She was standing by the window, contemplating an escape route, when she sensed something wrong.
A strange scent brushed her nose. Seo-ah tilted her head and drew a deeper breath. All the windows were closed. The room was like a sealed chamber. So where was the smell coming from?
On the second inhale, she thought of acrid smoke.
But as the breath filled her lungs, the scent vanished as if it had never existed. Instead, her ears began to ring, like water had suddenly flooded them.
After her nose and ears. Then came her eyes.
Each time she blinked, the world shook violently. Afterimages spun, dizzy and chaotic.
She was standing upright. So why… why was this happening?
Instinctively, she grabbed for something. A long, cloth-like object stretched in her grip. A crashing sound followed, distant, as if something had fallen. And somehow, she found herself on the floor.
Why am I… like this…
Her thoughts stretched thin. Time stretched with them. For a moment, she wondered if this was a dream. The floor felt like an abyss, a pit drawing her in from behind.
But the abyss did not come from behind.
A dull breaking sound, as if something was breaking. Then, filling her vision up to the ceiling, a face loomed. Even through the haze of her consciousness, his laughter made her heart sink.
“Oh dear. I need to ventilate. Before you completely lose it.”
She needed to see where he was going, but her neck would not move.
Wind entered. Or something like wind. A layer seemed to exist between her skin and the air itself. In her frozen field of vision, his face returned.
“Where are you going to run, pretty thing? Hmm?”
Seo-ah tried desperately to open her eyes wider, to breathe.I have to get up. Get up.
She drew a deep breath. Wind filled her nostrils.
Her limbs, which had felt foreign, began to return to her. The ringing in her ears sharpened. The strange layer over her skin receded.
Seo-ah desperately flipped herself over. Her palms pressed against the floor. Her elbows bent awkwardly, collapsing more than once, but she refused to stop. There was no time to understand what was happening. Only one thing mattered.
Escape.
He chuckled.
“Let’s take the medicine. This is the perfect point to take it.”
At the chilling of those words, her body was lifted. She tried to scream, but no sound emerged. Her abdomen would not obey her.
A strange sensation covered her senses again. Like a film drawn over everything.
She was thrown. An overwhelming weight pinned her down. Even as she struggled beneath him, he only laughed. He sat on her stomach, his knees pressing her arms into the floor. She felt like a helpless insect.
“Ah… ah…!”
“Why would you wear something like this again?”
He unbuttoned her coat at leisure. As he did so, he licked over the face of the woman trapped beneath him.
Her large pupils flickered inside almond-shaped eyes, then filled with moisture. She struggled, saying no, but her drugged eyes were blurry and clouded. Her lips parted without control, unable to do anything. A faint moan escaped with each involuntary movement.
“Fucking hot.”
Feeling himself harden instantly, the man pulled a small medicine bottle from his pocket. He seized Seo-ah’s chin with one hand, pushed open the cap with his thumb.
She turned her head from side to side. Her feet kicked weakly behind her hips. He did not care.
He poured a single precious drop—worth tens of thousands of Kertes—into her mouth. Then he covered it with his hand to keep her from spitting it out.
Her resistance grew sharper. His arousal only intensified.
“Ugh… mmm… hck.”
“Just wait a moment, okay? You’ll feel better.”
He stroked her legs slowly as she struggled.
“Did you bite me?”
His hand over her mouth had been bitten. He grinned. Then he slapped her cheek.
Slap!
“Are you going to bite again and get punished? It didn’t leave a mark, did it?”
He examined her cheek, then toyed with her rounded earlobe. His whisper slid in.
“You’ve never done this before, have you?”
Seo-ah gasped desperately for breath.
What was more maddening than the whisper in her ear was her consciousness drifting farther and farther away. Everything receded. She felt herself falling into an endless abyss. She knew that if she fell completely, everything would become nothing.
She should have gone with that man back then.
Even if she had been suffocating with fear, she should have gone with him.
If he could pull her out of this hell, if he could simply take her away from here, she didn’t care if he was the devil.
So, in the midst of hell, she sought the devil.
She heard a long exhale. Then the acrid scent of tobacco reached her. The movements of the man binding her body stopped with that scent.
In her strained, focused vision, she saw him turn his head sharply.
Seo-ah, still dazed, turned her eyes in the same direction. She couldn’t move her neck. She rolled her eyes desperately. Her slowly rotating vision traveled from the ceiling to the doorway.
A room steeped in darkness.
The entrance she had once hoped would be paradise—but which had become an abyss—was now occupied, as if by magic, by that man.
Even through the haze, she recognized him at once.
A man carved from darkness.
The ember of his cigarette glowed red. That acrid point of light was the only illumination in the room.
She prayed it was not an illusion.
As she clung to the reality of that red glow, he opened his mouth.
“Do you want more?”
His voice was low enough to sink her heart. Calm. Monotonous.
Unhurried. As if the violence in the darkness was meaningless.
“If you want more, I’ll wait a bit.”
Light. Casual. As if her situation was of no importance.
Seo-ah had no choice but to cling to him.
Help me.
No sound came out. Or perhaps she simply couldn’t tell if it did.
She pleaded with her whole body.
Help me.
She could only hope her desperation reached him.
Please… don’t leave me like this.
—
Incomprehensible events often distort judgment.
The man, burning with the thought of ‘educating’ Seo-ah, should have questioned who the figure at the door was, or how he had entered. He should have recognized the chill down his spine as instinct’s warning.
“If you want more, I’ll wait a bit.”
He should have understood that those strange words contained no threat toward himself.
“Sir, perhaps you have the wrong room.”
His gaze, fixed solely on the woman, lifted at last.
The cigarette tip flared red again. After a slow drag, smoke spilled from the man’s mouth.
“Leave.”
The calmness in that voice sent a cold line down his spine. He flicked his eyes around. No one else was present. Only this man.
How had he entered? He had been too aroused to notice. The guards outside… they must have stepped away. They would return soon.
“I told you; you have the wrong room.”
“……”
“The one in the wrong room should leave, shouldn’t they?”
He deliberately raised his voice, aiming it toward the corridor.
At that moment, who had been leaning against the door, as if by magic, stood up.
In an instant, he crossed the distance.
Before he could react, his hair was seized from behind. His head was yanked back, and only then did he see the piercing blue eyes.
“They all fail to understand simple instructions.”
Oscar released a hollow laugh. He dragged the man off the bed. A kick to the inner thighs forced him down. A foot pinned his legs. A cigarette, inverted, was driven into the mouth of the man about to shout.
It all happened in a single, fluid sequence.
“Ughhh… mmm… mmm!”
He tried to open his mouth against the searing pain on his tongue, but the grip on his jaw made it impossible. The pressure of the foot on his thighs, the hand clamped at the back of his skull—overwhelming. His free hand flailed uselessly.
He felt like an insect.
—