Reversal (3)
It was Saturday night again after a full circle. Soon it would be Sunday dawn. Whether immersed in self-improvement or, at the very least, busy enjoying themselves. In that precious time when one should be doing something, I spent the entire day shut up in my room, clutching my phone.
I figured that man might call me at any moment. He had already called me out last Saturday under the excuse of returning my clothes, so I assumed he would stir up trouble this week too. But even as midnight drew near, there was still no sign of contact.
I told myself it was a relief, yet I felt pathetic for wasting my precious Saturday because of a man like that.
…Not that I had anything to do even if I went out.
By now I was playing the game half on autopilot. Ever since Sua unnie started logging in less, there wasn’t anyone worth chatting with, and I had already burned through most of the worthwhile content. In the end, instead of gaming all Sunday, I wasted the whole day on ego-searching.
Every time I saw idiots leaving malicious comments about me, it didn’t spark anger so much as a sense of relief that I was more normal than they were. Praise in the comments raised my self-esteem in its own way. It was like a drug.
I had never thought this way when I was busy. Even after midnight, lying in bed and scouring every community I could find, there was still no end in sight. There were already more posts with just my name than I could ever read, and they kept piling up. Switching the search to my group name would obviously inflate the results several times over.
By now a few tabloid articles had appeared with my sister’s name too, and combining them would make for a decent amount of content. Even this was only the visible portion that searches could reach. In the abyss beyond sight, I had no idea what kinds of words were flying around.
On real-name sites, crowds of people were openly debating my thighs and breasts, and just as many were reading my expressions like mind-reading. So on anonymous boards—where they could be fairly sure they wouldn’t get caught—what exactly were they saying about me?
Ah, I had already seen more than enough photos of my face spliced onto nude bodies. They were all crude and low-effort, and none of them came close to the things Kang Juhyuk had actually done to me, so they barely even made me angry anymore.
“…Ah.”
While I was blankly hunting down those synthesized photos of myself and creating a throwaway email account to report them to the company, a message arrived on Twitter the exact moment my usual bedtime hit.
The sender needed no introduction. It was that man. At this hour, the only person rude enough to contact me—and specifically through a Twitter DM—was obviously him alone.
I hurriedly checked the message, reflexively frowning as I changed clothes. I shed my pajamas for something easier to move in and less revealing: short sleeves, long pants, a cardigan, and sandals. This time I skipped the sunglasses, pulling on just a mask and hat before heading straight down to the parking lot.
The moment I stepped out of the elevator and started walking toward where Kang Juhyuk had summoned me, he spoke.
“You don’t have any plans tomorrow, right?”
“…Why?”
“If not, get in.”
“I asked why.”
“…Just get in for now.”
He was already sitting in the driver’s seat waiting for me, hair styled more carefully than the late hour seemed to warrant.
…As if that would ever make me feel anything for him. It was pathetic beyond words.
“Where are you taking me?”
“You’ll see when we get there.”
I couldn’t even imagine where he might be dragging me in the dead of night, but refusing wasn’t an option. This man only grew more aggressive the harder I resisted. I found his tastes truly perverse, but since I was already caught in his grip, pretending to be a boring woman was the best fallback I had.
The absolute best option would have been… leaving judgment to the law. But after the news about the manager who had slipped me sleeping pills suddenly went silent, I realized depending solely on the law inside this company was foolish.
It wasn’t that I distrusted the team leader, but the company itself was unreliable. If I told them about Kang Juhyuk, they would probably meticulously “review” whether it was more profitable to lock him away rather than threaten him or chase him overseas. Even I had considered it; there was no way the higher-ups hadn’t.
And if anything happened to Kang Juhyuk, my sister and Hinami would obviously hate me.
“Buckle your seatbelt. Keep the hat on and just sit quietly.”
“…”
Even saying “yes” felt irritating, so I pressed my back against the seat, closed my eyes, and let him take me wherever he wanted. After all, this man had far too much to lose to throw everything away over me.
At worst he would probably just haul me to some secluded spot and chip away at my pride again. Like when he forced beer down my throat and toyed with me last time.
“Huu…”
Hearing that heavy sigh as he drove, I should have been tense, yet sleep crept over me anyway. Call it hostile trust. Maybe it was the strange conviction that if I didn’t rebel, he wouldn’t cross the line first.
Even last time, when he made me drink, he could have been truly vicious and kept me there until I was humiliated on the roadside, but he hadn’t gone that far. After I slashed his shoulder with a knife, he had retaliated by forcing me to take him in my mouth. As long as I didn’t do anything like that again, he probably wouldn’t escalate further.
“…”
Even now there was no sign he intended to grope me. It wouldn’t have been strange at all if he casually ran a hand over my thigh or chest. Watching him glare at the road, focused only on driving, he looked so stupid that I closed my eyes again, rested my head against the seat, and gave up on thinking.
The deeper I thought, the more I would hate him. And the more I hated him, the more interest he would take in me. That much was painfully obvious.
So there in the middle of the tiger’s den, I casually lay back and invited sleep.
…In the dead of night.
Without the faintest idea when I would wake.
“Mmm…. Ah.”
I tossed in my sleep, smacked my head against the window with a dull thud, and slowly regained consciousness.
…Where was this? How long had I been out?
I looked outside, but it was too dark—pitch black. I couldn’t tell anything. The driver’s seat was empty too, so I pulled out my phone and opened the map first.
“…What the hell is this place?”
…I had definitely been in Seoul when I closed my eyes. Now I was somewhere on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province, a place I had never been in my life.
“Wait, where’s Kang Juhyuk…”
But the most important thing was that there was no one near me. Beneath a night sky so dark it was almost black, it was just me. Alone with an ownerless car, breathing in that heavy darkness. Any lingering sleep vanished instantly and cold sweat began to trickle down my back.
“…He must be around, right?”
Maybe he had just stepped out for a moment. Probably to a convenience store. Convincing myself of that, I unbuckled first and opened the door to step outside.
The moment my weight settled on the ground, gravel and dirt crunched beneath my feet. The pitch-black sky seemed to brighten just enough to cast a faint glow over the surroundings. A creepy-looking mansion stood there, surrounded by a dense wall of forest. If I hadn’t spotted the sign behind me, it would have been perfectly believable to say I had been stranded in the middle of the mountains.
…So there were pensions even in places like this. I had never imagined it.
“Where did he go?”
But I still had no idea where that man had disappeared to after abandoning me at a mountain pension. A convenience store? Was there even one within walking distance? And even if there was, would he really walk there without the car on a night this dark? Or had he gone inside the pension first?
…By himself? Without waking me?
Both possibilities made no sense, and while I paced around the car in growing confusion—
“Ah.”
…Right in front of me.
A girl with snow-white hair wearing what looked like a pure white shroud. The instant my eyes met hers—bright and shining—I froze. My breath caught in my throat. Overwhelmed by raw terror, I scrambled back into the passenger seat as fast as I could.
There was no time to wonder if I had seen wrong. No time to decide whether she was human or ghost. I slammed the door shut, locked it, bowed my head, and only dared to peek up with my eyes, staring through the glass.
“…Uh, uh.”
Step. Step. Step. Step.
The white figure slowly approached the car.
“…Jia…. ya….”
…She was even calling my name.
The echo ringing hollow through the mountains was so eerie that I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to hide.
…Should I run? But could I? How—how do I escape…. Wait, it’s a car. If I hit the accelerator it’ll go forward….
“Jia-ya.”
“Hik…”
My feet were shaking so badly I could barely climb over to the driver’s seat when—
…The ghost was suddenly pressed right against the window, staring straight at me.
I was about to pass out—
“…What are you doing?”
—when it became obvious.
…The ghost’s face looked extremely familiar.
My head went ice-cold in an instant.
“Hey, you. Why are you here…?”
“Why am I here? We drove here together earlier.”
“…What?”
White hair. Not a shroud, just white pajamas. Hinami, whose skin had always been pale, looked at me like I was an idiot and yanked open the driver’s door.
“You were sleeping so I left you alone. If you’re awake, come out. Oppa went to buy some food.”
“…What?”
“There’s a place nearby. He walked over. I told him I’d come get you, so come on.”
“…Why?”
She grabbed my wrist, pulled me out of the car, and—despite being only a month older—stroked my head as she continued.
“You’ve been acting strange lately. You’re barely practicing. It looked like you needed a refresh, so I asked oppa for a favor, okay?”
“…”
…This idiot. Did she have any idea who was responsible for my half-hearted practices and shattered mentality?
“Ah, unnie isn’t here, so you don’t have to worry about her. …Let’s go eat some late-night snacks.”
At the very least, it definitely wasn’t because of unnie. …If you were going to take me somewhere, you could have just taken me without that man.