The Depths We Choose Together
I had always thought of myself as ordinary, but in truth, I had been chasing pleasure all along. There was something strangely delicate about married life. For the past two years, to outsiders we seemed like a rather enviable couple in our early thirties. We never raised our voices in fights, we respected each other’s careers, and on weekends we shared a refined routine of hunting down trendy restaurants that became hot topics on social media. Yet beneath that smooth tranquility, a damp discomfort had always settled like sediment at the bottom of a lake. The subtle distance I felt when we lay in bed with our backs turned to each other. The habitual lies we told to suppress the primal urge—“I’m too tired today.” We weren’t bad people to one another, but we had grown accustomed to an inexplicable emptiness that came from never fully satisfying each other.
That was how our marital gears had been misaligned—until that twisted dawn encounter finally made them mesh smoothly. The disappearance of dissatisfaction evaporated every trivial conflict in our daily lives. There was no room for petty irritations like dividing housework after work or arguing over weekend schedules. Through the nightly process of confirming and releasing each other’s secret desires, we realized for the first time in two years what it truly felt like to be a “real married couple.” With our sex life running smoothly, every conversation in daily life gained new energy, and that peace was addictively sweet.
But in one corner of my heart, a heavy thorn still remained lodged. I couldn’t shake the weight of wondering whether Sujung was forcing herself to act out the taboo of calling another man “brother-in-law” for my sake, for the sake of our marital peace. As her husband and as a human being, I asked myself if it was truly right to nourish my own pleasure with her shame. I worried that I was destroying her demure nature, that the stimulation of that night might have left her with lasting wounds.
Then a message came from Seunghun.
“Junseok, how about a drive out to the countryside this weekend? Jian’s been dying to see you two.”
The moment I heard his boisterous voice through the speakerphone, I stopped breathing. Meeting him again would mean throwing another spark onto the precarious yet sweet peace we had barely managed to build. I glanced at Sujung, who was sitting on the living room sofa looking at her tablet. She looked serene. I didn’t want to shatter that serenity. The thought that it would be inhumane to force my wife into another harsh role or drag her back into that filthy theater of imagination dominated my mind.
“Ah… hyung-nim, I’m sorry. Sujung’s been swamped with a company project lately—she barely has time to breathe.”
I cowardly used my wife as an excuse in my haste. Seunghun sounded disappointed as he hung up, but I stood there for a long time, wiping the cold sweat from my palm. I tried to comfort myself by calling it consideration for my wife, but in reality I had fled because I was terrified my inner desires might spiral out of control again.
That night, dinner was the same as always. Sujung was quieter than usual. She absentmindedly mashed the tofu in her stew, then carefully studied my face before speaking.
“Oppa… Jian unni called me today.”
I froze mid-bite. My fingers tightened around the spoon.
“Oh… really? What did she say?”
“She said I told her I’ve been too busy with my project to make time on weekends… and that you told hyung-nim the same thing.”
Sujung’s voice was trembling slightly. It wasn’t accusatory; it sounded more like she couldn’t handle the tension of the situation itself. She set her spoon down and fidgeted with her hands in her lap.
“Jian unni kept calling and pestering me… and I felt uncomfortable thinking I might be ruining things between you and hyung-nim because of me…”
Sujung paused and lowered her head. I could see the fair skin of her neck flushing pink. To her, Seunghun was no longer just an acquaintance. He had become the very embodiment of taboo—a mixture of shame and pleasure summoned during our most intimate moments. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how much inner conflict she must have gone through before deciding to see his couple again.
“More than anything… seeing hyung-nim and unni together… it’s not that difficult for me anymore. No, actually… what I hate more is you forcing yourself to distance from hyung-nim because of me.”
Sujung lifted her trembling eyes to meet mine. Her gaze was far from resolute. Instead, it was a precarious look mixed with anxiety and a strange anticipation. She feared how her decision would appear to her husband, yet at the same time she was making a kind of surrender—declaring she would willingly expose herself to that dangerous place once more.
“So I just… told unni we’d make time this weekend. She said the place is so good they had to make a tough reservation, so let’s go have fun. Haha…”
Her last words came out almost in a whisper, but they carried an undeniable weight. I stared blankly at Sujung’s face. She knew her demure nature would be put on trial again, yet she was telling me she would cross that line with me—the line where I, her husband, hesitated under the guise of “human decency.”
“Sujung-ah, are you really okay with this? If it feels forced…”
“It’s not forced… It’s just that we’ve been getting along so well lately. I’m more afraid of losing that.”
Sujung forced a smile, but the hand holding her cup was visibly shaking. She had gently torn down the fake fence I had built to protect her as her husband. She was no longer a passive wife being dragged along—she had thrown her own card onto the table as a partner in this dangerous game.
After dinner, the air in the house felt unbearably sticky. Sujung headed to the dressing room, saying she wanted to pick out an outfit to wear for Jian, while I stayed in the living room replaying Seunghun’s earlier words. The image of witnessing my wife’s “abnormal wetness” that day tore through my mind once again.
Where dissatisfaction had vanished, an even greater thirst was now rising. The stage of depravity that my wife had chosen for herself. As the weekend drew closer, my heart began to pound so violently it felt like it would burst. The ordinary us were gone. Because we loved each other so deeply, we had prepared ourselves to walk together into an even deeper abyss in order to confirm the most primal desires that waited at the end of that love.
The outfit Sujung brought out from the dressing room was quite different from the modest style she usually preferred. She held it against her body and stared at herself in the mirror for a long time. Her eyes reflected in the glass were still trembling, but deep within that gaze lay a dark, unspoken curiosity about reuniting with Seunghun and Jian—a curiosity she could not yet voice aloud.
—
Finally, we arrived at the luxurious countryside pension. Whether it was because of the sunny weather and the flutter of the two-piece Sujung had chosen, or the strange tension that came from drinking with Seunghun’s couple, my heart had been pleasantly racing even before we arrived. Due to an accident that caused a forty-minute traffic jam, we reached the place at 7:20 p.m., twenty minutes later than planned, and were greeted warmly by the waiting couple.
“Oh my, Junseok! Sujung! Why are you so late? Haha!”
I almost lost my gaze for a moment to the visual stimulation of Jian’s bold dress, but the real shock came next. As I followed behind Seunghun and Jian to our seats, Sujung’s steps began to noticeably slow down.
When I turned to look at her in confusion, Sujung pressed her flushed face against my arm, clinging tightly. Then, with her lips so close to my ear they nearly brushed it, she whispered in a voice trembling with shame.
“O… oppa… today… I’m wearing… mesh thong panties… inside…”
My mind went completely white. My wife—who had been the very symbol of modesty her entire life—had worn mesh thong panties to a place where another man would be… After she finished speaking, Sujung hung her head so low it looked like she wanted to bore a hole through her own feet. Her face had turned an explosively deep red.
But at that exact moment, I made eye contact with Seunghun as he turned around. Instead of hurrying us, he had been quietly watching the entire sequence: Sujung whispering her confession into my ear, then immediately blushing and crumbling. The redder Sujung’s face became, the more a strange, unreadable smile slowly spread across his lips.
“What’s this? Whispering to each other even after coming all the way out here? Why is Sujung’s face so red?”
Seunghun tossed the question in his usual relaxed tone, but his eyes were persistently scanning her flushed cheeks and the way she awkwardly shrank her lower body. It was a sly gaze that seemed to have already noticed the “lewd secret” hidden behind her unnatural reaction—or rather, a gaze that seemed to enjoy her shame.
Sujung startled violently at his stare, shortening her stride and shrinking her hips as she walked with an awkward waddle. The sight of my wife from behind, fully conscious of the unfamiliar sensation of the mesh panties digging into her skin beneath her thin two-piece. And Seunghun walking ahead with a smile, as if determined not to miss a single movement she made.
Wow… I’m seriously going crazy…
Behind the stunned shock, an erection so hard it ached took complete control of my body.