True Feelings
1.
I was bathing with two women anyone would call beautiful.
On paper alone, it was the kind of situation any man would envy—but the reality was nothing of the sort.
Their hair hung in wild tangles. Faces were filthy with blood, tears, and snot. Bodies looked as if someone had doused them in red liquid, flecked here and there with vomit and bile. On top of that came the reek of rotting corpses, the copper stench of blood, the sewer stink—every foul odor imaginable mixed together. Far from getting hard, the whole scene was enough to make a man wilt on the spot.
“……Who wants to wash first?”
“You go first. You’re the only one who’s still halfway decent.”
“Alright.”
Refusing once would have been polite, but I was too filthy to bother. I accepted at once.
Shaaaaa—
Hot water hit me and the fatigue that had piled up began to melt away. A tingling rush ran through me; a soft groan slipped out.
When I washed my hair, red liquid streamed down my body. I scrubbed the scraps of flesh and blood from my face, then rubbed every inch of myself hard. Once I was clean from head to toe, I headed for the tub I had already filled.
Splash—
The water was hot enough to sting the skin. I sucked in a sharp breath and sank in up to the shoulders in one go. Heat flooded through me; the knotted muscles slowly uncoiled.
“Huuu…”
I let out the breath I had been holding, drowsiness settling in.
I had thought I would never bathe again for the rest of my life. I never expected the chance to come this soon.
Today, at least, I’m really grateful to Jo Hee-ran.
One of the things that had surprised me when I first came up to the fourth floor was this huge bathtub. Kang Tae-ik never would have had a hobby like this, so Jo Hee-ran must have installed it. After all, the real owner of the building wasn’t Kang Tae-ik—it was Jo Hee-ran.
“Excuse me?”
While I was lost in thought, An Ga-hee slipped quietly into the water beside me. The sensation of water against my neck made me turn my head.
Wet hair. A body glimpsed beneath the surface with not a single ounce of spare flesh. Her breasts were small, yet the line that ran from her waist down to her hips was lethally perfect.
“Uuugh, this feels so good…”
She stretched luxuriously, then leaned her body against me. The soft pressure on my right shoulder felt nice, but I was too exhausted for any real reaction.
I was still savoring the afterglow and the faint eroticism when a continuous scrubbing sound started behind me.
“Ugh… uhhk…”
I twisted around. So-hye was scouring her hands and arms with a shower towel so hard the sound carried all the way over.
Splash—
I shot up and went to her. When I grabbed her wrist, the backs of her hands and her arms were bright red. A moment later and she would have drawn blood.
“Uhhk…”
I brushed aside the hair hanging over her lowered face. Tears fell steadily from bloodshot eyes; her jaw trembled. She still clutched the shower towel, staring down at her hands.
“So-hye.”
At my call she slowly lifted her head. The moment our eyes met she let the towel drop and opened her arms. The helpless gesture made something in me give way; I pulled her into an embrace.
“Hic… waaaaaah!”
Once she was in my arms, So-hye wailed as if her heart were breaking. Both shoulders shook; she kept gulping huge breaths as if she couldn’t get enough air.
She stayed like that for a long while, then quieted only when her body began to cool. I gently loosened my hold and eased her back by the shoulders. She had fallen asleep—probably from sheer exhaustion.
“Hand her over. I’ll wash her and put her to bed.”
An Ga-hee looked at her with something like pity, then took So-hye away. I let out a long sigh and sank back into the tub. The water had gone cold.
After finishing the bath and drying my hair, I stepped out.
“……Want some?”
I had gone to the kitchen for water and found An Ga-hee already there, sipping whiskey she had poured into a glass. Biscuits and chocolate sat on the table—things So-hye had set aside.
“Yeah. Pour me one.”
I sat across from her. She set a glass in front of me and filled it with the amber liquid.
Gulp—
The whiskey burned down my throat, thick with the scent of oak. I immediately popped a piece of chocolate into my mouth; the sweetness and the liquor mixed into something almost ecstatic.
The mood that had sunk a little lifted again with the alcohol.
“Why are you moping like that? So-hye, sure—but this isn’t like you.”
“…Hey. I may be a selfish bitch, but I’m not cold enough to turn my back on someone who just risked her life fighting beside me.”
“That so? Unexpected.”
When we first met she had seemed the purest opportunist, selfishness taken to the extreme. Apparently she had far more heart than I had given her credit for.
“I wasn’t always like this. I used to get along with everyone pretty well, actually.”
“So what changed?”
The sudden dive into old stories made sense. There are days when you just need to spit out whatever’s sitting in your gut. For An Ga-hee, today was clearly one of those days.
“There was this girl I was close with. The guy she liked confessed to me.”
“And?”
“I wasn’t interested, and I didn’t want to lose a friend, so I turned him down. You know what happened the next day? Rumors exploded all over school that I was a slut.”
She gave a bitter smile and downed the whiskey in one go. That had to hurt her throat—she must have been that frustrated.
“I kept wondering what bastard started it. Turns out it was her. ‘The bitch who hit on her friend’s crush.’ ‘Slut.’ That kind of shit. I never did any of it.”
“So what happened after that?”
“What do you think? If my parents had been decent people they might have at least talked to the school. But mine never gave a damn about me. They both worked, sure, but it wasn’t just physical absence—they were completely checked out emotionally.”
Could people like that even exist? A father, maybe. But a mother who had carried the child in her own body?
“Then what were you to them?”
I asked, puzzled. She let out a heavy sigh and continued.
“Like a trophy, I guess? Proof to the outside world that their marriage was fine. That was how they treated me. Outside of early childhood I barely remember ever talking to either of them.”
If that was true, the way her personality had twisted made a certain amount of sense. Parents are supposed to be a child’s mirror, after all.
Of course there were exceptions. Kids who suffered domestic violence sometimes grew up to become the exact opposite of their fathers.
“I did everything I could not to turn out cold like them. But when all that effort got me was that kind of shit… fuck, it was disgusting. So from then on I stopped giving anyone the benefit of the doubt.”
“Using whatever you could use?”
“Yeah. It was easier. Part of me even started understanding why my parents acted the way they did. Of course it was just a defense mechanism born from emotional neglect.”
“You’re pretty good at looking at yourself objectively.”
“You have to know yourself well if you want to use other people well.”
She shrugged and popped another piece of chocolate into her mouth, chewing as she spoke.
“After that, life got pretty comfortable. My parents didn’t care about me, but they cared a lot about how they looked. So they weren’t stingy with money. I did whatever I wanted, got into art school, and just kept living like that.”
“You went to art school?”
“Why? Surprised? Figure a selfish bitch like me would be weak at something emotional like painting?”
“Yeah.”
My blunt answer made her mutter “asshole” under her breath.
“It’s the opposite, actually. Living by calculation and putting on an act all the time meant I often couldn’t express real feelings. But on a canvas I could be honest. That’s what got me interested in painting, and eventually I ended up at an art university.”
She added that she had talent too.
“……I don’t even know why I’m suddenly dumping all this on you. I haven’t told anyone since it happened.”
She covered her flushed face with both hands. Looking embarrassed, she exhaled, picked up the whiskey bottle, refilled the empty glass, and held it out to me.
Clink—
We toasted and each tipped the liquor down our throats. She set her empty glass down with a sharp sound.
“This is all that bitch So-hye’s fault. Because of her I’ve gone all soft and emotional. This isn’t who I am.”
“Maybe this is who you really are. Everything you’ve shown so far could just be the mask.”
“Could be. But you know how it is—wear a mask long enough and you can’t take it off anymore. You can’t even tell them apart.”
She smiled bitterly and turned away. Looking at the bed where So-hye lay sleeping, she took another sip of whiskey. The sight was almost pitiful.
An Ga-hee and So-hye’s relationship had never been good. More precisely, whenever So-hye tried to get closer, An Ga-hee seemed to push her away.
So-hye, raised drowning in love at home. An Ga-hee, ignored by her parents and then ostracized at school.
They stood at complete opposite poles.
If you looked closely, So-hye was the peak—a flower raised in a greenhouse.
An Ga-hee was the bottom—a tree clinging to the edge of a cliff.
Of course she found it hard to stomach.
So-hye’s mere existence must have filled An Ga-hee with inferiority. The kinder So-hye was, the more guilt and self-loathing An Ga-hee felt.
And because I had treated So-hye and An Ga-hee differently, that inferiority only grew worse. I didn’t regret it, though.
First impressions and attitudes were completely different. How could I have treated them the same?
Still, I was glad I got to hear these true feelings now. If more time had passed and the emotions had dug deeper, there might have been no way back.
It felt like getting a preventive shot.
So-hye would work through the experience of killing and the guilt that came with it. An Ga-hee would work through her inferiority. After today, a lot of things would probably change.
“……Hey.”
A cold sensation on my hand made me look up. An Ga-hee had somehow come around in front of me and was looking down.
“What?”
“Just for tonight… will you hold me?”
Unsteady eyes. Shoulders slumped. Hard to believe this was the same woman who had been trying to seduce me only a few days ago.
Emotion, alcohol, and the rawness of the early hours—they really were terrifying. I felt that truth anew as I stood up.
“Alright. Let’s go to the innermost room. So-hye might wake up from the noise.”
“……Okay.”
We headed to the bedroom at the end of the hall.
I closed the door quietly and turned around. She sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed. Her face, flushed bright red, looked almost cute. She fidgeted with her fingers, then lifted her head a little and pleaded in a small voice.
“Um… this is my first time, so… be gentle?”
If this was all an act, she deserved a Best Actress award.
“Kyaa!”
I pushed An Ga-hee’s shoulders and laid her back on the bed. Black hair spilled out, forming a shape like a flower.
“Don’t worry.”