The Phone Call
Minhi had taken my phone and was hammering away at the screen with rapid taps of her fingers.
“This fucking bitch…”
She kept spitting curses between every few keystrokes, and I flinched hard at each one.
I did nothing. I simply sat upright and polite in the chair, waiting for her to give the phone back.
“This dog-fucking bitch… how dare she hit on my man?? Not once—twice?? This fucking bitch…”
“……Gulp…”
Her reaction made every single thing I did feel dangerous. Breathing. The tiniest shift of my body. Even swallowing. I was being careful with all of it when the soft sound of me swallowing made Minhi’s head snap up.
“Get up.”
“……”
Her voice was pure rage. She stared me down and shoved the phone into my hands.
I took it and carefully scrolled through the chat the two of them had been having.
The messages were nothing but raw, unprintable filth, yet every reply from Eunseo looked terrified—like she genuinely thought the account had been hacked.
“Call that fucking bitch right now.”
“A-ah, Minhi… let’s just stop… that junior didn’t do anything wrong…”
Minhi stepped in close, using her height to look straight down at me.
“Shut your fucking mouth. One more word about another woman out of that hole of yours and I will not let it go. Call that slut. Now.”
“Mi-Minhi…”
“Shut up and dial.”
Her eyes were right in front of mine, coercive and hard. Her fingers cracked, one knuckle after another, like she was already deciding how she would hit me.
I had no choice. I called my junior, Eunseo.
“Speaker.”
“U-uh…”
I tried to lift the phone to my ear. Minhi snatched it, forced it onto speaker, and set it between us.
The ringing went on. Then my university junior Eunseo picked up—crying.
“Hic… hic… Se-senior… is it really you……?”
“Th-that’s me.”
I almost said her name. Right in front of me Minhi’s forehead vein pulsed and twitched.
“Se-senior… those messages earlier weren’t from you, right…? You got hacked, didn’t you… right…?”
“Th-that’s…”
I had no idea what I was supposed to say.
While I hesitated, Minhi grabbed my chin and mouthed the words slowly, deliberately.
“………”
“Senior……??”
Where was I supposed to run? I couldn’t see a single way out.
Even Eunseo, the one person who might have helped me over the phone, was useless now that everything was on speaker.
If I didn’t say exactly what Minhi wanted, I was going to suffer for it right here, right now.
The air around her had gone wrong.
She leaned in and whispered against my ear.
If you don’t want the rest of your life completely fucked, say it. Fast.
Then she held up her own phone so I could see the screen.
Earlier the photo had been mosaicked. Now there was nothing covering it—my blank, broken face, semen painted thick across my body.
“Um… se-senior?? Hello~ hello~ are you there??”
When I stayed silent, Eunseo kept calling for me.
Minhi’s finger hovered over the upload button, ready to put that photo on the internet with a single tap.
Want to spend the rest of your life as a male whore? Keep stalling. I’ll crush you however I have to.
“…… Whore…… bitch….”
“What did you say, senior?? I can’t hear you.”
I would rather die than say those words.
Eunseo had done nothing wrong. She had only tried to help me. Calling her a whore would not come out of my mouth.
“Senior? What did you say? I can’t hear. Please speak a little louder.”
“Wh… wh… whore…… I-I can’t…….”
I was not bold enough to call an innocent person that.
She had come up to me every single day even though I was so passive. I could not say it to her.
“Haa… fuck. I knew you’d pull this.”
Minhi looked at my wet eyes, cursed, and ripped the phone out of my hand.
“Huh? Senior, are you with someone right now?”
“Hey, you fucking bitch. Stop hitting on someone else’s man. You whore-faced slut, who the hell do you think you are, keeping on seducing my man?”
“Ha… senior, are you okay?”
“You dog-fucking bitch, whose man are you hitting on right in front of me?”
She stood right there and poured pure filth at my junior without a second of hesitation.
Eunseo never cursed back. She just kept searching for me in a calm, careful voice, trying to talk past Minhi.
“Senior, you’re listening next to her, right? Are you okay being with a woman like that?”
“Fucking bitch, ignoring me—who the fuck are you hitting on right now?”
Those words only poured gasoline on Minhi.
“Senior, you’re not being held by a woman like that, are you? I’ll come find you right away. Just tell me where you are.”
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut the fuck up!!! Who the hell said you get to take my man!!!”
Whether she had taken the bait or simply snapped, Minhi started screaming into the phone at full volume.
“Really, senior doesn’t like violent women like that, does he? So why are you with her right now?”
“Shut your fucking mouth, you bitch!!!”
Every shout right in front of my face made me flinch and jump.
Minhi held the phone and kept breathing hard, the kind of short, sharp breaths that said she was still climbing higher into rage.
“No manners at all, cursing first without even knowing who you’re talking to, locking someone up—really, being with a criminal-looking bitch like that, senior, are you actually okay?”
Eunseo kept saying exactly the things that would dig under Minhi’s skin.
Minhi’s grip on the phone tightened until the plastic started to creak and crack.
“This dog-fucking bitch… my whole body is itching to go find her right now and rip that cocky mouth of hers clean off…”
“Hehe. And keeping a future murderer right next to you—really, Junhi senior, are you okay? I’ll call the police for you right now.”
Had she always been this good with words?
She let every single curse Minhi threw slide right past her and kept answering as if she were talking only to me, while every sentence was a clean hit on Minhi.
That quiet, almost polite way of insulting her seemed to land harder than anything else. Minhi’s face changed color by color until she looked like a demon, like a yaksha ready to tear something apart.
“Junhi senior… no, we’re not at school right now, so is it okay if I call you Junhi oppa?”
The single word “oppa” from Eunseo made Minhi’s hand open. The phone she had been crushing dropped and hit the floor.
“You fucking bastard!!!!!!! Who the fuck gave you permission to call my oppa with that filthy whore mouth of yours, you dog-disabled, mother-dead, worse-than-a-bug fucking piece of shit!!!!”
“Ugh……”
She screamed into the phone at a volume that hurt, then stomped on it with her full weight and smashed my phone to pieces.
The broken thing only made wet, grinding noises. Minhi kept staring down at it.
“Th… th-that, Mi-Minhi……”
She was still breathing hard, but the pure rage began to drain out of her. The in-and-out of her breath got faster and faster instead.
I was still trying to figure out how to get through this when she grabbed my hand, pulled me out of the room, and walked me into the living room.
I said nothing. I just let her drag me. She sat me down on the sofa.
“Stroke my head……”
She laid her head on my thigh and asked for it in a small voice.
I didn’t speak. I just ran my hand through her hair the way she wanted.
“Hic… hic… mi-mine… oppa is mine… my-my oppa… hic……”
She didn’t seem to care about most of what Eunseo had said. But that last word—“oppa”—had cut her. She lay on my leg and sniffled, shoulders shaking.
“Mine… mine, I can’t give him away… o-oppa is mine. Only I… only I get to call Junhi oppa… fuck… fucking… that bastard… called our oppa ‘oppa’… fuck hic bastard…… I-I’ll kill her…”
Was that one word really that important? I was just exhausted.
Who would have thought a short phone call could leave me this drained?
Minhi, still using my thigh as a pillow, clenched her fist in the fabric of my pants.
“Can’t give him… n-no, I won’t give him… to… other fucking bitches… I won’t……”
“Hoooo… fox-faced bitch.”
I hadn’t even gotten a real call with senior. I hadn’t even properly heard his voice. All that came through was the voice of that insane woman.
“Our puppy’s owner called and he didn’t even answer… really, a puppy that needs proper training.”
I’m right here. I can take better care of him. I can hold him and love him better than anyone…
The jealousy kept rising.
“Our puppy… if our puppy doesn’t recognize his owner and keeps wagging his tail at other women, it hurts so much.”
I looked up at the huge poster I had secretly taken of Junhi-puppy and gently stroked the face in the photo.
“Puppy… puppy… how long are you going to keep wagging that tail at other women… your owner is right here…”
I had planned to approach him slowly, building a tower of trust and faith, taming him carefully… but that plan was dead now.
Someone else was after my puppy.
And she was already one step ahead of me……
—Crack!
I bit down too hard on my lower lip. Blood welled up and ran down.
“Puppy… wait just a little longer… your owner is coming to get you soon♡”
One hand kept stroking the poster on the wall. The other held a thick dog leash.
“Oppa.”
“Yeah.”
“Oppa.”
“Yeah, I-I’m here.”
Those words from earlier kept looping inside my head and would not leave.
Another woman—not me—had called my precious Junhi oppa “oppa.” That single fact refused to disappear.
“Oppaah… oppa is my oppa, right…?”
“Uung…”
Even with his hand stroking my hair like this, something still felt wrong.
Just… just… if I turned my head for even a second, it felt like he might vanish completely.
“Junhi oppa…”
“Yeah.”
“I-I want you to call me by my name too…”
“Okay, Minhi.”
“Say you love me.”
When I asked him to say it, he hesitated for a beat before the words came out.
“I-I love you…”
“Again.”
“I… love you…”
“Again.”
“Lo… ve you.”
“Again.”
“I love you……”
I made him repeat it over and over, but the unease still sat heavy in my chest.
Right now he couldn’t run. He couldn’t go anywhere…
And yet the second I looked away, I kept imagining him slipping off to someone else’s side. So I just held on tighter to the front of his shirt, gripping hard enough that he could never escape.