Reverse Scale
Seoyeon’s embrace was more than warm—it was hot.
The more I listened to the heartbeat beyond it, the more the humiliation and pain I had just endured seemed to melt away.
I leaned into the rhythm—slightly quick, yet still carrying the composure of a true owner.
At the same time, that sound felt like a longing directed at me.
The kicks, the cruel words—they all seemed to spring from this small heartbeat, and somehow it felt as if she were relying on me.
Gentle eyes and a tender hand brushed down my cheek.
At that single word of praise, I smiled without even remembering that my knees were scraped or that I had soiled the floor.
By the time I reached the thought that the seesaw between owner and slave was moving steadily in the right direction, Seoyeon spoke again.
Contempt. Mockery.
Her eyes held just a trace of those emotions as she looked at me, deliberately stoking my shame. Both her gaze and the urine on the floor had gone cold.
“…Yes.”
Step. Step…
Seoyeon rummaged through the bag that held my clothes and pulled out a shirt, pinching it between her thumb and forefinger.
“H-huh…?”
My heart pounded.
A new kind of anxiety washed over me. Not the frantic, tearful panic of not knowing what to do, but a cold, chilling dread—like standing at the edge of a cliff with my toes already hanging over.
“I won’t. I swear I won’t, Master. Couldn’t I… maybe use toilet paper instead?”
In a way, this felt even more desperate than when my body had been broken.
Why?
I had already pissed on the floor like a dog—why was I suddenly refusing to do this?
No matter what I used, the floor still had to be cleaned.
It felt strange to resist my owner’s order over something like this. Even when I tried to convince myself there was no other way, my heart violently rejected the idea.
(What is this? Why…?)
The situation was so absurd I couldn’t understand it. My mind spun in confusion.
Wiping up the urine I had released… with my own shirt.
Compared to everything I had already endured, this wasn’t particularly extreme, filthy, or horrifying.
To my frantic plea, a firm answer came.
Plop—
The moment the shirt fell carelessly onto the puddle of urine, something inside me twisted violently—something I hadn’t even known was there.
* * * (Observer’s Perspective)
Yerin was wiping up the urine pooled on the bathroom floor with her own shirt. Tears streamed steadily from her eyes.
(This is wrong… I hate it so much… why… why is this happening… why…?)
Cleaning the floor, dirtying herself in the process.
The perfectly pressed seams were now wrinkled. The pure white fabric was stained. The visible traces left behind only made her emotions explode even more violently.
She felt a despair so deep that being beaten, hearing degrading insults, being tied up and used shamefully would have been far better.
This was far more unbearable than when she had lifted her leg like a dog and pissed earlier.
The dissociation of shifting from the subject who dirtied herself to the object being dirtied.
The feeling that it wasn’t her “mark” being erased, but her very self.
(I want to die…)
What kind of treatment was this?
A bitch? A slave?
She might be called those things, but Yerin felt she had become something far more miserable.
Every time she wrung the shirt out in the sink, poured the urine down the drain, and went back to wiping, her chest grew tighter, as if it would burst.
(Why… why can’t I say it? Why the hell…?)
She no longer knew whether she wasn’t saying the safe word because she couldn’t, or because she was too afraid to.
Even though it was a difficult word to utter, something felt off.
Why couldn’t the protagonists in those novels ever abandon their relationships despite the misfortune, pain, and abuse?
They weren’t even blood-related. They could have just ended it.
She used to find that frustrating.
And now she was doing exactly the same thing.
This was the sixth time she had wrung the shirt out in the sink, letting the urine flow away.
Then—suddenly—understanding struck her.
The realization that everything had been wrong from the very foundation.
Showing her naked body to someone else had been embarrassing.
Speaking vulgar words had been humiliating.
Doing things she would never have done before had felt good simply because she was with someone she liked.
That was why she hadn’t realized it.
She had thought she enjoyed being ashamed, being dirtied, being hurt, having her heart tormented.
She had believed that as long as she could endure life as a slave, she would accept that life.
So she had mistaken this emotion for something familiar, something she already knew.
(This… this was “humiliation.”)
The moment she identified the true nature of the feeling, the first thing that surged through her was a depth of rage that completely overwhelmed every emotion she had felt until now.
Being made to climax pathetically by someone younger,
suffering pain and showing an ugly side of herself,
even giving away her first experience and her first kiss—everything.
Only now did she realize she had been consuming all of it as mere entertainment, the way one might immerse themselves in a novel or a roleplay.
It wasn’t so much a self-awakening as a sensation forcibly injected into her brain.
Heat erupted from every nerve in her body.
She felt as if her soul and body were peeling apart from thermal expansion, floating in midair.
It wasn’t the pleasant dissociation of a sweet dream. It was a collapsing dread—the terror of not knowing what she might become.
I want to die. I want to kill.
The reason she had fallen into a world where only such extreme thoughts were permitted was simple and clear.
The essence of Seol Yerin—the very law that governed her—despised this.
A physiological disgust so strong it felt as if she were carrying feces in her panties while thousands of insects crawled all over her body.
A primal rejection that required no complex factors to consider.
Like the deep sea beneath a crashing tidal wave, while her surface consciousness shattered against the rage, the depths of her subconscious remained eerily calm.
(If you were going to attend a masquerade, you shouldn’t have tried to rip the mask off.)
Both Seol Yerin and Lee Seoyeon were people who lived wearing many masks.
There was a mask between the two of them, and those who wore masks had rules.
Suppose there existed a slave whose mind had been completely subjugated.
If the owner ordered her to die, some might actually obey. That much fell within the range of sacrificing body and mind in service.
But what if the owner ordered her to go outside and stab unrelated people? To butcher an ordinary family and destroy their lives?
Or if a murderous owner asked the slave to take the blame for her crimes?
The vast majority would refuse.
Even a slave had limits. There were minimum rules that could not be broken.
Seoyeon had violated those rules. She had tried to tear the mask away.
It was just a shirt. Not even one with deep sentimental value—just an ordinary shirt.
Yet it was the shirt Yerin had always washed and ironed with care whenever she was going to meet Seoyeon.
And now it was crumpled and soiled.
Even she herself could not fully understand it, but an irreversible twist had occurred.
She had struck a reverse scale she hadn’t even known she possessed, and only after being struck did she become aware of it.
In this world, a single word could create a debt of a thousand gold, and a single glance or phrase could spark murder.
The original core question rose to the surface again.
Was there any chance Seoyeon would submit?
She didn’t know. And now it no longer mattered.
Could she herself enjoy being a slave?
Impossible. A slave who could not endure humiliation?
She could try talking to Seoyeon to adjust the direction of their play, but she refused to even consider that option.
This wasn’t on the level of “don’t touch my shirts” or “I won’t do anything dirty.”
It wasn’t simply about locating the switch that triggered humiliation. There was a far greater problem.
For the first time, the well had grown shallow.
When you throw a stone into a deep well, the impact and sound are muffled.
When you throw one into a dry well, the sound of it striking the bottom rings out violently.
A dried-up well meant the relationship had become one-sided, that one side was being consumed.
Seol Yerin was the type who gave others a deep well in the beginning, but was nearly impossible to refill once emptied.
And when the water ran out, she discarded people without mercy.
Except for that one time—when she had forced the other person to refill the well.
And for Yerin, Seoyeon was someone she did not want to discard.
After wiping up every last drop of urine, Yerin did not throw the shirt away. She placed it back inside her bag.
Seoyeon, who had been watching, spoke to her just before they left.
Yerin immediately recognized it as a remark laced with consideration from her owner. Since Seoyeon was interested in clothes and had plenty of allowance, she would surely pick out something even better than the old one.
A strange ambivalence washed over her—sincere gratitude mixed with resentment. The coexistence of a slave’s heart and a human being’s heart.
A face and voice that was happy yet not happy, sad yet not sad, angry yet not angry—finally accepting her position and enduring it.
Only now did Yerin truly understand what shape a slave’s mask took.
For a brief moment, a complicated look flickered across Seoyeon’s face.
Seoyeon-ah.
Until now, I only pretended to be your slave with the intention of deceiving you.
This time, I learned painfully that it was a serious deception toward both of us.
So from now on, I will truly devote my body and heart to serving you.
Therefore, you should also do your best to train me.
It would be better if you don’t leave me as a living being capable of independent thought.
It would be better to turn me into a doll who cannot form even a single syllable of thought in a day without you.
I’ve changed my mind.
Back then, I mistakenly thought your excessive desire to cherish me was the only problem.
The statement that you would break me after making me your slave.
Now that I look at it, that sentence could never have been true.
I will simply break you while remaining your owner.
You know… I’ve come to genuinely want to live as your one and only slave.
So I hope this relationship of ours lasts a very, very long time.
Once again, I leave myself in your care.
My respected and beloved Master.