Seducing a Married Woman
The languid drowsiness of late afternoon settled damply through the room.
Outside the window, a pale gray sky seemed to whisper that spring was just beginning to arrive.
Hyun-soo lived in a studio apartment on the third floor of the villa.
Even with the window shut, the room was so quiet that the sound of a motorcycle passing outside drifted in, and a faint oily smell rose weakly from the gas range.
“What am I even living on...”
Scratching his head as he fiddled with his phone, Hyun-soo heard a regular knocking at the door.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The knocks were firm, without a trace of hesitation.
The mere fact that someone had come looking for him in this cramped studio space stirred a strange tension.
A moment later, a woman’s voice came from outside the door.
It was rather sharp, edged with irritation.
“Hey, Kim Hyun-soo... It’s the landlady. I need a word with you. So open the door.”
Her voice carried quite loudly.
Then, as if she were steadying her breath, a brief silence fell before her words came again, this time laced with clear annoyance.
“It’s about the rent—three months now. If you don’t pay this month either, we’re going to have a problem. I’ve let it slide until now, so open the door, Hyun-soo!”
Perhaps she already suspected he was unemployed.
Her tone held the certainty of someone who knew.
Hyun-soo rose from his seat, opened the door, and arranged an apologetic expression on his face.
When the closed door swung open, the landlady’s eyes widened slightly.
The look she had prepared for a full-blown scolding faltered for an instant.
She was fairly tall and slender, with a refined, beautiful face that anyone would notice.
Her actual age was early forties, yet by appearance alone she could easily pass for early thirties—she was remarkably youthful.
“I was going to pay the overdue rent this time anyway. Here... count it.”
Hyun-soo held out an envelope.
She took the money envelope, her fingers checking inside with practiced ease. She pursed her lips once, then sighed and tucked it into her clothes.
“Haa... Really. You say you were going to pay, so why do I always have to come up here myself?”
Her voice still carried an edge, but it had clearly lost strength compared to before. She crossed her arms and glanced past him into the room. Spotting the ramen wrappers and empty beer cans scattered across the floor, she frowned slightly.
“With this, the overdue is settled... but next month you have to pay on time. Continuously delaying and then dumping it all at once isn’t good.”
“Yes, I will.”
Hyun-soo answered with an awkward smile.
She took a step back and looked up at his face again. Reading the apologetic look there, the corners of her mouth loosened slightly.
“...But are you eating properly? What’s with your face?”
She tossed out the blunt remark and looked over his shoulder into the studio once more.
“Actually... I haven’t eaten yet...”
As Hyun-soo rubbed his stomach, a loud growl escaped.
“And I used up all my food money for this too...”
At his awkward words, her eyes went round.
Mouth half open, she stared blankly up at his face.
“...What?”
The reaction came a beat late. She blinked several times, then furrowed her brow as she studied him before speaking.
“No, so... you couldn’t eat because you paid the rent? Right now?”
“That’s right...”
Hyun-soo made another awkward face.
She pressed one hand to her forehead and let out a deep sigh. She opened her mouth as if to say something, closed it, and repeated the motion.
“Haaa... Really.”
She looked down the stairs, then turned her head back toward him. Her eyes were still sharp, but something other than irritation mixed in them now.
“Come down to the first floor. I’ve got some stew boiling.”
Saying that, she started down the stairs first. The sound of her slippers on the steps echoed. Halfway down, she paused, turned, and added one more thing over her shoulder.
“Just one meal. Just one. Don’t even dream of me cooking for you every day.”
“Thank you!”
Hyun-soo brightened at once.
Then he followed her down the stairs.
As he descended, color began to return to his face.
The landlady’s residence on the first floor was entirely different from the studio where Hyun-soo lived.
A comfortable sofa and furniture filled the living room, and in the tidy kitchen she—the landlady—was already standing over a pot of doenjang jjigae.
The savory smell of soybean paste stew spread through the air, and a few simple side dishes sat modestly on the table.
“I really steeled myself to pay all the rent this time. That’s why I even put in the food money.”
At Hyun-soo’s words as he settled at the table, she spoke.
“Steeled yourself?”
The voice muttering as she opened the rice cooker carried a strange emotion. She stirred the stew once with a ladle and tilted her head slightly.
“So if you starve yourself, what kind of steeling yourself is that? It’s just foolishness.”
Her hands ladling the stew into a bowl moved without hesitation. She filled it generously. She also scooped a heaping bowl of rice and set it firmly on the table. Handing over chopsticks and a spoon, she sat in the chair opposite.
“I’ve never seen someone who delays two months and then scrapes together even their food money to pay this month’s rent all at once. Really.”
Arms crossed, she watched him eat.
The corners of her mouth twitched slightly.
It was the face of someone who hadn’t decided whether to be angry or simply dumbfounded.
“But... are you looking for a job?”
She asked carefully yet directly. Steam rising from the stew gently filled the space between them.
“I have to find a job, of course.”
Holding his spoon, Hyun-soo scooped up the steaming stew.
“Oh, the stew is delicious!”
He took another spoonful and nodded.
“Your husband would like this, wouldn’t he?”
Hyun-soo knew perfectly well that she was a married woman.
She let out a small sigh at his words.
“Why the sigh?”
Scooping a big spoonful of rice and bringing it to his mouth, Hyun-soo asked.
After hesitating a moment, she opened her mouth.
“My husband’s having an affair, so what good is it if he likes the food?”
“An affair?”
Hyun-soo, who had been picking up a side dish, looked at her in surprise.
She—no, Jung Na-yeon—gave an awkward smile and brushed under her eyes with the back of her hand. It wasn’t that she was about to cry, but the peculiar awkwardness of someone who had suddenly let out something long suppressed spread across her entire face. She wrapped both hands around the water glass on the table and dropped her gaze.
“Sitting here telling this kind of story to a tenant... I really... Just eat. Before it gets cold.”
She tried to force a change of subject, but the door that had already opened would not close easily.
Jung Na-yeon took a sip of water and looked up at the ceiling.
“Your husband is having an affair? Why on earth?”
Hyun-soo asked again.
The fluorescent light whitely illuminated her slender jawline and the line of her neck. After a brief silence, Jung Na-yeon’s mouth opened once more.
“These days he doesn’t even come home. Actually, there were signs from long ago. His clothes always smelled of perfume that wasn’t mine. When I asked, he said it was a company dinner. What kind of company dinner four times a week? He wouldn’t answer calls, left KakaoTalk messages on read.”
Her fingers scratched meaninglessly at the surface of the water glass.
Her nails made a squeaking sound against the clear glass.
Jung Na-yeon let out a self-deprecating laugh at her own words and shook her head.
“Back then I didn’t have certainty. It wasn’t like I caught any evidence. Just... a feeling? We’ve lived together for ten years—how wouldn’t I know? Of course two years... well, not really... Anyway, the look in his eyes changed. When he looks at me, there’s nothing in his eyes. It wasn’t like that before.”
She suddenly sat up straight as if coming to her senses and waved her hands. She forced the corners of her mouth up into a smile, but the smile never reached her eyes. It seemed she had belatedly become embarrassed at the fact that she was pouring out her married life to a twenty-seven-year-old unemployed young man eating stew across the table.
“It’s fine. Really. This isn’t something you should hear, Hyun-soo; I must have said something unnecessary. I was just a bit tired lately and talking nonsense. If you’re done eating, leave the dishes in the sink and go up.”
Her back as she rose and headed for the sink looked especially narrow. Her hands starting the dishes under the faucet trembled slightly. The sound of running water seemed to hide that trembling.
“I don’t get it. Leaving a pretty wife like you... for an affair? Is he crazy?”
Hyun-soo looked at her as if it were absurd.
“Honestly, if you weren’t married, you’d only look early thirties. And even I can see you’re really beautiful! It’s ridiculous, that husband of yours.”
Hyun-soo wasn’t lying.
This landlady had a picky personality, but she was truly beautiful.
When he first heard she was early forties, he had been shocked.
No matter how he looked, her appearance never went beyond early thirties.
So he had thought she was around thirty-one.
But hearing she was forty-one, he had simply thought she really had a baby face.
“If it were me, I’d stick to you every day.”
Jung Na-yeon’s hands washing the dishes stopped.
Only the stream of water pouring from the faucet pounded the sink. She stood with her back turned, unmoving for a long moment. Her shoulders could be seen trembling very slightly. Slowly she turned off the faucet, roughly wiped her wet hands, and turned around.
Jung Na-yeon’s face was complicated. Her eyes were reddened and she was biting her lip hard, yet within the surprised expression lay the look of someone who had heard words she had not heard in a very long time.
“What did you say...?”
The voice she barely squeezed out cracked. She leaned her back against the sink and looked at Hyun-soo’s face.
“I said your husband went too far.”
She blinked several times as if she could not believe that a tenant—a twenty-seven-year-old man who had been late on rent—was sincerely angry. The corners of her mouth tried to rise, then twitched, freezing into an expression that was neither crying nor laughing.
“Hyun-soo. You shouldn’t say things like that... to just anyone.”
Even as she spoke quietly, the area around her eyes was dyed red. The motion of gently tucking her hair behind her ear with wet fingers looked like that of a pure young woman.
It was the appearance of someone flustered by sudden praise, making her forty-one years of age seem irrelevant.
“Early thirties... really...”
But Na-yeon truly did have a youthful face.
If she never mentioned her age, it would not have been strange to see her as a slender woman in her early thirties.
“I’m not just saying it. When I first moved in here, I thought there wasn’t much age difference between us.”
Finding out that the married landlady he had thought was early thirties was actually forty-one had surprised him.
At Hyun-soo’s words, Na-yeon could not completely suppress the corners of her mouth.
She turned her head to look out the window. The sun had already set, and orange sunset light slanted in through the kitchen window, warmly coloring her profile.
Standing like that for a while, Jung Na-yeon sniffled once and forced her usual tone as she opened her mouth.
“Just finish eating. The soup will get cold.”
After looking out the window a moment longer, she muttered quietly.
“Thank you... for saying that...”
“You don’t have kids yet, right, ma’am? Then aside from being married, you’re basically a young woman. And no burdens either. Who would know your age? Looking only at appearance, you only look early thirties. I thought so too when I didn’t know your age.”
At Hyun-soo’s words, Na-yeon felt a strange emotion.
“Honestly, if I were your husband, every night would have been fun—but your husband’s an idiot.”
At his mutter, Na-yeon’s body flinched. The area around her eyes seemed to redden even more. Heat spread up to her nape, fully revealed beneath her hair.
The fact that this man was casually bringing up that she had no children—and what that meant—made her tremble.
“Hyun-soo...”
Her expression as she barely managed to face him properly revealed complex emotions.
Her pupils looking at him trembled slightly.
How many times did she lightly bite her lip, then release it?
It seemed she needed to say something, yet the right words would not come.
The repeated motion of clenching and unclenching both hands seemed to speak for her complicated heart.
“Th... that kind of talk is really...”
She muttered in a voice less than half her usual volume.
That sharp voice was nowhere to be found; standing before Hyun-soo now was only a woman flustered, revealing complex emotions, not knowing what to do with herself.
She looked at his face again.
As if to confirm whether he was sincere.
She stared straight into his eyes.
There, Na-yeon seemed to find no trace of empty words or casual flattery, and her eyelashes trembled.
“You shouldn’t say that carelessly...”
In that moment, the moisture that had gathered at the corners of her eyes made her pupils sparkle under the fluorescent light. Na-yeon hurriedly turned and picked up the dishcloth on the sink. She began wiping the clean countertop meaninglessly, with nothing actually to wipe.
Her shoulders rose and fell slightly, trembling.
“Hurry... finish eating... and... that kind of talk... don’t say it again.”
The voice telling him not to say it again was far from truly not wanting to hear it. Rather, it was full of the feeling that if she heard it once more, she might collapse.