Part 1 - Fake Leash(2)
Part 1 - Fake Leash(2)
The sound of the cheap wall clock hanging on the wall rang out unusually loudly.
10:55 PM. The promised time was 5 minutes away.
My cramped studio apartment, barely five-pyeong in size, which would usually be littered with clothes cast off like molted skin and books with no room to step, was cleaned up without a single speck of dust, just for today.
I straightened my clothes in front of the mirror several times and lightly applied lip balm to my lips.
My heart was pounding uncontrollably fast.
The perfect idol of the department and the tyrant who had me wrapped around her finger.
That Cha Do-hee is walking into this shabby studio apartment on her own two feet, solely to reveal her most shameful secret to me.
That fact alone sent a thrilling shiver down my spine.
Tonight, I intended to thoroughly throw that perfect woman's pathetic pride onto the floor of my studio apartment and reign over it.
Ding-dong-
11:00 PM sharp. Breaking the suffocating silence, the doorbell rang.
I cleared my throat, feigning composure, and slowly walked to the entrance to turn the doorknob.
With a kki-ik sound, the door opened, and the hallway sensor light turned on, revealing Sunbae.
"......You're here?"
At my cheeky, informal greeting, Do-hee Sunbae's shoulders, standing at the doorway, flinched slightly.
Her attire was not the blouse and slacks she usually wore at school.
An oversized gray hoodie and black dolphin shorts. Messy hair peeking out from under a pulled-down ball cap was casting shadows.
It was a shabby appearance, like a felon who didn't want to be caught by anyone, or a pitiful beast dragged to the slaughterhouse.
"......Can I, come in."
A dry, moistureless voice.
The arrogant and cold eyes that always used to crush me were now anxiously wandering the floor, unable to meet my gaze.
It was thrilling.
To think that the great Cha Do-hee was lingering at the threshold, asking for my permission.
I swallowed the joy bursting from within and pointed into the room with my chin.
"Come in. Close the door properly."
Sunbae carefully took off her shoes while hugging her large backpack and stepped into my room.
As she entered the narrow room, her unique scent, which usually hovered around her, wafted over.
I sat arrogantly on the desk chair in the middle of the room, crossing my legs.
And I pointed at the thin rug spread on the floor, flicking my finger.
"Sit there. And take your laptop out of the backpack."
"Yeon-woo, even so, I'm your senior, so on the floor...."
"Sunbae? Ah, right, you are my senior outside. But isn't the situation a bit different here? I'm the savior who's going to save that trashy erotic novel you wrote. A novice writer who came to get feedback from me shouldn't be cheekily coveting the chair."
At my blatant mockery, Sunbae's pale face instantly flushed red as if burned.
She bit her lower lip until it bled, then swallowed her humiliation, knelt on the floor I pointed to, and sat down demurely.
That gaze looking up at me from below my knees.
It was the moment when the completely overturned form of power was visually proven.
Sunbae took a white laptop out of her backpack with trembling hands and booted it up.
The screen brightened, and the Novelpia serialization page I saw in the club room yesterday appeared again.
[The Academy's Yandere Saintess Imprisons the Villainess]
I leaned over and pulled the laptop screen toward me.
And I began to scan the unpublished manuscript of episode 15, which Sunbae must have spent several nights writing, with the eyes of a hawk.
In the room, only the sound of the mouse wheel as I scrolled down rang out irritably.
"Haa...."
I let out a very loud and blatant sigh on purpose. Sunbae's shoulders flinched once again.
"Sunbae. I told you yesterday, but this is really not it."
"......What's the problem. The grammar and spelling are perfectly checked...."
"It's not about the grammar! Do you think readers expect spelling that puts the National Institute of Korean Language to shame in an 19+ scene? Tension! Vividness! Sexiness! It has none of that."
I dragged and highlighted a passage with the mouse cursor.
"Look at this part. 'The young lady felt great pleasure at the Saintess's touch and let out a cry.'...Are you kidding me? How did she let out the cry? How did her breathing tangle, how did her gaze waver, and what was the temperature when their skin touched? Your description is like studying an introduction to literature. It's dry, stiff, and crucially, it's not sexy at all."
At my vulgar vocabulary, Sunbae's eyes narrowed in pain.
Imagining how shamefully the blatant feedback of 'it's not sexy' must be piercing the ears of someone who only lived in the world of noble literature made me want to laugh.
"Sunbae, you really have no practical experience, do you? You've never slept with a woman, have you? That's why this fake writing, squeezed out only with your head, comes out."
"......Stop it."
Sunbae growled in a suppressed voice with her head bowed low. Her neck, hidden by the hat, was dyed bright red with shame.
"Stop what? We decided to fix that starting today. Now, let's begin the first practical correction."
I got up from my seat and approached behind Sunbae, who was sitting on the floor. And I yanked back the hood of her hoodie.
Beneath her disheveled black hair, Sunbae's beautiful and sorrowful face, filled with tears, was revealed.
That fragile appearance, with all the venom that had always been sharp completely drained away, ignited my sadism.
"Read it out loud."
"......What?"
Sunbae looked up at me with wide eyes, as if she couldn't believe it.
"That scene I just dragged. That trashy dialogue and description you wrote, read it out loud with your own mouth. You need to hear it with your own ears to realize how awkward and artificial it is."
"Yeon-woo, please... how could I say such things with my mouth...."
"Haa. If you don't want to, then don't. I can just upload the screenshot of your novel to the department group chat right here, pack my bags, and go down to my parents' house."
As I pretended to take my smartphone out of my pocket, Sunbae urgently grabbed my pant leg.
Her slender fingers were gripping with enough force to turn white.
"I'll do it...! I'll read it, Yeon-woo. Please, not the group chat...."
A woman for whom pride and face are more important than life. I cheered inwardly and pointed at the screen with my chin.
Sunbae struggled to steady her trembling chin and turned her gaze to the monitor.
And soon, she began to stammeringly read the sentences of the third-rate erotic novel she had written, in the clear voice she usually used to recite literary works.
"Ah, aah... Saintess, th-there, no... please...."
Sunbae's voice shook like an aspen tree with shame.
"Th-the young lady's... between her white thighs... the Saintess's fingers dug in... the young lady, in, sh-shame... heut...."
Every time she spat out the profanities mixed between the sentences, Sunbae squeezed her eyes shut, and each time, transparent tears flowed down her cheeks from the corners of her eyes.
A feast of obscene characters flowing from those perfect lips.
A strange pleasure, mixed with a sense of immorality and conquest, pressed heavily on my lower abdomen.
I couldn't hold back, so I approached closely behind Sunbae and placed my hand over the back of her hand, which was resting on the floor.
"A-eut...!"
Sunbae was startled and hunched her shoulders, but she couldn't shake off my hand.
I leaned my face close to her ear and whispered in a low voice.
"How is it? Now that you've read it with your own mouth. Do you feel how fake it is? There's not a single breath mixed in, and there's absolutely no reality to the moans of someone holding back pleasure."
"Heuk... I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't know...."
Sunbae apologized in a broken voice.
That Cha Do-hee is crying and apologizing to me.
I was becoming intoxicated with an emotion bordering on ecstasy, losing my reason.
"I told you, you can't know just by reading it aloud. You have to experience it in practice to know how the body reacts when real pleasure touches it, how muscles contract, and how breathing becomes labored; that's how you add detail to your writing. Don't you think so, Sunbae?"
I stroked the back of Sunbae's hand, which I was holding, and slid my fingers into the sleeve of her hoodie.
Sunbae's smooth skin was transmitted intact to my fingertips.
"Stay still. The editor is giving the writer practical training."
My provocative touch.
I stroked Sunbae's neck, firmly believing that she was trembling with extreme shame and fear.
I felt her body stiffening with tension, and I mistook that reaction for the result of my thorough control and domination.
However, I didn't notice at all.
That Sunbae's body, which was leaning on me as if trembling with shame, was very skillfully reading the trajectory of my movements.
That her fingertips, which were shaking as if resisting, were secretly observing my reactions by brushing against the most sensitive parts of my waist and inner thighs as if by mistake.
"Ha-eut...."
A shallow moan escaped my lips without me realizing it.
It was because Sunbae's trembling hand, in the process of grabbing my arm as if to defend herself, had stroked the soft flesh on the inside of my arm with exquisite pressure.
A strange stimulation that made my mind go blank for a moment.
'What was that? Just now....'
While I was flustered and paused for a moment, Sunbae hurriedly pushed my hand away and prostrated herself on the floor.
She gasped for air and looked up at me with a tear-stained face.
"Haa, haa... Yeon-woo, today, let's stop here for today. I... it's too much for me to handle...."
Her pitiful pleading appearance. At that desperate acting, my fluster was quickly painted over again with arrogant and sadistic superiority.
I stupidly dismissed even the strange pleasure I had just felt as stemming from the mental excitement of me dominating this situation so perfectly.
"Ha, look at you trembling just from being touched once. You're admitting you have zero practical experience."
I laughed arrogantly and got up from my seat. Today's first taming was successful enough to this extent.
Because I had completely broken Cha Do-hee's pride, and I had clearly confirmed with my own eyes how she trembled at the tip of my finger.
Sunbae, sitting on the floor, wiped away her tears by rubbing her eyes vigorously with the sleeve of her hoodie.
Then she rummaged through her bag and took something out. It was a luxurious silver thermos.
"I was... too nervous, so my throat is dry. It's tea I usually drink, and I brought it because it helps me calm down. Do you, do you want a cup too? You must be... tired from helping me."
Sunbae carefully poured tea into the lid of the thermos.
As soon as the lid was opened, a refreshing yet bitter citrus scent covered the stale air of the studio apartment at once. It was Lady Grey, which Sunbae always drank in the club room.
Sunbae's appearance, holding out the lid cup with trembling hands, perfectly matched that of a frightened slave offering an item to their master.
I smiled like a benevolent ruler and took the lid cup she was offering.
"Well, it's the first day, so I'll let you off here. We have a long way to go. Take good care of your stamina, Sunbae."
I slowly swallowed the warm black tea, as if savoring Sunbae's submission. The fragrant and warm liquid flowed down my esophagus, pleasantly relaxing my tense body.
It felt like a thrilling sense of victory, that I was at the pinnacle of power, was deeply permeating every single cell in my body.
However, I did not see.
At that very moment when I closed my eyes and swallowed the black tea, intoxicated by the sense of victory.
That Sunbae's gaze, which had been prostrate on the floor and trembling with shame, was licking up the trajectory of my bobbing Adam's apple like a snake, stickily.