The Only One Left
He smiled in amusement as he watched me hesitate, then slowly reached out. He pulled back the blanket and grabbed the hem of my T-shirt, lifting it until my navel was exposed. I refused to show any panic, wetting my lips instead as I steeled myself and glared at him with empty eyes.
“You must be scared because you think I’m actually going to do it.”
“…Not at all.”
I wasn’t scared. I couldn’t afford to be. The moment my reaction fed his sadism, he would grow several times more excited and take an even greater interest in me. So I had to endure. Until he grew tired of me.
“If you’re scared, just say so. Why hold it in like that?”
“I’m not holding anything in. …No matter how much a man like you touches me, I don’t feel a thing.”
“Is that so?”
When I clenched my teeth and pretended not to care what happened, he let go of my T-shirt, as if he’d bought the bluff. But the relief lasted only a moment. He slid his hand slowly beneath the fabric, pushed his fingers toward my back, and with a soft click, unhooked my bra with one hand. Then he slipped his palm under the loosened bra, found my nipple, and began to lightly scratch it with his index finger, watching my reaction.
“…I wonder what kind of face you’d make if I raped you like this.”
“…As long as it doesn’t hurt, I won’t feel anything.”
“Your bravado is impressive.”
He layered his thumb over the teasing finger and began to pinch my nipple, tormenting me. Kang Juhyuk lifted his wrist, pushed my T-shirt up, and leaned down to take my other breast into his mouth. First with his tongue. Then with his teeth. He tapped lightly, then bit down gently. After letting go, he wiped the damp nipple with his thumb and looked at my slightly furrowed brow, letting out a hollow laugh.
“If I raped you and then just went home, would you hang yourself? Or jump off the balcony?”
“Neither. So get out right now….”
“No matter how I think about it, if I raped you, you’d probably kill yourself. …You look like you might do it even without that. Your mental state seems far too unstable. Not like you at all.”
While only refuting the parts where he kept painting me as some dangerous woman, I shook my head as hard as I could to erase his nonsense from my ears. There was no way I would ever commit suicide. Why would someone like me—who lived so beautifully, in such a nice apartment, with every comfort—ever make that choice? And why should I take advice from someone like you…
“Ugh….”
When I struggled a little more, he placed a hand on my neck with a pitying expression. He applied just enough pressure to still my head, then traced down my collarbone, over the valley between my breasts, and cupped one breast again. He squeezed hard enough to hurt before stroking the corner of my eye with his other hand and speaking in a low voice.
“When was the last time you went outside?”
“…Why are you asking that?”
“Just answer.”
“Yesterday.”
“Not for work. When was the last time you went out with a friend?”
“….”
…When was it? The first thing that came to mind was the memory of the pension. But could that really be called going out with a friend? All that had happened was Kang Juhyuk and Hinami toying with me. So I wound the clock back further. The next thing that surfaced was the game event. That had definitely been an outing. Though it had been half blackmail, and I’d been too terrified of being caught to enjoy any of it. But even if I went further back, there were no more plausible memories left.
“Doesn’t look like there was one. Well, I’ve been busy lately too, so I haven’t seen my friends either. That can happen.”
“….”
“…But do you even have anyone you could call and meet right now? Ah, excluding Hinami.”
…The very concept of “friend” no longer existed for me. Everyone who had any connection with me saw me not as a friend, but as a celebrity one step above them. The only person I’d ever had an equal relationship with was Hinami. And even that had ended in a fight. So what kind of relationship did I have left?
“I don’t have friends. I fought with my coworkers and now everything’s a mess. Some disgusting article came out and I got cursed out like crazy. My mental state completely collapsed because an idol is supposedly running some kind of sex scandal, and now she’s even about to get raped by someone like me. …Logically, how could she be fine?”
“…It’s all because of you. From start to finish.”
“It is my fault. But you’ve been pretending to be fine this whole time.”
…I didn’t want to admit it, but there really was no one else but Kang Juhyuk. Countless people sent goodwill toward the idol “Seo Jia.” But the only one who directed this sticky, furious rage at “Seo Yeeun” was that bastard. The only one who hated me. The only one who showed me any interest.
“…If even I stop caring about you, who’s going to be left by your side?”
“Do you think I’m the same as them? Someone like me could have anyone….”
“Ah, what. You’re going to say you’ll date men? A girl who’s never even dated once is going to date just fine. You know how the entertainment industry works. Do you really think any decent, wholesome guy is going to lay a hand on you? Only people like me will swarm around.”
“….”
“If you meet the wrong guy and get used and thrown away, you’ll really want to die then, won’t you? That ridiculously high pride of yours will get shattered. Think you can handle that? …With that pathetic mental state of yours?”
There really was no one else but this bastard. A crazy son of a bitch who looked at a girl as arrogant, self-centered, and disgustingly prideful as me and sneered right in my face. There were countless people like that online, but only one who spat in my face directly.
…And the only person I could spit back at was that bastard too.
“A girl who was holed up in her room whining after one stupid scandal broke is going to do just fine in a real relationship. I guarantee it—you’ll never date. You’ve got nothing to lose? Bullshit. You can’t even show your tits on a secret account because you’re too scared, with your face completely hidden.”
“….”
“A kid who doesn’t even know what sex is saying it wouldn’t be scary even if she got assaulted—is that funny or not? …You really don’t know too many things. If I leave you alone, you’ll definitely meet a guy like me, get fucked, and get thrown away. Then you’ll start posting pathetic shit on Instagram about wanting to die. It’s obvious even without watching.”
Only this bastard would spout that kind of bullshit. Nothing but groundless speculation. Even if something like that did happen, it wouldn’t be any different from now. After all, he was just another man who only wanted to fuck me and throw me away.
“So what exactly do you want to do to me? If you want to rape me, just do it. You can overpower me with force anyway, can’t you?”
“Why would I? …I can do anything once I’m underneath.”
“….”
…His true intention was so obvious—that he wanted me to come into his arms of my own will. I bit down on my lip hard enough to split it, threw away the mask, and glared at him with venomous eyes. I knew that expression excited him, but his words were too disgusting to endure any longer. Even as I felt his hand settle on my hip, I couldn’t hide my expression.
“…Besides, you’d die without me.”
“Don’t talk bullshit.”
“Bullshit? …Who else would you curse at if I wasn’t here?”
“There are plenty of disgusting bastards in the world, so….”
He stroked my waist, then lifted my body slightly and yanked down both my pants and underwear at once. When the waistband caught at the line where my buttocks met my thighs, he laid me back down, placed his hand on my stomach above my navel, and pressed down firmly while looking at me with a grotesquely twisted face and laughing.
“Ah, sure. Go ahead and curse all you want. Whether it reaches them or not is another story.”
“….”
“…The only person you can curse at is me. Do you think you could call those disgusting bastards disgusting to their faces while the cameras are rolling? Even after you retire, you’ll have to keep that mouth shut for the rest of your life. One wrong word and even the people supporting you now will all turn around and curse you instead.”
As if telling me to spit on him right there, he pointed at his own face with his index finger and spewed madness toward me. Staring straight into those terrifying eyes that went beyond grotesque, I struggled with all my might not to let the words filling my throat spill out.
“If you keep holding it in without even being able to curse like this, it’ll explode. Right now you’re already secretly uploading lewd photos because you can’t hold it in, aren’t you?”
“So… what, you fucking bastard….”
“…Yeah. It feels pretty good when you curse like that. Do it more. …Anyway, I actually enjoy getting cursed out by you.”
“Disgusting bastard. You don’t know anything….”
But in the end, the words that had been circling in my throat passed over my tongue and poured out onto his face. The moment he heard them, his grotesquely twisted expression smoothed out and he smiled in delight. He stripped away all the clothes tangled around my thighs and spread my legs. When I thrashed and tried to kick him, he grabbed my legs tightly and pinned them down with force. He folded my body in half, held both my ankles with one hand, gripped his cock with the other, and placed it against my entrance.
“Get the fuck out of my life, you son of a bitch…!”
“….”
When he saw my lips let out an involuntary scream at the thought of him pushing inside, he released my ankles, suddenly got off the bed, took a pair of scissors from the pencil case on the desk, and tossed them onto me with a thud.
“If you really want me to leave, stab me. Or cut me with the scissors. Do whatever you want. It’s not like a little torn skin is going to kill me.”
“….”
“Last time you even managed to cut my shoulder with a box cutter, didn’t you? What? …Can’t do it this time?”
I couldn’t even properly grip the scissors he’d given me. My hands only trembled as I glared at him.
“…Time’s up. If you can’t subdue a criminal in ten seconds, you die. That’s how it goes.”
“Ah….”
In the blink of an eye the weapon was taken from me. I could only follow the tossed scissors with my eyes. …Now even the strength to kick had been stolen. Crushed beneath the weight of his arms, my folded legs were forced apart.
“Don’t cry. …You’ve already asked me to rape you at least ten times today.”
“…Who’s… crying…? You… fucking bastard….”
But even my lips—the only part of me that wasn’t trembling—continued to hurl curses at him as if possessed. Even while knowing that no matter how vicious the insults I spat, they would only sound like cheerful sound effects to his ears.