From Lover to Slave
I was grateful for her arms. I hadn't known that being held by her could feel this precious. Maybe it was a blessing I'd only realized it now, even if it was late.
She scooped me up and carried me without a single word, walking in silence. Same as before, we crossed the first-floor lobby, rode the elevator to the eighth floor, and she unlocked the front door and brought me inside.
I'd been wound tight the entire way home, certain she would turn on me the moment we stepped through the door. But contrary to every expectation, she was quiet — nothing like the vicious way she'd threatened me earlier.
She laid me down on the bed with careful hands, as if I might shatter, then stretched out beside me. Was she just going to sleep like this? After everything that had happened today, her exhaustion didn't seem strange.
"Heejin..."
She didn't answer.
"Are you... going to sleep...?"
Still nothing.
"You're not going to punish me...?"
Silence. I would have rather been scolded. Her non-response was so much harder to bear. I didn't want to be left in this awkward, suspended place with her.
She might not understand, but I had no one except her. If she grew tired of me, she could always find some other pretty lover. I couldn't even leave the house alone — I was too afraid. I couldn't do what she could.
I have no one but Heejin...
"B-baby..."
I pressed my mouth to her ear and whispered every sweet thing I thought she might want to hear. She didn't react at all. The more she ignored me, the harder my heart dropped.
"H-hey, wake up... okay...? Let's talk a little..."
When I finally started poking at her back, too desperate to stop myself, she let out a sigh and rolled toward me. Our eyes met. Hers were full of disappointment, and the sight of it made my chest ache so badly I thought I might go insane.
She flicked her hand as if I were a nuisance and spoke.
"I'm disappointed in you, Unnie. I don't want to say a word to you right now, so stop bothering me. If you keep it up, I'll just leave."
The words that came out of her mouth were so shocking I wouldn't have believed her capable of them — and just like that, my mind snapped into focus.
I'd known she was disappointed in me. But not wanting to talk at all? Threatening to walk out if I kept bothering her?
This was no time to sit around being awkward. If I let this continue, we were going to cross a river we could never come back from.
Heejin, who's that woman?
Oh, just an ex. She won't stop bothering me.
Starting today, I could see it — Heejin throwing me away and making someone new. I shook my head hard, trying to drive the nightmare out. I was terrified that if I kept thinking like that, the dream would become real. I needed to focus on what was in front of me.
"W-want to touch my chest? Touch my chest and let your anger go. Okay?"
I remembered something about making up with a lover you'd fought with — let them touch your breasts — and I gathered mine and pushed them toward her. The top I'd been wearing had been torn halfway open at some point without my noticing, and it was already lying on the floor.
It worked, at least a little. The life that had gone out of her eyes came flickering back. I hadn't realized it before, but the fact that she still wanted my body made me so happy I could have flown.
I yanked off the black lace bra — the kind she liked — and moved on impulse. I lifted her head, slid my leg over her, and pressed my nipple into her slightly parted mouth. The pose was like a mother nursing a child, and a sudden rush of shame hit me, but I could feel her temper easing, bit by bit, and I couldn't stop.
"H-here. Drink Mommy's milk and let it go..."
I didn't forget to murmur the things she liked to hear, and I didn't forget to stroke her hair.
She didn't seem ready to forgive me that easily. Even with my nipple forced against her lips, she did nothing. After a while, though, as if her willpower were starting to fray, she glanced up at my face, opened her mouth, and bit down.
The notable part was how hard she bit.
"H-Heejin...! Ah, it hurts! It huuurts...!"
My breasts were just flesh with fat in them, not chewing gum, but she gnawed on my nipple like she meant to grind it apart.
It hurt so badly I thought the nipple might tear clean off. Before I could even tell her to stop, my chest was covered in her saliva and the marks of her teeth. Mottled red blotches bloomed across my skin.
The strange part, if there was one, was that it wasn't only pain. I would never say it out loud — I would take it to my grave before I admitted it to her — but every time her teeth clamped down hard on my nipple, a shameful, twisting pleasure rose up through the hurt.
A heated little breath slipped out of me. She stopped moving her mouth and her expression went flat and cold.
"Unnie. Did you do this because it feels good for you?"
I'd tried to act like nothing had happened. Of course I couldn't fool her.
"Th-that's not—"
"If that's not it, then why do you react like a pervert to every little thing? This isn't you trying to make me feel better. This is just you doing what you want."
"That's not true! It's really not!"
After everything I'd been putting myself through!
I'd done these humiliating things without hesitation, all of it to soothe her anger — and now she was asking if the whole of it had been for my own selfish pleasure. I felt like I was going to lose my mind.
"Take off your pants and spread your pussy. I'm going to inspect you myself — whether you're getting off or not — until my anger is gone."
The order was so harsh I couldn't believe she meant it, but I had no choice. The moment she questioned my sincerity, I was filled with the need to do something, anything, to prove it.
She'd only told me to take off my pants, but I wasn't about to make the mistake of stopping there. I stripped my panties off too and tossed them on the floor. A nasty little smirk tugged at her mouth.
"I said take off your pants. Why'd you take the panties off too? God, you really are a pervert."
"Nngh..."
There was nothing more stupid than letting words like that get to me, but coming from a girl who looked years younger than I was, the mockery had a power that made me burn with shame.
"Since you've already spread them, spread them properly. Wide. So I can see all the way inside."
"Okay..."
I did as she said, using my hands to pull myself open as far as I could. I was already soaked without anyone having touched me. Thick, sticky fluid welled up and dripped onto the sheets.
"You're a real fucking pervert, Unnie. I didn't even touch you. All I did today was hurt you because I hated you so much — so why are you getting off on it? Aren't you even ashamed that you're a woman, same as me?"
"Nngh..."
If everything she'd said to me up until now had been spice — humiliation meant to season the act — this was the real thing. Pure contempt, nothing else. Being degraded in polite speech had wounded my pride as an adult. Being degraded in the casual register of someone talking down to a child felt like having my human dignity stripped away entirely. The feeling of not living up to my age at all — an adult in years only, no different from a little kid in the head. There was nothing good about it, not even as a lie.
"I can't believe you're a woman like me. I'm ashamed that you're my girlfriend."
"Nnh... hh... uhhngh..."
The moment those words came out — words I couldn't just let wash over me, no matter how hard I tried — I burst into tears like a child. I could have taken every other insult. That last one I couldn't bear.
"Y-you can insult me, that's fine... sniff... you can hit me... hhik... that's fine too... just please don't say that last thing... huuuhh..."
I grabbed her arm and clung to it, begging her to take it back. Wasn't that too cruel a thing to say to someone who had no one to look at but her?
But my sobbing didn't move her at all. She raised her hand and brought it down hard — smack! — across the breast already covered in her teeth marks.
"Hngh! Mmph!"
Don't feel it. Please, don't feel it, I told myself, but it was useless. The pleasure that bloomed inside the pain was too good. The spark that shot from the tip of my stiff, swollen nipple was intoxicating.
Just like she'd said — the desire to be hit a little more rose through me like thick smoke.
I clapped both hands over my mouth, but covering it couldn't take back the cry of pleasure that had already escaped. The look in her eyes, which had been merely pitying, began to curdle into something like disgust.
"Who told you you could take your hands off your pussy? You don't even have the basics down, do you?"
"I-I'm sorry... I'll hold it again... I'm sorry..."
Fat tears dropped off my face even as I said it. I felt stupid for not being able to follow even an order as simple as keeping my hands on myself, and I felt wretched that this was what I was being punished for.
Smack. Slap. Smack, smack.
After that she hit my breasts over and over, until the pale skin had flushed as red as a ripe tomato. She had all kinds of ways of doing it — from above, from below, from the side. She even curled her fingers and flicked my stiff nipples with her knuckles.
I couldn't cover my mouth because I was holding myself open, and I screamed with pleasure until I wished I could just cut my own tongue out. Somewhere along the way the sheets had gone past damp and into soaked.
She raised her hand again. I clenched down around nothing on reflex, bracing myself for the pleasure I thought was coming — but the place her merciless hand found wasn't my chest. It was my cheek.
Smack!
My head snapped to the side. My lip must have split; my mouth filled with the taste of blood.
I had never been slapped in the face in my life until today. The pain was one thing. What hurt worse was the feeling of my mind coming apart, collapsing into something wretched and ruined.
The red mark blooming on my cheek was a brand — proof that I would always be beneath Heejin.
"I have more to say, Unnie. You were just pretending to comfort me while you satisfied your own needs. How can a person be like this?"