The Smell of a Man
It smelled like a man.
Shim Sona.
She was one of the four who'd made my time in the service halfway breathable, and since our school days she'd enjoyed a popularity that ran neck and neck with Han Seoyeon's.
The shape of that fame, though, couldn't have been more different.
If Han Seoyeon was liked because she was warm and easy with people, Shim Sona was the type whose face was so pretty it felt almost offensive—and whose mouth smashed the illusion the second it opened. More than one boy had confessed on looks alone, eaten a faceful of curses, and watched his fantasy shatter to pieces.
"...Shim Sona?"
"Finally recognize me?"
With that, she flicked the brim of her cap up. The face underneath had only grown sharper since school.
"God, you really know how to make a girl feel fucking unwelcome."
"Why the hell are you suddenly here..."
"Why do you think. I came because of Han Seoyeon."
My heart dropped straight through the floor.
"Seoyeon?"
"Yeah."
"No—how do you even know she was here yesterday... ah."
I cut myself off and clapped both hands over my mouth. She'd told me not to say anything. And she'd been clear that nobody knew she'd come here...
"Wouldn't be you if you weren't a dumbass. What are you getting all serious about by yourself."
Shim Sona looked down at me like I was pathetic and went on.
"I came because I know you two fucked yesterday."
"What...???"
This time my mind really did go white.
"How do you know that. Don't tell me you two are still close?"
"We're at the same agency, idiot."
"...The same agency?"
"Yeah. So move. I can come in, right?"
The tone asked permission. She had no intention of waiting for it. One shove from that small body and she was already stepping into the entryway.
Shim Sona yanked her cap off and tossed it carelessly on top of the shoe cabinet. At the same time she took one slow lap around the cramped, rundown studio, wrinkled her brow, and pinched her nose without a shred of subtlety.
"Fuck. Han Seoyeon, that bitch's smell is disgusting. How much perfume does she dump on herself?"
I couldn't bring myself to answer. There was no way that was all perfume. Yesterday's slick was still in the room, and the smell of sweat and cum had to be soaked into the sheets.
"Air this place out. You showing off that you fucked Han Seoyeon? With the smell?"
"It's not that..."
I picked up the sheet I'd set on the floor and let out a heavy sigh.
"I just got back from work, so I haven't had a chance to clean."
"Work?"
"Yeah, work. Hauling moving boxes all day—backbreaking labor. My back's about to give out."
My whole body already ached like hell, and the second I got home there was an uninvited guest. I pressed at my temples and looked at her.
"So quit bitching about the smell and answer my question. Why did you come."
Only then did Shim Sona turn to face me. She didn't look like she planned to answer first. She flung the fridge open like it was her own place and pulled out a bottle of water without asking. Graduation was long behind us, and the hopeless attitude hadn't changed one bit.
"Seoyeon said you gave her her first time with a guy."
She took a sip and held the mouth of the bottle out to me. The moment I reached for it, she added:
"So I figured I'd try it too."
My hand stopped in midair.
"What...?"
Shim Sona's face wasn't joking. If anything, she shut the fridge like it was nothing and went on.
"I'm thinking of taking an adult film this time."
"...An adult film?"
"Yeah. That shitty child-actor image—time to take it off. But I've never had sex with a guy. There's a limit to how dirty you can look on acting alone."
"You're turning twenty this year... isn't it normal not to have?"
Even the question I forced out didn't move her expression.
"What's normal. In this business, getting the experience in early is a competitive edge. You think you can moan like it's real without ever having a dick in you?"
"Even so, that and this..."
Before I could finish, Shim Sona stepped right up to me. Two fingers pinched the front of my sweat-soaked sweatshirt and lifted it.
"What. You don't want to? Don't tell me Han Seoyeon, that bitch, is fine and I'm not?"
"Hey, hey. Hold on."
I took a reflexive step back.
"I haven't even showered. I hauled boxes all day. The sweat's gonna be no joke."
At that, Shim Sona wrinkled the tip of her nose.
Sniff. Sniff.
Her brow drew tight at once.
"...Wow. The sweat stinks. Seriously nasty."
"So back up a little."
But something was off. She'd put the disgusted face on, and she still didn't retreat. If anything she came a step closer and gripped my sweatshirt harder.
"But."
She sniffed again. Her face stayed scrunched.
"This might actually be better."
"What?"
"This smell. It's a man's smell. The smell Han Seoyeon got off on."
Strange. Up until a day ago, if something like this had landed on me I would've freaked out first. Now that I'd tasted a woman's pussy, the refusal didn't come easily. And the other person was Shim Sona—the girl who'd fed the whole sunbae-hoobae thing to the dogs.
Sunbae. Go to the snack bar and buy me a cola.
Sunbae. Copy the script up to here.
Sunbae. Clean the club room.
They weren't even requests. She'd toss out whatever she needed, and before I knew it I was at the snack bar or standing in front of the copier. Refuse an order and she'd throw a fucking fit. And now, years later, that same girl had walked into my stinking studio on her own two feet and was telling me to do her too.
Shim Sona lifted the front of my sweatshirt higher and brought her nose right up against it. Disgust and interest sat on her face at the same time.
"If anything... this sweat might make it easier to get into it. So don't wash. Just do it like this."
"...Are you two using me?"
She stopped with her hand on the shirt and looked up. There wasn't a trace of apology on her face.
"Using you? Yeah. But it's not bad for you either, sunbae. She told you to come over again, didn't she. Han Seoyeon."
"You share even that?"
Shim Sona blinked and tipped her head a little. The motion was strangely indifferent.
"Less sharing... more bragging."
The corner of her mouth lifted, just barely. I'd almost never seen her smile, even back in school. And in that same instant she yanked up the white tank top and the bra under her leather jacket in one go.
"Hah..."
What came free was definitely smaller than Han Seoyeon's, but it still had some volume to it. Against the pale skin, the small nipples were already standing a little.
"Han Seoyeon was going on like she was so proud. Said she'd been popped by the loser who used to run our errands."
"Loser..."
The word barely registered. A hand that couldn't beat a male's instinct reached out as if spellbound and closed around Shim Sona's breast. Calluses and dust were still on it from a day of hauling loads. Every time that rough palm dragged over the soft, small flesh, the scratch of it was unmistakable.
"Nn... your hand's fucking rough. What are you, a day laborer."
"I am a day laborer. They pay about ninety bucks a day. I've got rent and food to cover."
"Only ninety bucks? For a whole day?"
Shim Sona frowned and looked down at my hand. Under that gaze—a Jjindda's instinct, maybe—a school memory cut through the heat. The day I'd shown up in front of Shim Sona, who was vicious about cleanliness, in a uniform I hadn't washed in days. She'd humiliated me outright. You stink. Get lost.
"Even now... maybe I should wash first..."
She shook her head.
"Forget it. Just do it. The movie I'm shooting doesn't have any scenes where somebody touches me gently anyway."
She grabbed my wrist and hauled it down to her waist. The hip bone under the jeans was small and sharp. Almost no flesh on it.
"What kind of movie are you even shooting?"
Shim Sona undid the buckle herself and answered flatly.
"A rape film."
"What...?"
My startled echo didn't slow her. She kept going like she was reading off a script.
"A woman getting it one-sided from a man. The director's a sick fucking pervert—says he wants to see me cry like I'm desperate."
"So... you're asking me to play a criminal right now?"
She nodded as she pulled the zipper down.
"Yeah. You call yourself an actor too, sunbae. Yesterday you went full porn star and pounded Han Seoyeon's hole like you were using it up. What? Don't tell me you're gonna draw some pathetic line now?"
That damn porn-actor thing. Since yesterday it felt like I was actually losing my mind. But while I hesitated, Shim Sona shoved her jeans down past her hips. White lace panties. Pretty grown-up underwear for a body that small. She caught my dirty hand and forced it onto them.
"I know how to cry. I don't know what it actually feels like to be forced."
At the same time a small, soft hand grabbed my chin and made me meet her eyes.
"So do it rough, like you're really raping me. That feeling—getting shoved off, crying, cursing, and still taking it."
"...Then I won't know. Whether you're crying because you really hate it, or because you're acting."
Even with my cock swelling, it was a practical fear. I knew Shim Sona's personality too well. She'd take the club room I'd scrubbed clean and collect the teacher's praise like she'd done it herself. She was the girl who'd tell Han Seoyeon sunbae did it about things I'd never done, just to embarrass me. If she later threw a fit about why I'd raped her, I was finished.
"That's the point."
That was the point?
"It has to be impossible to tell the acting from the real thing. That's the skill I have to show the director."
Ah. As an actor, she wasn't wrong. What an actor does in front of a camera is make a lie look true. Even so, I stood there hesitating. Tired or not, the cock that had learned the inside of a woman was already half-raised in my pants. Yesterday Han Seoyeon had treated me like a Safe Dildo, and now Shim Sona was lining me up as a dildo for acting practice on top of it.
Really... how to put it. Maybe it was just one of those things you live long enough to see. Me—out of the orphanage, gasping to make rent, failing every audition, bouncing between moving jobs and shifts at the convenience store. And in a single day I was about to taste the pussies of two top stars.
Of course neither of them saw me as a person. Just a tool you stick in when you need it. That was pathetic. And still my cock was already hard enough to push at the fabric, and I couldn't deny it.
As if it weren't enough that Shim Sona, tired of waiting, had hooked her own panties aside and was looking up at me—that small, smooth pussy didn't have a single hair on it.
"What are you doing? The script doesn't have a scene where the guy stops halfway. So fuck, just do it. What? Do I have to put it in myself before you'll move?"
She grabbed the hand that had been on her chest and dragged it down by force, then pressed her waist in until her small pussy sat completely against my palm. Cold, and sleek. Han Seoyeon at least had hair. Shim Sona was nothing but skin, not a single strand.
In the end I peeled her hand off and set my thick middle finger precisely at the entrance.
"Fine. Then spread wider."
If this was acting, I was sure of myself.