The Ninth Day
There are things you come to know whether you want to or not, once you have shared a body with someone. From the shape of his most private places to the look on his face in the act, his habits, even a temperament that ran from mischievous all the way to cruel—Major Louis Kane was nothing like the man the world believed him to be.
She could brace herself and drill the lie into her own head, that this sort of thing meant nothing. The moment his body crushed hers without mercy, it all fell apart. Once he dug down to the deepest part of her and stripped her bare, Jiyeon had no choice but to kneel before that ruinous pleasure.
Whatever his intentions, she hated him. She hated that obsessive way he had of driving her into a corner with nowhere left to hide. And after he had spun her senseless in his hands, a thick wash of futility and self-loathing always came flooding in.
He ignored every plea to tell her how Ella was, or even just to let her know where her sister was being kept. Yet he was generous enough to inform her exactly how many days she had been confined, what the date was, what day of the week. As of today, it had been a full thirty-five.
Roughly twenty-one days had passed since she first lay with Major Louis. Time had moved far too fast. Unlike that first week, he no longer came to the cell every day as the days wore on—whether from the press of his duties or because his interest was cooling. Even so, he never let three pass. Two or three visits a week, without fail, to slake his appetite. A remarkably diligent sex life.
There was no chance the rumor had failed to spread through the unit. Even without this, every last move Major Louis made was a hot topic in the 5th Battalion. Which route he had taken to which mess hall, whom he had eaten with, which uniform and which shirt—useless scraps of information traveled among the soldiers, the women especially, as if they were classified intelligence.
The thought that she would now appear, without fail, in every one of those rumors made her head throb. She had spied with her life on the line, and yet here she was, sick with shame over a single rumor. It was absurd. Human feeling was a treacherous thing.
The major himself seemed not to care what the rumors said, or how the battalion saw him. Like a madman, he was fixated only on how many times he could make Jiyeon Yu come, clinging to her body with a stubborn, single-minded hunger.
Once, hoping exhaustion might dull the pleasure, she had driven herself to collapse with exercise before he arrived. She met him without even the strength left to lift a needle, and it backfired. The pleasure came all the same, and the fatigue came doubled.
Even so, Jiyeon never skipped a day of brutal training. The desire he had planted in her body was a nuisance, and a monster. It dragged stray thoughts out of her and scattered her mind until she could no longer plan for what came next.
She could not go on like this, killing time in Major Louis's bed. As he had said once before, it was dangerous to wait blindly—to play his doll until the rebel base fell and Louis Kane was promoted to lieutenant colonel, until his interest finally wore thin. But no matter how she turned it over, no plan flashed into being.
The best she had managed was this: catch Major Louis off guard while they were together, overpower him and bind him, torture Ella's location out of him, then break out of this cell and rescue her. In truth it was the only method she had, and its chances were close to zero.
And so, while she lived day after day in a tangle of futility, worry, anxiety, and pleasure, twenty-one days slipped past.
"Permission to enter."
A tense voice, and then a familiar-faced servicewoman came in and set a tray on the table. The thin corn porridge that had been her staple gave way to proper meals the day after Louis muttered it.
"You've gotten too thin."
Jiyeon thought of it sourly. He couldn't have his favorite doll wither past the point of his taste, so he had graciously bestowed his mercy.
The woman's hands were practiced as she gathered the laundry. Yesterday and today there had been no need to change the sheets and blanket, because Louis had not come to the cell. Only a few changes of clothes lay abandoned on the floor, shed after a day of sweating through her training.
Ever since the servicewoman had once asked whether Jiyeon meant to change the sheets herself, she had taken to speaking to her now and then. Having finished taking the measure of the situation, she seemed a little less on edge. This time their positions were reversed. Jiyeon kept her mouth shut and gave no answer. Major Louis had already supplied everything she needed to know, and anything beyond that, this woman could not tell her.
He had been right. And to some degree, she was grateful to Louis—a contradictory gratitude. The rebel operation might well have failed because of this man, and yet she was thanking him.
Even so, the reason Jiyeon had not yet made a move was a belief she could not explain: that he really was keeping Ella safe. A mad pervert, a hypocrite, a man whose insides she could not read—and she was putting faith in his word. When she picked through her own heart piece by piece, it was nothing short of absurd.
"Is there anything else you need?"
The servicewoman asked it carefully. Admiration and curiosity lived in her eyes alongside fear and tension. Jiyeon did not answer. If she had felt even a scrap of gratitude that the woman did not hate her—despite the sordid way she was carrying on with Louis, idol of the 5th Battalion—she might have answered kindly. She had no intention of feeling that way, not even if she were born again.
The servicewoman went out, and Jiyeon counted in her head. It was six o'clock. Louis had not visited in two days, so today or tomorrow, he would come to the cell. And he would shake her reality apart with a pleasure she could not withstand. Jiyeon closed her eyes and tried to steady herself.
Time passed quickly. No matter how long she waited, Louis did not come. Privately, she was relieved. Today must not have been a visiting day.
The next morning, the moment she opened her eyes, she sorted her thoughts. Today, Louis would come without fail. She resolved to press him harder for Ella's whereabouts.
When she was spent and slack with feeling, the major would kiss her body and stroke her as if she were a lover. Sometimes that Louis was almost funny. Sometimes he was strange. Catching him in that unguarded instant and appealing to whatever he felt might not be a bad approach.
All that careful planning came to nothing. The servicewoman brought her meal at one and took the laundry, then came again at six, and still Louis did not come. Jiyeon lay awake nearly the whole night, eyes open.
The day after that, she seriously considered whether he had finally lost interest in her body. Twenty-three days was certainly a long time. Then what became of her and Ella? Their lives were collateral in his hands. The only ending left for a prisoner who had outlived her use was death.
Now that she knew Ella was in Louis's hands, Jiyeon could not die quietly. If he meant to kill her, she was more than willing to throw everything she had into fighting back. All that day, she thought about how to stay alive.
On the fifth day he had not come to see her, she hardened her body. She had no idea what might happen, or when.
On the sixth, she skipped her meals. Poison in the food would be simple, and clean.
On the seventh, she searched every corner of the room for anything that might serve as a weapon. She knotted unused clothes into a long cord and hid it beside the bed, and began grinding a toothbrush to a point.
On the eighth, three days without food had left her weak, but her mind was sharper than it had ever been. The servicewoman who brought the meals asked, puzzled, why she wasn't eating. For the first time, Jiyeon answered her: her stomach was bothering her.
On the ninth day, Louis came.