The Mask Slips
I couldn’t tell what color the face half-hidden behind the mask had turned. Whether it had gone pale from tension or flushed red from fear. Either way, despite how smoothly the words left my mouth, I was frozen stiff inside. I had to shut Hwang Suah’s mouth somehow and pull her to my side if I wanted any chance of sleeping peacefully at night. No matter how I looked at it, Kang Juhyuk, who hadn’t contacted me once in an entire week, wasn’t the type to do nothing. If I stayed still, he would definitely set the board exactly the way he wanted and force me onto it.
“I’ll be direct. …Did DM unni send you?”
“….”
So I decided to face it head-on. Planning traps, sowing discord between people—I knew I had no talent for that. Kang Juhyuk had drilled it into me every time he had his way with me. I had no intention of harming her, nor did I plan to blackmail her. If anything, I was the one who could be blackmailed. In truth, I had nothing I could use against her. All I intended to do was… tell the truth.
“…Then follow me. We can’t talk about this outside.”
“Ah, okay….”
No matter how much she liked dirty things, once she heard what had been done to me, she wouldn’t be able to help feeling some sympathy. Even if she didn’t take my side, at the very least she wouldn’t fall for Kang Juhyuk’s sweet-talking tongue. That was enough.
“….”
Without looking back at Hwang Suah, who was hesitantly trailing after me, we matched our strides and walked slowly toward my apartment. We didn’t run into anyone we knew. We stepped into the elevator, and I pressed the button for the floor right above the one where he lived. It didn’t take long to reach my floor. Together we got off, and I unlocked the door lock that only two people in the world knew the code to. With this, she would be the fourth person to ever set foot inside my home. After unni, Hinami, and Kang Juhyuk… Hwang Suah.
“Have a seat. I’ll make some coffee.”
“Uh, yeah….”
She looked a little flustered by the luxurious apartment, glancing around. I sat her on the sofa and brought over two instant coffees, setting them on the table. I watched the guest blow on her hot black coffee for a moment before taking the seat right beside her, removing my mask and revealing my face. Hwang Suah waited with a tense expression for me to speak, but I was waiting for her to put the coffee down. When it became clear she wasn’t going to, I gave up and started talking anyway.
“…Suah unni.”
“Ah, y-yeah! Yeah…, um….”
“What I’m about to say here must never leave this room. You can’t tell anyone. …You understand that much, right?”
“…Yeah.”
As expected, she nearly spilled her coffee the moment I spoke, but after hearing what came next she set the cup down with obvious tension. Her hands were trembling so badly that a drop ran down the side of the cup, but I ignored it, swallowed hard, and kept my eyes on the floor.
…Where should I start, and how much should I tell her so she would pity me? So she would keep that reckless mouth of hers shut? I agonized over it, then carefully let the filthy story spill from my tongue. A vulgar tale soaked in his scent.
**
“….”
…What the hell am I listening to right now? A confession? A testimony? Or… some kind of erotic audio drama? ASMR from a current idol or something? Or maybe one of those netorare scenes where the guy just watches…
“Unni?”
“Ah, yeah! Yeah…, I’m listening….”
I didn’t really understand why she was telling me all this, but… honestly, it wasn’t that hard to figure out. Half excuse, half silencing. If she’d been this honest and I still went around spreading it, she was basically saying she’d seriously consider pouring concrete and dumping me in the Pacific. Of course, I had no intention of spreading it, and I definitely didn’t have the courage to. …But still.
“…Anyway, so. Back then, that man… raped me. He took photos and videos….”
The story she was telling was incredibly lewd. It was someone’s first-time story, the kind I’d never heard spoken out loud in my entire life. And not from some school friend, but from a top-tier idol whose face was more recognizable than most people’s. What made the story even more obscene was this:
“Maybe… to that man, it was revenge. He thinks he retired because of me….”
…There was a story behind it. It wasn’t just dirty. It had a proper beginning, middle, and end. It wasn’t simple humiliation porn. It was revenge porn. I felt really, truly sorry for Jia, but… I loved stories like this. It was like the northern archduke who held a grudge against the female lead’s family winning the war, plundering her, and then doing all sorts of things to her…
…Mm. I should probably save this. Besides, Jia’s words were full of holes and self-justifications. The part about the boss suddenly holding a grudge and wanting revenge already felt off. As a hardcore fan of this kind of content, I even thought she kind of deserved it. …Wasn’t the boss’s girlfriend the director’s daughter in the first place? More than anything, the fight with the boss had been started by unni’s side, and from the outside it looked like unni was the reason his shoulder got wrecked. Would he really go after Jia for revenge? If I were the boss, I’d go after unni first. I wouldn’t even think about touching a famous idol. In reality, the boss had met unni’s side first anyway. No matter how I thought about it, it felt like she’d left something out in the middle. For example, Jia, upset that unni had fallen for some strange man, tried to do something about it… and the direction of the revenge twisted, leading to her getting fucked like a dog instead. That seemed more plausible.
“So. I figured if I didn’t upload it myself, he would, so… I had no choice but to upload it myself. …I thought it was edited well enough that no one would notice.”
“…Uh-huh.”
…Even that part sounded suspicious. What did she mean, if she didn’t upload it the boss would? What was this perverted bitch even saying? I’d seen her waist trembling while she got fucked. Wasn’t the editing done by the boss in the first place? To begin with, the fact that she spread her legs for a guy she kept saying she hated was weird. Logically, if she really hated it that much, she could’ve just reported him, right…? …Wasn’t it far more likely that this bitch had always been an exhibitionist masochist, and the boss had caught that weakness and used it?
“Anyway. I’ve pretty much explained everything…, I don’t have anything else to say. As long as you keep your mouth shut from now on, Suah unni.”
“…Uh, yeah. I won’t go around saying stuff like this, ahaha….”
But despite all the malicious thoughts running through my head, the only thing that came out of my mouth was agreement. No matter what the truth was, if I ran my mouth carelessly, it wouldn’t end well. If it really was the boss gaslighting and scheming to rape her like she claimed, then as a matter of conscience I shouldn’t go around talking about it. If it was my fantasy—that she was a natural masochistic exhibitionist idol who provoked the wrong guy and got caught by the weakness—then running my mouth would get me thrown into the sea. The truth was probably somewhere in between, but one thing was certain: this wasn’t something I should touch. I’d just keep it to myself. Digging any deeper would probably get me hurt.
“…….”
Anyway, after the homeowner had poured out everything she wanted to say and clamped her mouth shut, I glanced at her and tried to down the now-cold coffee so I could make a quick escape. She didn’t seem like she planned to blackmail me. She was just “asking” me to keep quiet. Of course, hearing the behind-the-scenes story about the boss’s injury pissed me off a little, but in the end he’d paid with his body, so it wasn’t really something I should get angry about, right…? …Or was it? Thinking about it, whether the boss fucked some busty cosplayer or an idol, it didn’t help my baseball career one bit. …Now that I thought about it again, it was kind of infuriating. A guy who could throw 145 km/h with his left hand and didn’t even have bad control got his shoulder ground down just because he met some women? It wasn’t like he was on drugs or drunk driving…
“Huh?”
The moment I missed my chance to run because I got worked up, the firmly closed front door beeped and opened, and someone walked inside. Jia, who had been sipping her coffee just like me, jolted in surprise and spilled the rest of her coffee onto the floor. Wiping her mouth with her arm, she looked toward the entrance.
“What are you two doing?”
“Ah…, uh, B-Boss…?”
At the end of that gaze…
…No explanation needed. The boss, wearing the same outfit I’d seen at the gym earlier with only an outer layer thrown over it, was walking in with steady steps.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“That’s what I should be asking. What are you doing, stealing my part-timer?”
“…How did you know?”
“How? I’m the boss. The kid who’s been dying to hit on her was grumbling that some suspicious woman took our part-timer away, so I came to check just in case.”
The boss continued speaking as he walked into the living room like it was his own house, then stopped in the middle of the room and looked down at Jia with a languid gaze. Seeing the coffee spilled on the table and floor, he tossed aside his outerwear and T-shirt, becoming half-naked, and casually threw the T-shirt at Jia.
“Try not to spill so messily. …It’s soaked in sweat anyway, so you can throw it out.”
“….”
“I’m taking a shower first. Ah, Suah, you can go home if you want.”
…I stared at the boss’s upper body, which looked dozens of times more dangerous in person than in photos or videos, and froze completely on the sofa, unable to move even a single step. …Just like Jia had confessed with her own mouth earlier, I was dying to know exactly how she had been taken.