Call Me Lady
I wanted to cry. I was the only one left in the room. My senior had vanished somewhere with the urine container, and even after quite some time had passed, she still hadn't returned.
I wanted to cry, but I was a man. Even if my body had been swapped, I was still a man — so unconsciously, I held the tears back.
My lower abdomen hurt, but I couldn't stroke it. Both arms could manage little more than bending and straightening a fraction of an inch.
"...Hnn."
A damp sigh slipped out. The thought that something terrible might have been done to me flickered through my mind — and the fact that I was still failing to properly grasp the situation only filled me with self-loathing.
...At least this wasn't a situation where my organs were being harvested. Was that something to be grateful for? It was less terrifying than waking up on an operating table, at least.
I lifted only my head and surveyed the room. A cheap bed like something out of a field hospital, a cheap mattress, soundproofing panels, a TV. A nightstand.
The person who had kidnapped me was Inha, my senior — the one who'd been closest to me at The Company. I didn't feel betrayal, or anything like that.
I'd never believed she'd looked after me for no reason. If anything, she suited the role of kidnapper better than the teammates who'd tormented me.
This place was probably that bitch's house — I figured a little cursing was fine; she was a kidnapper, after all. What did it look like beyond that door? Was this an apartment? A detached house? At least it wasn't a basement.
In the country next door, there'd been a case of someone kidnapping a person and confining them in their own room for years even while living with family — so there was no guarantee the same wouldn't happen to me. For all I knew, she might be eating dinner with her family right now.
Anyway, bound like this I couldn't do anything, so I had to somehow coax my senior. Only after somehow getting free of the restraints could I think about what came next — whether to report her, or fight and win.
I let the tension out of my body. My stomach hurt. South Korea was a CCTV superpower, and even if my relationships were loose, there were several people who knew me — so the thought that I'd be rescued before long let the tension drain away.
With the tension gone, the pain felt all the more vivid, but it was still far better than fretting over when I might die.
And then the doorknob turned, and my senior came in.
"Heeyeon. What are you doing?"
"Hhk— ah. I-I was just... lying here."
"I see. Hmm..."
She strode over and perched on the edge of the bed. The mattress made a soft pssh as air escaped from it.
"Does your stomach hurt?"
At some point the formal speech had vanished entirely from her mouth, but I had no intention of picking a fight over it. Better to just play along.
"Ah, n-no. I'm fine..."
"The only thing Heeyeon did wrong was not relaxing her thighs, and I gave her too harsh a punishment. Sorry."
"...Th-then, maybe, c-could you at least... undo just the restraints...?"
"..."
"M-my, uh, shoulders hurt..."
I mustered the courage to give my shoulders a little shake. Her gaze wavered for a moment, then she shook her head firmly — no.
"Ah, r-right..."
Well, I hadn't expected much. She'd hit me in the stomach and this crazy woman had calmed down a little — that alone was something, wasn't it? If she'd untied me after just a few hours, she wouldn't have kidnapped me in the first place.
"Yeah. Then I'll see you later tonight. Got it?"
She rose with a little bounce, brushed the back of her hand lightly against my cheek, and headed out of the room. There was no way to tell time in here, so I didn't even know what hour it was.
It might have been midday. It might have been the middle of the night. Whether she'd spiked my drink or I'd simply gotten thoroughly drunk, that day had definitely been a Friday — so she wouldn't be heading to The Company.
I clenched and unclenched my fists. The blanket pulled up to my neck was uncomfortable, so I wriggled a little to push it down.
About ten minutes after finding a decent position — ten minutes by feel — the hangover must have been catching up, because drowsiness began to creep in.
And so, snoring softly, I fell asleep rather easily for someone who'd been kidnapped.
In my dream, I rode the 5200 bus and arrived home safely.
Once home, I took off my black coat and hung it on the rack, then pressed the switch to light up the tiny space of maybe a hundred square feet. The boiler button next to it, too.
I washed up simply and wrapped my wet hair in a towel. Hair I'd cut two or three times after getting my second life, just barely long enough to call a bob — I trapped it in the towel, pulled a beer from the fridge shorter than I was, and cracked it open.
I put on a YouTuber's video — the kind you put on to kill time and then find yourself watching longer than expected because it's actually pretty good — and gulped down the beer with no snacks.
It was entertaining, but not enough to put a smile on my face.
Then I checked the time and it was past ten, and knowing that wrecking my sleep schedule just because it was the weekend would make weekdays twice as hard, I flopped onto the bed without even clearing away the beer can.
"Hah."
And then my eyes snapped open.
The light still on. The position I was lying in. The only things different from the dream were the soundproofing panels covering everything but the floor, and the cuffs on my wrists and ankles.
"..."
And one more thing — my senior, watching me from beside the bed with a look of fondness, as if observing a fish in a tank.
"You awake?"
"Ah, yes."
"Cute."
Even though our relationship had only just changed into this, she kept repeating "cute" like a verbal tic. How had she held it in at The Company?
My lower abdomen throbbed.
"Um, S-Senior. But... wh-where is this...?"
I asked the question just because it felt awkward being stared at — and only after asking did I realize it was the kind of question a kidnapping victim ought to ask, which left me flustered.
"Yeah, this is my house. Ah, no. Our house."
She grinned as she answered, correcting herself while pointing a finger at me and then herself.
"Ah..."
"By the way, how long are you going to keep calling me Senior?"
"Huh? Ah, uh..."
"Shall we decide on a title?!"
The mattress shrieked once as she bounced into a new position, looking down at me.
"Master is too cliché, right? Hmm? Ah, and I need to get Heeyeon up too — a new bed's coming next Monday, so don't worry! You know those hospital beds? The ones that go click-click-click and let you sit up. Do your shoulders still hurt? Just hang in there a little longer. Sorry?"
She rattled all of this off in a rush, bouncing her feet excitedly.
...Master was a bit much.
"J-just Senior is—"
"Lady! How about Lady? Hmm? Nice. Kind of aristocratic. What do you think, Heeyeon?"
"..."
And this woman didn't seem to particularly care about my opinion. So I mulled it over this way and that, searching for whatever would sit least awkwardly in my mouth, then nodded.
"A-alright..."
"Aha, great. If you get the title wrong, it's punishment time? Be careful, okay?"
I nodded. She was speaking as if casually letting slip some secret, but given my situation, the nature of the punishment was obvious. For all I knew, the nightstand by my head had a dildo or vibrator sitting there fully charged and ready.
Watching me nod, she said good, and stroked my stomach — along with a question about whether my belly was okay.
I was a sad human being who couldn't even see my own stomach past my chest — or rather, setting that aside, it was covered by the blanket so I wouldn't know — but the pain had lessened a bit, so I said I was fine.
"Hmm... That's a relief. Yeah."
She lifted the blanket slightly to look at my stomach, made a thoughtful sound, and covered me again.
"Ah, by the way. Aren't you hungry?"
I wasn't hungry yet. Time-wise, it wasn't time to be hungry, was it? I'd eaten chicken yesterday and hadn't thrown up or anything.
I nodded, and her head tilted to the side.
"Oing, really? Weird."
"I-I just... don't eat that much originally..."
"Yeah? But you still eat at least one meal a day, right?"
She asked with a puzzled look.
"Th-that's true, but..."
"Hmm, I see. Still, you've got to eat something! Even without a hangover, the drugs must be hard on you."
"..."
"Actually, I already prepared something."
Hehe — she laughed.
The hand that had been touching my stomach slipped back under and fretted around near my belly, then climbed up to my chest. Then she suddenly lifted her hand to fuss with my cheek, and finally stroked my hair before standing up, telling me to wait, and leaving the room.
Only then did I let out another long sigh. I wondered how I was supposed to eat lying down like this, but I repeated a self-consolation in my head — that my relatively obedient attitude might at least earn me a meal.
I also wondered if I was taking this too calmly. Even if I'd gotten a second life, my previous one hadn't exactly been spectacular. Being able to keep my head clear and stay calm despite this being my first kidnapping — was it because I trusted this country's police force?
Of course, the breadth of my human relationships was ordinary, but their depth was infinitely shallow, so I was a bit worried... but still, I lived on monthly rent, so it shouldn't matter, right? By that measure, I should be rescued in at least two weeks. The landlord wasn't the type to tolerate late rent.
I'd never resented that monthly rent so much — and now the fact that it might actually help left me with a strange feeling.
Anyway, so the deadline was two weeks — no, factoring in the time it would take to find me, maybe a bit longer. Maybe three weeks.
It was a long time, and also a short time. I'd taken a hit to the stomach, but the treatment wasn't that severe, so it was a stretch I could endure.
So I had to steel my will. Three weeks. Just hold out for three weeks. Maybe I could even squeeze hundreds of thousands — millions — out of her in mental damages. The Company would be free of me thanks to the kidnapping, so if things went well they might even reinstate me. If I just held out three weeks, my life might actually get a tiny bit better.
While I was steeling myself like that — creak — the door opened, and at the sight of my senior barely managing to close it while carrying a tray, my face instantly went blank.
Had I been smiling?
"Upsy."
She set the tray on the nightstand and lifted the lid — and inside was an eel rice bowl... sitting there. Didn't that seem a bit mismatched? I'd been thinking of something like bread.
Still, well — the thought that the food was coming out decent, that this might even be better than the military in some ways, helped me keep my composure. What kind of place had the military even been?
"Hmm, it's my first time making this... but when I tasted it, it was good, you know?"
"Um, S-Senior, do I, uh, eat lying down?"
No matter how I thought about it, eating in this position seemed hard. The train of thought led me to hope she might undo the restraints, so I asked — and she stopped moving, put the lid back on the tray, and turned to look at me.
"..."
"Uh, ah, n-never mind. Haha... I-I can eat lying down...!"
"Senior?"
...
Ah.
She stood still, glaring at me as if performing anger — but the corners of her mouth kept climbing higher.
At the sight of her glaring at me while clearly holding back a laugh, my body shrank in on itself without meaning to.
The cuffs hadn't gone anywhere — so that sound I'd already grown familiar with. Clank.