The Beginning of Fate 3

"You may not have realized it until now, but from here on you might meet people out in the world wearing rings like this. Even then, don't lose your nerve. I'll be right behind you."

With that, we stepped into the club room. Senior Dohyeok hadn't arrived yet, so we waited a little, and before long he opened the door and came in.

"Sorry, kids. I'm a bit late, aren't I? I was just talking with the person who's going to be our group's new member."

"It's already been decided?"

"They're already here. Let me introduce them, then. The last member of our group is... a distinguished senior, Writer Shin Yugyeong. As for this person, she is currently a content producer in the variety department at A Broadcasting, someone who sets the trends—a veteran broadcast writer with experience leading numerous prime-time programs..."

"...That's Mom."

The new member Senior had mentioned was none other than our mother. Her sudden appearance startled me, but it wasn't beyond understanding. For some time now she had been moving between the company and campus, laying the groundwork for projects alongside all sorts of students.

Mom's everyday fashion never changed. Suit skirt, stockings, heeled pumps—I had seen that outfit day after day until it became entirely familiar. I had asked her once whether it was uncomfortable, but she had kept to the look for quite a while, insisting she had to project a senior's dignity.

"I'm only here in a supporting role, sent by the company, but I'll back everything you do with all my heart. So let's give it our all while this runs. Call me whatever feels easy."

We took a moment to introduce ourselves, then moved straight into the idea meeting. The subject of the video hadn't been set, but the genre had: we were to leave a short story on film, something like a narrative advertisement.

Mom, who had said she would only assist, argued her opinions more fervently than anyone. She put campus life forward as the theme, and I didn't like it. Maybe because campus life was exactly what I was living through. Chaerin agreed with me. The subject was too plain, she said; it would be hard to build any special story around it. Senior Dohyeok wore a troubled look the whole time.

"Draw campus life, but not in an ordinary way..."

"...That's a tall order."

"We don't have to do it that way, kids. Was ajumma too quick to jump in?"

I knew well enough that Mom longed for university life. She had dropped out to look after me and my sister when we were little, never getting to enjoy a proper campus life of her own. The problem was that no real story would come. The subject had already appeared in countless movies and dramas.

"...There is one way."

Then Senior Dohyeok slowly opened his mouth. After drawing it out for a long while, his gaze fixed on Mom.

"If you take the lead yourself, Writer."

"...Me?"

Mom was badly flustered, and Chaerin and I were startled along with her. Senior Dohyeok, though, explained without the slightest waver.

"Yes. Senior, your looks wouldn't be the least bit out of place if someone called you a woman in your twenties. If anything, we'd be grateful to have you appear as an actress."

"Th-that's... but I'm only supposed to be helping..."

"The story I had in mind is this."

In front of everyone he laid out the scenario he had thought up. The explanation ran long, but it came down to this: Mom would infiltrate the school disguised as a college student and take down the villain faction on campus.

"I have to be the protagonist... and as a student, at that? ...Not a professor?"

"Because the identity is fabricated."

Mom was torn over the unexpected proposal. Senior Dohyeok's idea was a little strange, and yet it had an odd pull. Still, she would refuse. It was embarrassing, but I knew the reason. Back when she was the youngest writer on staff, she had unintentionally appeared on late-night broadcasts in a number of roles.

I had stumbled across that footage by chance on a video site. To me, at the time, the mother on the screen was far too stimulating. Faced with a lewd image of her I could never have imagined, I ended up getting hard. After she caught me on the verge of masturbating, Mom never once showed her face on a broadcast again. She always dressed modestly, and she tried hard to be an example for me.

"I won't force you. Please think of it as nothing more than one opinion."

Chaerin scratched her head, as if she still didn't quite follow.

"So it's like a spy story? The kind where you run around carrying out missions."

"Not that far. Catching hidden-camera crimes, busting drug-trafficking scenes... a female hero who does work in the public interest. From a broadcasting standpoint, you could say the intent is sound."

Put that way, it made a certain amount of sense. A female-hero protagonist doing public-spirited work, and our mom, who had steadily stacked achievements on her own record and torn down the rotten culture running rampant inside the station. The images overlapped. It seemed as if they might suit each other... and yet.

"I'd like to hear a little more of the details. Step outside with me for a minute?"

Still weighing it, Mom rose and took Senior Dohyeok out of the club room. While we waited for the two of them, I decided to ask Chaerin what she thought.

"Chaerin, what do you think? About Mom taking the lead."

"That's for Auntie to decide. Honestly, her looks surprised me too. More than that—you need to see Baek Jiyeon soon and talk to her. Tell her to stop seeing Nam Geon."

"...I will."

So Chaerin had been worrying about Jiyeon as well.

"And if word gets out that you put the ring on, you'll have to keep a slave's rules too."

"Rules...? What are those?"

"I can't tell you yet. But if, by some chance, talking with Baek Jiyeon doesn't go well... come find me then. From that point on there really is no other way. You'll have no choice but to become my slave on the surface and bring Baek Jiyeon out."

The first time Chaerin told me who Representative Nam Geon really was, and that I was being targeted, it had felt like pure nonsense. To some extent it still did. I had wondered whether this was only role-play, but she was pleading with me in earnest. So I decided to trust her, and to take her advice.

A little later Mom and Senior Dohyeok ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠came back. Mom said she would take the lead role—only, she was embarrassed to give a bad performance in front of her son, so the filming would be done when I wasn't there.

"Good. Then it's settled. Senior Yugyeong and Chaerin will be the leads, I'll handle the filming, and Doyun will take the editing. Thanks for the hard work today. You too, Senior—thank you for your trouble."

Senior Dohyeok said he would write the scenario himself. And so we closed out the first meeting without a hitch and went our separate ways.

The next day I went straight to Jiyeon's house.

When she opened the door, she looked the same as always. Only her expression was no longer as bright as before.

"You're disappointed in me, aren't you, Doyun. I'm sorry. I'll explain everything."

An apologizing Jiyeon was deeply unfamiliar. She had been as much a model student as I was, and in all her life she had never done anything she ought to have been sorry for. I pulled her into a tight embrace, and we stayed like that for a long while, feeling each other's warmth.

"...A while back, an SNS modeling offer came in through the boss. The condition was that I'd shoot in clothes a little more revealing than what I usually wore."

I remembered. It had come up the day Jiyeon and I were on a video call.

"Of course I turned it down, so the SNS shoot was dropped. But after that the boss said this—what if it wasn't for upload? What if I tried shooting something purely for my boyfriend..."

The moment it was framed as being for me, Jiyeon accepted at once. She wore clothes with a little less fabric than usual, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and President Joo Chaebin—Noona Chaebin—photographed every bit of it. Then, from some point on, personal shoots outside the modeling work became part of the ordinary routine. Noona Chaebin began demanding all kinds of poses.

"Sometimes I'd lift my skirt a little.... Sometimes I'd kneel and lick an ice cream with my tongue.... And standing up, splitting my legs straight into a vertical split..."

"Y-you don't have to tell me that much."

Jiyeon had felt something wrong about shoots like those, but she followed without much protest, thinking that someday she would show me the photos. She said that from around then, she thought she had changed a little.

Whenever the work was finished, Noona Chaebin took her out drinking, just the two of them, on the pretext of hearing her worries. Jiyeon was weak to alcohol, and in her cups she ended up spilling our sex life. Thanks to that, Noona Chaebin could see exactly where our problem lay.

I don't know precisely what was said. What is certain is that Noona Chaebin used the drink to coax her. She gaslit a Jiyeon who knew nothing, and turned the two of us into her experiment.

Then one day, just as a shoot had ended and she was about to leave, Representative Nam and a man she had seen before came to the studio. The man was someone Noona Chaebin called oppa, and Jiyeon said she didn't know his true identity either. In front of the representative, Noona Chaebin took her clothes off one piece at a time and had her oppa put them away.

From there it was as I had already known. Unable to remember the counseling properly through the drink, Jiyeon remembered only the sex between Representative Nam and Noona Chaebin with perfect clarity.

"...Right in front of me, the representative and the boss devoured each other. I never knew he was that kind of man. In front of me he was endlessly kind. But in front of him the boss did nothing but scream and pass out, over and over. Even foaming at the mouth, shouting that she was grateful..."

It was viciously stimulating.

Having witnessed sex that chased nothing but pleasure past the point of belief, Jiyeon found the sight engraved in her mind. And there, in front of Jiyeon trembling head to toe, Noona Chaebin recommended Representative Nam's Private Lessons.

"I was scared, so I kept shaking my head. Then the boss said I'd end up accepting it anyway. That I was no different."

That day Jiyeon staggered home. She masturbated so violently that a moment's experience ought to have been wiped clean away. The result was the same. If anything, the memory of that day stayed more vivid, and it ruled her mind.

"I wasn't in my right mind.... Just walking into the studio, that scene kept coming back. That's why I asked for sex every time we met, Doyun..."

For weeks, she said, she stayed in that heightened state. And I, pathetic as it was, never once caught on to what was eating at her. While she was on the phone with Noona Chaebin, saying she hadn't come even once, I was dead asleep, oblivious to the world.

Little by little her everyday life came apart. Whenever she went out and came home she had to masturbate to settle the excitement, lying in bed and repeating that relief until she fell asleep.

...There was nothing to do but accept it. Just as Noona Chaebin had predicted, Jiyeon applied herself for three lessons to relieve her sex drive. A lecture on sexual technique had only ever been the surface reason.

"S-still, that is absolutely not your fault. The fault is all mine. I'm sorry.... I did everything wrong."

Having heard all of it, I said nothing. The feeling I'd had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the first day I saw Representative Nam rose to the surface again.

An overwhelming powerlessness. A sense of defeat.

He had toyed with both of us in the palm of his hand, and still we hadn't managed to resist even once. How many people in the world could work human instinct this skillfully, and play with it like this?

"Jiyeon, let's go back. To how we were a few months ago. If we do it now, we'll be all right."

"...Yeah. I don't want to regret anymore. I don't want to be ruled by lust."

"That's the right call. Thank you, Jiyeon.... Truly."

"Ravish me until the memory of it is blown somewhere far away... Doyun."

She spread her already aroused pussy with her own hands and bared the mouth of her cunt. I drove my hips with everything I had, and Jiyeon answered by clenching around my cock as if she meant to twist it off.

"Pound me harder—cum inside and fill me up, Doyuuun...! Rougher... I think I'm gonna come too, nnngh...!"

We crashed our overheated feelings together and tangled our bodies. Even in the middle of the kiss, Jiyeon let vulgar moans spill, doing whatever she could to drag my excitement higher.

"Jiyeon...! I'm—again...! Ngh... I'm coming...!"

Sworn not to leave her to be ravaged by another man any longer, I painted her insides white. I poured into her every drop of semen I had to give, and then, spent, I simply fell asleep.

...How much time had passed?

I had dozed off at Jiyeon's without meaning to, and I jerked awake to check the clock. Evening was already slipping past. She was still sleeping soundly beside me. And just ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠then, Jiyeon's Character Info was flickering.