If the Stream Failed, You Deserve to Be Punished
The stream was cut short in a panic, well shy of its scheduled runtime. After the fall, Yoo Jimin had been in a near-panic in front of the camera. Buried under a barrage of worried questions, she could barely repeat that she was in no condition to continue, that she was sorry, before she fled the broadcast and killed it. The instant the screen went black, she collapsed to the floor again, gasping for air. Her whole body was a slick mess of sweat, tears, and some fluid she couldn't name.
At that same hour, the Internet Broadcasting Gallery was on fire.
Her sudden shutdown had instantly become the hottest topic on the board. Every refresh brought a waterfall of posts titled "Uni" or "Today's Gallery Queen." The mood was half worry, half mockery… no. The mockery was overwhelming.
The gallery stayed on fire all night, burning with keywords like "Uni Falls," "Uni Slapstick," and "Gallery Queen Crash."
Some turned her blunder into memes and spread them. Some genuinely worried about her health. And some, even then, tossed out sexual jokes and snickered among themselves.
"Pffft… BWAHAHAHAHA!"
Lee Dongwoo was reclining comfortably on the living room sofa, a tablet in his hand, the screen endlessly scrolling through flashy gifs and inflammatory titles. The Internet Broadcasting Gallery. The aftershock of Yoo Jimin's stream, which had just ended, was unfolding in real time. He clutched his stomach and burst out laughing, over and over, as if he couldn't get enough. When he got to the slow-motion gif of Jimin slamming down on her ass, he laughed so hard he could barely breathe.
His laughter stabbed into her like a blade. Across from the sofa, Yoo Jimin sat collapsed on the floor, drained of all strength. The moment the stream ended, Dongwoo had ordered her to take off the mask.
When the mask she'd been forced to wear came off, the grotesque swelling of her left cheek was laid bare. Between the aftermath of the vibrator, which had drained every ounce of strength from her body, and the humiliation piled on top of it, she couldn't even lift her head. The sting in the places hidden under her clothes hadn't faded, and the foreign presence of the vibrator still stuck to the front of her panties was the worst of it.
"Whoa, this is a total hit. 'Gallery Queen's slapstick legend, updated,' they're calling it. Your fans are having a blast. A real blast."
Dongwoo snickered as he tilted the tablet toward her. The screen was packed with mocking comments and stills of her looking ridiculous. Jimin couldn't bring herself to look at it head-on, and ducked her head even lower.
"Let's see here… shall I read some comments?"
He started reading one aloud in a voice that was deliberately, theatrically exaggerated.
"Ahem. 'But why was Uni wearing a mask today? Didn't she get hit fighting with her boyfriend yesterday? lmaooo' Hey. Look at this."
Dongwoo took his eyes off the tablet and stared down at Jimin's bowed face. His gaze landed exactly on her swollen cheek.
"Your viewers are pretty sharp, aren't they? How'd they nail it so perfectly? They're saying you really did get hit by someone yesterday. Well?"
The sly tone was thick with a mockery he didn't even try to hide. He was digging his fingers into the exact place it hurt most. The moment she heard it, Jimin's shoulders began to tremble.
The fact that her pain and shame were being consumed as a joke on the internet — that people were even guessing at the cause. And the reality that the man who had orchestrated all of it was sitting right in front of her, laughing in her face.
It shoved her down into a deeper despair. The trembling grew worse, until her whole body shook as if she were standing in a gale. She couldn't answer. All she could do was pray for this nightmare to end.
"Heh…"
Dongwoo had been snickering his way through the gallery's reactions when he suddenly stopped, as if something had just occurred to him. He lifted his head slowly and looked at Jimin, still collapsed on the floor, still shaking. The look in his eyes turned cold and calculating again.
"Ah. Come to think of it…"
His voice dropped low.
"The original punishment for today was to endure that vibrator until the stream ended, remember?"
His gaze drifted down to her lower body. The faint outline of the vibrator at the front of her panties.
"But our Miss Uni ran away a little too fast, didn't she? Went and shut the stream off whenever she damn well pleased?"
"…!"
Jimin's eyes flew wide with terror. Punishment? She had to take it again just because the stream had ended?
That was insane… but there was nothing in Dongwoo's face that looked like a joke. He fully intended to inflict additional pain on her for failing to complete the punishment as promised.
"N-no… th-that's… it was too much… it was an accident…"
She tried to explain, her voice shaking, but the words wouldn't come out right.
"A mistake? A slave breaking a promise to her master is something that just gets written off as a mistake?"
Dongwoo snorted.
He rose from his seat, slowly. His oppressive shadow swallowed her whole.
"This won't do. You broke the punishment, so you'll have to take it again. And this time, I'll make it far more severe."
He cracked his knuckles, one by one, as he closed the distance. It was an ominous sound, a promise of pain and humiliation beyond anything she could imagine — worse than what she'd just endured. There was no trace of a smile left on Lee Dongwoo's lips. Only cold rage and sadism flashed in his eyes.
"I'm sorry! I was wrong! I was wrong!"
The moment she heard she would have to take the punishment again, Jimin dropped to her knees on reflex and begged. She threw herself down as if she meant to smash her forehead against the floor, pleading with everything she had. She had read it in his freezing stare: the pain and shame she'd already suffered were only the beginning.
"I won't do it again! If you tell me to stream to the end, I will! Please… please forgive me! Please, Dongwoo!"
Her voice trembled, soaked in tears, pitiful — but that desperation didn't so much as ripple the ice in Dongwoo's heart.
Dongwoo spat the words out coldly as he came to a stop in front of her prostrate form. The tips of his shoes entered her field of view. He bent at the waist and seized her trembling chin in a rough grip. The force of his hand snapped her head up.
A face streaked with tears. Pupils blown wide with terror. They met Dongwoo's freezing eyes. Her swollen cheek was crushed painfully in his grip all over again.
"You still look like you're a long way from being properly educated. Seems you've completely forgotten a slave's place."
There was not a shred of feeling in his voice.
"From now on, I'll teach you all over again. Step by step."
With that, he reached out with his other hand and picked up one of the things he'd bought earlier. A blindfold of soft black cloth.
"Hhn?!"
Before Jimin could even think of resisting, the blindfold covered her eyes.
Her vision went completely black. Seeing nothing multiplied the terror several times over. Only her hearing and her sense of touch stood on end, painfully sharp. The dread of having no idea what he would do next made her breath come short and fast.
The hand on her chin seemed to let go — and then something hard and round pressed against her lips.
A ball gag.
"Mmph! Mmmph!!"
She clamped her mouth shut on reflex and tried to shake her head, but Dongwoo gripped the back of her skull firmly with one hand and forced the ball gag in hard with the other. The hard ball filled her mouth, stretching her jaw until it ached. Once the leather strap was pulled around the back of her head and fastened tight, she could no longer close her mouth, nor make any proper sound. Humiliating drool spilled from the corners of her lips.
Sight and speech. Even the minimum means of communicating and expressing herself as a human being had been stripped away. All that remained was the sound of his breathing in the dark, and the unpredictable terror of whatever he would do to her body next. The presence of the vibrator still stuck to the front of her panties felt even more ominous in this situation.
Jimin could only twitch her unbound hands and feet, a meaningless little spasm. Under the name of education, she had been thrown into complete darkness and silence.