The Woman With No Secrets
He had only ever seen her in photographs — known her, until tonight, by nothing more than a profile. But just as it had been with the other public subs, the pictures and the woman herself were two very different things.
She had given her age as fifty-six, and yet she looked younger than that. It might have been the careful makeup. Or perhaps it was simply that her features themselves carried a certain softness. That, at any rate, was what Ma Kyeong-il found himself thinking.
The public sub he had been with just before this — Yoo Mi-ran — had been forty-five, but there had been something faintly loose about her, the air of a woman who got around. This was an entirely different impression.
At the first round, over drinks and dinner, the public sub Yang Ji-hwa had worn a neat two-piece pantsuit, spoken very little, and carried herself with a quiet, composed stillness.
When that first dinner broke up, the five male members and Yang Ji-hwa headed to a nearby karaoke lounge. The other men all seemed to already know her. The only one meeting her for the first time was Ma Kyeong-il, who was still, for all practical purposes, a newcomer.
He was confused. If this was a meeting, shouldn't he simply see Yang Ji-hwa one-on-one, go to a motel, sleep together, and part ways? Why did there always have to be a group dinner with several members? Why a second round at a place where they sang? And why was it only after working through that entire sequence that they were allowed to go to a room? He could not make sense of the unspoken course they were all expected to follow.
His first public sub experience at the cafe, with Ji Hye-in, had gone through a similar process. His second, not long ago, with Yoo Mi-ran, had followed the same pattern before they ended up in bed. The first round was always an expensive, excellent meal — five or six men dining together with the public sub. Then they moved for the second round, drinking, singing, amusing themselves. Only after that would the two who had been arranged in advance slip out of the second round and head to a lodging. Ma Kyeong-il still was not entirely used to the system.
At dinner, Yang Ji-hwa had been wearing the kind of neat two-piece pantsuit a respectable middle-aged wife would put on. At the second round, she disappeared into the women's restroom and came back in an entirely different outfit, and the pharmacist Ma Kyeong-il could not help but stare. He had known, of course, that once they reached the second round the women would change into their own kind of work clothes. But watching a woman in her fifties walk back into the room in a micro-miniskirt that barely covered her ass, teetering on high, steep heels — honestly, he could not help being shocked.
Ko Ki-yoon, the pharmacist friend who had led Ma Kyeong-il to this cafe, murmured it into his ear as he watched Yang Ji-hwa — dressed like a hostess in that revealing outfit — step up onto the stage at the front of the karaoke lounge and begin to sing.
It was an upscale place, and everyone was drinking in a lively, loosened mood. The conversation had shifted from whatever they had talked about over dinner. Now they were all talking about stealing other men's women. At the cafe, they took their turns with the public subs to satisfy their own appetites — but separately from that, in their private lives, they were constantly attempting the challenge of taking another man's woman. That was the talk circulating among the members.
It was mostly the relatively senior members, the ones of three years or more, who led those conversations. Ma Kyeong-il, practically the newest man in the room, and Ko Ki-yoon, who had only been a member for two years, were in a position of simply listening to the veterans. One doctor was telling the story of how he had seduced a married nurse in her thirties who worked at his hospital, and the others were hanging on every word.
When the time came, Ma Kyeong-il left the karaoke lounge first with the cafe's public sub, Yang Ji-hwa, and they headed toward a nearby motel.
He felt a faint sense of dissonance at the way Yang Ji-hwa casually slipped her arm through his. The middle-aged wife who had worn subtle, modest makeup over Korean beef short ribs at dinner was nowhere to be found. In her place, a woman with heavy eye makeup and lipstick painted a vivid, almost uncomfortably bright red was walking beside him with her arm linked through his.
The two public subs he had already been with had both been younger than he was at fifty-three. Yang Ji-hwa, beside him now, was fifty-six. Three years older. In a way, if she had married young, she could easily have been a grandmother by now — and the fact that she was doing this, here, on his arm, was hard to believe.
But her figure was remarkably well-maintained for her age — an attractive body. She was wearing a micro-mini so short it barely covered her panties, and the men passing through the nightlife streets at that hour seemed to sweep their eyes over her ass and her body as they walked by.
The two of them went into a motel room.
Once they were inside, Yang Ji-hwa had Ma Kyeong-il sit on the edge of the bed, then knelt on her knees at his feet. She was still fully dressed.
"There is nothing I won't do. You may do everything. You may use implements. Spanking, needle play — all permitted. Golden showers and scat, of course, as well..."
Ma Kyeong-il said nothing. He had already studied this field thoroughly enough that he understood every word she was saying. There was not a single term he did not recognize. He grasped the meaning, the context, with complete accuracy.
Honestly, the image that Ji Hye-in — his first cafe public sub — had shown him had been so thrilling, so nerve-wracking, that as he had gone through the second encounter, and now this third, that initial charge kept diminishing instead of deepening.
"I have a question."
"Please, speak freely. Member Ma Kyeong-il... I am a cafe public sub. You may treat me however you like — like a public toilet."
"I'm sorry. I'm still not used to this. And I'm not a dominant, either. I'm just... interested in having a variety of sex with a variety of women. That's the only reason I'm here."
"I will do my utmost to serve you. I am a cafe public sub, after all."
"Alright. But would it be all right if we talked for a moment? There are things I haven't been able to ask the other members... and some things I'm personally curious about."
"Of course. I can tell you everything. I am a cafe public sub with no secrets."
"Ji-hwa. I heard you've been active as a public sub at this cafe for a full eight years. Is it really possible to live that kind of life for eight years without your husband or your family finding out at all?"
"Yes, of course. If I'd been found out, I probably would have been divorced. There isn't a man alive who would keep living with a wife being passed around among other men. Unless he had a netori inclination... it would be hard to even imagine."
"Does your husband have a netori inclination?"
Ma Kyeong-il asked it with a puzzled look on his face.
"No. Not at all. My husband just... never had much interest in me. We have two children. After the second one was born, things between us cooled off, and from about the fifth year of the marriage, we became sexless. I've been married twenty-seven years this year. In the fifth year, I ended up in a sexless situation I never wanted... and it's been that way ever since."
"My husband works in civil engineering. He's a civil engineer. When he goes out to a construction site overseas, it's two or three years at a minimum, and even when he isn't going abroad, he stays at regional sites for a year or two as a matter of course. He looks at me like I don't even exist. So I had no choice but to have affairs behind his back. While I was having those affairs, I discovered I had a submissive streak... and eight years ago, in my late forties, I met the gentlemen here and began my training. That's how I ended up where I am."
"Your husband doesn't know at all?"
"No. He has no interest in me whatsoever. We just live together because of the children. Still, we don't particularly fight or anything. He's a good father to the kids."