Model (3)
“How’s the model search coming along?”
Wednesday night, Shin Duhyeong summoned me out to the smoking area to ask about my progress. His face was lit with a broad smile, the look of a man who already knew the answer.
“You gave me the job knowing I’d fail, didn’t you, boss?”
“Suspicious little shit… I knew it wouldn’t be easy, sure. Truth is, I also wanted to see how far you’d get.”
“It’s definitely hard. There are decent girls everywhere. If I lowered my standards a bit, I could’ve found plenty who fit the criteria you laid out. But… I don’t know. Right before I make the final call, I always start second-guessing myself. Without meaning to, I end up asking, ‘So what do I actually think?’”
I had narrowed down a shortlist more than once. Yet no matter how objectively impressive a candidate looked, if she didn’t sit right with my own eyes, I turned her down.
“That’s completely normal.”
“Is it? Maybe it’s just because I don’t understand the ad concept. If you told me what it was…”
“No, that doesn’t matter. You’ve already reached the standard that separates first-rate from second-rate.”
“…?”
Was he about to float more of his usual vague nonsense? Fortunately, this time the explanation that followed was fairly straightforward.
“Anyone can find girls who meet the conditions. If I’d handed this to literally anyone else, they would’ve come back with a list of a hundred names. But injecting your own judgment into that process? That’s not easy. Most people just want to wrap the job up quick, so they talk themselves into a compromise.”
“But what if my judgment is wrong? What if I’m just being picky and my actual taste is trash, so there’s no quality guarantee?”
“That’s exactly what I want to see. You’ve already passed the first round. So once I look at whoever you bring in, I’ll know whether you make the final cut.”
“…”
Just for having brought my own standards into it, I was already under examination. What remained was the question of who I would actually bring—and at this rate, it looked like I wouldn’t be bringing anyone at all.
“Yaaawn… I’m wiped. Hyung’s heading to the sauna.”
Abby Paramugson had no fixed start time. When a project was on, everyone pulled all-nighters without complaint; when the work dried up, the office could sit completely empty.
Still—if your body was tired, wouldn’t going home to rest make more sense? Right then, Shin Duhyeong’s phone rang.
“Fuck…”
“…?”
Who the hell was calling that his first reaction was a curse? After a long moment of hesitation, Shin Duhyeong picked up.
“Yeah. At the office, where else? Coming home today? You know we’ve got a project running. I’m pulling an all-nighter. Can’t make it.”
“…?”
Then—click. He hung up. Anyone could tell it was his wife on the other end, and he had lied straight to her face.
“You little shit, you’re judging me right now, aren’t you?”
“No, just… wouldn’t resting at home be better?”
Tch.
Without answering, Shin Duhyeong stuck a second cigarette between his lips and lit it. Smoke denser than anything from earlier scattered into the night sky.
“Hoo… You find sex fun?”
“Cough—coming out of nowhere with a question like that… Depends on the situation, I guess?”
“Look at this kid. At your age, isn’t getting laid the whole point of life?”
Shin Duhyeong looked genuinely surprised, as if he hadn’t expected that answer. But I wasn’t like most people.
If I wanted, I could have a purely physical relationship anytime. There was zero guarantee the other person would be someone I loved, though, and it always came packaged with the sick knowledge that I was hurting someone else.
In the moment the body might enjoy itself, but once it was over, a deep emptiness crashed in—plus a guilt that wouldn’t wash off and a quiet disgust with myself.
“You’re a weird one, that’s for sure. Listen carefully to hyung. Once a woman gets close to thirty, her amniotic fluid starts rotting and her body stops working right.”
“…”
Was there any actual medical basis for that? And the conditions he was describing lined up a little too perfectly with his own wife.
“Hyung’s fucked every kind of woman there is. If you collected all the cum I’ve shot, you could fill a bathhouse tub, and the abortion money I’ve paid out could’ve bought a whole building by now. You know what’s funny, though? Once a woman’s older, even if you make a point of dumping a load deep in her cunt, she still doesn’t get pregnant.”
“Uh… I heard something like that. Guess it’s not as easy as people think.”
“You know how fluid this line of work is. But every time she’s ovulating I have to drag myself home, no time to set a mood, just mechanical in-and-out. Every single time I think, what am I, a stud horse at a breeding farm? The fuck is the point of this?”
“Still, with the power of love…”
“Love? That’s all bullshit too, kid. It was nice when she was young and fresh. Once the years pile on and the flesh starts sagging, there’s nothing more miserable. You leave a mood light on and start pounding from above, and little by little you notice the skin getting rough and loose—disgusting, seriously, ugh… What’s the point of me working so hard on top? She’s just lying there like a frog ready for dissection, can’t even moan properly, and then she starts yapping about this and that…”
“…”
I could understand that mechanical sex wasn’t easy, but did he have to trash his wife that thoroughly?
Besides, she was still in her twenties, and even with only the masked glimpse I’d gotten, she looked strikingly beautiful.
More than that—what was the point of bragging about sex with his own wife in front of a subordinate who barely knew her? Did that mean the people who’d been here longer had heard this rant how many times already?
Shin Duhyeong left it at that and walked off. He was someone I respected completely when it came to work, yet I felt like I’d just peeked into a corner of an abyss I never should have seen.
“Sunbae, have you been really tired lately?”
The moment I walked into Thursday morning class, Gyeoul asked with worried eyes. Once again I didn’t answer, just stared straight at her face.
What if I compromised and went with Han Gyeoul? Honestly, she didn’t fall short of the conditions Shin Duhyeong had set.
What remained was my own judgment. Even factoring in a little rose-tinted bias, she was still teetering right on the Maginot Line.
“Sunbae…?”
When I fixed her with that silent, blatant stare again, Gyeoul’s cheeks flushed pink almost immediately. I snapped out of it and sat down beside her.
“Who are you eating lunch with today?”
“Huh? I haven’t decided yet. Probably Sujeong and…”
“I’ll buy. Eat with me. Think about what you want.”
“…?”
I had a fairly serious favor to ask; cafeteria food wouldn’t cut it. Leaving a puzzled Gyeoul where she was, I opened my textbook.
When lunch period arrived we left campus. We ended up at the sake-don place Oh Sujeong had suggested and took seats around a table.
“What’s this? Oppa, are you just openly making plans with Gyeoul now?”
Oh Sujeong beamed, clearly convinced her long efforts had finally borne fruit. But if I’d really been thinking that way, would I have bothered bringing her along too?
“Sujeong, please…”
Gyeoul was already growing tired of trying to rein her in. I ignored it and got to the point.
“Actually I’m buying lunch because I have a favor to ask. You know I’m working part-time in Gasan, right? It’s an advertising agency, and apparently they’re looking for amateur models lately.”
“Really?! Oppa, were you trying to scout me?”
At the words “advertising model,” Oh Sujeong’s mouth stretched open as if joy itself had overflowed. Gyeoul, however, was focused on something completely different.
“Is that why you’ve looked so exhausted lately?”
“Finding someone decent is harder than it looks. Every free period I’ve been walking the different colleges looking, and every time something was missing.”
“So you’re saying Sujeong and I are the perfect fit? Oppa, you’ve got a real eye for people.”
Strictly speaking, only Han Gyeoul had cleared the bar. Oh Sujeong wasn’t bad, but even so I could still see the subtle wall that separated the two of them in my eyes.
“Gyeoul, let’s do this! What kind of commercial is it? Do they pay well?”
“Honestly I don’t even know what the ad is for… I know the rates they give girls like you, but it’s not the kind of money that makes you rich overnight.”
“But if this gets us famous, it’s good for a long time, right? What if my followers jump past a hundred thousand?”
Oh Sujeong was already floating in rapture, imagining herself chosen by the public. Then Gyeoul spoke.
“The truth is, you haven’t found a model you actually like, have you?”
“Huh? That’s you two.”
“But if we really were the right fit, you would have said so from the beginning. You failed to find a model, so you figured you’d at least give the opportunity to juniors you know. Isn’t that it?”
“…”
Gyeoul showed a surprising sharpness in an unexpected place. She was right—I had grown tired of the search and reached a compromise.
Of course Gyeoul herself was balanced on a razor-thin line. But I had no idea how much of my personal bias had gone into that assessment, so the chance of failure was still high. That much was true.
“What? Is that true, oppa?”
“Well… I think you two are enough.”
“He said we’re enough, Han Gyeoul. This is a totally amazing chance—why are you…”
“No. Sunbae was entrusted with something really important. We can’t be the reason he fails. How about looking a little longer? Someone must be out there.”
“…”
Gyeoul understood exactly what kind of work I was doing. She had even given me baseless encouragement once, saying I might have talent for it.
That was why she had already figured out the path that led me to the two of them.
She probably didn’t want to let such a rare opportunity slip away, yet she still declined—because she hoped I would gain even a little more recognition.
Was there anyone else in the world this considerate?
In the end, Gyeoul’s refusal sank the casting. Oh Sujeong threw a fit, insisting she would do it alone if she had to, but she had never been under consideration to begin with.
Gyeoul’s thoughtfulness was genuinely warm, but I had no time to sit around being moved by it. The weekend was almost here, and campus would empty out completely.
As someone who already had nothing better to do, I would spend the entire weekend bloodshot-eyed, scrolling through SNS. At this rate I might even end up calling Bae Eunsol without thinking.
Anyway, I stepped into the convenience store to buy a corn bread before heading to work.
“I said no!”
“…?”
The inside of the store was unusually noisy today. Over by the counter, a middle-aged woman and a young woman were arguing.
“If you suddenly tell me to quit like this, what am I supposed to—”
“I’m the one in a tough spot here, okay? We had a clear agreement, didn’t we? One more man-related incident and you’re out for good.”
Trouble between the manager and a clerk, apparently. The part-timer who was anxiously pleading with the manager was someone I knew.
She worked this same shift every day and always rang up my corn bread. She kept a mask on, so I had never seen her full face, but every time I paid I thought her eyes were really pretty.
Apparently the parts she kept hidden were nothing ordinary either. “Man problems” weren’t exactly a common reason for firing a convenience-store clerk, were they?
“But it wasn’t even something I wanted… I wear a mask every single day…”
“Then why do the other staff keep texting nonstop asking to switch to your hours? And do you know how many customers file complaints saying you’re unfriendly?”
“I was being friendly…”
Ugh. I had no idea what had actually happened, but the scene unfolding was classic power imbalance. Still—there were other customers besides me. Did they really need to shout like this?
And watching the clerk hunch her shoulders, unable to finish even a single sentence properly, I felt a spontaneous wave of pity.
But that was their problem. Just ring up my corn bread already!
“Enough! I’ll deposit the remaining wages into your account, so let’s leave it here. Can’t you see the customers piling up?”
“…”
In the end the powerless employee had no choice but to quietly back down. When she turned her head, those clear eyes I had always found so pretty entered my field of vision.
A single transparent tear slipped free.
Seeing that, I almost wanted to step forward and offer some word of comfort. Of course, only on the condition that she rang up my corn bread first.
She sniffled.
Crying was already hard enough; now her breathing seemed to be giving her trouble as well. Carefully she pulled the mask straps free.
Puh!
She blew her nose into the mask, tossed it into the convenience-store trash can, and walked out. From farther back another clerk called to me.
“I can ring you up.”
“…”
I didn’t answer. Because just now I had discovered something enormous.
The true face of the part-timer I had been so curious about. Not a single artificial touch of beauty—features like a doll I had never seen anywhere else.
At last, I had found the right model.