A Lesson in Survival
"Slurp... mmmph..."
Jia remained meekly prostrated at Jihun's feet, meticulously licking his shoes.
"Your hands are idle."
"I'm s-sorry... slurp... I did bad..."
Seeing Jia's hands idle for even a second, Jihun stomped his foot down on her head once more.
Jia's face was crushed against the floor, her cheek ground flat against the tiles.
One cheek was smeared with dirt and grime from the sole of his shoe, while the other was rubbed into the damp, pungent puddle of urine.
Her disheveled hair acted like a mop, soaking up the urine on the floor and giving off a sickening stench.
"Clean it properly. I know women are naturally stupid, but how can you fail at something this simple? Is your body really the only useful thing about you? Should I just sell you to a slaughterhouse?"
"Ah-hic!"
Jia's back flinched violently.
The butchering video Jihun had shown her as a threat flashed vividly before her eyes.
The woman in the video had her stomach sliced open while still alive, her entrails dragged out.
As chunks of flesh and organs were ripped away by brutal, uncaring hands, the woman screamed in agony, crying tears of blood and foaming at the mouth.
It was a blood-curdling, horrific scream—and he had told her that even that woman had received a bare minimum of anesthesia.
“For you, Sis, I'll ask them to do it with absolutely no anesthesia. Alive, of course.”
Jihun's threat echoed in her mind.
Spinning with sheer terror and panic, Jia's eyes welled with a fresh torrent of tears.
She didn't want to be slaughtered alive. She had to show Jihun her absolute sincerity, no matter what. With that single, desperate thought, Jia's broken mind raced.
"Nooo... nooo... I did bad... I make it clean-clean..."
With her head pinned down, she struggled to move her hands and grabbed a fistful of her own hair.
To avoid being slaughtered, she would gladly sacrifice her hair.
"Ugh... uuugh..."
Though her head was crushed under his foot, making it hard to move, Jia did her best to use her hair to wipe the shoes of the brother who was trampling her.
"Uuu..."
On the verge of bursting into tears, Jia frantically rubbed her hair against his shoes as if it were a polishing rag.
She had cherished her hair so much; she had never dyed it like other girls, and she rarely even used a hair straightener to avoid damaging it.
Whenever she dried it, she always used the cool setting and took her time to ensure it wouldn't get ruined.
She had always bought the most expensive shampoos and conditioners.
There was once a cruel joke popular online: “If a Hannyeo washes off her makeup and shaves her head, she looks no different from a man.”
Paradoxically, this meant that makeup and, above all, hair made up a massive portion of a woman's identity.
And now, Jia was wearing away her own femininity like a cheap rag.
Her precious hair, soaked in urine and caked in dust, transformed into a hideous, matted clump.
With every rub, she drifted further away from being a woman.
It was humiliating and deeply sorrowful, but it was better than being beaten.
Actually, even if she were beaten, it was still infinitely better than being sold off and slaughtered.
To ensure her punishment ended right here in Jihun's hands, Jia—
"How is it?... Sis is good at cleaning shoes, right?..."
She desperately wiggled her hips, using her hair and her tongue to meticulously polish his shoes.
Humiliation wedged itself into her mind, splitting it open, only for the cracks to be filled with relief.
As the coldness in Jihun's eyes softened, the terrifying vision of her own slaughter began to fade.
"...She looks like a total psycho pervert."
"I've never seen a bitch use her own hair like that."
"Did they scoop out her brain and replace it with a monkey's?"
"How sex-crazed do you have to be to soak yourself in your own juices while doing something that retarded?"
The whispers of the crowd struck her, but they couldn't penetrate her core.
The relief of obeying—and thus being protected by—Jihun acted like a stab-proof vest, shielding her from the world and her own shame.
"How is it?... Clean, right? So don't throw Sis away... I keep cleaning my baby brother's shoes like this forever..."
Jia continued to smile happily through her tears, rolling around naked on the floor like a pig.
Countless eyes dug into her pale skin as it grew increasingly covered in filth.
But she didn't care about their stares anymore.
Jihun was the only one who could protect her.
And among the eyes watching Jia, there were not only men.
"Look closely... You know you'll end up just like that if you don't listen to me, right?"
"Yes, Oppa..."
There were women too.
In the old days, if a boyfriend or husband stared at a scene like this, she would have lashed out with all kinds of toxic, neurotic remarks:
“Oppa, where are you looking?”
“Why are men so disgusting? Why do you like stuff like that?”
“Are you really the kind of guy who gets off on this?”
“Ugh, this is so annoying. Let's break up.”
But now, the world had changed.
Jia's pathetic display was nothing more than a valuable educational tool for them.
The men with women at their sides were like nagging parents warning their kids, “If you don't study, you'll end up like that.”
They used this living textbook to vividly teach them: “If you don't obey a man, you become Yeochuk.”
They were hammering the lesson home.
And not everyone was watching purely for educational purposes.
"Do you want to have your Human Rights Deprivation processed too, Hayul?"
Some men looked at Jia not as a mere warning, but as a role model, imagining the day they would strip their own cock-sleeves of their human rights.
"Oh, Oppa... I might be your cock-sleeve, but I'm not that much of a masochist..."
"Hmm... But do women even need human rights? It's not like they do anything useful with them. They just get in the way."
"Oppa, don't make scary jokes like that. Let's just go back to our place and have sex, okay?"
"I'm not joking."
"Seriously..."
The woman tried her best to laugh it off, but her pupils shook with unmistakable terror.
In this new world, even an informal relationship like a boyfriend was enough to exploit legal loopholes and strip a woman of her human rights if he was determined enough.
Hayul desperately tried to distract her boyfriend with playful banter, but her fingertips trembled as she pictured herself being stripped of her humanity.
And so, the grotesque farce surrounding Jihun and Jia continued.
"..."
The Female Public Service Agent watched with a sour expression, making no move to intervene.
The Female Public Service Agent system was a new institution introduced after the revolution.
Only after women's rights were stripped did feminist groups begin clamoring for female conscription under the pretext of "fulfilling their duties as citizens."
It was their desperate attempt to regain some leverage.
The response from the rising young entrepreneurs of the northern territories and the alt-right youth was the creation of the Female Public Service Agent system.
“You slacked off and enjoyed your privileges until the war ended and the country was unified, and now you want to play the martyr and act like you're doing your duty?”
Or, more simply: “Cut the shit and fuck off.”
The system was an institutional middle finger.
It reflected the firm stance of the ruling male youth: those who once abandoned their duties would never be granted them again, and rights only followed the fulfillment of obligations.
Conscripted in this half-baked manner, these female agents existed in a legal blind spot, subjected to all kinds of absurd—or, depending on how one looked at it, entirely logical—treatment.
Serving as Flesh Toilets, sexually harassed and assaulted by the regular employees of their assigned stations, was a daily occurrence. It was not uncommon for them to be gang-raped or even raped and murdered by hostile citizens.
Yet, there was no one to protect them.
Just as men had once been left unprotected, they too were abandoned.
Their sacrifices were reduced to mere statistics, buried deep within government websites under titles like "Mortality and Suicide Rates of Female Public Service Agents"—figures no one would ever see unless they went looking for them.
These dry numbers were dismissed as an "insignificant and minor issue" and completely ignored by society.
Just as men's suffering once was.
"..."
And so, the female agent tried her best to ignore the spectacle of Jihun and Jia from her corner. Until—
"Dasom, what are you doing here?"
"Hyaah?!"
An older railway employee shoved his hand between the thighs of Dasom, the female agent, squeezing her crotch hard as he spoke.
"Ah... over there. They're..."
Dasom flusteredly pointed toward Jihun and Jia.
"What? You're making a fuss over just that?"
"Yes... I guess so."
"Aren't you going to stop them?"
"Stop... them?"
An image of herself being beaten by Jihun until her bones shattered flashed through Dasom's mind.
Even if she got hurt, there would be absolutely no compensation for medical bills. Even if she ended up crippled, limping on broken limbs, she would still be forced to report for duty. Getting involved in such a situation was the last thing she wanted.
And if she were beaten to death...
Dasom's face turned pale.
As if reading her mind, the male employee sneered.
"You don't have to stop them. They'll stop on their own eventually. Besides, stuff like that is common these days anyway."
He laughed at her.
"Right...?"
Dasom let out a quiet sigh of relief.
"Yeah. Oh, by the way, I have something to discuss with you. Follow me to the night-duty room."
The employee grabbed Dasom's breast and dragged her toward the duty room.
"Yes..."
Though she knew her only purpose in that room would be serving as his sexual plaything, a look of relief washed over Dasom's face.
After all, being used as a semen toilet for the staff was infinitely better than being beaten to death by a hostile citizen.