Prologue
"I'll have a cafe latte, two pumps of syrup."
I said it while sitting in the café, scrolling through my messages on social media.
"Isn't coffee a bit much at this hour?"
The woman getting up from the chair across from me was Yu-bin, my girlfriend, whom I'd met at a meeting with one of our company's clients.
"Mm-hmm..."
While I gave a half-hearted reply, Yu-bin had apparently already ordered, because she came back holding the restaurant pager. In the brief silence that followed, she was the first to speak. Had it been bothering her all along?
"...So, did the morning meeting wrap up okay?"
"Yeah, well, it's a recurring thing anyway, so we just went over the nitpicky details and finished up."
Two years in, it wouldn't have been strange for us to hit a rut, though if anything, she was the one who accommodated me more.
Unlike me, who never took my eyes off my phone, Yu-bin kept trying to look at my face and meet my eyes throughout the conversation. Maybe I felt a little guilty, because I took a long sip of my drink, set it down, and put my phone away.
"Mm... I was hoping to get the tiramisu."
"Huh? You should've said so when we ordered. ...Want me to get it now?"
"No, the thing I wanted wasn't available anyway. They're always out of it whenever we come here~ If that's how it is, they should just take it off the menu."
"Right~ ... Well, there are plenty of other places that sell tiramisu besides here."
"This place makes it from scratch, so it's good."
"Aww, is that so~?"
Yu-bin said that as she carefully poked my face with her finger. If a stranger saw us, they'd probably think we were just old friends.
"Oh right, I have plans later."
"...At this hour?"
Five in the afternoon. It wasn't exactly late.
"Yeah, around seven? I'm just stopping by for a bit."
Yu-bin's expression seemed to harden into something I couldn't quite read, like she was trying to hide her irritation. I turned my eyes back to my phone.
"Still... you could've told me in advance."
"Sorry... I only just heard about it too."
"Who is it? Si-eun?"
"No, just..."
Yu-bin started to say something more, then just closed her mouth.
"What time will you be done? I can wait at your place. Actually, if it's nearby, why don't you come to mine?"
I almost answered that I'd probably be tired if I drank, but I just said okay. I didn't want to bring up a topic that would turn into a fight.
Once she heard my answer, Yu-bin picked up the buzzing pager and got up to get our drinks.
Beep, beep, beep. Bzzt.
Beep-beep-beep-beep. Bzzt.
I clung to my fading consciousness and punched in the passcode one digit at a time, but the entry keypad kept blaring that it was wrong.
Again, one digit at a time.
The door flew open.
Had the alcohol soaked not just my brain but my whole body too?
The fingers that had been pressing the passcode one by one were still hovering in the air.
"You've been drinking, huh?"
I wondered if she couldn't tell just by looking, if she was being sarcastic for no reason. But my head was just, just too heavy, and when I lost my balance and stumbled, she caught me cleanly as I fell.
"Mmm... baaabe."
"Oh my, you really must be drunk if you're actually calling me that."
She slid both hands under my armpits, hoisted me up, and carefully laid me down on the living room sofa.
"Want some water? You're completely wasted."
I tried to answer, but another wave of pain crashed through my head, so I ignored her and closed my eyes.
When I opened my eyes again, I sat up, parched. My body was slightly damp with sweat. I wanted to run straight to the bathroom and shower, but I ached all over, probably from the hangover, so I held a cup under the water dispenser.
Gulp gulp.
After downing about two cups of cold water, I felt my vision gradually clear. I sat on the sofa and, with my eyes still unaccustomed to the dark, fumbled around until I found a phone and turned on the screen. I winced at the sudden brightness and lowered it.
Only then did I realize the phone in my hand wasn't mine. My wallpaper was a cat lying on its back; Yu-bin's was a photo of the two of us together. Seeing Yu-bin on the screen with one arm around me, rubbing her cheek against mine, made me feel awkward for no reason. I swiped, and the lock screen appeared.
Then I glanced at Yu-bin sleeping beside me.
Gulp.
It was only natural to be curious about things like this when you were dating someone.
Doesn't she ever hear about this kind of thing at work? I thought to myself, and wondered for a moment what the password might be.
"...My birthday?"
The screen buzzed.
"Huh, what, it's not... Then, hmm..."
9071
"Oh?"
I'd just entered her birthday reversed, and when the lock opened, I was momentarily dumbfounded.
"...You're so simple, Lee Yu-bin."
Thinking that, I let my thumb wander across the unlocked screen for a moment, then opened the gallery. Photos from the private café we'd gone to last time. Huh? When did she take this one? I kept scrolling, then froze.
"...What is this?"
I stared blankly at the screen before finally tearing my eyes away.
Only then did I notice my hands trembling.
On the screen were photos of me sleeping naked and completely unaware, photos of me lying there with my legs stretched straight and my pussy held open by a thumb and forefinger, videos several minutes long, text messages with clients, and KakaoTalk conversations I'd had with a friend just a couple of days ago.
Bang. It felt like I'd been struck in the head.
Disgust crept up, slowly, steadily. I wanted to wake Yu-bin sleeping in front of me right then and there, make a scene, get angry, demand to know what this was.
When I tapped one of the seven-minute videos, the sound that suddenly burst out was so loud that I hurriedly lowered the volume.
The video contrasted Yu-bin's breathing, loud enough to grate on me, with my peacefully sleeping face, my legs held straight and my pussy spread open. Every explicit angle had been captured.
I glanced over. Yu-bin was still asleep. I tried to calm my mind, churning with anger and resentment. What had the last two years even been? I couldn't believe I'd been dating this crazy bitch.
I flinched. I tapped a photo at the bottom of the screen and checked the time displayed at the top.
3:17 a.m.
"Huh."
She'd taken them while changing my clothes after I'd passed out, too drunk to move. Tears welled in my eyes from the sense of betrayal. I was so angry I felt like I could die, so why were the tears coming first? Well, of course it was a shock. My girlfriend of two years had turned out to be a creep who secretly photographed me naked while I slept.
I hurriedly got dressed, threw on an outer layer, gathered my things, and was searching around for my phone when—
"Not sleeping? What are you doing?"
"..."
"...I've been awake for a while."
"Lee Yu-bin..."
"Yeah?"
Her tone and expression were so utterly nonchalant, so completely different from the person I knew, that I thought maybe she'd been a psychopath all along, or... what was it, dissociative identity disorder? My head felt like it was spiraling into panic.
"Do-ha, can you sit down here for a second?"
"I have nothing more to say to you."
"No... come on, Do-ha."
Yu-bin blocked my path to the shoe rack.
Huh, had she always been this tall?
"Y-you... fuck... y-you... I-I'm g-going to r-report you."
Tears leaked out again as I spoke. Emotions I couldn't tell apart—fear or fury—churned together, and the words came out with my tongue tripping over itself. Even to my own ears, I sounded pathetic.
Yu-bin stared at me for a long while as I sputtered incoherently, then finally spoke.
"Ah, haha... Fuck. It's all ruined."
She said it as she swept her hair back with one hand, and she looked genuinely, thoroughly annoyed.
She wasn't the person I knew. Her voice was still soft, certainly, but the words coming out of her mouth were ones I'd never heard in that voice, never even imagined.
Alarm bells went off in my head.
They were screaming danger.
I stepped back, one step at a time.
Every step I took back, Yu-bin took another step forward. Before I knew it, she was right in front of me.
"...Do-ha, do you love me?"
"H-huh? Wha, wha, what?"
"Pfft... Guess not, huh?"
Thud. Pain exploded through my lower abdomen.