Y is an 18-year-old high school senior who becomes drawn into a dangerous dynamic after her friend Woori strikes up a correspondence with J, a 38-year-old sculptor. After a phone conversation with him, Y is struck by the sound of his voice and decides to meet him at a love hotel, intent on making her first sexual experience her own choice rather than losing her virginity to a rape she believes happened to her sisters. In their first encounter, they begin with sex as soon as they arrive, and the evening unfolds with both anal and oral sex, setting a tone of intimate risk and boundary-pushing exploration.
In their next meeting, J opens up about an interest in sadomasochism, and Y agrees to explore it with him, allowing him to beat her on her buttocks before they have sex again. What begins as experimentation deepens into a routine where they meet regularly, and the intensity of the beatings grows as they experiment with a wider range of implements. At first, Y frames her consent as something she does to please J, telling Woori that she desires whatever he does. Yet over time she discovers a surprising shift inside herself, initially compliance evolving into a genuine, if tumultuous, enjoyment of the power exchange and the act of being disciplined.
Meanwhile, J’s personal life proves unstable. He travels to Paris to visit his wife, who refuses to participate in the kink, and the couple’s long-standing strain comes into sharper relief as his own sexual fantasies put pressure on their marriage. The relationship between J and Y intensifies after an especially brutal beating; in a moment of shared volatility, J offers Y the chance to turn the tables and beat him. She accepts, and the pair increasingly trade roles, exploring dominance and submission in a way that binds them but also isolates them from the rest of society.
The couple’s passion—and their secret—begins to fracture Y’s ordinary life. Y’s brother discovers the affair and acts out in anger, setting fire to J’s house in a confrontation that forces Y to confront the consequences of their relationship. In the aftermath, Y cuts her hair, withdraws from university, and the two abandon their previous lives to live in a string of hotels, spending every night in different beds, carving tattoos onto their inner thighs as a physical manifest of their bond, rejecting conventional work and social expectations.
Tragedy shadows their escape from the world. When Y’s brother dies in a motorcycle accident and money runs out, Y leaves J despite his pleas for her not to. J, unable to sustain their life together, relocates to Paris to live with his wife, while Y dissolves into her own uncertain path.
Years pass, and a new call arrives. J receives a message from Y as she stops over in Paris on her way to South America to join her sister. The two meet one last time in a hotel. She recreates a part of her past by changing into her old school uniform and, using the handle of a pickaxe, enacts a final act that mirrors a fantasy he once voiced. After this last encounter, they part ways for good, and J’s wife remains unaware of the full truth, as he chooses to lie about the origins of the tattoo that marks his skin. The film closes on the unresolved tension between memory, desire, and the cost of choosing one’s own path.
