Gaslighting
"There was nothing like that."
Jeongmi nodded with a smile. Then, without warning, she pressed her lips to mine. Her tongue slid deep into my mouth. Minhwa startled far more than I did.
"Ah... she beat me to it. I was saving that..."
Even at my still-young age, and even though I had already finished only moments before, I was already surging hard again. Once more I found myself thinking that the women around me were of the absolute highest grade. Jeongmi took my hand and laid it on her breast. Seeing that, Minhwa refused to be outdone; she seized my other hand and pressed it to her own chest. There was no way to say whose breasts were better—both women's bodies were magnificent. The liquor was beginning to rise in me and I was a little tired, yet the atmosphere that had formed made sleep impossible.
Before meeting Ma Juri today I had already heard every truth about them and the full outline of Myeongsuk's plan. Myeongsuk had early on marked Ma Juri as the one person among Jo Byeongsu's closest confidants who could be approached. Even for someone like Myeongsuk, luring a perfectly healthy woman into a small religious group was no simple matter, so she had laid her groundwork well in advance. Of course I only learned of it later. Myeongsuk bribed a doctor and had him deliver a terminal diagnosis. It was an absurd death sentence for a disease that showed almost no symptoms, yet when I searched I found that such an illness did, in fact, exist. When any human being is confronted with something as vast and hopeless as death, the heart breaks. Myeongsuk approached the shattered Juri and guided her to our Cheonsiman-gyo; as of today both her body and her soul had become complete slaves of our religion.
Myeongsuk's plan was to use her to entangle Jo Byeongsu. And the one who would entangle Ma Juri herself was to be me. Already more than ninety percent enslaved to me and to Cheonsiman-gyo, she was now ready for me to lay waste to her heart and drag both her and Jo Byeongsu down into the abyss.
In the end the two beauties' relentless teasing pulled me under; I took both Minhwa and Jeongmi into the bedroom. Jeongmi was one thing, but even Minhwa was growing accustomed to sharing me with others. The two of them moved as if they had rehearsed beforehand, perfectly coordinating hands and mouths to work me over. When one attacked my upper body the other claimed the lower, and the moment the roles reversed they shifted positions as naturally as breathing.
Whether they simply missed a man or specifically wanted me I could not tell, but they threw themselves at me as if starving. I, for my part, felt little enthusiasm, yet I held both women for the sake of washing away the lingering unease of the sex I had been obliged to perform earlier. Even now I could still smell Juri's perfume and cosmetics beneath my nose. It was not that the scent itself was unpleasant, nor that I had been unwilling, yet that fragrance seemed to carry her falsehood, and so it left me with a faint revulsion.
Once the two women's devoted service had heated my lust to the boiling point I poured everything I had into both of them; then Minhwa, Jeongmi and I fell asleep together on the bed. Even the raging sexual hunger of a man in his twenties could not outlast the limits of the body. I sank into a deep, unguarded sleep.
When I opened my eyes the sun was already high. Neither Minhwa nor Jeongmi was beside me; instead, to my surprise, Mireong was sleeping in my arms. The moment I stirred she woke as well and sat up.
"When I came into the room this morning you were sleeping alone, so I just meant to lie down for a moment..."
I smiled and drew Mireong into an embrace. Unlike the others she never put herself forward, and it was true that I had grown a little distant from her because of it.
After we had eaten and I was resting for a while, Myeongsuk came looking for me.
"Jisin. Ma Juri has arrived."
I nodded and rose from my seat. While I was still fastening the front of the robe I had only thrown over myself, Myeongsuk casually stripped off her clothes, found her own robe, and put it on. Somehow the sight struck me as cute.
When Myeongsuk and I stepped out in front of Byeolchae, Yeonggi came down from the roof carrying a bag. We exchanged a glance and entered Simanjeong. The three of us climbed to the third floor and stopped before one particular door. We had remodeled one of the rooms for this purpose. We named it the Repentance Room—or the Prayer Room. Our order had never possessed such a thing before; we had built it in haste, solely for Ma Juri.
I entered first. Every window that had originally been there was sealed; the interior held not a single ornament. A solitary dim light glowed on the wall, and there was one small, plain single bed. Beside it stood a low floor desk. That was everything the room contained. At a glance it felt almost like a prison cell.
The moment I stepped inside, Ma Juri, who had been sitting on the bed, sprang to her feet at the sight of me.
"Jisin."
I approached her with a gentle, fatherly smile.
"Did you get home safely last night? I had to leave in a hurry because our Cheongisa came to fetch me."
Juri answered with a bright smile.
"Yes. My house is very close to that place."
I nodded. She glanced around the room and spoke again.
"I received a call from Goseonsa. She told me this is the Prayer Room. I truly want to be saved."
I stood before her, brushed her hair back from her face, and said,
"For the time being you will spend three days here and four days at home. If you wish, you may lengthen the days you spend here. Prayer is most effective when it is concentrated. And every day I will come and listen to your repentance."
Ma Juri smiled as though she might cry.
"Thank you."
"The dreadful disease that has taken hold of you exists because your soul has been defiled. From now on you will look back upon your past, repent, and purify your heart. Then your soul will receive salvation, and a saved soul may even heal your illness."
Ma Juri's eyes went wide.
"Is that really true?"
I made my expression utterly grave.
"But a process so harsh you will wish you were dead awaits you. Mere pretense will never be enough. And so that you do not grow lazy, there will also be times when you must inflict pain upon yourself."
Ma Juri's face filled with fear, yet she nodded. I found myself wondering how someone whose every emotion showed so plainly on her face could have spent decades among such villains. At the same time I wondered whether the method Myeongsuk had designed would actually work.
"While you are here you will cast off every garment of the secular world and remain naked. You will cut all contact with the outside and wrestle with loneliness as well."
Ma Juri nodded, still looking terrified. She began to undress little by little. Once she was completely bare, her tattoos came into view. Watching her settle onto the edge of the bed, I turned with deliberate coldness and walked out. Outside the door Yeonggi and Myeongsuk were waiting.
The moment I saw Myeongsuk, the tattoos I had just glimpsed on Juri's body rose again in my mind. Myeongsuk and Yeonggi entered the room. Just as I was beginning to think they were taking a long time, they came out again. Yeonggi's face remained expressionless; Myeongsuk wore a strange look.
"From now on it is up to you, Jisin. Please finish it quickly."
I nodded. My thoughts were many, yet for the present I decided I had to concentrate on this task alone.
From the next day my gaslighting began in earnest. The flirting techniques that had become second nature to me since childhood, built on sheer verbal power, were now joined by a completely different set of techniques Myeongsuk had taught me, and the real work started.
Juri's heart, already largely broken, had reached the desperate edge of the cliff called despair, where she believed her life itself must end. Into that heart I alternately showed hope and plunged her into still deeper despair, imprinting upon her mind exactly whom she must cling to now.
It was something quite different from the blind faith and affection that had been transferred to Minhwa. Because Minhwa had voluntarily chosen that blind devotion, she possessed within herself the ability to monitor and control her own heart. In other words, the belief rose naturally from within. What I was injecting into Juri, however, was something that would leave her unable to do anything on her own. It was the work of making her utterly incapable of functioning unless she depended on me.
I knew perfectly well that ethically such a thing should never be done. Yet when I considered the social crimes she had committed and the justice we would achieve through her cooperation, I had given my consent. And Myeongsuk, for her part, possessed an almost unnerving certainty about this method.
Honestly I was confident that in pure verbal skill I would yield to no one, and even if the effect did not last forever I still carried a peculiar confidence that I could shake anyone's heart when I stood before them. Until now that ability had worked on every person I met; it had even allowed me to found a religious organization with thousands of believers. There was, however, one single person upon whom my words never worked, and that person was Myeongsuk. She acted as though she had already fallen under my sway, yet she never truly had. There were moments when I even grew confused, wondering whether I myself might have fallen under hers instead.