Eating and Being Eaten (1)
That night, I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, as if I'd been knocked unconscious. When something is gnawing at my mind, sleep usually refuses to come — but that day, both my body and my heart were too thoroughly worn out. It had also been the day I experienced sex with a woman for the very first time, through Teacher Ah-hyun's hands.
By morning, after sleeping it off, my thoughts had settled somewhat. The idea that my mother was locked away in the Annex at this very moment, being violated, still drove a knife through my chest — but I was able to think about the situation more calmly than yesterday. For one thing, I couldn't guarantee my deduction was correct. Thirty mothers collectively selling their bodies to boys barely older than their own children — it sounded utterly unreal. And yet, from another angle, it seemed entirely possible precisely because they were mothers. When I weighed the size of the hopes my parents had pinned on me against the size of the support they could actually give me, my mother offering her body to make me a doctor wasn't so impossible after all. And were there really only thirty such mothers in this whole country?
I wondered if the academy was being too careless. Even if hiding the families' faces, and blocking my ID from viewing my mother's face, were measures taken to conceal the fraud — could something like that stay hidden for nearly a year on such flimsy precautions alone? In reality, I'd caught on within a month, and the Annex group kids seemed to already know whose son I was. But then again — so what if they knew? My mother hadn't been violated by force; she had offered herself willingly. If I truly couldn't bear this situation, I could run out of this academy. But then my mother's sacrifice would all become meaningless.
Still, all of this agonizing rested on the premise that my deduction was right. Maybe the twenty-nine slaves were simply prostitutes the academy had hired with money, maybe Han Mi-jung wasn't Seh-hwan's mother, and maybe my own mother was living an ordinary life at home with my father at this very moment. Suddenly I missed her with an almost maddening intensity. I decided I would call her.
Smartphones were forbidden, but there was a public phone on the first floor. I had to log my name and who I was calling, but that was no real problem. I hurried downstairs, picked up the receiver, and dialed. It was eleven in the morning. The line rang for a long while before my mother answered with a "Hello?" — and her voice, the first I'd heard in a month, sounded so beautiful I nearly wept.
"Mom, it's me."
"Yes, sweetheart. I was just thinking I should call you, but I kept putting it off, worried it might interrupt your studying. Everything okay?"
"Yeah. How about you, Mom?"
"I'm fine, of course. Are you eating properly?"
"Yeah..."
The kind of predictable exchange any mother and son would trade followed. Then I thought I heard someone's voice nearby. I couldn't make out the words, but it sounded like a man's voice.
"Is someone with you?"
"Oh — a customer."
"Ah..."
At this hour, Mom would be at the salon, so a male customer being there was nothing strange.
But then a sharp, percussive sound — a smack — came through the receiver. Over the phone I couldn't tell exactly what it was, but it wasn't a sound a hair salon should produce. And then came the laughter of not one but several men.
"What was that sound?"
"Hm? Oh, nothing. It's the TV. I've got a variety show on."
That, too, was a perfectly plausible answer. But something about Mom's voice was off — unnatural. It trembled faintly, as if... as if she were talking while walking, or running.
"Wonjoong, Mom's a little busy right now, so I'll call you this evening. You'll pick up, right?"
"Yeah, okay."
"Good, talk to you later then."
"Yeah..."
Somehow she hung up in a hurry. Honestly, even that wasn't strange — if anything, the length of the call was stranger. If she had a customer and was working, Mom wouldn't have answered at all, or she'd have said she'd call back and hung up immediately. Of course, maybe she talked a little longer because her son had called after so long. Still, something felt off. And decisively, just before the call cut off, I heard a man's voice. I might have misheard — but to my ears, it came through unmistakably.
"Who said you could hang up, you fucking bitch."
The instant the line went dead, I dialed the salon's number. I held the receiver for a long time, but no one answered.
Back in my room, lying on my bed, I couldn't calm down. It's nothing. I misheard it, I kept telling myself — but in my head, over and over, played the image of Jang Tae-joo and his gang surrounding my mother mid-call, violating her together. What I couldn't understand was this: every time that image surfaced, blood kept rushing to my cock. I knew of the citadel of perversion called NTR — netorare — but I had never once imagined myself in it. I couldn't tell whether this feeling wringing out my chest was rage or arousal. But I couldn't erase the scene that kept replaying in my head.
I tried to study, but nothing would stick. I lay on the bed writhing in torment as the hours slipped by, and before I knew it, dinner time had arrived. Having not eaten a single meal all day, my stomach growled as I headed down to the dining hall. There were fewer people than usual. The boys eating here and there seemed oddly quiet today, too. Today was the day of embracing the slaves, so some of them had surely already done the deed. Which meant some of them might have been fucking my mother until just now — or would be fucking her shortly — and the thought made nausea surge up so suddenly I couldn't take another bite. I dumped my half-eaten food and went back up to my room.
At seven-thirty in the evening, Proctor Yoo Chan-hyeong came to my door. Has this bastard had my mother too? These days, every person I laid eyes on looked like nothing but a man who'd violated my mother. As I followed the proctor toward the Annex, he explained a number of things to me. The time limit was until midnight tonight. Until then, I could make the woman of my choice do anything. The woman was, quite literally, a slave, and would obey any order absolutely. If she refused to comply with even the most trivial command, I could report it to the proctor or write it in her slave profile on the intranet. From midnight tonight, a review board would open on the slaves' profiles, where we could freely post anything we wanted to share with the other students.
Ji-young — the woman I'd chosen — had a room on the second floor. Her profile surfaced in my mind again, along with the face from the video of her being raped as she wept. She had been begging someone she called "honey" to stop, to please stop. If my guess was right, the man holding the camera was probably her husband. How had a forty-four-year-old female teacher — an English education graduate, my mother's age — ended up in a place like this?
The door opened, and Ji-young appeared. She wore a white off-shoulder minidress that clung to her body. Her shoulder-length hair was swept neatly to one side, baring her forehead, just as it had been in the video. She looked less like a schoolteacher than like a woman working in one of those establishments you see in movies and dramas. She greeted me with a smile, but something about her looked worn out and exhausted, as if the smile were forced.
Once Proctor Yoo had left, I entered the room with Ji-young. It was the same size and layout as Teacher Ah-hyun's room, but somehow it lacked any sense of lived-in warmth. Ji-young guided me to the living room sofa and seated me, then knelt before me, pressed her forehead to the floor, and bowed deeply.
"My name is Ji-young. I will serve you devotedly so that you may enjoy your time, Master. Please use me freely, in any way you wish."
So this is how it works... My head was so full of thoughts of my mother that whatever Ji-young did, it felt as though my mother must be doing the same thing somewhere right now, and that pained me — but watching a woman my mother's age kneel in absolute submission before me, calling me Master in the most respectful register, was also undeniably arousing. Little by little, my mother faded from my mind, and the Ji-young before my eyes took her place. This was the "very great reward."
"Look up at me."
Somehow, casual speech didn't come easily. Ji-young raised her head. It was a beautiful face — so beautiful I almost wondered why my turn had come. Cold and aloof in impression, yet possessed of a certain sensual allure. If you passed her on the street, nine out of ten men would find their eyes stolen.
"Stand up."
Ji-young stood straight, hands folded in front of her, her gaze lowered to the floor as if embarrassed. The tight dress let me take in every curve of her figure in full. She was slender overall, with a nipped-in waist and hips that flared just enough. Her breasts couldn't be called large, but I already knew from the video that they were beautifully shaped and firm.
Which means this woman is someone's mother here at this academy, too, right? Which means that bastard Yoon-seok might be fucking my mother at this very moment.
The pity I'd been feeling vanished in an instant, and rage filled the space it left behind. Maybe this was how it had always been meant to be. Strip away the hypocrisy and the pretense, and hadn't I, in the end, spilled my seed into Teacher Ah-hyun's hand while watching this bastard's mother being trampled?
I rose from the sofa and walked toward her.