The Game Begins
The air felt strangely thick. What kind of mood was this?
“Hyung, it’s about some advice I gave… No, never mind. Earlier, noona almost fell, that’s all…”
I waved my hands frantically, trying to fix the slurred words caused by all the alcohol. In my head, the memory of Sujung’s cold, hardened gaze from our drive back from the camping ground flashed by—the way her expression had frozen when the topic of our married life came up. But the rational part of me, already drowned by an entire bottle of wine, had blurred out those warning signs. The sweet, musky taste of noona’s saliva still lingered on my tongue, sending a sharp thrill through my chest with every breath.
Yet the reaction that came back was nothing like what I had expected.
“Why~ Oppa, it sounds like what brother-in-law said is true? What kind of secret advice did you give my sister while I wasn’t looking? Hmm?”
Instead of getting angry, Sujung pressed me with a nasal tone a pitch higher than usual. My wife set the hangover cure bottle down on the marble table and stared straight at me. Her eyes, already glazed with intoxication, had lost their usual clarity. Within those once bright, moist pupils, the familiar modesty had vanished, replaced by a strange, liquor-fueled curiosity that glittered dangerously.
At that moment, Jian, who had been lazily leaning across from me and idly tracing the rim of her wine glass, slowly lifted her head. With a seductive curl at the corner of her lips, she fixed her gaze on me and murmured in a low voice.
“Why, Junseok? Hehe. You were so bold when it was just the two of us earlier. Now you’re singing a different tune?”
“……!”
My heart plummeted. The single word bold sliced through the humid air of the living room and stabbed into my ear. Jian deliberately leaned her body slightly toward me, and under the soft lighting, the pale line of her neck stood out in stark, alluring contrast.
Then Seunghun tapped the hangover cure bottle with his finger and let out a low chuckle. His eyes were also flushed red—he seemed pleasantly drunk as well.
“Wow, Im Junseok… You’re full of surprises today, huh? Hearing the word ‘bold’ come out of my wife’s mouth? Must’ve been some pretty heavy stuff.”
Seunghun rested his chin on his hand, studying me with keen interest. At thirty-four, his smooth, oily smile suggested he was thoroughly enjoying this abnormal situation as if it were some entertaining game.
“Hey, now I’m too curious to sleep. You were really different from usual today, Junseok. What the hell did you talk about to make Jian act like that? Come on, spill it, Im Junseok. Hyung will listen to everything.”
With Seunghun slyly setting the stage, Sujung shook her body and fixed her gaze on Jian. The thick scent of wine mixed with my wife’s sweet body odor drifted dreamily across the table.
“Unni, unni! Is it true? What exactly did oppa say? I’m dying of curiosity! Tell me, please?”
Sujung leaned her upper body across the table, urging Jian for an answer. The woman who had just been ravaging my mouth was now provocatively stripping me bare right in front of my wife and her husband. Cold sweat broke out on my palms as I nervously fiddled with the label on the cold glass bottle.
“Oppa, your face is all red! It must be true! Unni, tell me quickly~ I’m so curious~”
At Sujung’s playful, coquettish whining, Jian gave me another mysterious smile. My wife stared at Jian with eyes full of eager anticipation, pressing her for details. Her usual demure nature had long since melted away in the haze of wine. I swallowed dryly, staring intently at Jian’s lips. I had no idea what kind of bomb might explode from those same lips that had so insistently wrapped around my tongue just moments ago. My pupils trembled wildly with anxiety.
Seunghun, his face flushed from the alcohol, watched my reaction with clear fascination. With his usual relaxed, mischievous tone, he began to shake up this bizarre silence.
“Aww~ Is our Junseok going to stay mysterious until the end? Lol.”
He lightly shook the hangover cure bottle as he scanned all of us.
“Alright, let’s do this. Since it looks like Junseok won’t open his mouth easily… How about we play a game where we take turns asking questions? If you can’t answer, there’s a penalty.”
Even though my head was spinning from the alcohol, I stared at him with an expression that clearly said, What the hell is this nonsense? This wasn’t a game—it was a public execution. But contrary to my worries, Sujung, sitting beside me, excitedly pointed at me and shouted.
“Whoa, awesome! Brother-in-law, that sounds so fun! I’m in, totally in!”
Sujung pretended to be jealous, mixing in nasal tones as she burst into playful laughter. At my wife’s clever provocation, Jian rested her chin on her hand and replied languidly, as if she had been waiting for this.
“Right? I’m in too. The things Junseok shared with me earlier were quite interesting. I’d like to dig all the way to the bottom while we’re at it.”
Jian naturally cast her vote in favor by using our “earlier consultation” as an excuse, narrowing her eyes at me. Sujung, believing it was all advice meant to improve our relationship, cheered her on enthusiastically. “Unni, shake him down completely! Fighting!” she said, swaying her upper body to the rhythm of her drunken excitement.
“Okay, shall we start round one right away?”
This dangerous game had begun under Seunghun’s lead. The shadows of the four of us stretched long across the marble table. I gripped an empty glass tightly with my sweat-slicked hand.
I had no idea whether the questions that were about to begin would push me into hell or drag me deeper into a swamp of pleasure. The only thing I could guess from this uneasy feeling was that by the time this game ended, none of us four would be able to return to our original, innocent faces.
“W-wait a second. If we let the mood push things along like this, I’ll be the only one at a disadvantage and it won’t be fun… How about the person who answers gets to pick the next person? That way each person gets one question fairly, and it’ll be more interesting, right!?”
I gulped down the hangover cure to soothe my burning throat and blurted out the words in a panic. I couldn’t let myself get crushed one-sidedly by Jian, Seunghun, and my wife teaming up against me. But the moment I said it, even I wondered what the hell I was saying, and my lips went dry. My tongue was twisted from the alcohol, my mind a complete mess, but it was a desperate, instinctive attempt to escape the crisis.
Jian watched my pathetic struggle with her chin resting on her hand and a provocative smile. She regarded me like a predator leisurely observing a mouse scrambling for a hole, then gently shifted her gaze toward Seunghun and Sujung.
“I like Junseok’s suggestion too. We’re all pretty drunk anyway, so let’s just treat it as drinking game fun and play a relay truth game. What do you think, honey? Sujung?”
Jian’s voice was languidly soaked in seduction, carrying a subtle note of anticipation at the end. Seunghun shook his glass and said, “Oh, a relay? That sounds thrilling,” while Sujung, whose excitement had already peaked, clapped without understanding the true intent behind my proposal. She leaned even closer to the table. The disheveled state of my wife’s clothes and the glimpse of her pale collarbone beneath them caught the light in a strikingly sensual way. Yet my eyes kept drifting to Jian beside her—the woman who was giving me an ambiguous smile as she leisurely took a sip of wine.
Jian stared at me over the rim of her wine glass and slowly licked her red lips. The sensation of her tongue persistently coiling around mine in the living room came rushing back, making my lower body grow heavy.
“Alright, then let’s start with Junseok, since he made the suggestion. For the first question… should we let the owner of the house, Jian, throw it?”
The moment Seunghun spoke, the air in the living room instantly condensed. Jian slowly leaned toward me as if she had been waiting for this. The smooth line of her legs revealed beneath her thin slacks gleamed seductively under the lights, and the heavy musk scent that wafted from her with every movement paralyzed my senses.
“Then… I’ll ask the first question.”
Jian paused for a moment, then, in the breathless silence where everyone held their breath, she looked straight at me. Her eyes, hazy with alcohol, sparkled with danger. Her thin lips parted slowly, and a viciously obscene question tore through the humid air of the living room.
“Since getting married… have you ever kissed another woman?……”
It felt like my heart stopped completely. The words another woman and kiss slipping from between Jian’s lips snapped me wide awake despite my near-drunken haze, as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over my head.
Her hot tongue that had just been ravaging my mouth, her elastic ass that had been crushed in my palm. It felt like all those ugly truths were about to be stripped naked and poured out onto this luxurious marble table. Every single syllable Jian uttered felt like a slow, sharp awl mercilessly digging into the center of my heart. I rubbed my sweat-drenched palms against my thighs, unable to even breathe properly as I checked Sujung’s reaction beside me.
But at the end of that suffocating silence, Jian slowly turned her head with a mysterious smile.
“……Oppa?”
The question was not directed at me, but at her husband, Seunghun.
“……!”
In that instant, a wave of relief washed over me as if a taut bowstring had finally snapped. It felt like I had been dragged right up to the flames of hell only to barely escape with my life. Yet behind the relief, some nameless, bizarre, and complicated emotion churned violently in my chest.
She had asked the question while looking at me, clearly reminding me of that heated kiss, only to turn the arrow toward her husband. Was this a display of how completely she controlled me? Or was it simply her own twisted amusement in walking this razor-thin tightrope?
Seunghun, receiving Jian’s gaze, looked momentarily flustered by the unexpected question before bursting into his signature sly laugh and raising his glass.
“Wow… You’re really asking me something like that? The mood just got way too heavy all of a sudden, didn’t it? Lol.”
His hearty laughter filled the living room, but I couldn’t laugh along. Even Sujung’s excited voice beside me—“Whoa, amazing! Unni is so bold!”—sounded distant. The look in Jian’s eyes as she stared at me, and the question she had thrown at her husband.
Jian now held my leash completely. She had taken full control of this dangerous game of truth. I could only stare blankly at her seductive profile glowing beyond the glass of red wine, still feeling the sharp pain of that awl buried in my chest, my emotions a tangled mess.