Shin Yugyeong and Choi Dohyeok
That night, on the video app I always opened—Yungtube—I came across a clip.
The title claimed it was a study video, but the thumbnail was packed solid with a full, heavy chest. Her face never appeared. The camera stayed locked on nothing but the woman's breasts.
Why, just to study, did she have to wear lingerie that kept showing through, and leave her chest half bare?
A few videos of that sort, and one thing settled in me: whatever they had been made for, motivation was not it.
Then I opened a related clip that had almost no views. Neither the thumbnail nor the title drew me. I went in out of idle curiosity.
The woman in it wore an ordinary gray hoodie, the kind anyone might throw on. Set beside the earlier clips, it was clean—a pure study video with no design on the viewer at all.
The uploader had posted quite a lot of footage of the same person. Around thirty videos in all, dated from a year ago through six months ago.
What startled me was the clothes. At first she studied in modest things, hoodies and the like, and as time passed the outfits grew steadily bolder. The more recent the video, the more skin it showed, and the views shot straight up.
"So there are worlds like this..."
Well. From the side of the people filming, studying and making money at the same time could only be better.
I was about to turn the phone off and sleep when one thumbnail hooked my eyes and would not let go. Someone studying in a school-uniform shirt. The clothes were strangely familiar—almost as if I were looking at the uniform from Jiyeon's old high school.
Spellbound, I played it and opened the comments. Sure enough, people had named the school. It really was the uniform of the high school Jiyeon had attended.
The video itself was ordinary. Only, the woman had taken the uniform shirt in until it clung to her body, and my eyes kept going back to her.
A little time passed, and the angle changed. She must have set the camera high in front of her. A face buried under heavy mosaic came into frame, and her upper body with it. From that shot on, several of the buttons at her collar were undone.
There was no name tag, so I had no idea who she was, but she was a strikingly attractive person. Dressed like that, yes—and yet at the desk her posture was passionate, and exacting.
All at once I had the feeling that her handwriting resembled Jiyeon's. Once I thought that, even the bobbed hair began to look a little like Jiyeon's in those days. The line of the face, the set of the features, seemed similar too... Impossible, of course. I let out a short breath of a laugh and let it go.
In the first place, Jiyeon would never own anything as absurd as a uniform like that.
Afterward I put the foolish thought away and decided to sleep.
Shin Yugyeong. This year she had turned forty-one: mother of two, Hong Doha and Hong Doyun.
She had met her husband in a season when she still knew nothing of the world, borne her children early, and before even ten years were out, had to let him go. Because of that, she gave Doha and Doyun a love she would not yield to anyone.
There were happy days and hard ones. Time went on all the same.
These days Yugyeong worked at a cable network as lead writer and content planner. Today she had decided to go with Doyun to the university he had just entered. He wanted none of it. She, from early morning, was alight at the thought of a campus date with her son.
Doyun was a model student who never slipped from the top ranks of his school, and he had entered the media and broadcasting department of one of the country's elite universities. He dreamed of becoming a producer someday and helping his mother, the writer. A son like that made Yugyeong deeply proud.
She herself had entered university only to be forced to drop out not long after, and she carried an enormous romance about campus life.
"Hm~. Mmm~. Hm, hmm~."
Fresh from the shower, Yugyeong hummed as she wound a bath towel around herself. Coming out of the bathroom, she met Doyun, who was passing with a drink of water.
Gulp.
The moment he saw her, he swallowed every mouthful he had been holding.
She did not know it, but Yugyeong still had a beauty that could pass for the middle or late twenties. A face and figure the years seemed to have glanced past still turned men's heads. Yugyeong herself, though, believed a little softness had come into her stomach, and that her breasts had sagged until there was nothing left worth looking at.
"M-M-Mom! We're going together today, right?"
"Mm? Of course. I'll get something ready to eat, so wash up and come on ou—"
He did not stay for the rest. He ducked into his room in a hurry.
Yugyeong went to the vanity to dry her hair. In the mirror, one nipple had worked its way out past the towel.
"Oh my."
Seeing it, she drew the towel aside as if it were nothing. Even if her son had seen, it would not have stirred any particular feeling in her. Set against the old days, her areolae had grown larger, her nipples stood out farther, and the color had darkened a little. Who would ever care for breasts this ugly now?
She let out a small sigh and went on getting ready.
When the two of them were ready to go out, they headed for Doyun's university.
Yugyeong sank completely into the vivid air of a campus in early April. They took a table at a café, drank coffee, and talked for a while. Doyun had class soon, so he rose first.
She was sorry to part from him so early, but she meant to finish what remained of her coffee and get up at her leisure. For a moment she watched the students drifting past in twos and threes, cups in hand, and their talk reached her.
A girl drinking her coffee in earnest, saying an assignment had kept her from any real sleep. Boys she could not quite follow, already deep in a heated argument from morning. To Yugyeong, every one of them looked young and firm past all reason. She envied them for being able to spend their youth among people their own age.
Slurp.
She had emptied the cup and was just about to rise when someone came up to her.
"If I am not mistaken... Writer Shin Yugyeong. Would that be you?"
He wore a neat knit, but a solid, well-built frame showed through it. His skin was the same bronze as Doha's, and yet the round glasses lent him an intellectual air.
"That's right. How do you know me...?"
"Hello. My name is Choi Dohyeok. I am a student in the media department. If it is not an imposition, might I speak with you for a moment?"
Dohyeok offered the greeting with perfect courtesy. Yugyeong could find no reason to refuse, and invited him to sit.
"Thank you. I was told that you, too, are a graduate of this school. If I may, might I address you as seonbae?"
"S-seonbae? I enrolled, but I dropped out almost at once."
Yugyeong laughed, abashed, and waved the idea off. She had borne Doha and Doyun young and had to raise them, so she took what was meant to be a temporary leave, and in the end it became a withdrawal.
"Even so, within the media department you are already a senior of long standing."
Dohyeok was ardent. He asked what a content creator's work actually was, and how she had climbed to a seat like hers. Yugyeong could not answer everything. Still, she liked the heat in him, and she answered as far as she was able.
"Thank you for making the time. Might I ask for a single autograph?"
She had never imagined a student from a generation so far from her own would ask her to sign anything. When she said she did not really have a signature prepared, Dohyeok asked for a photograph instead.
Yugyeong agreed at once. As she saw him, he was a young man with real promise—someone who thought before he moved, in whom care and courtesy toward his elders had become habit.
After Yugyeong left, Dohyeok remained standing in that spot for a long while.
Then his phone buzzed. He turned it on and read a message from an anonymous sender.
"......"
He read the message that had come back, and slipped the phone into his pocket again.
Nothing had begun yet. There was no need to rush. Dohyeok was a man who savored the eve of a thing—the slow, unhurried wait of it.
He poured out, into the bathroom sink, a coffee he had sipped only once. He washed his hands clean, and left to attend class.
About two weeks had passed since I started working out with Doha.
Today she said she had a small thing to take care of, and asked whether heading out late at night would be all right. I said I didn't mind. When the time we had set arrived, I waited at the front door in a tracksuit and running shoes I had just bought.
Doha's clothes were ordinary: a training jacket and shorts.
It was late, but we went out onto the walking path and started to jog. Close to midnight, the path was empty.
Something about her was off that day. She always looked back to check my form. Tonight she ran without a word, eyes only on the road ahead. Her breathing, too, was a little rougher than usual.
"Noona. If you're not feeling well, let's head in."
I was the one to speak, but she only kept saying she was fine, and kept running.
Even for someone obsessed with training, this was too much. No need to force it...
Doha and I finished the jog rather late. Today she seemed to be taking it slow, so I could run easy behind her.
"I-I'm a little sweaty..."
She laughed, awkward, and hastily wiped the beads of sweat that had run down her thighs.
"You're really all right?"
"I told you, didn't I? I'm fine. Full of energy. Want me to throw you on my back and run?"
"There you go again. You're worn out. Let's go in."
And so we finished a workout no different from any other day, and went home.