The Scent She Left Behind
"Since you're already here... usually, when a private session like this gets arranged, that's when I post the explanation... I'm the cafe's Public Sub, so... feel free to drop the formalities. Cussing is fine too. But actually hitting me and that kind of thing... my sub training isn't far enough along yet, so that's still a bit hard for me. A lot of the other Public Sub girls have no limits at all, but I... my career as a sub is still short, and my training's incomplete, so... I have quite a few limits."
"So I'll give you a quick rundown."
The woman calling herself Public Sub Hye-in was a little tongue-tied, her face flushed red — but she kept going, laying it out carefully, one point at a time.
"Coming inside me, facials, finishing in my mouth — all of that's fine... Everything except anal is on the table. Call me whatever you want... Cursing, humiliation — I welcome all of it. I'm a Public Sub who gets wetter the more humiliating it is, after all... And... even if you finish in my mouth, swallowing the cum is... still a bit hard for me. I'd appreciate your understanding on that. We've got two hours... no limit on how many times you come... Well then... Hye-in, the cafe's Public Sub, will take good care of you. Please be good to me..."
"Oh my... look at the time already... Kyeong-il, take your time washing up... I'll head out first. I really enjoyed meeting you today. Next time we see each other at a gathering... please speak comfortably with me..."
After she finished speaking, Public Sub Hye-in leaned in and gave him a light kiss on the lips.
She didn't even wash. She pulled her clothes on in a hurry and was already heading for the motel room door.
"W-wait... just a second..."
Ma Kyeong-il, still completely naked, scrambled up from the bed and called after her — Public Sub Hye-in, already fully dressed and moving toward the door.
He caught her and pulled her into a tight embrace.
"Th-thank you... Really... thank you so much. N-next time... there'll be another chance, right... There has to be... I... I was really lacking today... Next time... I really hope... we get another chance like this..."
"Of course... I'm a Public Sub for the cafe members to use freely. Let's make sure we see each other again... it's a promise..."
In a cutesy little voice, she hooked her pinky around his.
And then she was gone — the first one out the door.
Ma Kyeong-il sank to the floor right where he stood.
And before he knew it, the tears were coming.
He was fifty-three. He had studied hard, gotten into pharmacy school, and from his thirties onward he had worked himself to the bone — starting out as a salaried pharmacist, opening a shop of his own, watching it thrive, until he now owned two mid-sized pharmacies and employed several salaried pharmacists under him. Ma Kyeong-il had built himself a stable life.
But sitting there now, the tears coming, he felt it with crushing clarity: the life he had lived until this moment had been nothing but a hollow shell.
He found himself resenting his pharmacist friend. Of course, that friend had joined this cafe two years ago himself, introduced by a doctor they had been close with. Membership here wasn't something you found by searching the internet. It was a gathering you could join only through a referral from an existing member.
Two years ago, the woman named Hye-in hadn't been actively working as a Public Sub, his friend had said. And that was still true now. There were Public Subs who took sessions four or five times a week — and then there were ones like Hye-in, who appeared maybe once or twice a month. On top of that, even as a Public Sub, her limits were extensive. Other Public Subs were said to allow the more extreme arrangements — threesomes, gangbangs — but Hye-in permitted one-on-one sessions only. On a board visible only to cafe members of a certain rank and above, those kinds of detailed notices and scheduling plans were laid out with painstaking precision.
Ma Kyeong-il wiped his tears.
Then he started muttering to himself.
"You idiot... taking half a pill because you're a coward... God, you idiot... should've taken the whole damn thing... God, you idiot..."
He was cursing himself for showing up to today's session on only half a tablet of his ED medication. He had come twice — two ejaculations so electric, so viscerally intense, it had felt like his whole body was being shocked — but the third erection had taken too long, and he had let the chance for one more slip away. Even if there hadn't been time to finish, he could have at least gone inside her again. He sat there resenting the weak dose.
Already he was thinking it: Next time I get that Public Sub Hye-in... I'm taking extra. I don't care if I go over the dose.
His heart was already pounding itself apart over her. It was suffocating. Like falling in love for the first time — not a single other thought would come, only her.
Those innocent, pretty lips saying such filthy things. The way she had licked every inch of his body. The way she had dropped to her knees at his feet and sucked him there. The memory hit him, and only then — finally — did a hard, urgent erection take hold.
Thinking of Public Sub Hye-in, Ma Kyeong-il started to masturbate. It had been years — truly years — since he had touched himself like this. A short while later, he came. Even the orgasm from his own hand felt sharper, more electric, because he was thinking of her while he did it.
This was the start of a new life. That was the thought in his head as he lay completely naked on the motel bed, not a stitch on him, his fists clenched tight.
And then something came back to him. While she had been getting dressed, she had told him to keep them as a souvenir — she had taken off her T-back and left it behind instead of putting it back on.
He looked beside the bed.
A black mesh thong was lying there.
"Ah..."
Ma Kyeong-il picked it up. The crotch was still wet. He brought the mesh thong to his face and breathed in. The scent of her cosmetics, the smell of her body — it was all still there, as if she had only just stepped out of them. He took her in again, and a shudder ran through his entire body.
The cafe's operating staff had gathered for an offline meeting.
They were seated at a restaurant specializing in turtle-and-chicken soup — the kind of rare, extravagant dish you didn't come across every day.
"Dong-seok... come on, why are you like this, seriously... You did such a good job as Hye-in's Markman... If not you, who else is supposed to be Hye-in's Markman..."
"No... hyung... other people can do it just fine. I... I still can't sleep. I got a military exemption, you know. So I never even got hit in the service. The last time I ever suffered violence in my life was in middle school, when the older kids from the next neighborhood beat me while they took my money. Even now, when I close my eyes... I can see that monster hitting me. I got a prescription from a psychiatrist... but even taking that does nothing. I... I want to take a break for a while..."
"Shake it off... As for Hye-in's husband... we'll think about that one a little more carefully too..."
"Come on, President Ko, don't be like that... You just never have to run into him again. What's there to worry about..."
"No, that's not it... That guy already knows everything — how am I supposed to just let it go? I... I want to step back. Things felt off from the moment Yeom Seong-bong started stirring up trouble. God... we barely managed to peel Yeom Seong-bong off, and now... it's one mountain after another..."
Ko Dong-seok let out a long, heavy sigh and shook his head.
One of the other operators — a man the same age as Ko Dong-seok, and a friend — spoke up.
"So... you're not doing cafe activities anymore? And you're not going to see Hye-in at all?"
"No... it's not that... With Hye-in... I'll contact her separately... just... to see her face now and then..."
"Hey, Dong-seok... I mean — Dong-seok. That's a violation of cafe rules. Hye-in isn't someone anyone can monopolize. Yeom Seong-bong couldn't stand that — sweet-talked her, tried to keep her to himself, and that's how this whole disaster started. Even if you're her Markman... drop the idea of monopolizing her."
"No... Gil-jun... I mean... Gil-jun. And the rest of you on the board... has anyone here ever been hit in the throat? Right in the uvula? Do you know what that feels like? It wasn't even that hard of a hit... I just thought... ah... I'm going to die here, for nothing... I really thought I was going to die..."
The oldest man among them — early sixties — opened his mouth.
"Dong-seok... I was a Marine, you know... God... was that husband a Marine? I don't think so... I was stationed on Baengnyeong Island... It's probably all gone now, but back in our day, there was this one godawful beating method. You'd wad a towel thick against the neck and tap it with a rifle butt. When that shock hits the uvula and the throat... it's a pain that really makes you feel like you're dying. I only got hit with it once... Probably only Marines have ever experienced that... That husband looked young, too... how would he know something like that?"