My Sister-in-Law’s Story (1)
When I woke up in the morning and saw my brother-in-law sleeping beside me, I realized it hadn’t been a dream after all.
Carefully moving his hand off my chest, I sat up and reached for my underwear.
"Don’t put your clothes on until you go back to your sister’s house."
I jumped at the sound of my brother-in-law’s voice as he woke, and for a moment I didn’t know what to do. Then, when he said it again, I had no choice but to give up on putting my underwear back on.
Even I found myself strange.
I had never been the type to change clothes in front of my husband. Only when I was traveling, and had no choice, would I do it; otherwise, I always changed in the dressing room or the bedroom alone, and even after a shower I would at least come out wearing underwear.
But with a single word from my brother-in-law, the fact that I could stay naked felt strangely natural.
Or rather than strange, it felt as though that was how it should be.
When I came back from the bathroom, my brother-in-law was already up, pulling open the blackout curtains and letting bright sunlight spill into the bedroom.
Only then did I look at the clock and see that it was already past eleven.
"Your sister left a little while ago because she had plans. It’s just the two of us here now, so let’s stay like this."
He moved around without putting any clothes on either, and the dangling weight of him kept catching my eye.
It was the first time in my life I had ever stared at a naked man for so long.
Still, knowing my sister wasn’t home made me feel a little more at ease, and as hunger began to build, I went to the kitchen to see what I could find to eat.
Even then I was still naked, but I was behaving so naturally that it hardly felt odd at all.
"Soh-hee, let’s just make something simple, like ramen."
"Yes."
At his suggestion, I cooked ramen, and since there was nothing else to do, I ate it wearing only an apron.
Once my stomach had settled a little, I felt awkward again, and when I met my brother-in-law’s eyes, I found myself being drawn with no resistance into the master bedroom.
We kissed like lovers and had sex for the second time.
It was the same kind of thing I had only ever done with my husband during our honeymoon.
Just like at dawn, I was nearly completely out of my mind, and afterward I thought I might have even wet myself.
No, I had.
I begged him to stop when I felt like I might pee, but my brother-in-law only moved harder, and before I knew it, I had let it out.
I was horribly ashamed, but with his body thrusting into me again, I couldn’t bring myself to think clearly.
When another storm had passed, I had no strength left to move even a single finger, just as I had felt at dawn, and I began to think that I might never escape this pleasure.
At first he told me to come three times a week, but later he said three times might be too much, so it would be easier if I came only once and contacted him ahead of time whenever it suited me.
For some reason, I felt disappointed before anything else.
On the way home, I kept feeling sorry toward my husband, but I think I spent even more time wondering when I should go again next week.
All of a sudden, I felt like a terribly bad person. I was sorry to my husband, and before I knew it tears were running down my face.
I didn’t understand why I was like this either. I clearly loved my husband, so why did the pleasure of sex come to mind first...?
I was confused. And yet I couldn’t possibly tell my husband about this exactly as it was. I didn’t have that kind of courage.
As the thoughts kept coming back, I found myself rationalizing more and more. It was only pleasure. My love was still for my husband alone...
After a while I heard my husband come in, and in order not to show my guilt, I greeted him far more sweetly than usual. When he saw me like that, he was pleased.
Seeing that, I thought, Yes, I should be even better to my husband too.
—————————————————————————
My wife had changed.
It wasn’t that her personality had become gloomy, but she did seem brighter than before.
She smiled more often and took better care of me, with a more thoughtful, attentive air.
She had always been like that on a good day, or when she was feeling well, but now I knew the situation was different, and I couldn’t shake the suspicion that she was acting this way because she felt guilty about what had happened with my brother.
Still, it was far better than seeing her sink into gloom and darkness.
Taking advantage of the situation, I told my wife I had some symptoms of enlarged prostate and needed drug treatment at the urology clinic, and that because the side effects could include a drop in libido, I hoped she would understand for a while.
She worried and asked if it was serious. When I told her it was only a matter of taking the medication for a couple of months, she looked relieved.
Though from where I stood, I couldn’t help wondering whether she was relieved about my health or relieved that she wouldn’t have to have sex with me. I told myself too much suspicion was unhealthy and forced those thoughts away.
I used a business trip as an excuse to get the procedure done at the hospital, and our marriage, at least on the surface, carried on as if nothing had changed.
Then work got busy for a while, leaving me with no room to think about my wife, and after a little over a month, I got a call from my brother.
It was Tuesday night, and I was sitting with him in a quiet private room at the same bar we had visited before, slowly drinking with him.
"You’ve been busy lately?"
"Yeah, really busy. There’s a new equipment replacement project, and I’m not the one doing the actual work, but I still have to oversee it, so I’ve been all over the place."
"And Soh-hee?"
"She’s the same, really. Nothing much has changed except that she seems a little brighter. Actually, I guess we’ve been a little more physically affectionate than before."
That was true.
My wife had never been completely devoid of physical affection, but it hadn’t been much either. Because it had become so natural to me, I hadn’t even noticed it until my brother asked and I found myself answering. Then I realized our skinship had indeed increased somewhat compared to before.
"It sounds a little funny to call it a progress report, but Soh-hee really does feel like every day is different, the way paper soaks up water."
"In what way?"
It had already been a month since my wife had slept with my brother. Between the procedure and work, I hadn’t been able to see Jin-hee either, and though we’d spoken on the phone from time to time, we never talked long enough for me to get any real direct news about my wife.
At first I had been curious, but I also felt weird asking too eagerly, so I held back in the beginning and later simply got distracted by work.
Besides, even though I’d seen it on video, it had been a drunken incident, and my wife had been completely conservative. No matter how much of a man my brother was, I doubted things could move all that fast.
But hearing him say that, I couldn’t help wondering just what had happened for him to talk about her like that.
"Well… I don’t even know where to start… Hmm. Since I’ve got plenty of time, I’ll tell you about my past first before I talk about Soh-hee."
I was curious about my wife, of course, but I’d also heard a little from Jin-hee, and I had always wondered what kind of life my brother had lived, so I focused on his words.
"You may not know this, but my father was what people would call a lecher. There were always women around him. Because of that, my mother suffered a lot, and in the end she passed away relatively young. So I hated my father. Even so, I needed the shelter his shadow provided, so I kept quiet and lived carefully, without openly rebelling. There were always women in the house. Even though I was his son, he kept bringing different women home and making them act like stepmothers. I grew up in an environment where I had no choice but to awaken to sex early. It’s embarrassing, but my first time was even with one of the women my father brought home."
Only then did I understand why my sister-in-law and my brother had never said much about their in-laws.
"Somehow I made it into college, and after talking it over with my father, I started living on my own. I figured even he would have been uncomfortable with me staying in the house as an adult. Anyway, I’m not exactly a handsome man, but I’m not ugly either, right? I worked out too, so my body was good and I had stamina. Women kept coming and going. Then I got introduced to that massage parlor by someone I knew, and back then I was determined to break away from my father, so I worked there for quite a while. The money was really good. And honestly, I wanted to make women happy. I felt a certain satisfaction when they left saying it had been good. But after doing it so much, I started to feel that the women’s reactions were way too fake."
I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into my brother’s story.
"When you watch porn, you probably think most women will react like the actresses in it, screaming and saying how good it feels, right? Absolutely not. I don’t really know about Japanese women, but Korean women, in particular, are usually extremely embarrassed to make noise. Most of them keep it in. The way your sister-in-law reacted isn’t actually all that strange if you look at it in terms of Korean women. Of course, some of it was a little extreme, but even a woman with a strong sex drive almost never goes off the way porn makes it seem. A little moaning, maybe, and telling you it felt good—that’s what most women do. And the thing you often see in porn, sakkashi? Korean women are starting to do that more often now, but they really weren’t like that before. Not even ten years ago. The more fake the women’s reactions felt to me, the more I started to hate it. So I quit the massage parlor. I wasn’t exactly short on money, so I spent a while loafing around like a bum, and then I met Jin-hee. She was gorgeous, so she definitely stood out, and after getting drunk, I ended up in bed with her. That was an unforgettable moment for me. I thought, so there really are women like this in Korea too. She was completely unrestrained in how she spoke. ‘This feels good,’ ‘Do it like that and it feels even better’—it was so refreshing to me. After meeting her a few times, I even started thinking I really should marry her, and luckily, I was able to."