The Price of a Single Finger
A few hours later.
Hayan forced her eyes open with agonizing effort.
"..."
She tried to rub her eyes, but—
"...?"
Her hands were tightly bound. She couldn't move an inch.
The pain she had desperately hoped was just a dream—no, a nightmare she wished she could wake up from—rushed back, cementing itself as cold, hard reality.
"Ugh... uuuugh..."
Hayan strained to look around her surroundings.
No one was in sight.
All she could see were walls lined with faded blue tiles.
An old, circular surgical light hung from the ceiling, and stainless steel equipment like shelves and instrument trays cluttered the space. Mold and rust bled down the tiles and metal surfaces.
Piecing the grim scenery together, she realized where she was.
"An operating room..."
It was unmistakably an operating room. Judging by its decrepit state, it had been abandoned for a very long time.
"What... what are they going to do to me here...?"
The decaying, Abandoned Surgery Room looked like a set straight out of a horror movie. And in horror movies, places like this were where the victims usually—
Thud!
With a heavy bang, the sliding door of the operating room was thrown open.
"Oh, you're finally awake?"
"Fucking bitch, stop sleeping so damn much! We've been waiting forever."
"What the hell are you so happy about, sleeping like a log, huh?"
A crowd of men poured into the room.
Among them were familiar faces: Seongcheol and Jiseong, along with other employees from the game company. There were also several unfamiliar faces, but the sheer malice burning in their eyes beneath their mocking laughter made it clear they all harbored deep, personal grudges against Hayan.
There were roughly a dozen of them in total.
Digital assets like games and illustrations multiply in value through media exposure, leveraging their reach. But the inverse is also true: a single act of sabotage on the source material multiplies the victims exponentially. In other words, Hayan's simple, smug insertion of That Finger gesture into her illustrations had caused catastrophic, far-reaching ruin to countless lives.
Yet, Hayan was a brainless feminist. She still failed to grasp the sheer magnitude of the devastation she had wrought.
"P-Please... *sob*... if you let me go, I won't report this to anyone. I'll never draw again. I'll live quietly... please... please just forgive me..."
Completely oblivious to the crushing weight of her sins, Hayan begged, drowning in her own pathetic self-pity.
"You retarded cunt, do you think crying now is going to fix anything, huh? Is the game going to magically revive? Is our money going to crawl back into our pockets?"
"You fucking bitch, because of you, I couldn't even pay my son's college tuition!"
The men snarled, forcing her to face the reality of her crimes.
"And report us to the police, you worthless whore? Go ahead, try it. See if they even give a shit."
"Do you seriously think there aren't cops among the guys taking turns sharing bitches right outside? You really don't know how much the world has changed, do you, huh?"
"It's because you're so fucking clueless about how the world works that you fell for that stupid feminist bullshit in the first place."
They made sure to hammer the warning home.
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... I'll do anything. I'll sell my body, I'll do whatever it takes to pay you back, so please, just forgive me this once..."
Hayan's face turned pale as she desperately pleaded again.
"You fucking whore, do you have any idea how many hundreds of millions of won we lost because of you?"
"Stop talking out of your ass. Even if your pussy rots away and you merge it with your asshole to sell them as one, you still couldn't pay back a fraction of that money, you retarded bitch."
The men didn't pay her pleas the slightest bit of attention.
"I'll pay it back, I swear! I'll... I'll sell my pussy as hard as I can!! I'll sell it until it's completely torn to shreds... and if my pussy gets ruined, I'll use my ass, my mouth, anything! I'll pay back every single cent, so please forgive me!! Please, I beg of you... I beg of you... *sob*..."
Hayan kept desperately wailing.
"Sigh... you dumb bitch. You stupid, brainless Hayan. Why the fuck did you have to do that feminist shit... or at least you shouldn't have made it so fucking obvious."
"If you hadn't done it in the first place, none of us would have to go through all this trouble, right?"
The men's voices softened slightly.
"Yes!... You're right. You're absolutely right. I was such an idiot! A total fucking retard...!! With my stupid, useless cunt brain, I was arrogant enough to think I could mock you noble men... *sob*... I really am a brainless retard... I am, so please..."
Clinging to a shred of hope, Hayan pleaded once more.
However—
"And that's why, you worthless cunt, we're graciously giving you the chance to pay us back with your physical body."
Cruelly shattering her illusions, the men decided to resume the torture.
"Let's get started!"
At Jiseong's command, the equipment was quickly set up.
First came the cameras.
They switched on the rusted surgical light, aiming it directly at Hayan's face.
"Ugh..."
But a surgical light wasn't meant for filming; it only left blinding, painful halos in Hayan's eyes before they adjusted it away. Instead, professional studio lights were brought in, casting a harsh glare over Hayan's body.
Her once-plump breasts, now bound tightly with wire and beginning to rot into a dark, purplish-black necrosis, her bruised and battered skin, and her utterly ruined genitals were illuminated in vivid, grotesque detail under the bright studio lights.
Next, the props were laid out.
Surgical instruments, saws, knives, electric soldering irons, and a car battery—every single item was terrifyingly real, clearly meant for actual, brutal use rather than cinematic trickery.
The men began arranging the torture devices one by one, casually discussing their plan.
"Please, just listen to me first!! I'm so sorry!!"
"Shut the fuck up."
"So damn noisy."
Hayan's desperate screams were effortlessly brushed aside.
"Let's pick up where we left off, shall we?"
The men reached their decision.
This time, Jiseong stepped forward, holding a metal strip clamped in a pair of pliers. He had even used a blowtorch to heat it up.
"Ee... eeeeeh!! Ee-geee-aaah!!!!"
Hayan let out a bizarre, guttural shriek, thrashing her body so violently that the cable ties binding her wrists threatened to snap. Of course, heavy-duty metal cable ties designed for industrial piping were never going to break under a woman's desperate struggles. Instead, the sharp edges of the metal ties sliced deep into her wrists, only compounding her agony.
"Hee-guk?! Hee-guuuk?!?!"
They say the pain you already know is the most terrifying. Just the faint, radiating heat from the metal strip was enough to trigger Hayan's traumatic memory of the torture. Her body convulsed violently as her mind replayed the agony, and her ruined genitals twitched in a sick, involuntary spasm, leaking a mixture of pus and vaginal fluid.
A moment later.
"Ah-guk... ah-guguk..."
Once again, the metal strips were driven deep beneath her fingernails. The only difference this time was that they weren't meant to rip the nails off. The metal strips remained firmly embedded, wedged deep under the nail beds of her left index and middle fingers.
"Eh-uh?... uuu-woo?..."
Hayan let out a pathetic, infantile whimper, like a crushed small animal, as she watched the men's movements with sheer terror.
The men lifted a heavy object and slammed it down onto the stainless steel tray with a loud clank.
It was a car battery.
Then, they connected jumper cables. One end was naturally clamped to the battery terminal, and the other clamp was—
"Eh-uh... eh-uuu-ah!!?! Woo-eh-eh-ah?!?!?"
Hayan shrieked, her voice dissolving into a senseless jumble of vowels. She had realized exactly what they were about to do.
They clamped one end of the jumper cable to the metal strip embedded in her finger. Under the heavy weight of the clamp, the metal strip sagged, tearing the nail bed upward and sending a fresh wave of agony through her hand. But this was merely the tip of the iceberg compared to the horror that was to follow.
Ignoring Hayan's frantic thrashing and screams, they mercilessly clamped the other cable to the metal strip in her middle finger.
"Oh... oh-geh-eeek?!?! Oh-guuuk?! Aaah?! Ee-giiik?!?!?!"
With a violent, crackling jolt, her entire hand spasmed and clenched shut. Her fingers trembled and shook like they were performing a frantic tap dance before contracting with maximum force. The sudden, violent contraction almost ripped the metal strips right out of her flesh, prompting the men to quickly disconnect the clamp from the battery terminal.
"Nng-gugu... gng-gube-beub-beub..."
Hayan writhed in agony, bloody foam bubbling from her lips. Yet, she did not lose consciousness. They had injected her with a high dose of stimulants right before she woke up, meaning she was physically incapable of passing out to escape the pain. To make matters worse, the stimulants had sharpened her senses, making the pain feel excruciatingly acute.
"Didn't think of this part, did you?"
"If her hand clenches up like that, the clamps are just going to slip off..."
Though the men were united by a burning, malicious desire to utterly destroy Hayan, they were not professional torturers. Having overlooked the involuntary muscle contractions, their first attempt had failed. After a brief discussion, they came up with a solution.
And that solution was—
"Kkee-eek?! It hurts!!! My hand!! Don't drive those into my hand!! Please!! Ah-kyaaa-aaak?!?!"
They took thin concrete staples used in construction and began stapling her finger joints directly into the wooden chair. The heavy-duty staples punched straight through her joints, shattering the cartilage inside. As the cartilage ruptured, the structural integrity of her fingers collapsed, causing them to twist and warp grotesquely. The ruptured joint fluid mixed with blood, pooling beneath the loose skin and causing her finger joints to swell up hideously, resembling the bulbous digits of an alien creature.
"Aaaah!! It hurts!! It hurts so bad!!!"
Thanks to the crude, slapdash nature of their "procedure," waves of agonizing pain piled on top of one another, forcing Hayan's brain to pump out massive surges of adrenaline. The cocktail of stimulants and adrenaline hyper-activated every nerve in her body, amplifying her perception of the pain to an unbearable degree.
Once again, Jiseong attached the clamps to the metal strips.
"Ugh... uu-geh-eeek?! Eek??!! Ah-gyaa-aaak?!?!"
A hideous, low, beast-like shriek tore from the depths of her chest, rattling in her throat.
"Oh-guk?! Gg-guguk?!"
Electricity always follows the path of least resistance. Instead of dispersing throughout her entire body, the current shot straight into her index finger, traveled through the joints, and exited rapidly through her middle finger.
"Kkweh-euk?!? Kk-guk?! Kk-guguk?!"
Her overloaded nervous system screamed at her muscles to contract and escape the stimulus, but the heavy staples pinned her fingers firmly in place. As her muscles strained violently against the metal fasteners, the pinned joints were forcibly pried apart, tearing the staple holes wider. Joint fluid, heated to a boil by the electrical current, began to bubble and seep out of the wounds. Amidst the frothing fluid, the taut ligaments holding her finger joints together stretched to their absolute limits, looking as if they would snap at any second.
"Uu-gugu... gu-gugugu?!?!?@#*()!"
Fortunately for her, the current didn't travel past her wrist, but the overloaded nerves subjected Hayan to a level of agony beyond human imagination. The pain radiating from her nail beds and shattered finger joints marched relentlessly toward her brain, incinerating every nerve pathway in its wake.
"Eh-guk?! Uu-guguk?! Gg-gyak?!"
Finally, the sensation of her nail beds being fried by the current struck her brain like a physical blow. The blunt trauma of the sensory overload scrambled her mind, causing several capillaries in her brain to rupture under the pressure.
"Kkeh-guk?! Kk-gyat?! Kk-geut?!"
As clusters of brain cells died off one by one, the resulting flood of dopamine and adrenaline whipped through Hayan's mind like a hand mixer.
"Ee-git?!? Uu-gugu?! Wha-?! This?! What is?!?!?"
Her entire body convulsed in a state that hovered somewhere between a violent orgasm and pure agony. Her limbs and spine, completely stripped of conscious control, jerked and twitched in different directions like a grotesque, broken dance. Her upper body writhed and swayed from side to side at a frantic tempo, mimicking some ancient, twisted disco dance.
As her body thrashed, her breasts bounced and swayed. Her breasts, bound tightly in wire and already rotting with dark purple necrosis, wobbled ridiculously from side to side. Under the centrifugal force of her violent shaking, the milk ducts of her decaying breasts split wide open, and a thick, yellowish-white fluid began to ooze out.
"What the hell? She's not even pregnant, so why is she leaking milk?"
One of the men, looking puzzled, dabbed a bit of the fluid dripping from her necrotic breast onto his fingertip and tasted it.
"Blegh! What the fuck is this?!"
The man gagged in disgust. And for good reason—what was leaking from Hayan's rotting breasts was certainly not milk. It was a grotesque cocktail of liquefied fat from her decaying breasts, dying mammary glands, and pus, all blended together into a slurry of dead cells.
Regardless of his disgust, the electrical torture continued unabated.
"Kk-geulg?!?! Kk-gyat?!?! Kk-geugeulg?!?!"
As the electricity surged from her index finger to her middle finger, it incinerated the layers of her digits one by one. First went the epidermis, then the dermis, and finally the muscle tissue began to burn.
"Kk-guk?!? Uu-guguguk?! Gg-gyak?!?!"
The nerves beneath her skin held out slightly longer than the surrounding tissue, but they too eventually succumbed to the intense heat and burned away. As the nerve fibers reached their limit and died, her pain signals began to cut out one by one. However, the remaining nerves, warped and melted by the heat, flared up with double the intensity before dying, unleashing a final, agonizing spasm of pain. Steam rose from her thoroughly cooked skin as the flesh blackened, shriveled, and crumbled into charred ash.
"Ah-guk... gg-geut... gg-geut...?"
Only after her two fingers and the flesh between them were completely reduced to ash did the current finally stop. The blackened, charred skin cracked open with a sickening pop, oozing thick, yellow fluid.
"It hurts... it hurts... it hurts so bad..."
Hayan's eyes rolled wildly in her sockets as she babbled incoherently.
"We've still got plenty of fingers left, you idiot."
Two fingers were only a tiny fraction of her entire body. The men fully intended to torture her fingers until her hands were as mangled and useless as a shredded ragdoll's.
Hayan's nightmare was only just beginning.