Primitive Desire, Part 1
After about an hour had passed and it was time to clean up the table, Hyejeong was still chattering away excitedly until she suddenly claimed her body hurt and slipped away first, heading back to the room.
Yeonju and Minhee began clearing the table. Once that was done, the two of them entered the bedroom, each grabbing their own pillow and blanket before returning to lie side by side on the bed-form sofa and start watching a cable movie.
“Aah~ hum. I’m so sleepy. I’m going to sleep.”
Yeonju rose from the sofa first and headed into the bedroom. Don’t just go in without me… damn it.
Click.
The door closed, and Minhee turned to stare at me. She gave me a pitiful look, clicked her tongue, then approached and untied the ropes binding my limbs before finally pulling the towel from my mouth.
“Here, have a drink.”
Minhee kindly poured me water. I gulped it down, and my throat felt clear and fresh.
“Come here.”
Minhee took me by the arm and led me to the bed-form sofa where she had been lying. She laid me down on the spot where Yeonju had been and then settled beside me. I felt a bit bewildered by her unexpected kindness, but my mind was still in ruins, so I simply followed her lead like a puppet.
Soon she turned her attention back to the movie. I lay there feeling as naked as if my soul had been stripped bare, unable to sleep. Lying beside Minhee felt strangely awkward, so I stared blankly at the TV without thinking.
The film was about a husband who couldn’t trust his wife. He hired a man to deliberately seduce her, then watched her infidelity unfold. Right now the hired man was coaxing the wife into the motel, and the scene on screen showed them entering together.
The husband in the movie filmed every detail of the couple entering the motel, his face filled with satisfaction. He set up surveillance at the entrance, waiting for them to come out. When they didn’t appear for a long time, he grew restless, then irritated, wondering what they could be doing that was taking so long. At that moment, the hired man’s phone began to ring, and the husband answered the message.
The message was long. The husband scrolled down, his eyes losing focus. Finally, as the last part played, the hired man’s hand stopped. The camera angle shifted to the husband’s phone, revealing a photo and video file of the naked wife lying on the bed.
The husband’s trembling fingers touched the video. The screen showed his wife writhing and moaning beneath the hired man, her body arching as she gasped. The husband’s expression twisted from fury to something darker—voyeuristic pleasure. Unconsciously, his hand moved to the prominent bulge in his pants.
The hired man continued fucking the wife while talking. When he asked if his cock was better than the husband’s, the wife answered yes. When he asked how it was better, she said it was bigger and harder. Then came the decisive question: would she leave the husband and give herself to him completely? The wife hesitated for a moment, then, urged by the hired man’s rougher thrusts, she finally answered with a loud moan that she would submit to him.
The husband watched the entire scene in silence, then quietly slipped out of the motel.
“Taemin-ah, if you were that husband, what would you do?”
While watching the movie, Minhee asked me this question. Looking back, my situation wasn’t exactly the same, but I had experienced something similar. I had watched Yeonju’s sex videos almost like a habit, growing excited. In my heart I still thought of Yeonju as my woman, yet she always ended up in another man’s arms.
The movie husband had plotted to abandon his wife, but in the end he blamed himself when he saw her with the other man. He drove himself to despair, parked the car, and slammed his head against the steering wheel, regretting everything.
The one thing my situation and the movie husband shared was that we both felt sexual arousal when we saw our women having sex with other men. Yet neither of us could blame them. I had never mustered the courage to approach Yeonju as a man back then. The movie husband had witnessed his wife in another man’s arms, realized he still loved her, and yet he had left her with the hired man.
“I guess he must be regretting it.”
“Regretting what?”
“Well… he watched the woman he loved being held by another man and still didn’t take her back. Doesn’t that sound like something he’d regret?”
“If it were you, Taemin, would you have taken her out of that situation?”
At that moment I couldn’t answer. I had always believed Yeonju would one day become my wife, but the real reason I hadn’t found the courage back then was because I had no idea how she would react if I confessed my feelings.
If I had confessed then, Yeonju might have laughed it off as a joke, and I could have tried again later. But since we had treated each other like siblings, suddenly confessing might have made her hate me. Moreover, because we had already seen each other’s worst sides, I had no idea whether she would ever accept me as a man.
In the end, the movie husband regretted his actions, tried to win his wife back, and she accepted him. They lived happily ever after.
“Do you think that couple can stay happy forever?”
Minhee asked again.
“I wonder. What do you think?”
“Anyway, the husband saw his wife having sex with another man. If you were him, could you keep loving a woman who’s with someone else?”
“Well… isn’t the present what matters? In the end the husband fell back in love with his wife, and she loved him too. So they’ll be happy.”
Maybe my answer was nothing more than what I wanted to believe.
The movie ended with a happy ending. But there was one final twist. Several years later, the wife had given birth to a child, and the three of them lived as an ordinary happy couple. On a weekend, the wife told her husband she had a college reunion, kissed their child goodbye, and drove off somewhere.
The place she arrived at was a hotel. Waiting for her was the very man the husband had hired years ago. They kissed like lovers in the lobby, then hurried straight to the room, where a fierce lovemaking scene unfolded.
Back home, the husband put the child to bed and came out to the living room. He checked his phone and opened the message. It contained photos and videos of the wife in disheveled clothing and in the middle of intense sex. When he tapped the link, the real-time footage played—his wife and the hired man fucking.
We sat in silence at the unexpected twist.
The husband had been masturbating while watching his own phone. Hours later, when the wife returned home, he hugged her tightly and carried her to the bedroom. The film ended with a brutal marital sex scene.
In the final frame, the two of them looked happy. To the characters in the movie it was a happy ending, but from the audience’s perspective, whether this should be called a happy ending was a matter of personal opinion.
“What the hell is this? Is it a happy ending? A bad ending?”
I muttered to myself without realizing it.
“Kikik~ Both, actually. Because the main characters are happy, it’s a happy ending. Because the last part was a sex scene, it’s a bad ending too.”
Minhee made a pun, but she wasn’t entirely wrong.
“I see… kikik~”
Creak.
At that moment Yeonju came out of the bedroom again, giggling at the two of us. She glanced at us once and headed toward the bathroom. A moment later, as Yeonju returned from the bathroom and walked toward us, she tossed out a comment.
“Hyejeong, if you’re going to sleep together, don’t fall asleep before Taemin. That guy is actually a rapist. You might be next. Kikik~”
Hmm…!
Yeonju’s words sent a jolt through me. Minhee caught the strange look on my face.
You might be next…? What does that mean?
Simply put, it sounded like Yeonju was threatening that if I ever tried to sleep with Minhee, I would face the same consequences as her or Hyejeong. But “don’t fall asleep first”… what exactly did that imply?
Wait… could Yeonju possibly know what I did to her back then…? She knew everything and yet pretended not to? If that’s the case, why… why has she been pretending all this time?
“Taemin-ah. You’re going to sleep with me?”
!!!
The impact felt like I had been struck on the head with a hammer. If Yeonju remembered that incident and had deliberately brought me on this trip just to set up an encounter with the girls, there was only one possible reason.
Yeonju herself must have been uncomfortable with the thought of being the one I slept with, so she was trying to redirect my attention toward the other women. There was no other explanation. Even though we had treated each other like siblings for so long, who would simply throw their friends at their brother for his sake? From the very beginning, Yeonju had planned this trip to steer my interest away from her.
Thinking back, no matter how drunk I had been, I had fucked her that intensely—how had I not noticed anything?
In the end, I had been a burden to Yeonju from the start.
“Hey, Park Taemin… be honest with me.”
“What? What do you mean…?”
Minhee suddenly asked in a meaningful tone.
“You like Yeonju, don’t you?”
Thump-thump-thump…
My heart suddenly raced like a runaway train. If the sound had been loud enough, Minhee must have heard it clearly.