Jin Seung-yeon (5)
Chirp, chirp, chirp—
My bedroom is aboveground. Sunlight poured through the great window and spilled across the foot of the bed, so clean it failed to catch even a single mote of dust.
I got up, drank the fruit ade that had been set out for me, and finished a light workout. In one corner of the living room I opened the cabinet where the slaves were kept, took one of them out, put on music, and pushed her down beneath my hips.
Squelch. Schlick. Squelch.
She needed no telling. I looked down in silence while she serviced me with her throat, then pressed the call button waiting at the edge of the table.
The puppet posted outside the door asked what I wanted. I told him to clear every slave out of the house. Play with them, turn them into cash, or turn them loose in the Playground—I didn't care which. I was thinking of bringing in new ones. I'd grown tired of the merchandise already on hand.
I finished getting ready for work while I put that drooling, filthy throat to thorough use one last time.
Thud. A long, grating creak.
"Seung-yeon. Have you been well?"
"...Manager."
She was nowhere in sight. Past the bed, it looked as though she had dragged the blanket down and slept on the floor.
"Have you eaten?"
"...No."
I went and stood over her anyway.
"Why are you like this?"
I held out my hand. It simply hung there in the air. Her eyes shook, badly, as if she were weighing what would happen if she took it against what would happen if she didn't. I am not a particularly patient man.
"All right."
I drew the hand back.
"Ah..."
"Seung-yeon."
"Y-yes, Manager..."
"Three hours. No... I'll see you in four."
"Yes...?"
I told her nothing more. The iron door shut, and when it opened again it was not me who came through, but a rush of masked puppets. How bitterly she regretted it came through clearly enough in the way she screamed.
I ate lunch. I amused myself for a while with the sows wandering the Playground, and I went over the reservation list. Setting the clipboard down, I rubbed at my eyes. The Playground is a business, after all, and the backlog piles up in the blink of an eye.
"How long has it been?"
"Yes. Adaptation Training has now concluded."
"Is she on standby?"
"Yes. That is correct."
"Then I ought to get over there."
I nudged the one under the desk with my foot. She only licked harder, unwilling to let go of my cock.
"We'll play again later."
"Ahh... M-Master..."
"...Hmm."
She didn't seem to be taking the hint. I shook off the hand clamped around my ankle.
"Take her with you and play with her a little."
"Yes. Thank you."
Once, I would never have tossed slaves their way this often. After I hand a finished piece of merchandise off to the puppets, I don't touch it again. They know that, and they seem to divide the leftovers neatly among themselves. Tell them to take one away and play with her, though, and they start the playing on the way out.
"Ah... M-Master...! I—I want to stay with Master... nnh...! Haa...! Kyah! Hhk! Haa!! Hnn—!"
The puppets really are a troublesome lot. I turned my back on the fading moans and walked the corridor to the click of my own heels.
Click. Click. Click.
A thin wash of light picked out each iron door in turn. I stopped at one of them. Hers.
Thud. A long, grating creak. Thud.
"...Seung-yeon."
He was here. The bastard was here.
I had tried to tear the wooden bed frame apart and bled under my nails for it, and when that failed I gnawed at the wood with my teeth like a beaver. The taste of blood filled my mouth, but the raw, fishy reek of semen rising off my whole body was worse. They might as well just kill me. Pathetic as it was, wretched as it was, I didn't have the nerve to end my own life.
He had promised nothing would happen to me, and then those bastards had done it to me again. If this was because I hadn't taken his hand, then I could forgive him even less. Kill him. Or at least try. If I just did something—surely.
"Y-you liar!!!"
I had been hiding behind the bed. The moment he came close enough, I lunged. The little shard of wood in my hand probably couldn't have killed him if I'd stabbed him dozens of times. I did it anyway.
Thuk—!
The feeling of something too dull to be a blade pushing through flesh was more revolting than the hundreds of times I had imagined it. Even so, punching through that thin shirt and driving into his abdomen was viciously, brilliantly satisfying. Now I would be put through whatever he called punishment. If he killed me, I would be grateful.
But he—
"What...?"
I stumbled backward before I knew I was moving. I'm telling you to kill me. Punishment or whatever else, just—! The strength went out of my legs all at once. The bastard—no. He caught me. The side I had stabbed had to be hurting. It couldn't possibly not hurt. Red was steadily soaking through the white shirt, and still he held me, this warmly.
"I said nothing would happen to you. I'm sorry."
He apologized as if he meant it, and then he laid me on the bed.
"Rest well today."
"It was hard, wasn't it?"
His hand moved over me, gentle. Right after that, the masked bastards came pouring in.
The sight of those black faces set me trembling before I could stop it. My lower belly ached. My head went light and ringing. Hide under the blanket and I would only be flung onto the floor in the end—I knew that. Thrash at those masks and they would pin my arms and legs in a way that made the shame worse. While those thick, huge cocks ravaged me, I had learned exactly how meaningless it was to beg them to stop. So I gave up. I drew the blanket down without a fight and squeezed my eyes shut.
But the bastards didn't so much as look at me.
"Manager. The wound needs treatment."
"It's all right. This is nothing."
He looked at me with a soft, warm gaze.
"Seung-yeon is shaking badly. All of you, please leave the room. And pass word to the CEO as well. This wound... well, it'll be fine."
He smiled like someone getting away with a prank. The masked men overruled him and sat him down. They drew the splinter out of his side and stitched the wound closed on the spot. That was his stubbornness. He insisted he couldn't leave me here and step away, that I was far too unstable, that he had to stay beside me.
Not much time passed. Silence settled over the room again, and yet something still felt unsettled—not out in the room, but inside the blanket.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
My heart was beating. A heartbeat was only natural, but this one seemed to slam hard enough to press against the inside of my ears, hard enough to send the blood rushing to my face.
"Do you have a fever?"
He laid a gentle hand against my forehead.
"You really do. You're burning up."
I looked at his side, fresh shirt and all.
"...Does it... not hurt?"
"Ah. This? No, I'm fine. When I think of how much it must have hurt you, it doesn't even hurt that much."
"I-I'm sorry."
I apologized.
"...No. Don't apologize."
He wouldn't take it.
"I'm the one who should apologize."
He was handing it back. It wasn't a cold dismissal. Just as he had seemed the first time I saw him, he really was a warm person. I found myself wanting to ask what all those lies had been for. As if he had read that look, he spoke first.
"It may sound like an excuse, but the training follows a set curriculum. Haha. That's confidential, and I've gone and said it."
"I-I see..."
"...Yes. The masked staff swarming in is a kind of training as well..."
"..."
Damn. I hadn't meant to leave him unanswered. Just the thought of those bastards locked my throat shut—what was I supposed to do about that? By the time I noticed, several seconds had already slipped past. I glanced at his face without meaning to, and relief washed through me. Watching him smile at me with such warmth, the strength slowly melted out of the hand clenched in the blanket.
"I studied up on you, Seung-yeon."
"Yes...?"
"Your debut, Descendants of the Moon, was really something."
He went carefully through the things I had been in, one after another. As if he had memorized them—no. Nobody talks that excitedly about something they only memorized.
"Maybe this isn't the place to be saying all this...? Haha..."
"N-no! Thank you for telling me..."
"It's true that I don't want to hurt you."
"Yes... I... it seems that way..."
Somehow I was embarrassed.
"Haha..."
I sank under the blanket as if I were diving. He stroked my forehead, slow and quiet.
"There will be more training before long."
My heart dropped.
"...Yes..."
"Seung-yeon. Let's both hang in there. I've said it before, but if you'll just cooperate with me—really cooperate—then neither of us has to have such a hard time."
"...What could possibly be hard for you, Manager Seo..."
Honestly. Why am I making so many mistakes today? His mouth was smiling, but his eyes had never been colder. Meeting that gaze looking down at me, I froze like a frog before a snake. His warm hand never stopped stroking me.
"...You're right. You're the one having the hardest time."
Ah, of all days. Really...
"Dragged somewhere no one knows, somewhere you can't even place yourself, with no one looking for you, through a hell of hours that might never end."
I wish he would just treat me the way he usually does. I wish he would.
"I shouldn't compare any of that to my own time. I'm sorry. I really do have a lot to apologize for today. Haha..."
"D-don't say that.... It's thanks to you, M-Manager Seo... that I... like this..."
"Is that so? I'm only doing what's expected of me. It's my job."
I tried to hide my burning face. That was when it came.
Ring!
"Ah, one moment..."
He rose from the chair and stepped a few paces off. He looked at his phone and heaved one heavy sigh after another. Several minutes passed. When he came back to the bedside, his expression was not a good one.
"I..."
"...Yes. Go ahead."
"Today... there was an instruction. To administer a punishment."
"Ah..."
He was the one who looked cornered by it. Somehow, today of all days, I didn't want to make things any harder for him. I sat up at once. Barely an hour ago this body had been drenched in the semen of men whose faces I had never seen, and when the blanket flapped, a foul smell rushed out. Cutting through it, sharper than anything else, was the scent of his cologne. I had only been held for a little while. He had only stroked my hair. And still my body seemed to be trying to keep his scent on me. It had to be that scent. That scent, the one that made the small of my back go weak—because of it, I was the one who spoke first.
"Yes...?"
"T-today I did something that deserves it... I h-hurt you, too..."
"Are you sure you're all right?"
He was asking me if I was all right. Of course I wasn't. But the words that came out of my mouth were different, as if something else were steering them.
"Yes. I'm all right. You do your job, Manager, and I'll... do mine. For now..."
"...Thank you."
Looking at that smile, I almost wanted to thank the kind devil that had taken hold of my mouth.
"...Yes."
I nodded. He held out his hand.
"...Shall we begin?"
I was so thrown by the question that it felt absurd how naturally my hand found his. I took it and went to stand by the wall—the wall I had pissed myself against yesterday. The surface was a strange material. Almost like a firm sponge.
Thud. A low, heavy rumble. The door opened again. The masked bastards took some instruction from him, then wheeled in a round piece of leather furniture that came up to about my waist.
"It's called a spanking bench. Custom-made."
"Ah... yes..."
Under the black-leather cushion, shaped in a half-moon, stood a thick metal post painted black. Four restraints lay against the floor. He set his hands gently around my shoulders and stood me in front of it, then knelt and closed his fingers softly around my ankle.
"Ah..."
I let myself go where his hands put me. The restraints clinked, then went quiet as they shut around both my ankles. He checked my face, walked slowly around the bench, and spoke in a soft voice.
"There. Just lean over the bench, face down."
"Ah... yes..."
Clink—!
"Nnh... my ankles..."
"Ah. Just a little farther..."
I lay down on leather that was strangely cool, bent over until my feet left the floor. My stomach was crushed, and it hurt, but I couldn't bear to pull his worried face any tighter than it already was.
"I-I'm fine."
Then I reached my hands down, and the other two restraints, fixed to the floor, drew tight around both my wrists. I was like a blanket hung out to dry. Not quite—blankets don't have both ankles and both wrists locked in shackles.
"Does it hurt?"
"Nnh... no... other than it's hard to breathe..."
"All right."
He nodded and disappeared behind me. A stretch, then a snap—the sound of latex gloves, the same as before. And if he was back there while I was bent like this, the inside of my ass would be on full display.
A clatter. A tap. The slide of something being drawn open. Maybe it was the pressure on my stomach. Maybe it was being spread out like that. Maybe it was the thought of him looking at me from behind. I couldn't tell. My face burned so hot it startled me.
"...Well then. Shall we begin?"
His ankle entered my line of sight. I couldn't lift my head to see him, but those glossy black dress shoes came to a stop beside my head. He lowered himself slowly, and then he held it up in front of my eyes.
"We'll be using this today."
In his hand was a large syringe.