Chapter 18
The basic human rights any person should have were no longer mine. Born in the twenty-first century, unless I'd committed a crime, I should have been entitled to the respect and treatment of an ordinary person—but I couldn't expect that in this house.
Maybe someone who had never known freedom from the start wouldn't understand, but a person who had spent twenty-five years self-aware and making her own choices couldn't become someone who submitted to violence in only a month or two.
It was no different from taking a dolphin born and raised in the sea and keeping it in a cramped aquarium. No matter how attentively and carefully you cared for it, whether it would live or die was unknown.
I was sure that if things kept going like this, I'd eventually try to bite my tongue and kill myself.
I was enduring it all on the single thought that someday I could escape this house. It was the greatest hope I could create for myself, and the psychological dependence that hope alone gave me was considerable.
It wasn't that my emotions had disappeared. They had only shrunk back in the face of repeated violence. Anger, resentment—anything that might look like defiance in front of her wasn't allowed, so I'd simply switched those feelings off as if flipping a switch.
As I stared through unfocused eyes at her silhouette looking down at me, the emotions knotted in my chest tightened painfully.
"Hup."
For some reason, it felt like I had to. As if my body was preparing for what was about to happen before my head could, even though there was no more room to lean back, I gathered my strength.
Crunch.
There was a sound like fruit splitting. I saw blood streaming down under Yu-bin's nose. Her expression looked calmer than mine, even though I was the one who had just smashed her nose.
For about three seconds, Yu-bin's expression stayed frozen. As if she couldn't quite understand what had happened, she wiped under her nose with her hand, then let out a sigh that was almost a lament, her face rigid.
"Ha."
Yu-bin's eyes narrowed. I bit down on the fingers of the hand she slowly reached out, her face full of betrayal.
Maybe I hadn't put enough strength into my jaw, because Yu-bin's expression didn't so much as twitch, which only deepened the terror.
"Eek...! Ngh, ngh...! Hic!"
My body shook and shuddered. The crying wouldn't stop. Yu-bin grabbed my shoulders as I fled to the corner of the bed.
"What's wrong, hm?"
"Ghk...! Hic...! Ngh..."
She kept holding my shoulders and shaking me, but my gaze stayed fixed on the floor. Because if I met her eyes, my heart felt like it would stop at any moment.
"...you fucking bitch."
As expected, my eyes squeezed shut when the slap struck my cheek.
"You fucking bitch, are you insane?"
I envied hermit crabs. Didn't a hermit crab at least have a home to run to? I resented my situation, with not a single step to retreat. Curled up, I wrapped my arms around my head and braced for what was coming.
"Ah, seriously, I was going to let today slide."
My body wouldn't calm down. Trembling excessively, I glared up at Yu-bin. Yu-bin looked down at me like I was ridiculous.
"Ha ha..."
Yu-bin let out a hollow laugh. Her face stayed exactly the same. Something about it was chilling. She didn't wipe the blood running from her nose; instead, as her tongue lapped at it, I caught sight of sharp canines between her lips.
As Yu-bin came toward me on her knees across the mattress, I kicked at her. She snatched my ankle, and with the force of her yanking it back, my whole body toppled over.
Pinning me down with her knee as I floundered on the bed, Yu-bin stared at me without a word. Her eyes were so eerily cold that for a moment my body went rigid, as if dead, and wouldn't move.
Leaving me like that, Yu-bin walked out of the room.
Usually in these situations, she came back carrying cold restraints or a strap-on dildo or something. Whatever it was, I knew this wasn't a good situation, so I crawled on my belly behind the curtain and hid.
*
I'd been sure there was no problem, but had I misread things? Do-ha and I kept going off track like this, once in a while. I didn't know whether she understood how I felt or not, and every time it happened, I burned up inside.
I gathered the things I'd bought to use when punishing Do-ha, one by one. In one hand I carried a leather whip with a paddle at the end. When I entered the room, it was empty again—she'd hidden somewhere.
Normally I might have found it cute, but not now. As I headed toward the master bedroom, what had happened earlier kept coming back to me, and the more I thought about it, the more irritated I got.
I wasn't planning to tie her up. How far could she run from here anyway? Watching Do-ha flee with a terror-stricken face was entertaining in its own way.
When I pulled back the curtain, she startled like a cat and clung to the fabric with her hands, so I shook it this way and that until I finally peeled her off. I didn't mind doing it on the floor, but I threw her onto the bed, figuring I'd be considerate of Do-ha's germaphobia.
"Hic... eek, eek...!"
Do-ha's eyes went up and down as she watched me put on the strap-on dildo. I'd chosen a size a little bigger than what I usually used—was she scared?
Do-ha was crawling frantically on her stomach when I grabbed her by the hair, and she wet herself on the bed with a long stream. That sight turned me on like crazy, so I immediately thrust into Do-ha's small hole.
I couldn't feel anything physically, but hearing her pained crying beneath me, I felt like I was reaching a mental orgasm. When I squeezed her neck tighter with my forearm, I heard her agonized sounds breaking off in fits.
It was a little disappointing that I couldn't see her face with her lying face down, but the sight of Do-ha from behind—impaled on my silicone dildo, being brutally raped—was truly obscene. Enough that I'd never get tired of it, even if we stayed like this forever.
"Attention."
"Hic...! Eek...!"
When I smacked Do-ha's ass with my palm—smack, smack—she raised her hips high, still held by the hair, and straightened her legs and back. She was so cute it made my head spin.
Her ass, red handprints on white skin, was so pitiful and lovable that I kneaded it. While I worked my hips hard, Do-ha let out moans closer to pain than pleasure, but when I ground against her womb, twisting my hips this way and that, she definitely reached climax.
Squelch. When I pulled the dildo out, Do-ha's ass and hips stayed raised in the air, her thighs trembling, and I couldn't resist the urge to tease. So I told her that if she lowered her hips, I'd pull out all her teeth, and then I pushed my tongue into Do-ha's pussy.
While I moved my tongue, I supported Do-ha's hips with my hands so it wouldn't be too hard for her. Hmm, was I being too lenient?
The inside of Do-ha's vagina was so warm and soft that just caressing it felt like I might come. While she reached climax quickly on my tongue, I held her hips and didn't let go, savoring every bit of it.
The moment her hips touched the bed, Do-ha twisted like a bug and gasped for breath, looking as if she might pass out at any second. I grabbed her hair harder and slapped her cheeks a few times until her eyes focused again.
Do-ha, naked and prostrating herself while stealing glances at me, was truly a sight to behold, but if I let her off again here, she'd obviously develop bad habits. So I picked up the whip I'd brought earlier. See, she's already trying to run.
"H-hngh, st-stop, stooop...! Ah...! It hurts...!"
With the skin of her back and ass split dark red and bleeding, her shrill screams filled the room.
So did the sound of the whip cutting through the air.
"Don't block it—you'll break your fingers."
Do-ha kept passing out even while being hit, so each time I dragged her to the bathroom and poured cold water over her to wake her up.
"Kill... k-kill me please.., hnk, I want to die."
Every word out of her mouth turned my stomach, so without a word I drove my fist into her stomach.
Like that, Do-ha passed out about seven times and barely managed to take thirty lashes. It was far fewer than I'd intended, but seeing her waist and ass, the skin split and caked with dried blood, I thought any more might actually kill her.
When I gathered the dazed Do-ha into my arms, her face twitched and spasmed on one side, like she'd developed a tic. It was clear something had gone wrong in her head, but the sight was actually pretty cute.
Smack, smack.
Every time I kissed her, Do-ha flinched violently like a small animal, and she was the most adorable thing in the world.
This time I brought my tongue to the nape of her neck and licked, tasting salty sweat. I made sure to leave a hickey too.
I toyed with her erect pink nipples with my fingers, tugging them this way and that, and admired Do-ha's expression. For some reason, even after all that torment, there was still a hint of defiance left on her face, and it pissed me off. Should I let this much pass as a tantrum?
"Do-ha."
"..."
"Hey, Bae Do-ha. Answer me."
"...h-huh."
A pained sound. Right, that definitely wasn't an answer. Did she still have some pride left even now? Poor, cute, stupid Do-ha.
I headed to the living room with the largest full-length mirror. From her toes, between her arms and legs, her stomach—Do-ha's mottled body, with not a single spot free of bruises.
The marks on her neck from being choked, the vivid kiss mark beside them. And then I slowly peeled off the eyepatch on the other side.
Do-ha stared blankly at her own reflection in the mirror, and her face gradually filled with despair.
She seemed to have taken quite a shock, crying silently, unable to form words. I held her and pushed her into the cold metal cage lined with potty pads.
She kept banging her head against it—thud, thud—then curled up in one corner, trembling. She looked worse than before.
Well, I was tired, so maybe I'd get some sleep.