Sinister Negotiation 2
Kim Soeun sank into thought as she listened to her son Kim Seojin’s earnest persuasion.
It’s true—even at the academy they looked like they couldn’t understand why he was retaking the year.
When she had gone in for counseling before registering him at the re-study academy, the staff had already worn expressions that said they couldn’t grasp why she would make a boy with top-tier scores retake the exam. She even remembered them asking whether there was any real reason to force him to study at the academy’s pace.
When was the last time her son—who always obeyed whatever she said—had spoken about something with such desperate urgency?
Is it because he’s an adult now? He even knows how to go against my wishes.
Her son was now an adult both legally and physically. She had grown used to the sight of him shrinking in front of her, unable to clearly state what he wanted. Ever since she had exploded in fury at the little boy who used to whine for toys, the times he voiced his own opinions had steadily dwindled.
If I leave him like this, even his independence will suffer.
The thought began to take root that she ought to treat her son as a grown man, not a child. No matter how fine a university he graduated from or how respectable a job he landed, a timid personality and a lack of confidence in everything would only diminish his appeal as a man.
After hearing Kim Seojin’s heartfelt plea, Kim Soeun lowered her gaze and began to deliberate in earnest.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
The only sound between them was the rhythmic drumming of Kim Soeun’s fingers against the dining table. It looked for all the world like a prisoner waiting for sentencing and the judge about to deliver it.
Her fingers, which had been tapping the table as if casting a spell, suddenly stopped dead.
Kim Seojin waited for the verdict, cold sweat pouring down his face.
“Hooo…”
The long sigh that burst from his mother’s lips made Seojin’s heart plummet.
I failed…
Just as he was about to give up on everything and retreat to his room, his mother’s mouth opened.
“Alright. If you’re saying it that strongly, I’ll trust you. But you can keep doing well like before, right?”
The unbelievable words that left her lips. Kim Seojin stared blankly at his mother, mouth hanging open, unable to believe what he had just heard.
Apparently displeased with his reaction, her face twisted again, turning sharp and venomous.
“Ah—ahhh! Y-yes! Trust me! I’ll do well. Thank you, Mom!”
Before her decision could reverse, Seojin answered in a frantic rush.
Seeing the bright smile that lit up her son’s face, Kim Soeun couldn’t understand what could possibly make him so happy—yet the precious smile he wore warmed a corner of her own chest in turn.
“Heh.”
“Huh…?”
A faint smile rose to Kim Soeun’s lips, then vanished like a mirage. Having seen his mother’s smile for the first time in so long, Seojin’s face flooded with the flustered look of someone who thought he had imagined it.
“Then Mom’s going to wash up and sleep, so hurry back to your room and finish studying. You know, right? If your grades drop, I’m putting you in the academy immediately.”
Without waiting for her son’s reply, Kim Soeun disappeared into the bathroom to wash.
The solid thud of the bathroom door closing snapped Seojin out of his daze.
“I—I did it!”
He suppressed the urge to shout and celebrated quietly inside. His back was damp with cold sweat, and his hands trembled as violently as his racing heart.
Drunk on the joy of having opposed his mother’s will for the first time, Seojin decided to push his plan even more boldly.
Confirming the sound of running water from the bathroom, he hurriedly snatched up the phone his mother had left on the dining table.
“Crap! Password.”
Holding his mother’s phone, Seojin ran into an obstacle he hadn’t even considered. The lock screen required a password before the device could be used. It was something he should have fully expected—why hadn’t he thought of it?
Should I just stop now?
In his anxiety he glanced toward the bathroom several times. But the thunderous pounding of his heart and the sticky lust rising from his lower body shoved him hard from behind.
Inside the phone now gripped in his hand slept countless photos of his mother. An enormous quantity that would put the treasures locked away in his own phone to shame, without question.
“Let’s just try whatever comes to mind first… Mom’s birthday?”
Her birthday, the bank-account PIN, the front-door code—he entered every number he could think of on the spot, yet the lock screen showed no sign of yielding. Instead, because he had entered so many wrong passwords in such a short time, a warning message even appeared stating that one more mistake would lock the phone for a while.
“Ah… damn it.”
His mother valued skin care, so her baths ran long—but there was no telling how long the phone lock would last. If the device locked now, she would discover he had touched it, and everything would be over.
Should I wait for the next chance?
His mother bathed every day; there was no need to get greedy—he could seize another opportunity anytime. Yet the high of having won his first negotiation with her, and the greed for other treasures, shoved him onward.
What haven’t I tried yet?
He ran through the passwords he had already entered. No new number came to mind, and he was about to give up when one suddenly floated up.
“No way… it couldn’t be.”
Even as he told himself it was impossible, Seojin entered his own birthday into the lock screen.
With a soft click, his mother’s phone unlocked as if by magic.
“…”
For a moment Seojin went blank, stunned by the love he had discovered in a place he never expected. The enormous sense of triumph and the sticky flames of desire that had been swirling through his whole body vanished in an instant. Reason returned as if ice water had been dumped over his head.
“Haa…”
He sank into self-loathing over what he was doing. His mother’s twisted affection and her overwhelming educational fervor—all of it was for his own good. Her attention had been heavy, yet he had struggled so hard precisely because he knew the love contained inside it.
…I’m crazy. I must be completely insane.
Ever since that night at the sauna, a screw had clearly come loose in his head. Like a dog in heat he had gone mad, treating his mother as an object of lust, even hatching a sinister plan and talking back to her. He felt ashamed of himself for racing ahead, drunk on the sweetness of that taboo.
“Let’s stop.”
He decided he would no longer use his mother as a side dish for his sexual urges and was about to set the phone down when his thumb, still resting against the screen, accidentally tapped an app.
It was the one Kim Soeun used most often, sitting in a position easy to open at any time—that was how it happened.
“Crap. I have to close it qui—ck…?”
Realizing he had opened an app by mistake, Seojin hurriedly tried to close it—only to lose his words at the feast of “treasure” that filled the entire screen.
The app he had accidentally opened was the photo album of a mother who loved taking pictures. Kim Soeun recorded all sorts of things to hide the inferiority complex of being an unwed mother and to feed the vanity of proving she was living well. Inside the album were casual daily shots for her personal SNS, heavily styled selfies, and even artistic photos that looked as if someone else had taken them.
The mountain of treasure Seojin had so desperately wanted to possess was right there.
His gaze, trembling as if an earthquake had struck, swept across that mountain of treasure. His shaking fingers flew madly, checking and re-checking the treasures that would feed his son’s sinister lust.
“Haa! Haa! Haa!”
His head, which had gone cold, heated up as if it would explode, and an even greater heat began to gather in his lower body. Fresh firewood was thrown onto the black flames of desire that had been dying out.
Then, while frantically checking photos, Seojin’s finger stopped dead the moment it landed on one particular image.
A single selfie of his mother.
It had been taken in what looked like their own bathroom, yet the only thing she wore was underwear.
As part of her self-management, Kim Soeun periodically photographed herself in the same place, same pose, to objectively judge her figure. A secret fragment of that private self-care—something she would never show anyone—had now fallen into her son’s hands.
“…”
Seojin forgot even to exhale the breath thick with lust as he stared fixedly at the suggestive selfie glowing on the phone screen. Perhaps anticipating a possible leak, she had partially covered her face—yet that only stirred the imagination and strangely stoked his desire. The beautiful body forged by rigorous self-management boasted lines hard to believe belonged to a married woman, and the pure-white underwear wrapping her full breasts and ripe hips seized his gaze completely. Just imagining what lewd form might hide beneath that innocent lingerie made his cock swell as if it would burst.
“Hoo… hoo… hoo…”
Seojin desperately suppressed the urge to drop his pants and masturbate right there on the spot. In an instant his mind tilted toward executing the plan before the sound of water from the bathroom stopped.
With lingering regret in every movement of his fingers, he closed the photo album, quickly opened the app store, and began installing a special app he had researched in advance onto his mother’s phone.
“Hurry, hurry, hurryyy…”
Even though the install time was never long, Seojin’s chest felt ready to explode from impatience and tension. The moment installation finished he hurriedly launched the app and began configuring it exactly as he had memorized beforehand.
The app he was rushing to set up was a kind of monitoring app. It was the common sort parents install to control a young child’s phone—yet its functions were anything but ordinary. Location tracking, history of what had been done on the phone, remote access, eavesdropping on surrounding sounds… functions bordering on invasion of privacy were packed in, yet they existed only because the other party’s consent was required for installation. Normally a parent would put it on a child’s phone; the fact that it was being used the opposite way now was truly ironic.
“I—I did it! The link is working fine too!”
In the end Seojin completed the installation of the monitoring app on his mother’s phone exactly as first planned. Now he could freely look into her phone remotely through his own whenever he wished.
“Now I just have to hide this monitoring app.”
He searched for the folder where everyone dumps useless apps they keep around, and sure enough his mother had one too. He quickly dropped the monitoring app into the folder of apps whose purpose she didn’t know and wasn’t sure whether to delete, then moved it to an inconspicuous position just in case she opened that folder by accident.
After confirming once more that he could remotely access her phone through his own, he returned to his room as if nothing had happened.
“Haa! Haa! Haa!”
Back in his room, Seojin collapsed onto the floor, gasping roughly as if he had just run a marathon. His whole body was unpleasantly sticky with cold sweat, and his cock was so erect it felt cumbersome and irritating—yet his mood was more elevated than at any other moment.
He had negotiated with a mother he had never even dreamed of talking back to, achieved what he wanted, and for the first time taken the first step of a plan he had thought up and built himself. Even if the true motive was filthy desire, the sense of accomplishment at having done something belonged entirely to him.