I'm Here
“I’m here.”
“So...”
The truth Noah revealed was more horrific than Dohyun had imagined.
No—calling it that felt like an insult. It was beyond anything he could have conceived.
“Those fucking bastards...”
Dohyun ground his teeth, fists clenched so tight his knuckles turned white.
“Hic?!”
Noah flinched at the sight of his rage, body trembling with a sharp hiccup.
“No, Noah. I’m not angry at you.”
Dohyun snapped back to reality, startled by her reaction.
“I-I’m sorry… It’s just… men getting angry still terrifies me. So I just… I…”
Her pupils darted wildly through empty space. Her fingers wandered aimlessly in front of her eyes, searching for nothing.
She seemed to be desperately stitching together some excuse, but soon—
“I’m sorry…”
She hung her head, completely deflated.
Because no matter what they said, they would always beat her senseless anyway.
“Noah…”
Dohyun couldn’t find the words.
He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to say something, anything. But the depth of her pain and sorrow was impossible to measure. He had no idea what to do, so in the end—
“…”
—he simply pulled her into his arms without a word.
If he couldn’t take her pain away, at least he could share it.
“It must have been so hard.”
When nothing better came to mind, he offered the most ordinary words he could find. Still, he held her with everything he had, hoping that even the warmth of his skin might ease even a fraction of her suffering.
“Yeah… It was so hard. I was in so much pain…!”
Noah cried again.
This time, Dohyun cried with her.
They wept together.
Some time later—
“…What do you want to do, Noah?”
“Well… um… I think…”
Noah’s words tumbled out in a incoherent mess.
“Should we… go to the police? Report Lim Su-hwan and… and the others…”
Dohyun carefully selected the words that refused to leave his throat.
“And… your father too.”
He finally said it.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Right now I just… I don’t know.”
Noah only wanted rest.
“If you don’t want to talk, you don’t have to. We’ll take it slow. Let’s organize our thoughts together.”
Dohyun gently placed his hand over hers.
A lot of sexual assault victims never report it. That’s what the post said.
The words he’d read online suddenly drifted through his mind.
Many victims never come forward. They’re afraid of retaliation. They’re ashamed. Or they simply don’t want to acknowledge what happened. Reporting it makes the nightmare real, so they bury it deep in their memories.
Along with the wounds.
Dohyun didn’t know which category Noah fell into, but—
“Yeah…”
“Okay…”
For now, he would respect her wishes.
As for those bastards—
I’ll deal with them later…
—he would find a way. And if there was no way, he would make one. He would make them pay. Just not right now.
“…”
It was pointless to talk about blame in front of someone bleeding out from a knife wound. And Noah looked far too fragile for him to focus on anything else.
“I’ll use the bathroom…”
Noah stood up hesitantly, watching his expression the entire time. In the past she would have walked in without asking permission, but now—
“…”
The difference broke his heart. He regretted every sharp look he had ever given her.
“Ow…!”
On the way to the bathroom beside the entrance, the ceiling suddenly dropped. Noah smacked her head against it and cried out.
“Ugh… damn it… that hurts…”
She frowned deeply, rubbing her head, then grumbled at him.
“I told you we should move to a bigger place!”
“…”
Dohyun paused, then shot back playfully.
“Then pay for it with your own money!”
Just like old times.
At least some things hadn’t changed. Dohyun smiled through the tears that slipped from his eyes.
“Jeez…”
Noah kept sulking.
But then—
“…Dohyun?”
She stopped dead in the hallway leading to the bathroom, standing motionless as she stared back at him.
“What do I do…?”
She glanced around nervously before speaking in a tiny, shrinking voice.
“I… I can’t use the bathroom…”
So much had changed.
The fragile walls of self-brainwashing had collapsed. The avalanche of trauma had come crashing down, crushing her beneath its weight. Every place was now a source of terror.
Even the bathroom.
“You’re not going anywhere, right?”
“Don’t worry. I’m here.”
Noah had begged, Please come in with me, but that felt inappropriate. So he left the door open and waited right beside it.
“You really won’t leave?”
“I won’t leave.”
A few seconds later—
“Dohyun, are you still there?”
“Yeah.”
After several more exchanges like that—
“Mmm…”
A trembling moan escaped Noah, followed by the sound of water trickling down.
Her long thighs and enormous feet poked out past the doorframe, wriggling seductively.
She really was huge.
As expected, a Hasshaku. A giant was a giant.
Noah always used to pee with the door open before.
She did. It’s too narrow and uncomfortable! she would complain. Seeing it now, he finally understood exactly what she meant.
It really was narrow.
Maybe we really do need to move…
With that thought, Dohyun slipped in his earphones. He turned noise-canceling all the way up and blasted white noise to maximum.
Even if they had known each other forever, the sound of a woman peeing was still embarrassing.
But then suddenly—
“…Huh?”
His vision shook.
“Dohyun! Dohyun! Dohyun! Dohyun!”
Noah’s screams rang out as the figure before him—
“Why aren’t you answering me… Why? I’m so scared… I thought you left me here alone. Hic… Sob…”
She was sobbing uncontrollably. And she was completely naked from the waist down, rushing straight at him.
Even worse—
“…”
—urine was still streaming from between her legs.
Dohyun could only stroke her head.
“I’m sorry, Noah.”
He comforted her as best he could.
“I can’t even shower by myself…”
That wasn’t the only major problem.
“I’ll wait outside the door.”
When he suggested it, she wailed.
“Those people used to harass me even while I was washing…!!”
She clung to him, crying and whining with everything she had. In the end, he had no choice but to go in with her.
A little later—
It was fucking narrow.
Truly, disgustingly narrow.
As expected of a studio apartment bathroom.
Though the studio itself wasn’t that small, sharing it with Noah made it feel tiny.
She stood by the showerhead while he faced away, arms braced against the wall so he wouldn’t stare too obviously. It looked exactly like rush hour on a packed subway.
“Is it… okay?”
“It’s… fine…”
A cheap internet joke suddenly floated through his mind.
How to fit an elephant in a refrigerator: Open the door, put the elephant in, close the door.
Same principle. Open the door. Put Noah in. Then put Dohyun in and close it.
He wondered if this was how the elephant felt—then immediately shook the thought away. Comparing a woman to an elephant felt wrong.
Instead, the image of a house-sized walrus forced its way into his head.
“…”
That wasn’t any better, so he discarded it too.
“Um… It’s not too uncomfortable for you, right…?”
“It’s… fine…”
It was unbearably uncomfortable. Insanely narrow.
He considered leaving the door open, but right outside was the “insanely expensive all-in-one dryer”—one of the three sacred treasures the previous tenant had bought with cash. It was a brand-name unit. An LG. If he broke it through his own negligence, there would be no after-service.
The narrow kitchen integrated into the hallway, the placement of the induction stove, the mold on the floor… Being a single tenant came with endless headaches.
So they closed the door.
A little later, once the discomfort of the cramped space began to fade, a different feeling slowly crept in.
Lust.
Her soft, plush skin, damp with sweat, pressed moistly against him. The overwhelming mass and elasticity pushed pleasantly into his whole body. And her scent—
How to describe it? Beneath the sharp, pungent odor typical of Caucasians lay a faint, hidden grassy aroma. Slightly fishy and damp, like a grassy field the day after rain. It felt refreshingly sweet, like lying beneath the eaves watching rainfall.
Next came the heavy, cheese-and-butter-like weight of milk fat, accompanied by the rich, sweet scent of lactose that tickled the tip of his tongue with pleasure.
All the scents fermented together in the warm heat, floating before his eyes like a shimmering haze.
It was a little hard to breathe, like being inside a wet sauna, but it still felt good.
Come to think of it, Noah’s body temperature had always run higher than most people’s.
“…”
Blood rushed forcefully to his groin.
Noah. Why do you smell so good? Why is your skin so soft?
Lost in those thoughts, savoring her scent and touch with his entire body, he suddenly heard—
“Turning on the water?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
The shower sputtered to life.
But—
“…?”
Something was wrong.
It was hot.
Far too hot.
He endured it for a moment. Dohyun had always been timid. Even when a hairstylist asked, “How’s the water temperature?” he could never give a proper answer. Like the internet meme said—it just wasn’t easy.
But this water was too hot.
Excessively hot.
To the point he wondered if this was even allowed.
At this rate he would be boiled alive, so—
“Noah, it’s hot…”
He twisted his body with difficulty to complain, but—
“…”
Noah kept washing without answering.
“I said it’s hot…”
“..”
She continued washing in silence.
Finally—
“I’m seriously going to turn into boiled meat at this rate…!”
Unable to take it anymore, Dohyun struggled to turn and look at her.
“Dirty… It’s dirty… Too dirty… Hic… It’s too dirty…”
There she was, frantically scrubbing her body while sobbing uncontrollably.