nine women, thirteen had green icons. But I opened every single woman's profile and video in order, red icons included. The preview videos ran about twenty to thirty ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠minutes each, and since I couldn't watch them all, I had no choice but to skip through the later ones. The filming location was the same in every clip, the angles and content nearly identical. The man was the same person, too. Like the woman I'd watched with the teacher—number 1, Jiyoung—the women were mostly indifferent at first and then wept and resisted as things went on, though some cried from the very start and others stayed deadpan to the end.

As I hurried through them, pressed for time, the twenty-fourth woman suddenly leapt out at me. She was already marked with a red icon, a woman I couldn't select. Her name was Han Mi-jung, forty-two—two years younger than my mother. She had a petite frame, but her chest and hips swelled in all the right places without a trace of excess flesh. In a word, she was an ajumma who didn't look her forties at all—she could easily pass for early thirties. A bob haircut framed a face that gave an overall impression of warmth and cuteness, and in her photos ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she was beaming. That appearance alone made her top-shelf goods, but what really seized my eyes was a strange sense that I'd seen her somewhere before. The bright, affectionate smile, the aegyo, the fair skin, the small, soft-looking body. And yet I couldn't place her. I wanted desperately to fuck this Han Mi-jung, but this time I had no choice but to give up. She was clearly a popular one, so my only option was to climb the rankings starting next week.

In the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠end, with ten minutes left before midnight, I made my choice. It was number 1, Jiyoung—the woman I'd watched in Teacher Ah-hyun's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠room. It wasn't that there were no better women, but she had a certain charm that recalled that thrill of cumming on the teacher's hand, and since she was the only woman whose video I'd watched from beginning to end without skipping, I wanted to see her in the flesh.

Having chosen my woman, I thought about watching the rest of the videos, but I was too exhausted, and all I wanted was for tomorrow to come quickly, so I decided to sleep. Tomorrow or the day after, these videos would be there whenever I wanted them. I turned off the computer and was climbing into bed, savoring the anticipation of the next day, when—like a hammer to the skull—a memory surfaced. I bolted upright, ran back to the desk, and switched the computer on again. Then I searched the slaves' photos once more for number 24, Han Mi-jung.

The occupation jumped out at me first. Food service. I hit play on the video immediately.

Han Mi-jung appeared, sitting on a sofa. She wore a deep blue dress, the upper chest and sleeves sheer. Her dyed brown bob was tucked behind her ears, giving her a cute look, but paired with the mature outfit she could have passed for a news anchor. Unlike the other women, whose faces were uniformly heavy with dread, Han Mi-jung wore a bright smile. The audio was stripped from the beginning of every video, but the way she laughed radiantly while chatting with someone off-screen was captivating.

Unlike the videos of Jiyoung and the other women, the man didn't stand behind her groping her chest—he sat down beside her. Her face came into the frame, though the man's was mosaic-blurred. He took her face in his hands and began sucking on her lips. "Kissing" wasn't quite the word—it was more like he was sucking and licking her lips. Han Mi-jung offered no resistance at all, accepting his lips and tongue. She even ran her small, delicate hands over his fleshy chest, caressing it. The man seemed to grow more and more excited, his bloated body beginning to engulf her petite one. With one hand gripping the back of her neck as he licked at her pretty face, his other hand kneaded the modestly swelling breasts and slim waist through her clothes.

The scene changed, and the man was now completely naked. The top of Han Mi-jung's dress and her bra had both been pulled down and hung around her waist, baring her porcelain upper body. Her breasts, just the right size to fit in one hand, her tiny pink nipples, her trim waist free of any flab, and her skin, pale as milk—all of it was soft and clean, more like the body of a woman in her early twenties than her forties, and set against the man's fat, filthy body it looked all the more pitiful and beautiful.

And yet in that delicate body, she was more proactive than any of the other women. Leaning back against the armrest, half-reclined, the man spread his legs while she worked on him with hands and mouth, giving the finest service. Her soft hands stroked along his thighs and the hollows of his hips; her small lips parted wide to take the head of his cock in and suck, then her tongue swept up the underside of his shaft, and she even licked his hairy, sagging balls. And through all of it, her eyes never left the man's face, and not once did her smile falter.

The scene changed again, and now Han Mi-jung was completely naked. Facing the camera, hands braced on the table, she was taking the man from behind.

"Aaahng.... aheuung.... it feels good... please keep going... aheuuk...."

With no sexual experience of my own, I couldn't tell whether she was acting or genuine. But whether it was service meant to please the man, or pleasure she felt even while being violated, at the very least her mindset was completely different from the other women. A thread of drool ran from her open mouth as she let out aegyo-laced moans, and her eyes looked hazily drunk. She matched the rhythm of his thrusts, bouncing her hips on her own.

Then the man's movements doubled in speed, and with a hard thrust of his hips he spat his cum inside her pussy. A line of liquid trickled down her thigh. Astonishingly, the moment the man finished, Han Mi-jung knelt down before his cock on her own and used her lips and tongue to clean the cum and froth from his filthy shaft. And I, who had been stroking myself throughout the video, came again watching her face as she looked up into another man's eyes and lovingly licked his cock.

Calming my pounding heart, I pulled tissues and wiped myself off, thinking. There was no doubt about it. I had seen this woman, Han Mi-jung, before. I'd only seen her face a few times in middle school, but she was Seh-hwan's mother, the one who ran the snack shop. I remembered stopping in once or twice on the way home to buy tteokbokki or ramen. I'd never gone with Seh-hwan himself—we weren't that close. She'd probably gone alone, or with a classmate she'd happened to meet on the way home from school. She was bright and outgoing anyway, and she was especially kind to kids wearing the uniform of her son's school. I remembered my heart racing at the glimpse of a young ajumma's pale upper chest between her T-shirt when she brought the food over. And I remembered her from behind, in jeans and an apron—how not just I but the other guys would sneak glances at the line of her waist and hips.

Was I imagining it? But the more I looked, the more certain I was: it was Seh-hwan's mother. A beauty like that was rare. Back then, Seh-hwan's mother with her snack shop and my mother with her hair salon were the neighborhood's acknowledged twin beauties, impossible to rank one above the other. And the timing was too uncanny. Here, of all places—where I'd run into Seh-hwan by chance after years—his mother appears. But thinking that way only made it stranger. Anywhere else I might understand, but why on earth was Seh-hwan's mother on a slave list?

Then, one by one, the things I'd been unconsciously trying to ignore began to surface, connecting in my head like puzzle pieces snapping together. Why on earth would a son of a hair salon and a son of a snack shop be enrolled in an academy elite enough to have chaebol heirs in it? My parents' bloodshot eyes on interview day, and my mother's disheveled hair. The sight of number 1, Jiyoung, being fucked by the hair. The way we students had entered the building one at a time, staggered so no one could see another's family before entering. My mother's suitcase being loaded into a car. The proctor Yoo Chan-hyeong's filthy hand stroking my mother's.

These twenty-nine women were all students' mothers. No—there were originally thirty. There was one woman I couldn't view with my ID. Name Jeong In-ae, age forty-four. My mother. Unlike the hundred and twenty mothers who'd paid a fortune to enroll their sons, thirty mothers had offered their own bodies as outlets for their sons' friends' lust so their boys could attend this expensive academy and get into good universities—and those thirty mothers were now together in the Annex. And tomorrow, no doubt, some of my classmates would use my mother's body to vent their pent-up lust. Maybe... maybe my mother was already stained with the cum of several men. She must have been violated on interview day, and judging by the atmosphere, Proctor Yoo Chan-hyeong may well have raped her from the first day. And the ten boys in the Annex... they'd surely already had a taste of my mother's body.

Only now could I understand the expressions they wore whenever they looked at me in the dining hall. Those expressions were saying this:

'Your mom was delicious.'