Irregular Period?
Irregular period?
That morning, Minjun noticed for the first time that his cock smelled.
After breakfast, in the bathroom the three siblings shared, he locked the door, did his business as usual, and then dropped his pants.
The moment he peeled down his underwear, a faint fishy odor rose up. A smell that never used to be there.
Minjun paused, brought the underwear back up to his nose, and inhaled. No question.
He slowly rolled the foreskin back.
There it was.
At the base of the glans, right under the coronal ridge. A thin white film had collected.
Something between cream and grime. When he scraped it lightly with a fingernail, it came away soft.
The source of the smell. Smegma.
Cock cheese.
Minjun had been circumcised during winter break in third grade of elementary school. His mother had said they were going to the bathhouse; the place they actually arrived at was a urology clinic.
Suyeon had even booked the appointment in advance, shoved him into the exam room, and the surgery was over in twenty minutes. After that his glans had always been exposed, so smegma had never once built up.
And yet now, smegma was coming out of his own cock. When he examined the foreskin, the skin just below the glans seemed a little thicker than before.
A minute difference, but a man knows his own body best. The foreskin was growing back.
Something that could never happen on a circumcised man's cock.
The cause was the onahole. Just as the lotion had side effects, something in that pink jelly mass had them too, and those side effects were enlarging his cock while simultaneously restoring smegma and foreskin.
This was an object only he could use. He could tell no one.
He washed twice with soap, rolled the foreskin all the way back, and scrubbed every crevice of the glans. After rinsing with cold water he sniffed again.
Gone. At least for now.
Just as he reached for the bathroom doorknob, footsteps sounded across the hallway. Light, quick steps.
Jiwoo. Minjun held his breath and took his hand off the knob.
The footsteps stopped right in front of the bathroom door. Three seconds.
Minjun stayed still, eyes locked with his reflection in the mirror. In his hand he still held the tissue he had used to wipe away the smegma.
The footsteps moved again. Jiwoo seemed to be heading back to her room.
Minjun waited until those footsteps had completely faded before he opened the door.
Suyeon returned to the master bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, unhooked her bra, and spread a towel. Milk was still flowing. She cupped both breasts and pressed slowly from the outside in. Milk fell onto the towel in thin streams. It was something she had done every morning with Jiwoo, but today Jiwoo had said she finished first. Suyeon didn't press the point.
As she expressed the milk, Minjun's voice rose unbidden in her mind. Cobwebs, he'd said. Mom's pussy's got cobwebs from not using it long enough. Every time she remembered those words her vaginal walls reacted and her nipples hardened further. The streams of milk grew thicker. She wanted to put a finger into her entrance but held back. Even though she told herself she mustn't touch, the wetness still leaked out. Arousal mixed into the towel meant for milk.
Even after she finished expressing, Suyeon sat still for a while, stroking her belly. Her period was due. For several days there had been no sign at all. Ordinarily she would have written it off as stress, but ever since coming to this house her body had been changing at every turn. She told herself a delayed period was nothing major, yet the hand resting on her stomach would not leave.
She couldn't stand it. Suyeon rose and went to the study, knocking twice. Yujin looked up as she closed her notebook.
"Unnie. What is it."
Suyeon shut the door and stood in front of Yujin's desk. For a long time she couldn't speak. She rubbed her own belly with her fingers.
"……My period."
Yujin's eyes widened slightly.
"Since when?"
"A few days ago was the due date. Normally I wouldn't care if it was a few days late……. This time it's different. I can feel my body changing. I've been pregnant three times, so I know. The feeling of the body preparing for pregnancy. That's what this is."
Yujin took off her glasses. She wiped the lenses with a handkerchief, choosing her words.
"Same here."
"……What?"
"My period isn't due yet. But my breasts are swollen, and they hurt just from brushing against them. I get strangely sleepy during the day, and my lower belly keeps twinging. That feeling you described—I know it too."
"Then all of us…… Seoyeon and Jiwoo too……."
"The possibility is high."
Silence filled the room. Suyeon slowly sat on the edge of Yujin's bed. The hand that had been touching her belly trembled. In this house, in this situation—pregnancy. And with her son's child. Her mind went white, then flooded red again.
"……What are we going to do."
Suyeon's voice was barely more than a breath.
Yujin looked straight at her through the glasses. Her lips moved slightly under the mask, but no answer came.
"I'm asking." Suyeon said again. Her voice hardened a little. "What are you going to do. There's no hospital in this house, no pharmacy, no obstetrician. If all four of us swell up at once, who's going to take care of us. Minjun? That kid alone with five people?"
"Unnie."
"You've never raised a child. I gave birth to three and raised three. How many diapers go in, how many times they wake at night, how many times a day you put them to the breast. I did that alone, without a husband. And now here, with no doctor, no medicine……."
Suyeon's voice cracked. Yujin removed her glasses and wiped them slowly with the handkerchief. Her fingertips, sensitized by the lotion, could distinguish every thread of the cloth. Then she suddenly stopped and turned her head toward the window.
"There are no options."
Yujin's voice was calm even through the mask. But her gaze was not on Suyeon. As if trying to see through the curtain, or sense something approaching from outside. Her pupils had widened slightly.
"No options……?"
"Think about what this house has given us."
Yujin rose slowly and walked to the window. With two fingers she parted the curtain a crack. The view outside was soaked in milky haze. It was morning, yet the only light was a murky gray. Beyond it, something was moving. Too slow to be fog, too deliberate to be smoke. Like something breathing, advancing toward the house one handspan at a time.
Yujin closed the curtain. Her fingertips trembled.
"The lotion. The onahole. The more we use them the more our bodies change, and we have no idea what happens if we stop. No manual on how to use them, side effects piling up, and we can't even quit. All we've gained are cursed objects. We don't even have the courage to throw them away… and even if we wanted to burn them there's no way. It's a private home, none of the five of us smokes so there's no lighter, and the kitchen only has an induction cooktop."
Yujin turned and faced Suyeon. Her eyes behind the glasses were wet.
"This house never just gives. Every time we gain something, that thing outside takes another step closer. And we have no way to stop it. Pregnancy will be the same. Whether we give birth or not, the odds are higher that it won't go the way we want."
Suyeon opened her mouth, then closed it. Yujin continued.
"So let's decide only what we can decide right now. Whether to tell Seoyeon and Jiwoo or not."
"We have to tell them." Suyeon answered at once. "It makes no sense for just the two of us to keep our mouths shut. This is all of our business."
"Tell them what." Yujin's voice remained level. "Nothing is certain yet. No pregnancy tests, nothing but symptoms."
"What changes once it's certain." Suyeon stood. "Periods have stopped, and our bodies are already sending signals. Why hide what we're going through."
"Unnie." Yujin put her glasses back on. Her fingertips trembled, but her voice did not. "Same symptoms don't mean the same conclusion. That isn't scientific. It could be stress, or the air in this house."
"Scientific?" Suyeon gave a short laugh. Too dry to be a real laugh. "Ever since we got here you've locked yourself in that room every day writing in your notebook. What have you figured out. What the lotion is, what the onahole is, why our bodies are changing like this. Have you uncovered even one thing?"
Yujin's hands stopped.
"Nothing, right." Suyeon took a step closer. In front of a younger sister nineteen years her junior, her voice was a mother's. "You're scared right now. You don't want to admit you know nothing. The fact that you can't control what's happening to your body with your head—that's what scares you most. That's why you keep writing things in the notebook."
The mask shifted slightly. Yujin's pupils wavered. Her fingertips trembled, but her mouth did not open.
"Is what you did with Minjun science?" Suyeon went on. Her voice no longer mocked. It was low and heavy. "Your body ending up like that, the way you lean on that kid. It doesn't make sense, so you're scared. I'm scared too. Seoyeon will be scared, and Jiwoo will be scared. But you just try to… throw that fear away. Calling it science, stress."
Yujin let out one long breath. Her eyes behind the glasses had turned red.
"……I am figuring things out." Her voice cracked for the first time. "Day by day, what changes how. Who is where at what time. What reaction comes how many minutes after applying the lotion. If I don't write that down…… we won't even know what's happening to us in this house. If you can't predict what your body will do next, isn't that even scarier?"
The air between them froze. Suyeon looked at Yujin's reddened eyes. Yujin looked at the hand resting on Suyeon's belly.
"So we have to wait longer." Yujin continued. The cracked voice was finding its place again. "Suppose we tell them right now like you want. The four of us, same symptoms, same man. What's the first thing Seoyeon and Jiwoo will think. Whose baby is it. And after that."
Suyeon had no answer. She thought of Seoyeon. The daughter who pushed everything through with sports. If she learned she was pregnant, would she be the first to break, or the first to run to Minjun—there was no way to know. The same for Jiwoo. Last night's face of Jiwoo flickered past. That girl already.
"We……." Suyeon slowly opened her mouth. Her voice was cracked, yet something strangely solid seeped through the cracks. "Minjun. I want that kid to keep a firm grip on his sanity and do his part."
Yujin raised her head.
"There's only one man in this house—him. The four of us can call ourselves mothers and big sisters and talk big, but in the end……. The only person who can hold this house together is Minjun. I want him to be the center. I don't know how to make that happen either."
Suyeon looked down at her own belly. Her palm slowly stroked above the navel.
"But what we're asking of Minjun right now…… is more than just being the center, isn't it. All of us, that kid……."
She swallowed the end of the sentence. Yujin quietly finished it.
"Need him. As a man."
Suyeon nodded. Minjun was no longer the youngest son who needed protection. He was the pillar holding up this house, and the man four women each wanted for different reasons. No one knew how to make Minjun himself understand that.
"……You're right." Suyeon sat back on the edge of the bed. Her hand went down to her belly. Nothing could be felt inside yet. But something already seemed to have taken root. That something might be Minjun's child, or it might simply be the desire to lean on Minjun itself.
"Just a little longer. Let's wait."
Yujin opened her notebook. She wrote the date in the corner of a new page and nodded. Under the mask, the tip of her split tongue swept once across the roof of her mouth.
They said nothing more. But the silence left in the room was no longer empty. It was a silence that had postponed a decision, and a silence that would one day inevitably break.