Weakness (1)
I walked endlessly on the treadmill. The people who had recognized me had long since finished their workouts and left. Newcomers only saw the back of my baggy outfit and didn’t seem to realize who I was. A few trainers drifted over, but the moment I mentioned I’d already spoken with the owner, they backed off right away. Whether it was luck or not, a woman in tight leggings walked in and stole every eye in the place, giving me the perfect cover. Tucked away in a corner with a view of the windows, I kept walking without interruption, steadily deleting the stream of obscene photos that kept flooding my phone.
Just in case, I left them in the recently deleted folder.
“....”
I seriously wanted to sue. Borrowing someone else’s phone to send shit like this wasn’t normal. But the real problem was that it wouldn’t matter even if I did. The phone belonged to Hinami. For whatever reason, she was already completely obsessed with that man. Some of the photos mixed in shots of my sister, but she was dating him too. Even if I reported it, the second those two claimed they had sent the pictures themselves, the whole thing would lose all meaning.
What the hell did she see in a guy like that? Why play along with such a twisted kink?
“...Excuse me.”
While I was busy wiping every last photo, I sensed someone behind me. Thinking it was another pest, I whipped my head around, ponytail swinging, only to find that good-looking part-timer standing there awkwardly.
“...What?”
“The boss is here...”
Her face was strangely flushed as she pointed toward the entrance. Given how unnatural she had sounded on the phone earlier, she must have caught some hint of what that man had been doing with my sister. Thinking she was another victim like me stirred up an unwanted sense of kinship.
It had to be incredibly uncomfortable working under a boss like him.
“Um... didn’t you have some kind of appointment?”
“...Ah. Yes. I just need to talk with my sister for a moment.”
“Ah... okay.”
I answered the part-timer as kindly as I could, switched the phone from the photo gallery to the voice recorder, pulled my mask back up over my face, and headed for the entrance.
It annoyed me that I was sweaty, but I couldn’t shower here. Too many eyes. Who knew if that man had secretly installed CCTV? He never cared about breaking the law anyway.
“...Hello.”
I trudged over with my face hidden, frowning as I greeted the man standing there blankly. He looked a little tired. With weary eyes, he glanced down the hallway and moved us to a more private spot.
I had worried he might bring my sister or Hinami, but for now it was just him.
“If you took my number, you could have called.”
“You seemed busy.”
“Ah, well. I was busy. But even if I’m busy, I can still answer the phone.”
I knew exactly what he had been doing in someone else’s house. The way he shamelessly asked why I hadn’t contacted him made my stomach turn. Then who the hell sent those photos? Was he going to claim Hinami sent them herself as some kind of joke?
“Anyway. You asked our part-timer for my number and even waited here. What exactly do you want?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
“I said everything I wanted to say earlier.”
“...Does someone who’s said everything they wanted to say pull something like this?”
When he pressed his lips together instead of answering, I wanted to shove the evidence in his face. Unfortunately my phone was recording. While I wondered what I would do if he denied everything to the end—
“...With just that?”
“...Just that?”
“Yeah, just that. I didn’t even send anything that would actually ruin your friend’s life.”
That man. With a truly ridiculous, indifferent expression, he brought up my friend’s life and threatened me.
“Excuse me?”
“You saw it yourself, didn’t you? The video I sent doesn’t show Hinami’s face. Only her body. Haeun’s the only one whose face appears.”
In an instant, he dropped the polite act and tossed it in the trash. Since I had deleted everything after only glancing at the thumbnails, I couldn’t verify the truth. For a second, I wavered.
I had definitely seen the photo of Hinami in a maid outfit. Among the deleted files there were images of a woman’s most private parts mixed with a man’s fluids, but I hadn’t clearly seen Hinami’s face. The video thumbnail had only shown up to her neck.
“...What do you want from me?”
“Want? I don’t want anything more. I didn’t send them in the first place. Your friend did.”
“You expect me to believe that...”
“Yeah. It’s not like I’m telling you to believe it. Even if she didn’t send them, I would have. Whether you believe me or not doesn’t matter.”
Lying through his teeth until the very end. In the nearly empty hallway, the man looking down at me continued.
“Your friend, your sister, and me. Everything between us is consensual. You can see that just by looking, can’t you? Do they look like they hate it? What does it matter if you know? Think it’ll cause some huge problem?”
“....”
“If you just keep your mouth shut, nothing will happen. If you don’t try to interfere, everything stays fine. Got it?”
He shoved his phone toward me. The screen showed Hinami smiling brightly and making a peace sign. Below that, clearly captured, were her exposed private parts, the nurse uniform she had worn during the shoot, her body covered in obscene scribbles and fluids, and even her ID card. He showed me the horrific photo containing every bit of it, his expression far from amused, and gripped my shoulder.
“I don’t want to fight with you either. I’m a fan of hers too. If this gets out, I’m screwed. You think I want to watch Hinami get destroyed?”
He wasn’t threatening me so much as persuading me.
“You just don’t know. Your friend is a bigger pervert than you can imagine. You really think I ordered her to take these and she just said ‘yes, yes’? Is that the kind of girl she is? No. She asked for it herself. With her own mouth.”
“This would be inconvenient for you too if it got out, right? It’s inconvenient for me as well. So why the hell did you come all the way here to make things bigger? If we both just stay quiet, nothing happens. Don’t you think it’s better that I’m the one holding her leash instead of some loose-lipped idiot?”
With completely untrustworthy words, he kept shaking my resolve.
“...Take your hand off.”
“....”
I knocked his hand away from my shoulder through the hoodie. I took a deep breath, calmed my pounding heart, and thought.
It was hard to find anything wrong in what the man had said.
“...How am I supposed to trust you?”
“Trust me or don’t. That’s up to you. And if you don’t trust me, what exactly can you do about it?”
Everything he said was true. Whether I trusted him or not, my sister and Hinami already trusted Kang Juhyuk completely. They had fallen for him. Unless those two grew tired of him first, or he grew tired of them first, there was nothing I could do.
In fact, the moment the three of them grew tired of each other would be far more dangerous. Right now the evidence left behind as byproducts of pleasure could still be contained. Later, they would turn into bullets capable of killing people.
“There’s no guarantee you won’t use this.”
“The guarantee is that I live in a house registered under your sister’s name. If Hinami’s scandal breaks and your group gets dragged through the mud, it would be hard for me to keep living there.”
Those words couldn’t be fully trusted, but they weren’t wrong either. The moment a scandal erupted, even if I kicked both of them out of the downstairs unit, I would have nothing to say.
“...Ah.”
But there was one thing that still made me uneasy. Grudge. Revenge. Wasn’t ruining my life and my sister’s life actually this man’s true goal? Hinami was nothing but a tool. If his real purpose was to vent the resentment of being abandoned by our father onto us daughters, then that kind of sexual desire was merely a stepping stone.
“Why? Still hard to believe?”
I stared at the strange malice that refused to leave his eyes as he looked down at me. I didn’t hide my own hostility either and pondered for a moment.
If he really hadn’t told a single lie. If everything he said was the truth. Could I accept it?
“Yes. Your words have zero credibility.”
“...You’re really honest. Must be because you’re young.”
The answer was no. I could not accept it. The human heart is finite. Just as my fans wouldn’t support me forever, that man wouldn’t love them forever, and my sister and Hinami wouldn’t like him forever either.
It would break someday. Whether he burned with revenge or not didn’t matter. When the relationship fractured, the goal would change anyway. The important thing was making sure the scandal didn’t spread widely even if things fell apart.
“...Fine. For now, let’s pretend none of this happened.”
But for now, I had no cards to play. I held my hand out to him.
“....”
We shook hands. While looking at the CCTV camera mounted in the corner of the hallway, I calculated the angle I had studied for years and pulled the back of his hand straight to my chest.
“Kyaa...”
“...What the hell are you doing?”
The sound that came out of my own mouth was painfully awkward. But it didn’t matter. The phone buried in my pocket would record it perfectly.
“Are you insane? Suddenly grabbing my chest... Are you trying to touch me now too?”
“...Are you fucking kidding me?”
His heated, growling voice was recorded just as clearly. At the same time, my figure—perfectly obscured behind his back—would remain on that CCTV. Sure, since he owned the place he might delete the footage. But if the camera went blank for exactly that moment, wouldn’t that look even more suspicious?
“...If you do anything weirder, I’ll report you.”
“...Ha.”
It’s more comfortable when both sides hold each other’s weaknesses, isn’t it, Kang Juhyuk? The moment even a single line with Hinami’s name appears in an article, I’ll destroy you socially. The piece of human garbage who laid hands on an idol, then went after another member of the same group and even committed sexual harassment.