The Jump into the Han River
I was twenty-nine years old, living a fucking pathetic life dedicated to one fap a day. Watching Japanese AV and envying the male actors—my existence was legendary in more ways than one.
I even took a certain pride in it. The art of the skip, and the sheer volume of AV I owned. The skip technique let me hop freely between the yamete and the kimochi, and as for the massive collection… did I even need to explain? Every genre, every fetish, all stocked. If I’d put half that effort into studying, I’d have a Nobel Prize by now. Of course, even if I went back in time I still wouldn’t study for shit. If there was a Fap d’Or, it would already be mine.
Today’s catch on my radar was a rookie actress’s stocking parade. She switched through every kind of stocking while getting railed—black, nude, white, fishnet, red… wasn’t that my entire fantasy? And damn, that male actor was lucky as hell. He ran his hands over her bare, stocking-free skin like she was his actual girlfriend, kneading her tits like dough and doing whatever the fuck he wanted.
Should I… become an AV actor?
Like I said, the fact that thoughts like this even crossed my mind made my life legendary.
I was just starting to heat up between the thighs when my phone rang, like a warning bell cutting through the filthy thoughts filling my head. At first I figured I’d ignore it, but when it rang again I realized it was a call.
The name on the screen made me jump. I killed the video in a hurry and grabbed the phone.
Kim Seoa. My high school classmate and the girl who’d been my unrequited crush while pretending to be just a friend. Guilt over the fact that I’d literally just been jerking off still clinging to me, I answered.
“Hello?”
“Oh, wow. You picked up super fast. Jun~ What were you doing?”
“…Just hanging around.”
“Been well? It’s been way too long since I called~”
“I’m doing fine. You?”
“I’m good too. Junhyun-ah. Free today? Wanna meet up real quick?”
My heart started hammering. The pulse thudded all the way up into my skull. I was still rock-hard between the legs, but that had nothing to do with the previous situation anymore.
She wants to meet today? Why? Just for a bit? Hell no, I want to see her for a long time… Should I suggest drinks? Wait—is this a fucking signal? What was it called… a green light or something?
I downed a whole bowl of kimchi soup in my head and ran my now-wet tongue over my dry mouth. As a lifelong virgin I’d learned romance from videos. They said you should play it cool once. Even if you had zero chill, act like you weren’t desperate.
“I’m kinda busy, actually.”
“Oh… really? That’s too bad.”
“What for?”
“Just to see your face~ We haven’t met in forever, so we can catch up a little.”
“You buying?”
“Why would I buy~ Between us it’s Dutch!”
“Okay. Then since I haven’t eaten dinner yet, I’m picking what I want. Dakgalbi and soju cool with you?”
“Sounds good! Where should we meet?”
Someone once said even a mouse hole gets its day in the sun. When one door closes, another opens. And someone else said that if you stay a virgin until thirty you turn into a dark wizard. When you’re lonely—sex. Sex is always a win.
God, Buddha, Allah, Jesus Christ. If I get to date Kim Seoa I’ll bow to every cardinal direction every single morning like a maniac.
That’s how desperate I was.
Back in high school, whenever the guys gathered for a face-rating session on the girls, Kim Seoa’s name never failed to come up.
“Kim Seoa’s face—could she make it as a celebrity later?”
“Yeah, easily.”
“Bullshit. At best she’d be a shopping-mall fitting model.”
“Nah. Totally possible~”
“But isn’t she dating Younghoon these days?”
“Oh, that tall guy from class 10?”
“Yeah. I saw them holding hands walking home after night study.”
“Ha. They did it, right?”
“They fucking did it.”
“Tch. Other people’s rice cakes always look bigger. It’s not even mine, so why do I feel like it got stolen?”
“Fuck, I’m jealous~ When do I get to try?”
“These days if you go to co-ed school and still can’t lose your virginity they call you a fucking loser.”
Nobody would believe that the fucking loser from ten years ago was still a fucking loser. Or would they? Average looks, 175 cm of neither-here-nor-there height. Out of every major I could have picked I chose creative writing, so instead of a job I just piled up debt for tuition and living expenses. In three months I’d even have to give up this room.
Ha. I stretched long and hard. Honestly I should have been figuring out how to survive first. But this was Kim Seoa. That Kim Seoa had contacted me first and set up a drinking date. Even if the world was five minutes from total collapse I should have been sprinting out the door, and right now I actually had time to spare. I styled my hair with whatever half-assed skill I had and put on the full set of the pretty expensive clothes I’d worn to a blind date once.
My hand went toward the cigarette pack, but I held back in case Kim Seoa hated the smell. Perfume instead of smoke. I sprayed the one bottle I’d been using for a whole year on my wrists and tapped some behind my ears.
Damn, with this I could even go to Hong Kong tonight.
Finally the appointed time arrived. I went into the dakgalbi place first and waited. About ten minutes late, Kim Seoa pushed the door open. She spotted me and waved. At first I thought about getting mad that she was late, but the second I saw her face that feeling melted away like snow.
“You waited a lot, huh~ Sorry sorry. Traffic was crazy on the way.”
She set a car key with the Mercedes logo on the table. Wait—why was my head suddenly spinning? My temples throbbed and my breath came short. Probably just from meeting the girl I’d been crushing on.
“I’m starving. Let’s order already.”
“I heard the cheese dakgalbi here is good.”
“Deal~ Auntie, one cheese dakgalbi and a bottle of soju please. Ha, it’s really been forever. Juuun~”
The last time I’d seen Kim Seoa was right after I got discharged, so about four or five years ago. The moment I got out someone invited me to a group chat—it was the high school reunion room. We met at the reunion, swapped numbers, and ran into each other a few times after that, but eventually everyone got busy with their own lives and contact dried up.
Truth was we weren’t even close enough to act this friendly. But right now I couldn’t afford to be picky about cold rice or hot rice. Just meeting Kim Seoa already had my heart pounding and my head spinning.
I pretended to be casual and mindlessly tapped my phone.
“Yeah, long time. You bought a car?”
“Yep! I’ve had it for a while now. About two years?”
“What do you do?”
“Just this and that. Hehe. You’re job hunting, right? Going well?”
“Don’t even start. With the youth unemployment crisis and all, places that are hiring are hard enough to find, let alone places that actually hire you.”
“Whew~ I see. All my friends are freaking out too. But you look taller than before? Your jaw’s sharper too.”
“Maybe because I’ve been working out?”
“Oh, working out~ I do Pilates.”
While we caught up she piled on the aegyo, and it felt pretty damn cute. She had a great personality. Careful with every joke so she wouldn’t poke my sore spots. She deliberately steered the conversation toward me, listened to every single thing, and even gave reactions.
Food came out and the drinks started circulating. Faces flushed and the atmosphere heated up before we knew it.
Kim Seoa had been wearing a tight gray dress under a jacket; once it got warm she took the jacket off. I’d known it before, but without the outer layer her figure really showed. Full, rounded breasts and a waist cinched like an hourglass. Whether she’d planned it or not, the off-shoulder that poured oil straight onto my already burning crotch felt perfect.
If a woman shows herself defenseless in front of a man and wants to look sexy, that’s a signal—what else would it be? Should I just grab her waist and plant a kiss? No. First I should stir her up a little.
While I was thinking that, Kim Seoa suddenly spoke first.
“Ha, I’ve been having a really hard time lately.”
After keeping the conversation centered on me the whole time, she finally brought up herself.
“Why? What’s hard?”
At my question she hemmed and hawed, not easily spitting it out. Like it was some hidden secret.
“Just tell me. If it’s something I can help with, I’ll help.”
“Ha, seriously. I don’t usually talk about this. Because people always get the wrong idea.”
“What wrong idea?”
“You know. You’re a really close friend and we’ve known each other forever, so you know me well, right?”
“Yeah…”
She paused again. But the moment she opened her mouth the atmosphere shifted completely from before.
“I’ve been doing insurance work lately. Haa, whenever I say this people always get the wrong idea. Since it’s sales they start acting weird and stop wanting to hang out with me.”
Ah, no wonder. My temple had been hurting. From the second Kim Seoa sat down and put that Mercedes-logo key on the table I’d had a bad feeling. So this whole repertoire was sized exactly for pitching me.
This crazy bitch. What the fuck is she pulling?
“Thanks so much. But this isn’t for me—it’s for you. You know that, right?”
After finally getting my signature on the contract, Kim Seoa sat in the driver’s seat, waved, and said “Bye-ing~”
Did she really have to take everything? Selling a thirty-thousand-won or fifty-thousand-won insurance policy to a broke bastard like me—was that even going to benefit her a little?
But the fact that I signed the contract knowing all that made my life legendary too.
Just to see her a little longer. That tiny hope that maybe, just maybe, she’d open her legs once. Looking at it that way I was a pretty shitty guy myself.
I raked my hands through hair stiffened with wax and pulled a cigarette from my pocket, sticking it between my lips.
At times like this I thought about the unfinished fap from earlier. If I didn’t at least do that I felt like I wouldn’t survive. Who was it that said AV was one of humanity’s greatest inventions? A symbol of half of human peace, created for the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
The night streets held every kind of person. Drunk guys collapsing or wrestling with telephone poles. Men with their hands possessively on a woman’s waist, looking triumphant. Fresh young couples arguing in front of motels.
I blew smoke out of my mouth and thought about the reason for my existence. I’d figured I’d stopped thinking like this after middle school, but it surged up suddenly just like Kim Seoa’s unexpected visit.
She was definitely going to take my money and then spread her legs for some handsome rich guy somewhere. Yeah, I was an ant. The kind that hands over even money it doesn’t have if you just wiggle your ass a little.
Minchan, the guy who’d hung out with me since middle school, had speed-run marriage with a famous female BJ from a big platform. Youngjun was so good-looking that his Instagram DMs never rested for a single day, so he got to pick his nightly partners. Taehoon, the bastard who’d beaten and bullied kids when we were young, hit it big with Bitcoin, became a building owner, and was apparently marrying a model girlfriend the year after next.
My life, kicking pebbles down the street, felt filthy and miserable.
It was true that I’d ended up like this because I had zero self-improvement and just watched porn. Before blaming the world I already knew the world had never been mine to begin with.
But fuck. No matter what wise saying reached my ears in this situation, it all just sounded like bullshit. My life was shit. In two more months I’d be thirty and I’d accomplished nothing.
I staggered along until I somehow reached the Han River. The bridge from Sindorim toward Mokdong, I think. The sidewalk was laid out so fucking badly it felt like looking at my own life.
How many cigarettes have I smoked by now?
I leaned on the railing and stared down at the Han River water far below. The rippling surface looked cold even without going in. If I fell from here it was guaranteed death.
“Pfft… puhahahaha.”
Suicidal urge? Why couldn’t I feel even that in this situation? Some people said just looking at the Han River for no reason made them want to die, but that all sounded like crap. I had to live. I had to claw and scrape and live. Even if it was a life where you worked all night and only fell asleep after drinking soju in the morning, you still had to claw and scrape and live.
That much was certain. Nothing was more pointless than suicide. And I knew perfectly well there were plenty of people in worse situations than me.
Minchan’s wife was a BJ, right? Are all BJs that pretty? Ha, fuck I’m jealous. That bastard probably didn’t even wear a condom on purpose and came inside. He’s probably still having hot nights trying for a second kid.
I was snickering like a lunatic when someone appeared in my blurred vision. A woman’s hair fluttered at the edge of my sight; when I looked, a woman as tall as me was standing on the bridge railing.
?
I stared in pure absurdity, then belatedly realized she was on the outside of the railing, not the inside, and shouted.
“Hey! That’s dangerous!”
Hearing my voice she turned her head toward me. Her eyes full of melancholy, she looked at me and slowly shook her head. I had no idea what that meant, but figuring I had to stop her I started walking slowly toward where she stood.
“Stay right there…”
I tried to continue, but—
Swoosh—
As if it were a lie, the woman’s body tilted and then vanished.
“Huk.”
I gasped and looked down at the Han River. A splash sounded, and after that nothing was visible.
Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.
All kinds of thoughts piled up in my head. The height wasn’t that high. Even if you fell, if you kept your wits you might be able to swim out. Honestly I had no idea. I’d never thought about what happened if you fell into the Han River. I just felt sorry that something like this had landed on me.
And for reasons I still don’t understand, after thinking a thousand things in 0.5 seconds I threw off my coat without hesitation and jumped.