Her Rage
A sharp, wet cracking filled the room and tore me out of sleep. The drugs hadn't fully worn off; my mind was still swimming. But the sound was so chilling it forced me awake whether I was ready or not.
I turned my head toward the noise and found Kim Heejin and the Doctor facing each other. No—looking closer, it wasn't a standoff at all.
Slap. Crack!
The Doctor was being struck across the face, over and over, with no chance to fight back. She had already taken so many blows that her face was swollen like a steamed bun, the puffiness climbing all the way to her eyelids until she could barely open her eyes.
Heejin did not stop. She kept slapping the Doctor's cheek with the mechanical regularity of a machine. At last the Doctor could take no more of that savage beating and crumpled where she stood. Heejin flicked the blood from her hand, seized a fistful of the Doctor's hair, and struck her a few more times.
"...I told you to anesthetize her. Did I tell you to put her under?"
The cause of her rage seemed to be the sleeping anesthetic the Doctor had administered without agreement. I remembered the Doctor's last words before I drifted off. The consideration she had shown me was now the very thing putting her in danger. Until now, Heejin's anger had always been something clean and refined. What she was turning on the Doctor was raw. I had never once, in all this time, seen her drop into informal speech. This kind of excessive violence was a first as well.
"I'm sorry, President... I must have lost my mind for a moment... ghk..."
Crack—
Heejin's hand smashed into the Doctor's cheek again. She was already abnormally strong, and she put her full weight behind the slap. The shock reached the Doctor's teeth; her mouth filled with blood. A few more blows and it would not have been surprising if every tooth came out.
All she could do was beg to be forgiven, and yet the Doctor only kept repeating that she was sorry. There was only one reason for that.
"...I'm already going out of my mind knowing Unni has to be around some other bitch. And then you go and look at her while she's sleeping, without my permission? Do you think I'd be angry, or not?"
"I'm sorry, President. It will never happen again."
She had a daughter. Her only child. She had to earn the money for her medical bills.
My chest grew heavy. It clearly was not my fault, and yet I could not shake the feeling that the Doctor was being beaten because of me.
So why did you have to go and do something I never even asked for? Why pull a stunt that doesn't even suit you...?
"No. I don't need you anymore. Why would I need a dog that bites my master?"
"President! P-please... p-please... if I get thrown out of here, my daughter will die... j-just forgive me this once... p-please, just once..."
The Doctor slammed her head into the floor with a dull thud. Even after being compared to a dog, she swallowed her pride and bowed. The sight of it made my chest ache so badly I could hardly bear it.
As the Doctor wept and begged, Heejin leaned in and whispered against her ear.
"So what? You've lived this long. That's enough."
The utterly merciless answer stole the breath from the room. From the Doctor. From me.
The person who broke that silence—where only breathing could be heard—was neither the Doctor nor Heejin. It was me.
"H-how..."
"U-Unni?!"
She had clearly never imagined I would be awake. Her eyes went wide, and she hurried over to me.
"U-Unni... th-that's not... I'm not that kind of person."
I had never seen her this flustered. But that did not make what she had just done disappear.
"Why did you do that?"
"D-do what?"
Even now, she played dumb. Something nameless surged up in my throat.
"What did that person even do to deserve being beaten like that? She only did it for my sake!"
I had never seen her rattled before, so I thought—this time, at least—I could seize the initiative. That is what I believed, until she opened her mouth.
"...Unni. Are you taking that bitch's side right now?"
"I-is that what matters right now?"
"Yes. It matters. It matters!"
She shrieked and came at me. Her face was savage, possessed by something vicious, and even a glance was enough to tell that she was dangerously unstable. Caught showing me a side of herself she had never wanted me to see, and convinced that I was siding with the Doctor, she began to fixate on me with a terrible intensity.
She climbed onto my bed with that murderous look. I scrambled backward as far as I could, certain that if she caught me I would die—but of course I could not escape her on these legs.
She seized my one remaining intact ankle, the left one. Was this last ankle going to be ruined just as easily? Tears spilled at the thought that I would never walk again, but fortunately she only used it to drag me toward her.
My body, already light as a sheet of paper, was hauled along by her grip. Having pulled me close, she crawled up over me on all fours, settled herself on top of me, and pinned me down by pressing her hips against my lower abdomen.
She was not sitting on my stomach, so I could still breathe, but it felt as if a massive boulder had been set on my body. The fear would not leave. If she put any force into it, I felt as though I would burst like a balloon. The fact that I could not move even a little only fed the terror.
"...Unni. This is unacceptable. Not taking my side is an unforgivable sin. Tell me what you learned in Bride Training today."
She had lost it. There was no other way to put it. I had thought she was half-crazy plenty of times before, but only now did I understand. Until this moment, she had been normal.
The shock must have been enormous. Her body began to tremble violently. Even her pupils shook. Veins stood out on her forehead, and blood dripped from her tightly clenched fists.
The crazy bitch had gone insane. The woman who was always angry was now truly furious.
How was I supposed to answer her in this situation? I knew that not answering would only make her angrier, but my mouth would not open, as if it had been glued shut.
And, just as I had expected, even greater rage found me.
"Answer me!"
"Ghk..."
Unable to contain the fury overflowing her any longer, she clamped both hands around my throat and began to squeeze.
"Why won't you answer? How many times do I have to tell you? When I talk to you, you answer. Right. This. Second!"
I could not draw even a thread of air. I tried to resist, raising my hands to strike her forearms, but it was useless. If anything, my struggling only poured oil on her rage.
"No matter how much I drill it into you, you don't even fucking take it in! You don't answer! You hit me! And now you're taking someone else's side?"
She gripped my throat so hard that before I could even suffocate, I thought my neck would tear off first.
In an instant my vision went dim, my mind grew hazy, and I felt myself drawing closer to death.
"Ghk— ghk... hh... cough, cough."
The hands crushing my throat vanished. From her perspective, she had only let go for a moment. From mine, they might as well have disappeared entirely.
"Haaah... hh. Haaaah..."
I had thought nothing in the world was harder than a chemical warfare drill. After standing at death's door, I would have rather done another round of it. Tears and snot streamed down my face. It was as if my tear ducts had broken—the tears would not stop.
"...We're not done yet, Unni. The Doctor ran away, so you'll have to take her punishment too. Don't worry too much. It'll be hard enough that you'll want to die, but you absolutely won't. If you die, I'll follow you."
Her hands closed around my throat again. She had said she would not kill me, but of course that kind of comfort offered not the slightest sense of safety.
When I could not breathe, I felt nothing. Tears filled my eyes so I could not see, and I heard nothing, as if I had gone underwater.
Of the five senses, only one remained: pain.
"There, Unni. Breathe for a second."
"Ghk. Hh... hhh..."
Every time her hands released my throat, I could feel my body breaking down. My lower half was wet; I must have pissed myself.
"Alright. Break's over."
It could not have been more than a few seconds before she started choking me again. Someone once said that if you suffer enough, you eventually become numb to it. That was not true at all.
Pain was pain. You did not get used to it. It hurt enough that I wanted to die.
"There, Unni. Breathe."
It had gotten to the point where even when she let go of my throat, I did not breathe. It was not that I did not want to live. I wanted to live more than anyone.
It was just that my body, after the continuous asphyxiation, had given up.
Of course I can't breathe. That's obvious, so I should just give up. I need to conserve my strength if I want to survive. I shouldn't waste more energy on pointless struggling.
When I still did not breathe even after she let go, she pressed down hard just below my solar plexus. Air was forced out of me, and then honey-sweet oxygen rushed in.
"Cough! Ghk, ghk. Hhhh... haaah..."
"Unni. You have to breathe. It's not as if I'm taking my anger out on you. You're being punished right now. Stay focused and take your punishment all the way through. Isn't that right?"
She seemed to be saying something, but I could not hear a word. I could not even hear my own breathing—how was I supposed to hear anything else?
"S-sa... hh... save me... hhh... H-Heejin... hh... ghk."
But I said something. Anything. I wanted to live. My body could not take any more. I could feel it collapsing, little by little.