Noise from Upstairs
School break had finally arrived, but for Juhwan, the busy season of his life was only just beginning.
With not a shred of support from his parents, he had to earn next semester's tuition starting now.
So he kept living in the officetel he'd found while still in school and hunted for work nearby.
Construction labor by day, a convenience store shift by evening...
Every single day was grueling and exhausting, but there was no other way.
Only this way could money be saved; only with savings could he pay the officetel rent — and beyond that, scrape together next semester's tuition.
By the time his punishing day's schedule ended and ten o'clock rolled around, he was finally walking home.
This was the only time of day he could truly unwind, empty his head, and exist entirely for himself...
Usually, the stress of the day melted away with a good long rest at home.
But Juhwan's hard-won solitude was about to be disturbed — by something coming from the apartment above.
*Screeeech.... screeeech*
The sound of furniture being dragged across the floor upstairs....
At first he paid it no mind. It'll stop soon enough, surely.
But then a noise he never could have imagined joined in — a noise that, for any red-blooded man, was impossible not to react to.
"Mmhh.... ah! Not there, oppa, hehehe... a little higher..."
"Haahh..... oh yes..! Yours fits me perfectly..!"
It was the woman from directly upstairs.
Juhwan had passed her in the halls a few times, even ridden the elevator with her once or twice.
She lived with a husband who had a gentle, mild-mannered face — and she herself, though in her mid-thirties, was meticulously well-kept, with a body that was simply exceptional.
Their few passing encounters were all Juhwan had to go on, but he remembered them vividly.
No — he couldn't have forgotten if he tried.
Every time he crossed paths with the woman upstairs, he found himself fixating: that insolent aura of hers, a chest so full his hand could barely wrap around it, the kind you ached to suck; an ass so plump it practically begged for a slap....
Her face was sharp, almost hawkish — but her figure alone made him think, *God, I'd give anything to have her just once.*
And he doubted he was the only man in the building who felt that way.
A mild-mannered husband and a smoldering wife... was that why they made love so long and so loudly every night??
Part of him was envious of the husband, sure...
But this — this had gone way, way too far.
"Ahhng!!! Yes..!! Inside..!! Cum inside me...!!!"
Listening to it, he couldn't deny it felt oddly pleasant — but it was also, unmistakably, stealing his rest.
*Tonight I'll just grit my teeth. Tomorrow morning, I'll go up there myself and politely ask her to keep it down.*
*The next morning*
The moment he opened his eyes, before heading out to his construction shift, Juhwan stopped by the convenience store in front of his building, picked up a simple cake, and headed upstairs.
He wanted to make his request as politely as possible.
He rang the doorbell of the unit above, but it took a long while before the door finally opened.
Kim So-hee — that was the name of the wife upstairs.
There was no sign of the husband; the woman answered alone.
She had come to the door wearing nothing but a dark slip.
The magnificent bust and deep cleavage he'd been dying to see greeted Juhwan the instant the door swung open, and against his own will, his eyes dropped straight to her chest.
The moment she saw him, So-hee recognized him as the young man from the unit below.
But the gentleness she wore around her husband was nowhere to be found. Now she looked at him the way one regards a bothersome insect — with a cold, dismissive contempt, as if he were something beneath notice.
"Hello, hehe... I'm from the apartment downstairs."
"So what?"
She was unbearably prickly. Maybe the cake in his hand had sent the wrong message, but he couldn't for the life of him understand why she was hostile from the very first word.
Completely flustered though he was, he hadn't come up here for nothing. Setting her attitude aside, Juhwan explained why he'd come — as courteously and kindly as he could manage.
"Um... hehe. I see your husband's already left for work?"
"Why on earth would you ask? My husband left for an overseas business trip two days ago. He hasn't come back yet."
*The husband isn't home?? Then who the hell was the man she was fucking last night...?*
"It's nothing, really... it's just, last night when you were moving furniture, the noise carried down into my place a little... hehe. I brought this for you — I was hoping you could maybe be a bit more careful from now on?"
Her answer left him speechless.
"If it's noisy, then exactly *how* noisy was it? Because I have never once been loud."
He was dumbstruck... All he could do was stare at her blankly.
He'd committed no crime, and yet his head bowed on its own.
He should have been staring at the floor, but instead, So-hee's impossibly large breasts filled his vision.
*(Fuck, where the hell does he think he's looking?)*
*(Well, lol — as if I'd ever put out for a shithead like you in real life. Must be starving for it, huh? Go ahead, look all you want. Fill your eyes, then go home and jerk off, you pathetic loser. lol)*
And then So-hee twisted the knife even deeper.
"Oh~ right! You're renting, aren't you? A rent-slumming beggar living in an officetel like this — shouldn't a certain amount of noise just come with the territory? Heh."
He had nothing to say. No — to be precise, he was so stunned that no words would come out.
So-hee glanced at the cake in his hand, wrinkled her nose in distaste, and kept going.
"You can keep that trash for yourself. I don't eat convenience-store cake — it's beneath me. And from now on, don't just come barging up here over a little noise. Keep showing up at my door like this, and I'll call my husband!"
Juhwan had been staring at So-hee's chest; he quickly caught himself and forced his eyes up to her face.
"Ah... please don't get the wrong idea... I really did just come up because it was too loud..."
To the very end, Juhwan fought to keep his composure, to treat her like a gentleman no matter what.
"...For someone who supposedly came up here over noise, you're sure getting quite the eyeful, aren't you?"
He was mortified.
"Ah... I wasn't looking at anything, really..."
It was a lie.
Whether So-hee noticed or not, she'd have every reason to call him out — he'd been staring at her chest, helplessly and repeatedly, without even realizing it himself.
And it wasn't just her chest.
The curve of her waist. The flare of her hips.
She had a body no man could simply walk past, and before he knew it, every last shred of the masculinity in him had been roaming his gaze all over her, from one inch to the next.
"You really have no shame at all... Should I call the police right now, instead of waiting for my husband?"
*(What an idiot lol. Standing there frozen, unable to say a word, just drooling over my body — and he had the nerve to come up here and bitch at me?)*
For Juhwan, there was nothing left to say.
He had come up to make a polite request about noise between neighbors, and now he was about to be reported as a sexual harasser — his morning apparently destined to end in a police station statement.
"....... I'm sorry."
But hearing that apology wasn't enough to end things — not for a woman like So-hee.
"Well then, don't glare at people like it's *their* fault. Like I said, I've never been loud enough to warrant this little visit, so just go back downstairs and deal with it."
"And if it's really so unbearable, save up some money and move somewhere else. Oh wait — you can't afford that, can you? Pfft, hahaha..!"
*BANG!*
She'd said her piece and slammed the door shut.
For a moment, Juhwan just stood there in front of the firmly closed door.
*'What did I do wrong?'*
*'Rent-slumming beggar?'*
*'Fuck — isn't this going too far?'*
The hand holding the cake was trembling.
He wanted to pound on that door, drag the woman out, and slap her across the face right then and there — but he didn't even have the courage for that.
No. To be precise, he didn't have the *strength*.
He was just a poor college student with no money and no pride. A rent-paying nobody...
The morning had soured his mood from the very start.
He went off to his shifts as usual, but his head was stuffed wall-to-wall with the events of that morning.
And then a strange detail began nagging at him.
If the husband was away on a business trip — then what exactly were the sounds I heard last night?
Don't tell me... could it actually be what I think it is?
A cheating wife taking advantage of her husband's absence... something like that...?
He couldn't let it stand like this — the indignity was eating him alive. He had to find proof, then go back up there.
He finished his morning shift at the construction site and his evening shift at the convenience store, then trudged wearily home.
His mind was still a mess over the incident with So-hee that morning, and after two grueling shifts, his body was spent beyond saving.
He was nearly at his front door when he spotted them: a drunk man and woman, staggering toward his building.
"?!?!?!?!"
He looked closer — it was Kim So-hee from upstairs.
The man beside her... he'd lived in this officetel the whole time and had never once seen him before.
The two of them stumbled tipsily toward the building, and even as they walked, they pawed at each other like animals in heat, unable to keep their hands to themselves.
"Hehe. Inviting me to the home you share with your husband on our first meeting? Just how crazy are you?"
"Why? Hahaha, you're loving it, aren't you? Isn't this side of me — this bitch-in-heat side — exactly why you chased me all the way here?"
"Fair enough, haha. I've lived a long time and I've never met a slut like you. Never thought I'd actually get to fuck a married woman. Shouldn't you feel bad for your husband or something?"
"Who cares, haha. My husband's never home anyway. If he's so sorry, he can come back for all I give a damn."
Dumbstruck, Juhwan swiftly pulled out his phone, switched on the camera, and secured the footage.
*(Fuck... so what I suspected was true after all...)*
He had hoped it wasn't.
He needed it not to be.
Because if it was true — if it really was true — Juhwan couldn't handle it.
And even if it *was* an affair... what could he actually do with this? What power did he have over that woman?
In the end, Juhwan waited until the two of them boarded the elevator first, confirming they'd gone up — only then did he ride up himself.
He slipped into his apartment and held his breath. And a short while later...
The noise from upstairs began again — wilder than last night's, a debauchery without the slightest shred of shame.