The Rules of the Dining Table
"Gack... *retch*..."
Yellowish bile trickles weakly from her mouth, landing right on the plate where the roasted calf meat rests.
What had once been Hanayuki's calf is now coated in yellow digestive fluid, emitting a sickening stench.
"Fucking hell..."
Jihun's face contorts with pure disgust.
"Puking on the dining table on such a perfect day?..."
Jihun presses the button on the remote, holding it down a fraction longer.
"G-gack!"
Hanayuki's back arches violently in response to the prolonged shock, then snaps flat with a dull thud.
"Hanayuki-tan."
"Ah... ahhh... my weg... my weeg... ugh..."
Jihun speaks in a sweet, doting voice, masking his rising irritation, but Hanayuki is in a state of absolute panic, tears streaming down her face.
"My weg... what do I do... *sob*... ugh... ugh..."
Consumed by sheer terror, her cries cannot even escape her throat, escaping only as muffled whimpers through her tightly clenched teeth.
Every time she frantically shakes her head, the bile smeared around her mouth drips onto her chest.
"Put it back... put my weg back... *hic*... give me back my weg..."
"You stupid bitch, do you think crying like a baby is going to make a severed leg magically reattach?"
Jihun scoffs, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Hanayuki-tan, listen to me carefully."
Jihun picks up the roasted leg from the plate.
From the toes, elegantly pointed like a ballerina's, thick, savory gravy drips onto the table.
"Look at this. You see the cross-section here?"
He shoves the severed end—cut just below the thigh, near the knee—right up to Hanayuki's face.
The cross-section of bone and muscle, lightly charred by the oven's heat, is on full display.
The layers of meat and fat surrounding the bone are swollen, glistening with locked-in juices and thoroughly saturated with heat and sauce.
"Look... use your brain for a second. This leg? It was cut off a long time ago. It was already severed at the place where Hanayuki-tan was 'reborn,' and now I've cooked it."
Jihun gently scrapes the knife across the roasted cross-section.
"And look. The meat is cooked to perfection, isn't it? The surface is roasted to a nice, crispy crust, locking the juices inside."
As he presses the flat of the blade against it, the tender meat yields, and a stream of rich juices trickles down.
"Which means everything inside—the nerves, the muscles, the flesh, the blood vessels, the bone—has been completely cooked and roasted. To put it in scientific terms—"
"The mass of flesh and bone that once functioned as a biological organ has been irreversibly denatured by heat. Therefore, this is no longer alive, nor is it a leg."
Jihun adds, explaining it as if to a child.
"I don't care... *sob*... give it back... give me back my weg... give me back my arms and wegs!..."
Despite Jihun's "considerate" explanation, Hanayuki cannot comprehend it. She simply wails like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Hearing her repeat lines that sound like they came straight out of some forgotten urban legend, Jihun lets out a soft chuckle.
After a moment of thought, a cruel, amused grin spreads across Jihun's face.
"Fine, I'll give it back to you."
He picks up the roasted leg and presses it against the stump of her thigh, then pulls it away, mimicking a child playing with building blocks.
"But oh dear, what should we do? It won't stick. Can a dead leg stick back on? Will it stick if I do this? Hmm? Look."
"Stop... don't play with my weg... *hic*... *waah*..."
Warm gravy smears against her raw stump and trickles down her thigh.
"Fucking hell, I'm doing this to help you understand, and you're being ungrateful. Stop crying and look, will you? I want to give it back too. But what can I do if it won't stick? Huh? Look. Look at it! Your leg is never sticking back on, Hanayuki."
"Ah... *waah*... my weg... my weeg... what do I do... Mommy... Daddy... Mommy..."
"My dinner is getting cold."
Jihun places the leg back on the plate with an annoyed sigh.
He carves off slices of the meat, transfers them to his own plate, and begins to eat.
"Still, this is quite a show. Maybe I should make her cry like this more often."
Jihun watches Hanayuki's hysterical sobbing with genuine amusement.
His gaze is completely casual, carrying the same idle interest of a man watching a ten-minute YouTube video on his phone while eating dinner alone.
A short while later,
"Calmed down a bit?"
Having finished his meal, Jihun looks over at her and asks.
"Ugh... *hic*..."
Hanayuki's crying has finally subsided, though her shoulders still shudder with residual, hitching sobs.
Bile around her mouth, tears in her eyes, snot running down her nose—her face is a disgusting mess of bodily fluids, but with no arms, she has no way to wipe them away.
She can only sniffle helplessly, letting the fluids smear and run together.
Jihun clicks his tongue in annoyance, walks over to the counter, and pulls a few tissues from a box.
"Alright, blow. Good girl."
Jihun presses the tissue against her nose, speaking in a coaxing, gentle voice.
A pathetic, wet snort escapes her nose.
Once she finishes blowing her nose, Jihun pulls out a soft baby wipe and meticulously cleans her face.
He works slowly and gently, terrified of leaving a blemish on her skin—afraid of damaging his precious, one-of-a-kind VTuber onahole.
A moment later,
"You really don't want to eat this?"
Jihun asks, his voice dripping with warmth.
"N-no... I don't want to..."
Hanayuki frantically shakes her head from side to side.
"Really?"
"Y-yes. Really."
"Are you absolutely sure?"
"Yes..."
"You won't regret this?"
"I won't..."
"You're going to regret this, though..."
Jihun shakes his head, wearing a look of deep, mock pity.
"You know, Hanayuki-tan."
"Yes?"
"I'm sure you've realized by now, but my tastes are... well, to put it another way, a bit extreme. But what can we do? If you want to live with me from now on, you're going to have to adapt to my preferences."
Jihun smiles brightly as he continues.
"I'll ask you one last time. Do you really not want to eat it?"
"Yes..."
"Sigh..."
Once again, a sharp, crackling jolt of electricity surges straight up Hanayuki's spine.
Like a startled cat, her entire body jerks violently off the table.
"You know, Hanayuki-tan."
Jihun dangles the remote control right in front of her face.
"When I press this button, an electric shock is delivered directly to Hanayuki-tan's spine. You know that, right?"
"Y-yes..."
Terrified, Hanayuki nods her head so vigorously her brain rattles.
"The important thing is the mechanism. Like this. Look closely. If I press it once..."
*Zap!*
"Gack!"
"It's not just a single, instant shock. It means... the current flows for as long as I hold the button down. Like this."
Jihun holds the button down, and a continuous, agonizing current surges through her body for the entire duration.
"Gack! Gh-ah! Gyah!"
For several seconds—which feel like agonizing hours to Hanayuki—the electricity roasts her spinal cord.
"Do you understand? And you know, the wire inserted into Hanayuki-tan's spine doesn't actually release that much current. It is calibrated to cause maximum pain without permanently damaging the nerves and muscles..."
Jihun pauses, searching for the right words.
"In other words, because it shocks the central nervous system directly, it doesn't need a lot of current to hurt. So, like... this."
*Bzzzzzzzt!*
"Gyah! Kyag! Gack?! G-g-gyah?!?! Ugh..."
An even longer shock than before. Bile spills from Hanayuki's mouth, bubbling into a frothy foam as her eyes roll back. Just as she is on the very brink of losing consciousness—
"Ugyah..."
Jihun skillfully releases the button.
"Ugh... ugh... g-g-g..."
Hanayuki hovers on the precipice of blacking out, her eyes rolling back and fluttering open repeatedly.
"No matter how long I hold the button, as long as your heart doesn't stop, you won't die. Don't worry about that, though—I have a defibrillator here, and I can always perform CPR on you if it comes to that."
"P-pwease stop... n-no, stop, Habung-i. I was wong. I was w-wrong..."
Hanayuki pleads desperately, her tongue barely cooperating.
"But why do you think I'm telling you this right now?"
"Th-that's... ugh..."
Hanayuki's shoulders shake as she prepares to burst into tears again.
"Quiet."
"H-hieek!"
At Jihun's sharp command, Hanayuki instantly chokes back her tears.
"I'll ask again. Why do you think I'm telling you this right now?"
"I-I don't know... Habung-i... p-please tell me... I'm... too much of... a stupid... brain-dead retard... so Habung-i... tell me... p-please..."
Hanayuki begs desperately, fighting to keep her tears from falling.
If she still had her arms and legs, she would have thrown herself into a desperate dogeza.
"Alright, I'll tell you."
Jihun smiles benevolently.
"You know in movies, right? Do you know what they usually do when they want to force someone to eat something they hate?"
"I don't know... I don't know... Hanayuki is a retard... a dummy... a brain-dead idiot, so I don't know... Habung-i, tell me..."
"Well, yes, since Hanayuki is a dummy, I'll explain it to you."
Jihun smiles warmly, recalling how Hanayuki used to play up her "airhead" persona during her streams.
"Usually in movies, they starve them until they're forced to eat. But a living onahole is, literally, alive. If you don't eat, you'll lose weight, and then you won't feel as good to use. Your health will deteriorate, making maintenance a nightmare..."
Jihun idly strokes the stump of Hanayuki's severed arm.
The neatly healed, rounded stump squishes softly under his palm.
"And once your health goes down, since you don't have arms or legs, your metabolism is poor... well, it'll be hard to recover."
Jihun grins widely.
"So! I'm going to use a much faster method. I have to make sure my hard-earned VTuber onahole doesn't break, after all."
Jihun picks up the half-eaten leg.
He strolls across the living room toward the window as if taking a pleasant walk in the park.
It's a spacious apartment, but it's not a long distance.
At least, if you're walking.
"Hanayuki-tan, let's get some exercise!"
He lifts Hanayuki's limbless torso and places her directly onto the cold living room floor.
He doesn't care that his hands are now covered in a sticky, foul-smelling cocktail of her bodily fluids.
"Ugh... *hic*..."
Hanayuki shudders violently at the touch of the cold floor.
Every time she squirms her limbless body like a caterpillar, the fluids smeared on her skin leave a sticky trail across the floor.
"While I shock you, crawl over and eat that leg! If you do, I'll stop!"
Jihun explains the rules, wearing a bright, cheerful smile.