Phase 3. Mom Gyeong-ae (7)
“So how did it go~?”
“She said things got better after that.”
“Are they dating?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Hmm~.”
She took a sip of water like it was nothing, but her eyes weren’t smiling. After draining the whole cup, Mom let out a long breath, closed her eyes, then opened them again. I took that as the signal she was ready to hear the rest and kept going.
“But apparently there’s this one part he can’t quite figure out.”
“Mmm~, I’m already lost. The idea that there’s something he doesn’t get even though they’re dating is new to me. Is it that the girl has a secret?”
Explaining it simply wasn’t easy. After a moment of thought I decided to just lay it all out, even if it got messy and long.
“The guy’s crazy about her, obviously.”
“Huuuung.”
“And the girl starts being really forward with her affection too.”
“Ha, is that so?”
“Mom?”
I’d never seen that expression on her before. One eyebrow cocked, a snort of laughter, a look full of hostility—it didn’t suit her at all. When I flinched at the unfamiliar face, Mom startled and hurried to explain.
“I-it’s just… because of what that girl did, I couldn’t help—”
“Ah. First time I’ve seen that face on you.”
“If you watched me watching dramas you’d see all sorts of faces, you know~.”
The little self-promo made me snort. Talking with Mom always loosened the knot in my chest and the air around us.
“Even though they’re dating, the guy says there’s still one thing that keeps him on edge.”
“What part?”
“He… ends up watching her reactions way too carefully.”
“Suffocating?”
“Kinda, but not exactly.”
“Keep going.”
“Before they got together he was always the one trying to touch her first, so now he’s terrified she’ll hate it. Unless she makes the first move or the mood clearly says it’s okay, he can’t initiate anything. And she seems to like that he’s so careful around her.”
“I see.”
Mom nodded seriously, thought for a second, then asked,
“Any other decisions?”
“Decisions?”
“When you’re dating you constantly have to decide things together, right~? Simple stuff—what to eat, where to go. Most of the time it’s the girl’s call, but has the guy ever gotten even a tiny bit of what he wanted?”
I was stuck. I understood what she was driving at, but I simply didn’t have matching experiences. Our only real date had been the amusement park, and we’d both been so high on the day that anything was fine. The only other “decisions” I could think of were about sex.
“We mostly just do short indoor dates, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Does he want outdoor dates but she deliberately keeps everything indoors?”
“No, not that.”
“This is tricky~.”
Mom went back to thinking, finger tapping her chin, foot bouncing, until a sly little smile appeared.
“Then what about when they’re having sex?”
“Huh?”
“During sex—foreplay, positions—does she ever do what the guy wants?”
Her eyes lit up as she leaned in. Looking at her, I realized Mom actually enjoyed dirty talk. Not surprising, really—she’d been alone a long time. Still, her bringing up the sensitive subject first made it a little easier to talk.
“There’s kind of a turning point.”
“Turning point?”
“Until he puts it in, it’s almost always whatever she wants. Once he’s inside, she completely loses it and just goes along with whatever he wants…?”
Easier, my ass. Trying to describe the situation in detail only made it weirder. Sitting here discussing putting dicks in and Hong Kong with my own mother was making my face burn.
“How many times does she come?”
“Twice.”
“Huh? The girl only comes twice?”
“No—the guy. He said the girl comes dozens of times.”
“Oh my, oh my~.”
Even while blushing she swallowed hard; it was a clear reminder that Mom was still a woman in her prime. The thought hit me automatically—should a woman at her peak really just keep holding it in? Dad had been living with another woman for over ten years now. If Mom found a good man, shouldn’t she get to satisfy those desires as a woman and get some compensation for everything she’d endured?
The second the idea formed I felt disgusted with myself. Mom having a lover. Fuck, I hated even thinking about it. The image of her hanging off some random guy, wearing a woman’s face for him, made me furious. And because she was Mom, that face that looked so much like Hui-gyeong’s—directed at another man—was something I never wanted to see as long as I lived.
…Where was this possessiveness coming from? I hastily told myself it was normal for a son to hate the idea of his mother dating.
“So the sex side is completely fine then~?”
“Not exactly.”
“Don’t tell me there’s a problem there too? Ah~. Is it that the guy has too much stamina, or the girl has way more libido? That’s something you just adjust to together~. As long as it’s not extreme…”
“No—it won’t even get hard.”
“Eung?!”
I cut her off without meaning to, too impatient. Mom’s eyes went round and she blinked hard at the shocking statement.
“You… remember she forced him to give her a Siofuki, right?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“He was the one who jumped her first so yeah, he was wrong, but that day she also said some really pride-crushing things. No, before that even—he’d been told to hold it, then she started giving him a handjob and he came so pathetically she laughed at him…”
I was rambling like an idiot and hated how pathetic I sounded. I was still pretending it was a friend’s story, but Mom probably already knew. Explaining this stupid side of myself to the woman who relied on me and leaned on me suddenly felt mortifying.
“So… so… that…”
I couldn’t get the words out properly. A hand settled on my back. Mom. With a gentle smile she rubbed slow circles between my shoulder blades.
“It’s okay. Take your time. I’m listening carefully.”
Those words steadied me. My head still wasn’t clear, but at least I could organize what I wanted to say a little better.
“She made him go two weeks without jerking off, then gave him a little foreplay and he came ridiculously fast. She saw it and laughed at him. He got pissed and took her from behind, and that’s when she forced a Siofuki on him and hit him with more venom.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Even though he knows he was the one in the wrong, every time he remembers that laugh and the sight of her back while she was squirting, he says he just can’t get hard.”
Speaking calmly didn’t make the shame go away. I kept my head down until Mom pulled me toward her.
“Gyeong-hun, look this way?”
When I turned, she was already standing and wrapping me in her arms. She pressed my face into her soft, full breasts and kept stroking my back.
Thump-thump-thump.
Whether it was my heartbeat or hers, I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that heart was racing pretty hard.
“You got hurt.”
Her quiet whisper reached me.
“You did wrong. But the girl who pushed the situation that far was wrong too.”
A weight lifted. I’d been so busy blaming myself I hadn’t even been able to properly hate myself.
“Severely suppressing a man’s desire and then not even releasing it properly—that’s a mistake. And she has no idea she wounded his pride on top of it; she’s just doing whatever she wants.”
Mom’s comfort felt like a single clean ray of light through the mud in my chest. Being understood and soothed was so moving I almost couldn’t stand it. Hui-gyeong would never give me something like this.
I flinched. Had I just badmouthed my own girlfriend…? Helpless panic made me bury my face even deeper into Mom’s chest.
“Do you want me to be coldly honest?”
I nodded.
“The guy’s like that too, but the girl is just too young. Love is something you give and receive.”
Hui-gyeong does give me love.
“In ways both people can fully feel and accept.”
She clings through chat, she pays attention to me.
“And especially in your twenties, people get drunk on the idea of themselves being in love, express it only their own way, then blame the other person for being weird or wrong~.”
Then had I ever expressed my love in a way she could actually feel?
“Once that happens the gap just keeps widening until you end up seeing every ugly, filthy side of each other and break up.”
A chill had entered Mom’s voice. It was the cool clarity of someone who had lived more years than I had. When I lifted my head she smiled at me—and with that same smiling face she said something merciless.
“If they haven’t been together long, maybe end it before it deepens?”
“What?”
“A guy like that already has other women around who like him.”
“No way…”
“There are.”
Her tone was absolute. Looking down at me, her lips kept twitching as if she were holding something back. Her breathing had turned rough enough to prove it.
“A woman ready to love him, receive his love, and devote her whole life to him.”
Confused, I asked,
“Where? Where is she?”
Mom grinned, mischievous as a kid.
“She’s definitely out there. Look carefully. Odds are she’s not that far away~.”
“But the guy sincerely loves the girl.”
“Once you’ve been through it you know more clearly what’s right. I’m only saying this because I don’t want you to get hurt the way I did, Gyeong-hun. So whether as your mother or as a woman, everything I said just now is completely sincere advice.”
“The girl could change, right?”
“Of course! Of course she could.”
Mom took a step back and looked somehow resigned. A lonely, desolate air clung to her.
“But people don’t change easily.”
“…….”
“It’s not that they never change, though.”
She calmly cleared the unfinished dishes, more adult than I had ever seen her.
“Give her a chance. Got it?”
“…Got it.”
If it doesn’t fit, end it. That wasn’t the answer I wanted. But because the person who said it was Mom, the weight of those words was heavier than anything.