The Side of My Wife I Never Knew (5)
Having said his piece, Sangjun could no longer lift his head and just stared holes into the floor.
Jisu quietly watched the boy with a look caught between bewilderment and embarrassment, then once more burst into a small pfft— of laughter.
"Oh my, Teacher... hehe. You can't just say things like that so bluntly, right in front of me..."
"I-I'm sorry! I must have lost my mind, Hayul's mom! I'm truly so sorry!"
Sangjun sprang up from his chair like a jack-in-the-box and bowed his head again. Jisu waved him off and pushed him back down into his seat.
"Sit down, quickly. If anyone comes in, they'll get the wrong idea. ...Whew, honestly. I mean, I didn't say anything about you sneaking glances at my butt, but I never dreamed the conversation would go as far as talking about you masturbating."
Jisu's own face was flushed a subtle shade of red as well.
But in her voice there was less disgust than a hidden sense of superiority—a strange excitement—stirring at the fact that a fresh, young man had been harboring desires for her that he couldn't hold back.
"But in her voice there was less disgust than a hidden sense of superiority—a strange excitement—stirring at the fact that a fresh, young man had been harboring desires for her that he couldn't hold back."
I slowly repeated the sentence the boy had spat out, without missing a single word. Then I lowered the hand that had been propping up my chin and glared at him, my eyes narrowing.
"Hey, you little shit. How the hell would you know whether Jisu felt superiority or some strange excitement? How can you describe it like that?"
"Ah... you told me to go into detail, so I got carried away for a second..."
"No, you little shit. I asked you a question. I said, how do you know that well enough to describe it? I told you to tell it in detail—when did I tell you to add your own creative embellishments?"
When I snapped at him in exasperation, Sangjun gulped dryly and scrambled to pile on the excuses.
"Ah... later on, Noona told me all of that herself, so I mixed it into what I was saying... Should I just stick to what actually happened at the time, then?"
"......"
The words—that Jisu had confessed all of this to him directly later on—made something sink in the pit of my chest, even as I found myself lost in thought.
The boy wasn't wrong, though.
Only by hearing Jisu's true inner feelings from that moment could this bizarre situation be drawn in sharper focus.
"Hmm... no, wait. I mean, including what you learned later does help make sense of the situation, like you said. Honestly, for a bastard who's supposed to be a top-university student, you've got some sense."
At my backhanded compliment, the corners of Sangjun's tightly wound mouth lifted into a faint smile.
The instant I saw it, the heat surged up in me again.
"You son of a bitch. Want me to crack your skull open?"
"Ah! I'm sorry!"
Sangjun recoiled in fright and bowed his head deep again. I let out a long sigh and gave the boy's shoulder a light thump.
"Phew... fine. Anyway, keep going."
Without realizing it, I was sinking deeper and deeper into the raw, bizarre story the boy was unfolding.
Even though this was a situation that should have made my blood boil, the strange stillness in the room was quieting my reason, leaving me focused on nothing but the words falling from his mouth.
The moment I finished speaking, the scene swung back to the taut silence of that day's kitchen.
Jisu bit her thin lips lightly, then stared steadily, directly into the boy's eyes and asked in a low voice.
"So... does that mean, even right now... your..."
Sangjun remembered the moment—the instant he had jumped up in shock, and then, when Jisu told him to sit, had dazedly dropped back down into his chair.
When it dawned on him that this was a question she was asking after getting a good, long look at his erect cock jutting up against his pants, his face grew so hot it felt like it might simply burst apart.
"Ah... I-I'm sorry...! Just now, that was... I mean, you see..."
He tried to cobble together some plausible excuse, but his mind had been wiped blank, and all he could do was stammer and trail off helplessly.
As Sangjun floundered, Jisu regarded him quietly for a moment before cautiously opening her mouth.
"I'm not sure if... I should even ask this... but have you ever had thoughts like that... looking at Hayul?"
The words were barely out of her mouth before Sangjun slammed his hands on the table and shouted, looking ready to spring to his feet.
"No!! Absolutely not!!"
"I'm sorry?"
"I'm really not that kind of person! Please believe me! In fact, just last month, when a girl from my major got drunk and came over to my place and threw herself at me, I kept my head and simply sent her home! I'm absolutely not the kind of guy who gets worked up over just anyone!"
At the naive sight of a twenty-one-year-old college student, swallowed up by indignation and panic, rattling off even his personal history—another pfft of laughter burst from Jisu's frozen face.
"Oh, really? It's not that that girl was just ugly? Ah, but no matter how you look at it, she'd have to be better than a married old lady... hmm..."
Jisu tilted her head and tossed out the teasing remark, deliberately needling him. At that bright, light laughter, Sangjun's nerves finally loosened, and some strange courage welled up in him as he fired back.
"No, really! That girl is one of the most popular girls in our whole major. Everyone's scrambling just to grab a drink with her... And for the record, my standards are actually pretty high."
At the words Sangjun huffed out, looking a little wounded, Jisu broke into a snicker.
So he'd brushed off the prettiest, most popular girl in his class, and yet the story was that he'd carried feelings for her—a mother in her late thirties—so deeply that he couldn't sleep at night.
It was a confession no woman could possibly hate hearing.
Without her even willing it, a corner of her chest began to tingle, and a strange pride as a woman came swelling up inside her.
On top of that, there was something quietly endearing about the sight of the huge, six-foot-plus medical student—who was barely more than a kid—fidgeting in front of her with his crotch straining and bulging, utterly unable to control himself.
Jisu propped her chin on her hand, crinkling the corners of her eyes as she gazed at him for a long while.
"Is that so? So this teacher with such high standards saw something in me? My, my. I hardly know whether to call it an honor..."
As Jisu rested her chin in her hand and smiled with crinkled eyes, a ticklish little silence drifted over the table.
Within that brief quiet, Sangjun seemed to run through ten thousand thoughts in his head alone; he bit his lip, his expression hardening into resolve. Then, fixing Jisu with a determined look, he made a declaration that threw himself utterly at her feet.
"I—if there's any situation that concerns you, Hayul's mom, I promise it will never, ever happen!"
When Sangjun spoke with such earnest, boyish gravity, Jisu could only stare up at him, dumbfounded.
"Something I should be... concerned about?"
"Ah... well, you see..."
When Jisu questioned him with a puzzled look, the heroic momentum Sangjun had built up just moments before collapsed in an instant. And when his face turned apple-red all over again and he clamped his mouth shut, unable to get a single word out, Jisu burst into low, bubbling laughter.
At first, Jisu had kept a wary guard up against the gaze of a strange man—but it seemed that seeing Sangjun, all bulk and no menace, acting as innocent as a child had completely melted her defenses away.
Leaning a little further across the table, she spoke to him in a warm, soothing voice.
"What is it you're worried about? I promise I won't get angry, and I won't be upset at all—so go ahead and tell me, hehe."
Emboldened by Jisu's gentle tone, Sangjun moved his lips, murmuring in a voice no bigger than a mosquito's.
"I... I'm... g... going to go home... and..."
"Hm? You're going to go home and what?"
When Jisu's eyes sparkled and she pressed him, Sangjun screwed his eyes shut and forced the words out, as if he were facing his own death sentence.
"I... going home, I... I won't... masturbate...!"
"PWAHAHAHAHA!"
At the utterly unfathomable "resolution" that came out of the boy's mouth, Jisu could not hold back and exploded into peals of laughter. She completely doubled over, clutching her stomach, her forehead practically dropping to the table, unable to stop laughing.
Beside her, Sangjun bowed his head deep, his face wearing an expression of a soul leaving its body, staring holes into the floor with his neck flushed scarlet.
"Pfft, hahaha! Ah, this is killing me, seriously... Teacher, aren't you just too adorable? Haha!"
Jisu had laughed so hard for so long that tears had even pooled at the corners of her eyes.
In her late thirties, she never could have dreamed she'd live to hear a declaration like this from a younger man so guileless and absurdly innocent.
He confesses an uncontrollable sexual desire for her—and then the escape-hatch solution he blurts out is a solemn vow to go home and not masturbate.
That sheer absurdity stripped away the last of his wife's wariness, and in its place a hidden sense of superiority—the feeling of holding a young, hot-blooded man in the palm of her hand and playing him as she pleased—rose up from somewhere deep inside Jisu's heart.
"Ah... I'm sorry..."
Sangjun kept his head buried, wearing the expression of a man who wanted nothing more than to vanish under the table that very second.
Pausing to catch her breath, Jisu lightly dabbed away the tears gathered at the corners of her eyes with a finger. Then, gazing at the boy's bowed head for a long moment, she tossed out her words in a low, soft voice.
"Teacher."
"...Yes, Hayul's mom."
"But then... why would you promise not to do something that's yours to do as you please?"
"I'm... sorry?"
Sangjun's head snapped up in shock.
Chin resting in her hand, Jisu was gazing at him, her slightly damp lips curling into a seductive smile.
"When a young man in his prime gets excited looking at a pretty woman and wants to take care of his needs on his own, what right do I have to tell him not to? Besides... the fact that you'd do it thinking of a married woman like me."
"M-Ma'am..."
"Honestly, it makes me happy. It means I'm still attractive enough as a woman to give a twenty-something medical student fantasies like that."
A strangely thick undercurrent began to swirl in Jisu's gaze.
The playful mood raised its temperature in an instant, and the boy, overwhelmed by her words—so shameless and yet so gentle—couldn't even draw a proper breath.
"...Ah, look at this crazy bitch."
I murmured under my breath.
Jisu's reactions that fell from the boy's lips were completely beyond anything I had imagined.
My wife—the prim, conservative woman I knew—faced with a younger man who had just confessed to masturbating over her, felt not a shred of shame. Instead she was basking in her superiority as a woman, in her pleasure, dangling him up and down on her string.
Twisted jealousy came surging up my throat, and at the same time I could have sworn I felt a tingling swell stirring in my groin. I swallowed hard and glared at the boy.
"...So then."
"......"
"With Jisu egging you on that blatantly, your cock must have swelled up like it was about to burst, huh?"