Afterstory (2)

For the two days that followed, I had neither the means nor the reason to go anywhere, so I stayed shut in Hwayeon's room on the twentieth floor.

With Franc there beside me, boredom was never really a danger. Even so, it felt wrong to do nothing but play, so I spent the time practicing the trick of forcing TP into the Extrema Ratio EX Yeongeun had given me and turning the dagger into a beam blade.

Strange stuff. Stroke TP into an inanimate object the way you'd pet it, and the thing goes rigid as stone. Shove the whole charge in at once, and it flares into something like a lightsaber. Was that what happened when the durability was high enough to take it?

Watching the dagger burn a brilliant blue, I found myself thinking of Choi Soohan.

Killing two birds, and giving myself something to do, I pestered Director Lee Hyeryeong until she handed over a broad slab of timber about twenty-eight inches long—an aberrant byproduct, she called it. She was plainly curious why I wanted a log. I was not about to tell her. Nope.

The piece came from a swamp trent, or so she said, and it was honestly hard and tough enough that I doubted an ordinary blow would so much as crack it. Satisfying.

"Six million won for a chunk of wood this size. Aberrant byproducts are ridiculously expensive."

"I asked why, and she said swamp trent grain is so fine that the rich treat it as the highest grade of luxury timber. Once, a single Mid-High Grade swamp trent that happened to grow in the shape of a Gothic chair showed up at a woodcraft auction. It went for seventy million dollars."

"Seventy-nine billion won?!"

Franc nearly jumped out of her skin. I'd been just as stunned. I'd heard there were people in the world with more money than they could rot through, but to actually buy a thing like that at that price... Word was it had been some royal from the Arab world. Oil money, I figured. Of course.

The world being what it was now, most countries ran their main power supply on energy plates made from Phase Stones. The efficiency left the old thermal, wind, hydro, and nuclear plants in the dust. That didn't mean oil had vanished. It still fed a great deal of synthetic chemistry, and it still fueled large ships and aircraft. An energy plate was absurdly efficient in a car or anything smaller. Scale it past a truck, though, and the returns got worse and worse. And Phase Power had plenty of uses besides being a fuel source, anyway.

In any case, I worked the log with a method for hardening wood that I'd stumbled onto early in my second run. I focused the Mana Sieve into my hands and, for a good while, stroked Phase Power into the timber a little at a time. Sure enough, it turned absurdly hard. Rigid. I tested it by bringing a blow down at the level of D-Class physical enhancement. It didn't so much as flinch.

Good. Excellent.

The downside was that any further working of it now looked hopeless—until I remembered the Extrema Ratio EX. I breathed TP into the dagger and cut the log, and the blade sheared through clean and easy. Lucky. It would come out a little crude, but it was for Choi Soohan. Rough would do.

"What are you making?"

Franc, delighted to see me crafting for the first time in a while, sat down in front of me and studied the timber as its shape slowly emerged. Her face said she had no idea what it was becoming.

"A torture implement. For Choi Soohan."

"......I beg your pardon?"

Hitting her with a fist or kicking her was too barbaric, wasn't it? Violence itself was how Soohan's masochism took its pleasure, so she wouldn't have minded. I minded. That was the problem. So what I'd landed on was one of the old tools once used to punish criminals.

In short.

"A caning rod."

There was an SM game called spanking, and within it a variant where you paddled someone's backside with something like a rubber slapper. But she was a D-Class physical enhancement user. What was a toy rubber stick going to do to that ass—tickle it? I'd turned the problem over and over until the caning rod came to me.

Rods came in more than one kind, and I'd worried over which to make. Before any of that, though, I needed wood tough enough to survive my strength and punch through Choi Soohan's reinforcement. Anything made from ordinary timber would snap like a dry reed. What I settled on was a gon-club form: a rod with a reasonably broad, flat face.

I flashed a grin at Franc, who was staring at me in a daze, and whisked the dagger through the air, refining the shape. It came out a little shorter than I'd expected, but not enough to matter. What I ended up with was something like an oar, about two feet long. Grip the handle and swing, and the sound it made—a deep, vicious whoom—was honestly frightening.

Hearing it, Franc went a shade pale.

"If someone were struck with that... wouldn't they die?"

"In the Joseon era they called a caning janghyeong, the rod punishment. An ordinary person often died by the thirtieth stroke. But Choi Soohan's a physical enhancement user, and unless I'm badly wrong she has skin reinforcement too. She isn't going to get hurt over something like this."

And if she did, there was Healing Touch.

I worked the surface down until it was smooth enough to be serviceable. The remaining knobs and rough patches, if anything, looked like a design meant to multiply the pain.

And then Franc's eyes, fixed on the rod, began to take on a peculiar heat.

......No. Surely not.

"Mm. I... I don't think it's wise for the first stroke to fall on Choi Soohan."

She finished the thought with a face that was visibly churning.

"Please test it on me first!"

"What?"

Franc had been wearing an ordinary V-neck and a skirt that fell to her knees. She simply dropped the skirt and her panties and pushed that pale backside toward me.

White, plump, and soft, with the cleft between—and something cruel rose in my chest...!

No. Absolutely not.

The sadistic impulse surged so fast that I clenched my teeth and brought the corner of the rod down on my own head.

There was a sharp crack, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Franc—who had been standing there bare-bottomed, face alight with anticipation—startled hard and caught my hand.

"What are you doing?! Ah—you're bleeding!!"

"I-I'm fine. I was only driving out the evil spirit in my heart."

Not a lust-demon. An evil spirit. An evil spirit!

I erased the cut on my forehead with Healing Touch, and Franc fetched a tissue and wiped away the blood that had run down.

I warned her while she knelt there, bottoms still off, looking up at me with worry all over her face.

"I'm telling you in advance: this is going to hurt like hell. You've said yourself that ever since you got a body back, you've started to feel pain, a little at a time. Take this, and it will hurt. A lot."

When I went too deep during sex, even Franc would complain of a faint pain. It followed that a caning rod would register. Obviously.

"Mm, it's all right! I... I have a masochistic streak too!"

I didn't think that was true. But if she was the one asking, what was I supposed to do? I took her—already flushed and eager again—over to the sofa, bent her upper body over the back of it, and set her with that backside pushed well out.

"L-like this?"

Between the long platinum hair spilling from her waist, a moon-pale bottom came into view, and in the cleft of her slightly parted legs the pink folds showed a seam in the bright sunlight.

I swallowed and said it.

"Th-then... here I go?"

"Yes. Please—give it to me!"

It felt like walking, step by step, into a river I wouldn't be coming back from. Ah, screw it.

I was in Mana Mode at all times, so I held the force to the absolute minimum. From about twenty inches out, with only a whisper of strength, I tapped the flat of the rod against Franc's backside. Truly, barely a tap.

Thwack!

"Hhk—"

"F-Franc?!"

The crisp impact rang out. Franc's backside jolted and rippled; her waist bowed like a drawn bow; those large breasts swayed and shook; and from her small mouth leaked a shallow, strangled, breathless cry. Then her legs gave, and she collapsed in a heap.

I rushed to her where she lay with her head against the sofa, her upper body trembling in fine shivers, and looked at her backside. One stroke. A single stroke, and that pale skin had flushed up like a peach.

I threw Healing Touch on it at once and gathered her into my arms. She shivered so pitifully I thought I might cry.

"I told you it would hurt! Are you all right?!"

"Ah, nnh... the shock that started in my backside... it feels like it struck my womb and climbed all the way to my head..."

Her pupils were shaking hard. The impact had been no joke. I laid Healing Touch on her two or three more times before she finally came back to herself.

And then Franc shot upright, presented that snow-white backside to me again, and cried out.

"Hnn. Come on—one more time!"

"What? No! You took one stroke at the weakest force I could manage and you were shaking like a leaf!"

"I'm all right! A moment ago I hadn't braced myself! This time I'll be fine!"

She kept urging me, and that plump backside—already returned to flawless white skin—held a pull I could not endure.

I lost to the demon in my heart. I meant to hit even more softly than before. Honestly, softer wasn't possible. So I hit her.

Thwack—!

"Kyah—!"

The instant it landed, Franc clamped her thighs, curled her toes hard, and trembled, spilling several short breaths before she put strength back into her legs and lifted her hips.

She couldn't possibly want—

"O-one more!"

The backside, flushed a fresh crimson, was slightly swollen where the rod had struck. If she took another without Healing, it was going to hurt worse. Franc didn't care. Flushed, scattering a dangerous light from her eyes, she looked back at me and hurried me on.

"Quickly!"

Ah... fine. I don't know anymore.

Thwack!!

"Hyaaahn...!"

I left the rod pressed to her for a moment after the blow. Franc stretched both legs out straight, thighs quivering. That snow-white backside shivered and jiggled with the tremor, and the line of her back, just visible above the V-neck, writhed. Eyes squeezed shut, she caught her lower lip lightly between her teeth and breathed in short gasps, and something I couldn't name—an eroticism—lived in the furrow of her brows.

As the trembling began to fade I slowly put strength into the rod and peeled it away. It came off her flesh with a long, sticky sound.

And between the rod and the cleft of her sex, a single glistening thread stretched.

......

Franc hung over the back of the sofa, dragging in hard breaths, and from the valley of her backside honey began to bead and run, drop by drop, down through the pretty thatch of hair.

She'd climaxed from the rod...? Dangerous. It felt like I'd laid a hand on a door that should never be opened.

I didn't think I ought to give her any more. I kept ignoring her, even as she begged—incandescent with lust—for another stroke, and she sulked herself into a perfect pout.

It really was dangerous.

If I got used to this, I had a feeling the aftermath would be more than I could handle. I didn't want my foot in that territory. So when Franc, dressed in the latest fashion of wearing nothing below the waist, curled into my arms and cooed and fawned and pleaded for just one more—just one—I refused to indulge her any further.

I'd wondered whether Yeongeun might like it. That was going to need serious thought.

I barely managed to soothe Franc, whose strange switch had been thrown by that meat-tenderizing club. Then she insisted, with formidable force, that the first piece was for the wives alone. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had no choice. I made another rod.

This time I shaped it first, roughly cleared only the bits that stuck out—splinters, knots—and then injected TP. It was finished in under thirty minutes. The first one was going to need time and a proper finishing.

I brought a large ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cloth, wrapped the rod up tight to hide it, and went down to Choi Soohan's room on the sixteenth floor.

The sixteenth, where her room was, had been built out as officetels for support-team leaders and members who might need to eat and sleep at the company. Soohan had been assigned the largest of them and was staying on site. It wasn't some bare closet of seventy square feet with a single bed in it. It was a fully equipped studio of about four hundred square feet. Living there shouldn't have been uncomfortable. And even if it was, once she understood the situation she was in, she wouldn't be in a position to say so.

I swept the whole floor with Spatial Perception. Aside from Choi Soohan, there wasn't a soul. If embarrassing sounds leaked out of her room, no one would be inconvenienced.

Soohan was sitting blankly in her room, watching television.

Or rather—her eyes were on the television. Her head was off somewhere obscene. What on earth was she imagining, to be worked up enough that her panties were soaked through?

Oh. A hand was sliding down into her pants.

The door wasn't even locked. I threw it open and walked in, and Choi Soohan startled upright.

"Ah, M... Master."

The moment she saw me, heat poured off her eyes and she started wetting those petals even more. She'd gone into heat harder just from seeing me. Franc, who had followed me in, watched this and let an expression of pure disbelief cross her face.

"You know why I came, don't you?"

"I... I don't really know..."

In a tight T-shirt and black shorts, Choi Soohan fidgeted and watched my face for a cue.

"If you don't know, you get hit."

"......!"

She lit up at the words you get hit. Let's see how far that expression would hold. And the bed, as it happened, was the perfect height for a flogging.

I unwound the cloth from the rod, and Soohan's eyes went glazed with rapture. Looking at her, I had to wonder whether I was doing the right thing.

The more I cultivated her masochism, the more that look of someone who had given up on life faded, which was why I kept up this punishment dressed as SM. It still felt like a mistake. And I'd already come too far to quit. Stop halfway, vaguely, and Choi Soohan would go looking for pleasure on her own and ruin herself. The odds of that were high.

I took the rod in hand, rolled my sleeves, and pointed at the bed.

"Face down."

I'd said it coldly, and still she brightened. Before I could stop her she kicked the shorts away and lay face down on the bed in nothing but her panties, hips lifted just a little. The ideal posture for taking a rod.

Unbelievable. Dropping her panties without a blush in front of a man who wasn't hers... No. I was her master. Not an outside man.

Anyway, the muscle that had once been downright grotesque was gone. Between thighs gone soft and full, one patch of the white panties hiding her folds was conspicuously wet. I shook my head slightly and gave the rod a last check. Nothing that would drive a splinter into skin. The knots had been properly ground down. And I'd fed it plenty of TP, so it was immensely tough.

I let out a breath through my nose and, without warning, brought the rod down on that slightly angular backside.

WHACK!!

"Nngh—?!"

The instant the rod met Choi Soohan's backside, a horrific sound went up, like flesh being crushed. Not a cute little smack. This was a blow meant to split skin and wound a body.

I realized the sound I'd made on Franc's backside had been pure affection by comparison. Franc herself went a little pale at the savage impact.

Soohan's eyes flew so wide the corners looked ready to tear. Both hands seized the mattress, and the mattress caught in her grip ripped with a thick tearing sound. ......And why, exactly, was she squirting?!

The wet patch on her panties spread and spread. The backside bared around them flushed scarlet and looked well on its way to bruising, and yet Choi Soohan cranked her head around toward me with a face red to the ears and an expression of someone who had completely checked out.

"What are you looking at? Head forward."

I growled it, and she snapped her face front and bit down on the pillow. Seeing that, I brought the rod down hard again. A dull thud of wood burying itself in flesh, a muffled groan torn out of her, and both legs convulsing.

"Do you know what you did wrong?"

"I don't..."

"Say you don't know, and the punishment ends here. I'll give up on you as a woman named Choi Soohan. Think carefully, then answer."

"......!"

She'd been about to say she didn't know without a moment's hesitation, so I cut her off. Face crimson, sweating, she darted her eyes around and seemed to think hard—and still wore the look of someone who genuinely had no idea what she'd done wrong.

Of course she didn't. I was picking a fight over nothing. If she did nothing but chase pain and pleasure without a thought, every last brain cell would die and she'd turn into an idiot. I wanted her to turn her head over, at least a little. That was the point.

"I-I'm sorry... I really don't kno—!"

CRACK!

"Hnnngh..."

I brought the rod down on the last syllable and beat that backside, and she let out a wretched cry and started convulsing head to toe. The impact and the scream were different from the ones before. Was that why?

She spilled a moan like wind had gotten into her lungs, sweat running off her whole body, shaking hard enough that my heart started to pound. For a second I wondered if something had gone wrong.

I'd heard that in the old days people sometimes died in the middle of a rod punishment. Fear hit me all at once, and I looked inside Choi Soohan with Spatial Perception—and the first things I saw were vaginal walls thrashing wildly, and the particular muscle spasms of a climax.

Damn it. The idiot was me, for worrying.

I rested the rod on my shoulder and spoke to her.

"I hate passive people. Why can't you find your own work, instead of trailing after me like a lost dog?"

I poked the tip of the rod into the backside, which had begun to swell an angry red. Every poke made her flinch. The wet mark on her panties spread wider still.

"During the inspection team, everyone else was working. You alone trailed after me and stood in a corner just watching. You're with Time River now. Aren't you?"

Smack. Smack.

I tapped her thighs lightly with the rod, and crisp sounds rang out one after another.

"You see people working, and it doesn't occur to you that you ought to help?"

"S-sorry..."

"If you know you're sorry, then from now on you'll fix that passive streak. Won't you?"

"Y-yes...!"

Choi Soohan, who could barely breathe, clung to her reason by a thread and answered as if she were screaming. And yet the face, smiling loosely as if a screw had come undone, was somehow frightening.

"Clench your teeth."

Thud!

"Hyah—!"

Thwack!

"Ah—ah. Ah. Aah."

CRACK!!

"~~! ......!!"

Two strokes and done would have been too little, so I said nothing and simply beat Choi Soohan's backside with the rod. Now, every time it landed, she spurted slick in little bursts and let out not a scream but a moan of pleasure.

The panties were already soaked as if they'd been dipped in water, dripping onto the bedsheet. Her whole body had flushed pink. Sweat plastered the T-shirt to her, laying bare the writhing line of her spine.

......Maybe this was far enough. It was a little frightening, too.

"Do well. I'll be watching from here on. Understand?"

"Yes... nnh. Haaah..."

I heard the answer and gave her backside one weak smack. This time she gushed as if she'd wet herself, rolled her eyes back, and fainted on the spot.

"Sh-she isn't dead, is she?"

Franc went to Choi Soohan, set fingers to her neck, held a hand under her nose, and checked the pulse at her wrist before saying she was fine.

"You know how to read a pulse?"

"Yes. I learned it as part of first aid, during my training as an ordinary knight."

She looked down at Choi Soohan with an expression that was just a little envious. Franc had no physical enhancement of her own. I would have preferred she not take an interest.

I stood the roughly made rod beside Choi Soohan's bed and turned to leave her room—then, just in case, laid Healing Touch on her once. I left the bruising on her backside as it was.

Healing Touch was close-range recovery, but unlike Healing Wave it didn't erase every wound on the body at once. That black-and-blue backside ought to keep for a while. I'd beaten it into her; from here on, I figured, she would start acting on her own initiative.

I'd given the thing the shape of a caning rod and handed her a reward rather than a mere punishment. She might throw herself into her work for the sake of earning another flogging. Or she might, in order to satisfy her own desire and pleasure, go looking for people like herself and widen her relationships. If it came to that, I could work her at a reasonable pace, fold her in as a formal member of Time River, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠put her on a salary. The original goal had been to draw the rotten look out of her eyes. Get that far, and it was a success.

Back on the twentieth floor, I took up the rod I'd made first and went at the sharp, jutting spots, smoothing them down so the thing wouldn't cut my lovers' backsides. Franc's face began, little by little, to redden.

"......Franc? Your face is red. Are you all right?"

"Yes? A-ah, I'm fine. I just got a little embarrassed..."

Ah. The switch had flipped back off. Relieved, inwardly, I opened my mouth.

"Your body isn't as tough as Hwayeon's or Yeongeun's, so I'll make a smaller one just for you. This is too big. It's dangerous."

"N-no! I like this one!"

And she hugged the rod in my hand.

"Huh?"

"I-I've already adapted to the big one! A small one won't satisfy me...!"

A size queen, of all things. If she said bigger was better, I had nothing to say.

I rounded every edge, all the way out to the tip, and what I had was a smooth caning rod, dark brown, with a quiet luster running through it. Maybe because I'd hardened it by injecting TP, I hadn't finished it or lacquered it, and still the wood's own grain shone like a luxury piece.

At this level, wouldn't SM players hunt for it with fire in their eyes?

I looked it over for anything still lacking, nodded at the perfection of it, and set it on the floor. Franc darted in at once, lay face down, wagged her backside, and began to write something.

Curious, I peeked. She was concentrating electricity at a fingertip and carving letters.

......A wives-only love cane?

Having cut the five words in, Franc took the handle in both hands, strained and grunted, and heaved the rod up. Then she looked at it and smiled, rapt.

"Yeongeun and Hwayeon are both going to love this love cane. Very much."

Watching her murmur it, I swallowed, tight with nerves.

That night, when Hwayeon finished her work and came up to the twentieth floor, Franc took her by the hand and stood her in front of the rod.

"......What is this."

"A love cane, to satisfy your masochism and ours!"

Struck dumb, Hwayeon looked down at the two-foot rod laid on the table and reached to take it in hand. Franc slapped the hand away.

"Only Seoha is allowed to touch this! The only part of our bodies permitted to meet the love cane is the backside!"

I was sitting with my back to the place where Hwayeon trained in the Shihwa Yuseon, and I could feel the dumbfounded weight of her stare.

Franc looked at her, grinned once, and began to whisper in her ear.

"When the love cane cracks across your bottom, it feels like a thrill equal to Seoha thrusting into you a dozen times, running up from your backside and stabbing into your womb. A different kind of pleasure runs along your spine and stimulates you all the way into your head... Imagine it, Hwayeon. An impact full of affection, piercing the precious womb that receives Seoha's seed, climbing from there to stir your breasts, and then raking your mind into a complete ruin of pleasure!"

As she spoke, Franc reached out, traced Hwayeon's lower belly, and slid upward along her stomach to fondle those large, full breasts with open lewdness.

Franc's heat-switch clicked up. And right along with it, so did Hwayeon's.

The two women swallowed, audibly, and came toward me slowly. Their eyes were hot. Franc's valley and Hwayeon's both were dampening, and I understood that there was no stopping this now.

"Y-you're here?"

The moment I saw their faces—Franc and Hwayeon both, sitting at my side and wrapping my arms—I went tense. I had never seen faces so soaked in lust.

"I saw it. The love cane you made. That..."

She was so ashamed she couldn't get the rest out, and from behind her Franc cheered her on. Hwayeon squeezed both eyes shut and opened her mouth in a trembling voice.

"H-hit me... too."

"......All right."

Doing it because Franc asked had been a mistake.

In the end Hwayeon stripped off her pants and panties, bared nothing but that lush backside, and in the spanking that followed sprayed like a levee with the dam burst—and fainted.

I'd thought yesterday's work with my hands had taken the edge off her lust. It hadn't. If anything, it had piled higher.

She had made a soaking lake between her legs and then simply sat down in it and passed out. I gathered her up to carry her to the bathroom, and Franc, smiling brightly, told me to enjoy myself, dragged the cleaning things over, and set about mopping up the lake Hwayeon had left.

In the bathroom I left the red-ripe backside and the mound as they were, and only stroked her head with Healing Touch. Hwayeon came around almost at once.

Then, lust blown wide open, she climbed on top of me and took me into petals cooked red. I am not joking: her sheath was hot enough that I could feel the heat off my own shaft, and slick besides.

I spanked Hwayeon's red-ripe backside with my palm, smack after smack, and every time I hit her the walls clenched and writhed something fierce. Stack that sensation on the thrusting, and a massive pleasure came down on me.

What happened after that, I don't really remember. Only that two beasts had been in that room.

All that was left now was Yeongeun, wasn't it?