Original Position
“Hmm, what do they call it at times like this? Back to position? Original position?”
She was tapping the palm of her opposite hand with something spatula-shaped, looking for all the world like a teacher brandishing a cane or an officer with a baton. Judging by the way she spoke, she was probably acting with exactly that image in mind.
My senior climbed back onto the bed and began tapping her own knee with the spatula—
“This is called a paddle. It’s going to be spine-tingling, they say.”
She rapped her knee with the paddle, thwap thwap. I couldn’t bring myself to move; if I draped myself over that knee, I doubted she would keep striking at such a light intensity.
Of course I hadn’t fled far. My grand escape amounted to nothing more than scrambling to the far edge of the same bed. Skin still soft and powdery from the bath rasped softly against the blanket, a dry rustling sound.
“U-Unnie… it… it really hurts…!”
The word “Unnie” still sat awkwardly on my tongue. That was the nature of a relationship between kidnapper and captive where even a safeword was impossible to shout.
“Mm, because it’s punishment. Unnie’s heart hurts too.”
She answered with a smile that made no attempt to hide the lie. Every time she struck me, every time I reacted, her body had given a little twitch. Whether the cause was sadism or lust I couldn’t tell, but it certainly wasn’t guilt.
“Hurry up and come here. Keep stalling and I’ll hit you more, okay?”
“H-How many more are left…?”
“…That’s a secret. But I really have decided. I’m counting them in my head.”
When I asked while wiping my tear-streaked cheeks, that was her reply. From the tone alone you could have believed we were longtime friends. If not for the paddle in her hand, I might have let myself be fooled and relaxed.
In the end the paddle showed no sign of leaving her grip, so only one choice remained: return to my original place. I started to move—then suddenly realized there might still be one more option. No matter how great the difference in strength, if I shoved with everything I had, at least I could knock her over—
“Hurry up.”
Just as my thoughts accelerated and my heart began to hammer, her voice reached my ears. I startled so hard I hiccupped.
“Hic.”
“Oh my.”
She abandoned the pose she had prepared and came toward me slowly. Ah—something felt wrong.
A stubborn resistance to running kept rising in me. I knew the reason. The punishment waiting if the escape failed. And the fear that the current, almost affectionate “Unnie, Unnie” would harden into serious ryona-gore material. So what I really wanted was for the door to burst open and a violent-crimes detective to walk in, flustered at finding only two women.
I didn’t even know the layout of the house. Was this the first floor with a basement at the end of the hall? Second floor? Third? What if the front door locked from the inside? What if I fell while running? What if I shoved her with all my strength and she simply didn’t move? The moment those thoughts appeared, terror of the next punishment erased any idea of escape.
…Then I looked at her again and the urge to flee crept back, sly and insistent.
My breathing grew steeper and steeper, as if I were forced to choose which wire to cut—red or black.
Run? Don’t run? Can I escape? Can’t I?
Cut it or not, cut it or not.
Cut it.
No—don’t cut it.
My head spun. Even so I quietly rearranged the arms and legs that had been sprawled across the bed so that I could spring up and put force into them at any instant.
“Heeyeon?”
She tilted her head, puzzled that I still hadn’t moved. Crazy bitch. Looking at that face that genuinely didn’t understand why, I wanted to slap her at least once even if the escape failed.
So the moment she set one knee on the mattress and came almost within reach, I launched myself at her.
Both hands free of any cuffs, I shoved her body any way I could. Adrenaline detonated. She toppled off the bed.
Crash. The thought that flickered through me—if her head cracked open, would I get mitigating circumstances?—proved I was a person perfectly suited to the twenty-first century.
Before she could rise I sprang up, dove off the bed, and flung open the unlocked door. The hallway I had seen while bathing stretched ahead. Sunlight waited at the far end.
Bare feet met the floor with the same sensation as before, and for some strange reason it felt wonderful; a full smile broke across my face.
“…Heeyeon…!”
Her voice came from behind—more bewilderment than pain or rage. Hearing that tone at my back mixed a twisted pleasure with the terror of being chased until my head swam.
“Uwaaa—aaaaah!!!”
The scream tore out of me. A voice that would have been genuinely frightening if I had still been a man had been transformed, by the mysterious power of possession or whatever it was, into something delicate and thin.
Thud-thud-thud-thud. The wooden floorboards rang under my pounding feet. I seized the stair railing at the end of the corridor, vowing to take the steps four at a time—then looked down and thought, Ah. Of course.
An iron front door of the sort you only ever see in countryside houses waited for me. Incomprehensible yin-yang patterns and a door lock somehow stuck firmly in place. The lock’s red LED glared straight at me.
From the far end of the hallway came light, almost cute footsteps. “Heeyeon~!” growing closer. So I simply went down the stairs without thinking. One step. Another. With every descent my face twisted further.
My vision wavered again. Tears welled until I could barely see; I felt certain I would fall.
Still one step, one step. A boxer driven into the corner by a flurry of punches is not cornered by his own will, yet he ends up there all the same. So another stair, another, and the final one.
The door opened outward—or rather, there was no space for it to open inward—so I pressed myself flat against it and slapped my hand on the lock screen. 1111. 0000. Nothing.
“U-Uwa… aaaah…!”
I rattled the mechanically sealed doorknob in pure hope; of course it never budged. I crouched, still gripping the handle, and looked up the stairs.
The footsteps above drew nearer and slowed. I buried my face in my knees, wrapped my arms around them; the free hand never left the doorknob. Only then did I feel the cold of the floor against my bare backside.
“A… ah.”
A stupid sound slipped out. My mind went blank. I shoved at the floor with my feet; nothing moved.
An action taken without enough thought was riddled with holes. A plan that had borrowed the force of adrenaline had ultimately failed. Why, when I was still on the bed, had I never considered that the door might be locked? I had no idea. Should I jump through the window right in front of me even now? What floor was this? It didn’t seem high…
Why had I come down the stairs in the first place? Even after seeing the locked door? Should I jump? Out the window? Really? Could I survive? And shouldn’t I be moving already if anything was going to work? Get up right now and run for the window—
A hand settled on the stair railing above. A raw, unfeigned scream ripped out of me.
She appeared. One hand was stroking her own head. She began to descend.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I shoved myself upright and clenched a fist. Even so I could not picture myself winning a fight against her; the fist trembled violently.
She reached a distance where an extended arm would touch. I swung.
She simply took the punch on her chest and reached out. The instant her hand closed around my throat I felt the overwhelming difference in strength. The back of my head slammed into the front door.
“Keh-ugh…!”
“Really, I’m disappointed, Heeyeon.”
She seized the wrist of the hand that had punched her and slammed that, too, against the door. A raw cry tore from my mouth at the force; the back of my hand flared with pain.
“How do you betray me the second I give you a little trust? Hmm?”
The grip on my throat tightened until my head swam. I thought I heard a high, thin ringing inside my mouth—whether that was real or imagined I no longer knew.
With my remaining right hand—two fingers already injured, the fist barely able to close—I shoved her away. Every time I pushed, the pressure on my neck only grew stronger—
The last thing I saw was her face, lips pressed tight in exaggerated fury. Consciousness cut out, flickered back, cut out again.
As if I had never existed until that very second, a self suddenly appeared and the thought Did I faint? arrived at the same moment my eyes snapped open. Even open, they saw nothing.
I did not, however, fall into the delusion that I had gone blind. The soft fabric covering them registered clearly against my skin.
The instant I tried to move my hands I became aware of my posture: arms stretched wide to either side as though crucified, bound fast. Cold iron pressed against the back of my neck and both elbows.
“A… uh… eh…!”
Completely different from the earlier restraints that had at least allowed a little elbow movement—now my arms could not budge at all. And the rustling sounds around me sounded, no matter how I tried to hope otherwise, far more like my senior than any police officer.
“A-Unnie, th—”
I opened my mouth first, desperate to invent some excuse, desperate to dodge the consequences of a choice made without a second thought. The now-familiar voice answered at once.
“Painful one, or sexy one. Choose, Heeyeon.”
“….”
I simply let go of my mind and screamed. A fist struck my half-open mouth with a sharp thwack. Pain shot up from my teeth; my jaw snapped shut.
I thrashed, but the only parts of me that could move were my neck and my hands and ankles; it did no good. So I simply shouted.
“L-Let me go…! Let go…! Let me gooo…!”
I sucked in a breath, ready to beg again—then a broad flat board cracked across my cheek. My head snapped sideways hard enough that I managed to snatch back the consciousness I had been about to abandon.
With a mind cooled just a fraction, I thought, then opened my mouth.
“U-Unnie.”
“Yes.”
“The sexy… sexy… sexy one, p-please…”
She answered in a bright, delighted voice, “Yes! Okay!”
A drawer without wheels slid open with a soft, smooth sound.