The Turning Point Between Me and My Wife - 03
It was late. Yeonju came home well past midnight, and I lay in bed with the lights off, staring endlessly at the ceiling in a restless, unsettled mood. I heard the front door open and her footsteps come in, but I didn't feel like greeting her. If anything, the thought of looking her in the face made me uncomfortable.
Yeonju, preparing to study abroad. I had just gotten out of the military and wanted to do all the things we hadn't been able to enjoy together — but contrary to every expectation I'd been carrying, she'd been getting ready to leave the country on her own. The thought left me feeling more than disappointed. I felt hurt. Even a little spiteful.
I heard her go into her own room, then into the bathroom. She stayed in there a long time, showering, before coming out and disappearing into her room again. And a moment later her door opened once more, and her footsteps were coming toward mine.
I flipped over in a hurry and shut my eyes, pretending to be asleep.
Creeeak~
The door opened and her footsteps entered the room. Yeonju approached the bed slowly, lifted the covers, and lay down behind me, wrapping both arms tightly around my body.
Sliiiide~
She stroked my lower belly, working her way gradually upward, and gently caressed my chest. It had been a long time since I'd felt her hands on me — warm, soft, and good.
"Hey~"
Pinch~~
"Aaah!!! I-I surrender~~~~"
Yeonju had suddenly seized my precious nipple, yanked it out, and twisted it, and I cried uncle before I could stop myself.
"Keeheeheeheehee~~~ That's so funny~ Did you really think I wouldn't know you were faking? Is that all they taught you in the army? How to be childish?"
"Jesus~~ Have you been practicing nothing but pinching this whole time? Ow, that hurts~~~~"
"Oh, please~ Guys have no problem yanking and twisting a girl's nipples, but they can't even handle a tiny bit of pain on their own?"
Damn... when she put it that way, I had nothing to say.
"...Are you mad at me?"
"Why would I be?"
"You weren't sulking about earlier?"
"I didn't even hear what you were going to say."
"Hmmm~ Is that so?"
Yeonju wrapped her arms around me again from behind. Her full breasts pressed into my back, soft and yielding, the plush warmth of them sinking into me.
"Are you... preparing to study abroad?"
"...Yeah."
"Why all of a sudden?"
"It's not sudden. I've been interested for a while."
"...So you're going?"
"Yeah. If the circumstances work out, I want to go. Honestly, living overseas has been a dream of mine since I was little. If Dad's business had been doing well, I might already be there by now."
I didn't know what to say. There was only this tightness in my chest, like something had lodged there and wouldn't move. Honestly, I wanted to tell her not to go — but it was her dream. I didn't feel like I had any right to tell her what to do.
"When are you leaving?"
"I don't know yet. I'm still short on money, and my English isn't good enough. It'll probably be next year, or the year after."
I rolled over to face her, then reached out and pinched her plump cheek, stretching it out.
"Look at you, all grown up. I thought you were just going to keep partying forever."
"Ow ow ow~ That huuurts!"
Her cheek stretched like rubber, and it was incredibly fun. If I'd known it pulled that well, I would have been doing this all along.
"You... you bastard!"
"Urgh...!!!"
In an instant, both of my balls were clenched tight in Yeonju's fist.
"Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah......"
"You wanna die? Who do you think you're messing with! Can I go study abroad or not!?"
"Y-y-you can go... aagh~ That hurts! I'm sorry, I was wrong."
"Heeheeheehee~ Thanks for giving me permission~"
She let go and, as if nothing had happened, beamed and threw her arms around me.
"Damn~ That's cheap, threatening a guy by grabbing his balls?"
"Aww~ In exchange, I'll treat you extra well with the time we have left. Mwah~♡"
She put on a cute little act and planted a sweet kiss on my cheek.
Well. It was her dream. What was I supposed to do? I'd send her off with a smile. We still had plenty of time together — we could enjoy it while it lasted.
I comforted myself with the thought that she wasn't leaving forever, that she was only going to be away for a little while, and decided that if I was going to let her go, I would do it in good spirits. And I made up my mind to treat Yeonju even better than before during whatever time we had left living together.
March arrived. I started my sophomore year, and Yeonju her senior year.
As seniors, Yeonju and the other girls spent their days frantically chasing certifications and managing their GPAs. Even Hyejeong and Heeyeon, who'd always seemed like they lived for nothing but partying, were holed up in the library prepping for national exams — a rare sight if there ever was one.
I'd wanted to spend a lot of time with Yeonju, but reality had other plans. That disappointment, though, vanished the moment my first class started.
My first day back... I walked into a large general-ed lecture and my eyes went wide. The room was packed with fresh, barely-twenty freshman girls. And when I thought about spending the coming year around all those fresh-faced underclassmen, the corners of my mouth lifted on their own, and I started spinning fantasies about being the cool older guy they all looked up to.
It didn't take long to remember that reality is always brutally, mercilessly cold. To those twenty-year-old freshmen, I was just an older returning student. And as the weeks went by, the only people swarming around me were guys.
Even Hyejeong and Heeyeon — who'd once wanted me so badly they'd followed me all the way to the army — became so hard to even catch a glimpse of that I ended up spending the entire year half-forcibly buried in my studies. And the following year, Yeonju and all my female friends graduated.
Yeonju chose a working holiday over studying abroad and left for Canada. Minhee and Hyejeong landed jobs right after graduation, and surprisingly, Heeyeon decided to go to graduate school to get her kindergarten teaching certification. Watching friends I'd always thought of as wild and promiscuous find their own paths when the time came... I was a little moved, honestly.
And I became a junior. As the time came to start thinking seriously about what I'd do after graduation, I naturally gravitated toward smartphone app development, something I'd always been interested in, and started building my skills in earnest.
There was also the hope that I could show Yeonju a better version of myself when she came back. But that hope was utterly destroyed when she unilaterally informed me that she'd landed a real job in Canada and would be staying another three years.
Strangely enough, though, it didn't hurt as much as I expected. The last year before she left, we'd both been so busy we barely saw each other, and the year after she was gone, I'd been so caught up in my own life that my longing for her had already dulled considerably.
And not long after that, Hyejeong left for Canada too. Yeonju had called her over, saying there was a good position waiting. We used to get together now and then — Hyejeong, Heeyeon, Minhee, all of us — to have a drink and fill the emptiness Yeonju had left behind. But once one of them was gone, the other two stopped showing up much either. Maybe the girls, now fresh out in the working world, had simply drifted apart as they threw themselves into their own lives.
Before long, I started seeing Yeonju in Hyejeong's social media posts. Yeonju had completely cut off her own SNS, so I'd only gotten a rough sense of how she was doing from the occasional phone call. Seeing her through Hyejeong's feed made me unexpectedly happy.
Yeonju's skin was even fairer than before, and she'd lost some weight — her figure was much slimmer. When she'd been by my side, she'd seemed like my own adorable little girl. Now she looked like a proper working professional, dressed in a bright pink blouse and a suit.
The new Yeonju felt somehow unfamiliar. Awkward, even.
Hyejeong updated her SNS often. A lot of it was everyday stuff, but every so often there were pictures of them dancing wildly at Canadian clubs, grinding against guys.
Heh heh heh. Figures. A leaky bowl leaks just as well outside the house. Of course they would.
At first I just laughed it off. But as time went on, there were always men next to the two of them. Sometimes a Black guy, sometimes a white guy. It wasn't like they were kissing or groping each other's chests the way they used to back here, but the intensity kept climbing — arms slung around shoulders, sitting on a guy's lap and kissing his cheek.
It might have been the season, but Yeonju's outfits were getting lighter too. Not long after I saw her in a white T-shirt that showed her lace bra right through it, there she was with no bra at all, nipples poking visibly through her clothes, grinding her hips against a Black guy on the dance floor like it was nothing. And at some point, that same Black guy who'd been grinding on her started showing up next to her all the time. Eventually there were tons of photos of Hyejeong, Yeonju, that Black guy, and the white guy who was always next to Hyejeong, all of them in bikinis at the beach.
I asked who they were, curious. Yeonju said they were just close coworkers. The club photos were mostly the equivalent of Korean company dinners, she said. But if they were just coworkers, they wouldn't have their arms around each other's waists with their hips pressed together on the beach, or unhook a bikini top while someone lay on their stomach to rub oil on their back, or clink wine glasses on a hotel terrace overlooking the night skyline while gazing at each other with those sweet, lingering looks.
That Black guy was definitely Yeonju's Canadian boyfriend.
I wanted to ask Yeonju directly, but it felt somehow undignified, so I hounded Heeyeon until I got the truth. Just as I'd expected, the Black guy was Yeonju's Canadian boyfriend. He was a DJ at the club she went to all the time, and a fairly well-known rapper in the area.
Hearing Heeyeon's story made my heart clench. Yeonju had danced and partied with plenty of guys before, but I'd never felt any real sense of crisis. Because I'd known that for her, those moments were just play — nothing more.
This time was different. The fact that she'd hidden the guy she was seeing from me, and the way she looked exchanging those sweet glances with a Black man over wine glasses in a hotel with a gorgeous night view — that was a version of Yeonju I'd never seen before.
Honestly, I felt threatened. I started worrying that she might not come back at all. And there was this ominous feeling that after being with so many impressive men, her standards had risen, and I might look cheap to her now.
I had to do something. I had to become the man Yeonju wanted.