The Cost of Devotion
For the first time, we sat facing each other as unni and dongsaeng, sharing drinks and cigarettes. I laid out the rules I had been mulling over in the spare moments at the company. Simply put, on weekdays we would live as Changhee in a sisterly relationship, and on weekends she would become Changnyeo, existing in a master-and-slave, owner-and-servant dynamic.
I told her she could speak freely if anything displeased her or needed adjusting. Surprisingly, she went into great detail about punishments. She wasn’t interested in anything simple or straightforward like a dildo or chastity cage. She wanted the penalties to be far more specific than that. And, interestingly, she viewed praise the same way she viewed punishment. In other words, both the things I considered penalties and the things I considered rewards sounded like punishments to me. Whichever direction it took, her words were soaked in the desire to be abused by me.
“Still, when I want to give you a reward, I will. You don’t get to decide that part either. If you dictate everything on your own terms, it’s no different from you dominating me, and I hate that. I’m not yours. You are mine. Understand?”
At my stern gaze, Changhee’s face crumpled into a frightened expression and she nodded. I quickly brightened and continued.
“Something this fun should have been shared with your unni right away. How could you keep it locked away for so long, you wicked girl? Hehe…”
“I’m truly sorry, Unni. I wanted to tell you sooner, but I was afraid you’d throw me out…”
I could feel that her apology was genuine.
“I understand. If you had told me back then, my first reaction probably would have been to call you a pervert, hehe… Up until recently I thought SM was nothing but deviant behavior myself.”
I emptied my glass and accepted the refill she poured, then kept speaking.
“But not anymore. Through you, Changhee, I feel like my own horizons have widened. I’ve even come to accept, at least to some degree, how addictive it can be. So you don’t need to worry about that. In that sense, I’m actually grateful to you.”
I raised my glass. Changhee lifted hers as well. We clinked them lightly and drank. Then we filled each other’s glasses again.
“Oh, right—about men…”
Changhee paused, chopsticks hovering over the side dishes.
“I’ve ended all of that. I won’t be seeing any men anymore.”
“Really? Is that even possible? You’re a woman too, Changhee…”
“Yes. Please believe me. I’m satisfied now with simply being your woman, Unni. I was curious about what it felt like with a man, so I did some bad things behind your back, but now that I know, I don’t need one. If you would occasionally take on the man’s role for me…”
Her face was flushed with embarrassment as she stole a glance at me. The small smile playing at the corner of her mouth told me she was confident I would agree. The fact that I was even willing to create opportunities to play the man for her sake made me feel strangely grateful.
“I can certainly do that much, but can a real man’s cock and a dildo ever feel the same? A long time ago at Delma I overheard a CD girl saying she loved it so much with men that she did it almost every day.”
“I’ve talked with people like that at the cross-dressing café too. She said there are surprisingly many. But I’m not one of them. I was simply so curious that I couldn’t hold back and slept with a few men, that’s all. I could never do anything so shameless as going back and forth between you and other men, Unni. From almost the moment I moved in here, I was already completely lost in you.”
She smiled again, bashful and bright. Even that smile was beautiful. In the roughly eight months since she had come to live with me, Changhee had become a woman in whom Lee Chang-jun no longer existed. Even when the occasional trace of that old self appeared, it only made me think of Changhee. It was a collaborative masterpiece created by her endless desire and the wicked witch that lived inside me.
“This might seem sudden, but I’ve actually been thinking about this for quite a while.”
I stopped there and lit a cigarette. An expression of genuine surprise crossed Changhee’s face.
“Since I realized how deeply you feel for me, I decided it would be better to have this conversation here.”
I took another drag, drawing out the moment. Her red-painted nails fidgeted restlessly, betraying her impatience.
“If you’re confident you can live the rest of your life without looking at anyone else and remain completely obedient to me, then let’s get married.”
The word I had just spoken was clearly one she had never expected; I could see it in the way her eyes widened until they looked ready to pop.
“I know it’s an absurdly clumsy and ridiculous proposal, hehe… I admit the timing and setting aren’t exactly romantic either. But this atmosphere somehow made me say it anyway, hehe…”
Changhee still couldn’t speak. Her eyes sparkled unusually, as if filled with tears.
“Oh, and even if you want to accept my proposal, you should hear the rest of what I have to say first. Because accepting means agreeing to my conditions.”
I glanced at her sideways. The word conditions always seemed to carry a peculiar power. It could spark anticipation or instill fear. Even I felt tense saying it, and she was clearly nervous as well.
“There are two main conditions. The first is… you quit the company.”
As expected, her eyes widened. But the real shock was yet to come. I took a sip of my drink, giving her a moment for the initial surge of excitement to settle.
“And the second condition… this will probably be even more surprising and much harder to decide on.”
She emptied her glass and nodded. I refilled it for her and spoke without hesitation.
“I like your cute little cock. It may not be enough to satisfy me anymore, but it remains my favorite toy, the one that enriches my life and gives me energy. The balls, however, I can do without. In fact, they need to go. If you truly want to become my woman, if you want to be my wife, then get rid of them.”
I looked straight into her face. At first it registered pure shock, then it shifted into an expression of pure terror. Because I had anticipated this, I continued in an even calmer tone.
“We’ve talked about this many times before, but the truth is I never had any interest in marriage. You already know I’m not the type who dreams of a man and woman falling in love, getting married, having children, and living happily ever after… But after meeting you, Changhee, my thoughts have slowly begun to change. I’ve always known I have strong possessive tendencies, but I never thought I’d want to possess another person. Strangely, the desire to keep you away from everyone else has taken root firmly inside me.”
I pointed at my own chest with my index finger. She lifted her slightly bowed head and followed my finger with her eyes. I promptly unbuttoned the men’s pajama top I was wearing. Since I wasn’t wearing a bra, my breasts were immediately exposed.
“If you quit the company, you can have something like this too. I plan to give you much fuller, more beautiful breasts.”
Her throat bobbed visibly. As far as I knew, she had longed for a woman’s breasts for a very long time. I had witnessed her sighing over her own flat chest on multiple occasions. There was no way she wouldn’t be tempted.
“The fact that someone like me—a confirmed bachelor—has proposed to you should tell you how seriously I’ve thought this through. I have no interest in a marriage that’s just for show. If it were the kind of union where I’d simply enjoy a woman’s body for a few years and then walk away, I wouldn’t even consider it. Right now I am proposing to you as one woman to another, and I am promising to take responsibility for you until the end.”
I truly felt like a man in that moment. The desire to be a man for Changhee kept dominating my thoughts.
“I know how you feel, Unni. I’m truly grateful that you’ve proposed to me. It’s a bit unexpected, but the thought that you truly see me as your woman almost brings tears to my eyes.”
Real tears were glistening in her eyes now, threatening to spill at the slightest touch.
“If it were just the two of us in this world, I would accept your proposal without a second thought. But that’s not the case. Quitting the company because I trust you won’t solve everything. We both have parents and siblings. And legally I am still a man, which means I have reserve duty obligations… There are simply too many things that keep me from blindly following your wishes. That’s what makes me sad.”
Her last few words trembled, and the tears finally fell. I quickly moved to sit beside her and pulled her into my arms. She immediately rested her head on my shoulder and began to sob. I held her for a while, letting her cry, then spoke.
“You… I knew you were taking female hormones.”
She nodded, still leaning against my shoulder.
“I suspected as much. But why didn’t you ever resist? Why didn’t you push back even once?”
Only then did she lift her head and look at me.
“Because it was what you wanted, Unni. I believed that if I let you do whatever you wanted, you would love me even more. Watching myself change little by little seemed to make you happy, so I couldn’t bring myself to say anything.”
Even with tears still wet on her lashes, her eyes held a smile. Her makeup had smudged a little, but she had never looked more beautiful. I pulled her tightly against me.
“So that’s how deeply you were thinking of me. I’m so sorry for doing all that without saying a word. I was too obsessed with making you mine. I suppose I deserve to be punished too, don’t I?”
Still nestled against my chest, she answered.
“No, I don’t think that deserves punishment. Keeping it from me was wrong, yes, but I was able to accept it because I understood how much you wanted me and how desperately you wanted to keep me close. If anyone deserves punishment, it’s me. I knew what was happening and pretended I didn’t, all while enjoying how pretty I was becoming.”
Changhee’s boundless selflessness left me speechless. I was so enchanted by her that I thought I might lose my mind. Unable to hold back any longer, I stole her lips. As if she had been waiting for it, her red mouth parted to welcome my tongue.