The Witches' Hour (1)
I stepped out of the shop carrying a paper bag that held a box wrapped with a black garter belt trimmed in golden floral patterns, glitter-flecked stockings, and a matching bra-and-panty set. A smile crept across my lips without me realizing it. Just imagining Changhee wearing this, writhing and moaning in my arms, filled me with a strange sense of satisfaction.
Lee Changjun and Lee Changhee... I had no need for Lee Changjun, but I needed Lee Changhee. Yet the two could not be separated. They were one and the same person. A single individual who possessed both sexes.
As I walked toward the parking lot, the smile still lingered on my face while my thoughts drifted back to the time I first met him.
The day I met him through a friend's introduction, I sensed right away that he was somehow different from ordinary men. He was neat and good-looking, dressed well, had excellent manners—everything about him was perfect—yet something felt off. Even on the way home after we parted, I couldn't shake the feeling that he was hiding something.
At first I wondered if the pressure of dating with marriage in mind was getting to him. But that theory had to be discarded immediately. The moment we met, I had already told him outright that we didn't need to date with marriage as the premise. At twenty-seven, in the prime of my life, the idea of getting married felt somehow unfair to me, so I had no desire to carry that kind of burden into a relationship. Of course his position as someone the same age might have differed from mine, but in this day and age, getting married before thirty still felt like an injustice. At least it did to me.
Having started a business with a friend back in college and now running a proper company as a young female CEO, I had no interest in tying myself down with marriage. And above all, I had a secret no one else knew. A secret shared only by my parents and me. Not even my younger brother Jaejin knew about it. After learning that secret in middle school, I had given up any thought of marriage entirely.
My secret was that I had been born with both male and female genitalia.
The hidden male organ began to appear outwardly when I was around four years old. My parents were naturally horrified. After consulting with doctors and giving it serious thought, they decided to have the male genitalia removed. And so, before I entered elementary school, I was given one sex. From my parents' perspective, choosing a woman who could not bear children but had no external issues over living as a man whose sexual function would never be normal must have seemed obvious. That was how I became a woman. Not by my own will, but by my parents' decision.
As time passed, I grew larger than most girls, developed a rather husky voice, and became a child who loved sports. Of course, many "real" girls could be big-boned and have personalities as lively as any boy's, so it never stood out too much. Until then, I had grown up without knowing that I had been assigned female through surgery.
But the secret between my parents and me shattered when I entered middle school. When I still hadn't gotten my period, my mother took me to the doctor for tests. That was when I overheard fragments of a conversation about "the surgery from when she was little." After persistently questioning her, I finally heard the whole story from Mom. I also learned that the regular hospital visits I'd had until then weren't simply for health checkups—they had been monitoring my hormone levels.
At first it felt like someone else's story. Then suddenly I began to loathe myself. I didn't understand the medical reasons behind what had gone wrong, but the thought that a man still existed inside me, and that I could never have a baby even if I married, slowly revealed itself as something truly horrific. So I attempted suicide. Even though I was young, the shame of puberty had reached its peak.
But suicide wasn't as easy as I thought. Whether it was hanging myself, slashing my wrists, or taking sleeping pills, I lacked the courage. I thought about it countless times but always gave up. As a result, my personality gradually twisted. And almost as if I were trying to drag the man inside me out into the world, I began dating girls indiscriminately. Not as friends, but as lovers.
Being the tallest in the class with a bold and refreshing personality, the girls who had secretly wanted to approach me started getting close in a romantic way. It was a novel experience. In high school I even dated a boy. Dating a guy wasn't particularly difficult. After all, female hormones were flowing through my body, and while I was somewhat large, there were plenty of male students bigger and taller than me.
Dating boys was fun. There was a strange thrill in knowing that the guys who called my slightly husky voice sexy and eagerly looked for chances to have sex had no idea that the person chatting with them had actually been born half male. In my second year of high school, I finally chose one boy and gave him my virginity. Or rather, I should say I took his. Either way, it felt like I had shaken off something dirty, so I felt neither regret nor disappointment.
It was the feeling of confirming that I was a woman while simultaneously discarding the male sex. Something like that—light and liberating. Strangely enough, after that my studies improved dramatically. I don't know if it was because I'd shed the burden on my heart, or because I'd dealt with the part of me that had unconsciously weighed me down and now felt like an adult, or if the arrogance of being a special person born with both male and female genitals had driven out my shame. But from then on, I began to make serious and clearer plans for my future and found the will to move forward.
That didn't mean I stopped dating, of course. I simply preferred dating girls over boys. I still had girlfriends who liked me romantically, and spending time with them was more fun than hanging out with guys. It seemed easier to simply accept and enjoy the contradiction that I felt more comfortable exuding subtle masculinity among girls than standing as a woman in front of boys. Perhaps I thought that since there was no man I could truly love, and even if there were, I could never give him a child, it would be better to grow close with the girls who already liked me.
Right after graduating high school, I had my female genitalia properly reshaped "like an adult" and implants placed in my underdeveloped chest to give me full, voluptuous breasts. Since I had decided to live as a proper woman, it was necessary for my body to match that image if I wanted to survive in this world.
While hiding that secret, I went to college, lived with a few girls who liked me, and eventually met Jeongsook. Not long after, I started a small business with her—the one person I got along with best. Her father imported various items centered around clothing from abroad, and we began selling them exclusively. The start was promising. Now the business has grown to the point where we deal directly with more than ten companies.
As you might have guessed, Jeongsook was a lesbian too. But because she had the same butch tendencies as me, our relationship was truly like a deep friendship between two men. Not long after we graduated college, that same Jeongsook suddenly got married. It was completely unexpected. I had never dreamed she would get married, so I was shocked.
Jeongsook said that when she told me she had decided to get married. I'd once heard that female homosexuality is different from male homosexuality. Men find it hard to hide their orientation, but women can hide it and live perfectly normal lives. Women can love both men and women at the same time. Maybe that was true. That must be why so many women keep female lovers even after getting married...
Even after marriage, Jeongsook continued running the business with me as co-CEO. Around that time, at her persistent urging, I started meeting various men. Perhaps because she herself was a butch who had gotten married, she believed I could do the same. She began supplying me with decent single guys from among her husband Kim Hancheol's friends. And the last man she introduced was none other than Lee Changhee—or rather, Lee Changjun.