See. Now You Can't Talk Back
A voice as cold as a blade, and Lee Dongwoo's hand came flying. He seized Han Seoyeon's jaw — she had crumpled to the floor in terror — and crushed it in his grip until it seemed the bone itself might shatter.
"Nngh...!"
A moan of pain tore from Han Seoyeon's throat. Dongwoo dragged her face up until it hung inches from his own. Her features, smeared with blood and spit, filled his contemptuous gaze.
"Which of these insolent little teeth..."
He shoved his wounded cock in front of her eyes and growled, low and dangerous.
"...had the nerve to scrape my dick?"
His fingers forced their way between her lips, then began to rake across her teeth one by one, as if they were pieces of iron. Incisors. Canines. Molars. Not a single one skipped. Han Seoyeon's body trembled like a leaf in a gale. Every time his fingertip scraped her gums, every time it prodded at a root, gooseflesh raced across her skin.
"This one? Or maybe this one?"
He pointed them out one after another, the way a child picks through the parts of a toy. That innocent tone made him sound more like a demon out of hell.
Lee Jihyun, sprawled on the floor, clapped a hand over her own mouth without thinking. Is he going to pull every last one of that bitch's teeth? The mere thought turned her blood to ice. Even Yoo Jimin, who had been eating her steak nearby, stopped chewing and held her breath. The rule of this room — what it cost to defy the master — was being carved into their bones all over again.
At last his finger stopped. On her sharp right canine.
"Ah. Found it."
He smiled with satisfaction and glanced toward the toolbox in the corner. Inside it, a pair of rusted pliers gleamed dully.
"So it was you."
Rusted pliers. He's going to use those. On my teeth.
Han Seoyeon's pupils shook as if an earthquake had torn through them. Still kneeling on the floor, she threw herself against Dongwoo's legs.
"I'm sorry! I was wrong! I'll never do it again! Please... please, not my teeth...!"
She begged through her tears. Tearing pain would have been better. Having a tooth ripped out was something she could not even imagine. A tooth that came out never grew back. It was as good as the end of a human life.
"Fine, I get it."
As if granting a favor to that pitiful pleading, Dongwoo set the pliers down on the floor. A flicker of relief crossed Han Seoyeon's face — and then:
"That's just the first one, though."
He said it casually and seized her jaw again with his bare hand.
"Don't need pliers. One little tooth? I can manage that with my fingers."
His thumb and forefinger slid into her mouth. They locked onto the sharp right canine he had marked a moment ago.
"N-no... mmph!"
She tried to scream, but his fingers pinned her tongue and no sound came out.
"Just gonna give it a little squeeze."
Dongwoo grinned and began to apply pressure to the canine. A sickening crack sounded from deep in the gum as the root began to shift.
"Nngh... nnnnph!"
Pain beyond language — living flesh tearing, bone fracturing. Fat tears poured from her eyes without pause. Dongwoo paid no attention. He started twisting the tooth left and right. Crack. Crunch. The horrific sounds kept coming.
And then — a wet rip, and the last nerve and blood vessel connecting gum to tooth tore free. In his hand sat her canine, thick with clotted blood and scraps of flesh.
Blood fountained from Han Seoyeon's mouth. She let out a short scream and toppled backward, unconscious. Dongwoo held up the dripping tooth like a trophy and smiled with satisfaction.
"See? Nothing to it."
He turned the tooth this way and that, like a jeweler appraising a gem in the sunlight. A long, sharp root, well formed. He was pleased. His gaze dropped to Han Seoyeon, collapsed and unconscious on the floor. The way she twitched, her mouth a mess of blood, was quite a sight.
"Hey. Seoyeon."
He nudged her slack cheek with his foot, the way a child pokes a dead cat — a gesture of pure, innocent malice.
"Why'd you pass out already?"
His voice was so childlike it sent a chill down the spine.
"I've still got more teeth to pull."
Lee Jihyun's body jerked. Don't tell me he's going to take every last one. Yoo Jimin choked on her steak, coughing hard. The terror in this room had no bottom. Every point they thought was the limit was always only a new beginning.
"Come on, get up. You've got over thirty left. Passing out already takes all the fun out of it."
Dongwoo snickered and grabbed the unconscious Han Seoyeon by the hair, hauling her upright. Her limp head lolled uselessly.
"Well, I guess I can't pull them like this."
He clicked his tongue and summoned a green light into his palm once more.
"No helping it. I'll just have to fix her and start over."
The green light bloomed in Lee Dongwoo's palm. The instant he reached toward the unconscious Han Seoyeon —
"Hhk...!"
Her body, which had lain as if dead, twisted in a violent spasm. She forced herself upright with desperate, uncooperative limbs. Only one emotion remained in her eyes. Terror. A raw, frantic terror of having to live through that hell a second time.
"Please... please don't do that...!"
She dropped to her knees and begged with everything she had, groveling until her hands might as well have been feet. The words came out mashed and wet from her blood-soaked mouth. Blood from the empty socket of her canine made the pleading even more wretched.
"I won't... I'll never do it again. I'll do anything you tell me. Anything. Please...!"
Dongwoo found himself intrigued. He let the green light fade.
"Anything?"
He crouched in front of her and tipped her chin up.
"You can really do anything?"
Han Seoyeon nodded like a madwoman. The tears would not stop.
"Yes, yes! Anything... I'll do anything!"
"Hmm."
Dongwoo pretended to think, drawing it out. Then he grinned.
"Then how about we start by throwing away that useless pride of yours?"
He released the chin of the pitifully begging Han Seoyeon. Smiling with satisfaction, he gently wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of his hand.
"That's right. That's how you should behave."
His voice was tender now, nothing like a moment ago. But inside that tenderness a crueler blade was waiting.
"So. Where should we start fixing you."
He pretended to consider, then clapped his hands.
"First, let's fix that habit of talking back."
He said it lightly.
"And the fastest way to do that would be to pull out everything inside that mouth of yours, wouldn't it?"
"...What?"
Han Seoyeon's mind stopped. Only now did she understand. The I'll do anything she had begged a moment ago had been the setup for exactly this.
"What. You said anything."
Dongwoo smiled brightly at her stunned face.
"Don't tell me you already forgot? You just said you'd do anything."
"Th-that's..."
Dongwoo didn't even glance at the rusted pliers on the floor. Once more he shoved his fingers into the begging Han Seoyeon's mouth. This time there was nothing gentle about it. Like a butcher breaking down a carcass, he found his target with rough, precise movements. The small premolar right next to the empty canine socket.
He rocked it forward and back, up and down. He felt a thrill in the sensation of bone coming loose, and he shook the tooth in his grip. Crunch. Rip.
"Mmph, nnph, nnnnnph...!"
Han Seoyeon no longer had the strength to scream. The pain had passed the limits of sensation and become nothing but white noise, paralyzing her brain. Blood and spit mixed in her mouth and ran endlessly down her chin.
The second tooth came out. Then the third. The fourth. His hands did not stop. Molars, incisors, canines. No order. No mercy. He was simply, mechanically, removing the parts called teeth from inside her mouth, one by one.
Yoo Jimin held her breath. She tried to look away from the hell unfolding in front of her, but the nauseating sound of bone breaking reached her even through covered ears. Lee Jihyun ran her tongue over her own teeth, counting them one by one. Thirty-two. Still intact. But that — that could be her future at any moment.
At last Lee Dongwoo's hands stopped. In his palm, her teeth lay heaped like gravel, clotted with blood and scraps of flesh. All thirty-two.
Han Seoyeon could not make a sound anymore. Blood would not stop flowing from her emptied gums, and her slack eyes stared at nothing, unfocused.
Dongwoo scattered the trophies in his palm across the floor without ceremony.
"A nice, quiet, well-behaved doll."
He said it as he wiped his blood-soaked hands on her clothes. Han Seoyeon was simply smiling. A smile of utter terror and bliss.