What Remains After the First Time
Riiing!
“Hic! Wh-what is that? Huh? Ah—ow… it hurts…”
The moment I opened my eyes at that unexpected sound, a brutal pain came roaring back through my body. This was nothing like a hangover you could laugh about the morning after a hard night of drinking. The tearing agony between my legs nearly knocked me unconscious all over again.
It had been a hellish stretch of time. I still didn’t know what I could have done to deserve it, but if people knew hell was real and that it looked like last night… I honestly believed no one would ever do anything wrong again. It had been a slaughter, carried out with meticulous care and effort through the entire night.
“Fuck. What even is this? What the hell is this thing? You’re a total monster.”
“Ghk—uhh… kuhhh…”
I couldn’t even properly hear the garbage he was spouting. Half my consciousness already gone, all I could force out of my throat were the empty, automatic noises of a broken instrument with air forced through it. So he took that naked lump of meat that was me and dismantled it however he pleased, talking nonsense the whole time without a scrap of resistance.
“At this rate I could honestly go all night. Wow. Insane. You’re fucking killing me.”
Slap!
“Ah—!”
Was that supposed to be praise? The sharp pain of his hand cracking hard across my ass made me react. It meant nothing. Just a little variation—like jabbing an awl into the middle of a steady, rhythmic carving. Even so, the broken percussion instrument that was me dutifully performed under the violence.
And he really did destroy me, dismantle me, trample me, and erase me all night long. The identity I had lived as a man for more than thirty years was murdered in his hands dozens, hundreds of times over. But the consciousness that refused to vanish no matter how many times I died was a curse so foul it made me sick.
How many times did I repeat that desperate wish?
Just kill me…
For the first time I understood that line you sometimes read in books—that death can be a mercy—and meant every word of it. The truly horrifying thing was wanting to die and not being able to, not even having that will left to you. So I took it, and took it, and took it from him… until I even gave up on salvation.
In a way, he was almost impressive. How many hours was it? Mentally it felt eternal, like something that would never end—but even in real time it was never short. Roughly six or seven hours? Through that entire stretch he never tired; he just diligently violated me.
Near the end, when even my consciousness had fled and I was thrashing in the air like a broken doll held up in his hands, the words he muttered came back to me.
“Fuck. Nothing’s even coming out anymore. But I’m hard again. Auntie, you’re the fucking best!”
“Uh… uhhh… uh… uh…”
From that point I couldn’t even manage anything like a moan. I just hung there with my mouth open, drool running, replaying the empty inertia my lungs spat out. That was it. I was dead meat. Will, identity, freedom—all of it gone. A corpse someone else had torn apart and thrown away like trash.
So… why did I open my eyes? It would have been better just to die.
The thought brought tears again to eyes that felt as if every drop of moisture had been wrung out of my body. And I had to force myself upright, because that sound just now had been the phone ringing on the nightstand. I reached for it—and immediately grimaced.
“Ah—hurts. Feels like I’m dying.”
It was only a small movement, but the connected parts of my body shifted and my joints screamed. I remembered my limbs being bent and twisted at angles I couldn’t even imagine under his hands. And right after that came the pain in my private place, of course.
It hurt so badly I could almost believe a knife was still buried there. Fucking bastard. Just kill me for real, I spat the curse inside my head, forced the pain down, stretched out my hand, and picked up the receiver.
“You not checking out? Your boyfriend left a while ago.”
“I—I’m sorry. I’ll leave right away.”
The curt call ended at once. But fresh anger surged up in me. What? Boyfriend? If you’d seen this situation… you should have called the cops. It was pointless, directionless rage and nothing more. The only reality in front of me was that checkout time had passed and I had to get out of this room.
That bastard… amazingly enough, had left me in this state and simply vanished. My clothes lay scattered carelessly across the floor. And on top of them—
“Th-that’s… uugh!”
The second I saw it, I truly threw up. Whatever was left in my stomach climbed my throat and spilled across the bed. So those things had somehow held on inside me through all of last night’s chaos. I retched and gagged with no chance to dodge the mess that splattered onto my own body.
I wiped my mouth and looked again, but the revulsion wouldn’t leave; dry heaves still hit me. There they were—tossed aside. The used condoms from last night. Torn wrappers and peeled-off rubbers dumped carelessly over my clothes. And the fluids of his that had leaked from them…
They had soaked into the fabric and dried into whitish clumps.
“Dis… disgusting. This bastard. Wait—don’t tell me…”
For a moment I shuddered at the clothes fouled with his semen, and then a memory cut through my mind. Something he had said while my consciousness was gone.
“Ha, shit. Out of spares. Auntie, I’m just gonna finish inside.”
I hurriedly spread my legs. After last night, when my hips had been forced open until the joints felt twisted, even a slight spread sent pain crashing through me—but this was no time to thrash around in agony. I had to check. And when I saw it, despair took me all over again.
“Ah… that stuff coming out… don’t tell me…”
It was a bizarre sight. My vaginal entrance twitched as if it were a separate living thing, working its lips in little spasms, reluctantly releasing the stuff bit by bit as if it didn’t want to give it up. That liquid still carrying a whitish tint… like a brand stamped on a pig at a slaughterhouse, the proof that he had taken me was seeping out of my body.
“Aaaaaaaah!”
I screamed. Sadly, it was the only thing I could do. I am a man. I will tell myself that dozens of times more if I have to—I am a man. And right now another man’s semen is packed inside me until it’s overflowing. Hahaha. Hahahahaha. Goddamn my fate.
I screamed again.
“Haa… haa… haa…”
Unfortunately I couldn’t keep wallowing in the motel room. When the phone rang a second time, even with my body screaming and my mind on the edge of breaking, I had no choice but to scramble out. Fighting the urge to retch, I pulled on the clothes still reeking of the fluids that had leaked from the condoms he’d thrown away.
Then I forced strength into legs that could barely walk and made myself move. A shower? I didn’t have the luxury. I just stuffed my body—caked and sticky with every kind of fluid—into clothes that were little better than rags and bolted from the room.
“Hey, keep it reasonable, will you? You don’t even look the type.”
The owner’s irritated scolding followed me out of the motel. If he saw the spectacular pile of vomit I’d left on the bed, he’d probably get even angrier. The thought didn’t make me feel smug so much as terrified he might come after me, so I walked for my life.
I turned into an alley. Strength wouldn’t go into my legs. My head was still swimming. I felt like I was going to lose my mind. The unspeakable, complex stench rising off my body. Every joint twisted out of true, unable to hold me up, offering nothing but pain.
But more than any of that… the mental shock I simply could not accept made it almost impossible to stay on my feet.
I had been raped. By another man.
“Hahaha. Hahahahaha! What a fucking joke. How does that even happen?”
I let the mockery out loud, aimed at someone. But that someone was me, and the tears came. Ahh… maybe I really have gone insane. I no longer knew what I was or what I was thinking. Why did it turn out like this? All I ever wanted was to be happy, and I’d lived diligently for that.
And then the one reason I still had to stay alive rose in my mind.
“Yujin… Daddy… misses you.”
With that thought… my consciousness began to fade again. Slowly I crumpled toward the ground, and a cold sensation slapped across my cheek.
“She’s conscious again.”
“Good. Nice work. I’ll handle the rest myself. Everyone out.”
“Sir? But—”
“I said get out.”
Voices suddenly drifted in from somewhere. Where was this? Had I not died? With vision slowly returning, I looked around. It was similar—to the Hexagon Group research facility I’d been admitted to before. But much smaller. Probably… some kind of facility inside a vehicle.
And just like last time, I was lying naked on a cot. What the hell had happened? A voice stepped in to answer the question.
“If your eyes are open, sit up already. This isn’t a motel.”
I knew that voice. Changmin’s subordinate from before… Manager Lee Seonwu, wasn’t it? I forced my head to turn toward the sound. My vision was still hazy. I blinked, and from that direction came an incredulous click of the tongue before a hand reached toward me.
Ah… now I could see. He’d put my glasses on me. And there he was—the researcher with the shaggy hair who’d stood beside Changmin that day. He looked… a little angry. The reason became clear soon enough.
“You left quite the vomit situation in the room. Do you have any idea how much the motel owner gave me hell when I went back for the glasses you left behind?”
“Ah… I’m sorry. But… where is this?”
“A specialized medical vehicle operated by the Hexagon Group.”
Ah. So that was it. The vaguely familiar look and feel of the place was almost comforting. But… why was this vehicle suddenly here? While the question formed, Lee Seonwu kept glancing between a chart and me with the same irritated tone.
“Tch. The sensors went crazy so I came out, but it’s nothing much. Mild muscle spasms, some shallow bite marks and abrasions on the skin. The hip joints look a bit strained, but… nothing worth fretting over.”
“There’s… nothing wrong… with my body?”
After feeling like I was going to die, it was nothing? The words left a strange, sour feeling in me. But Lee Seonwu was the one who got annoyed first.
“What, did you imagine something catastrophic had happened? You got drunk, locked eyes with a man, and had sex. It happens every night somewhere. What’s so abnormal about that?”
He said it flatly, as if the whole thing were ridiculous. Looking at him, something suddenly rose in my mind. I pushed myself up and asked him.
“Um… there’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while.”
“What is it?”
I threw the question I’d been holding onto at him.
“Why do you hate me so much?”