Karma (15) — Explosion
The instant she saw the caller ID, she went to fetch her phone from the master bedroom—just in case Jia tried something the second she left the room.
The ringtone went off the moment she stepped back into the living room, as if it had been waiting for her to pick it up.
"Yeah. Hello?"
His wife's movements cut off mid-action as she answered. She looked thoroughly displeased. Of all the times for this to happen.
"Oh... Mom..."
He couldn't make out what was being said, but her expression soured as she hemmed and hawed.
"You want me to come over... now?"
"...?!"
"Heheh♡"
To Jiwoo, it was a bolt from the blue. To Jia, it was the best news she had ever heard. She flashed a sly, crooked smile at her mother, then turned that same look on her father.
"Nngh..."
Her gaze was thick and sticky as she dragged her tongue slowly across her lips.
"Ah, for fuck's sake..."
Whatever was going on with her mother-in-law, Jiwoo couldn't even manage a proper reply. She just clicked her tongue in irritation.
"Fine. I'll be right there."
Throwing glances at Jia the whole time, she threw her clothes on in a hurry and headed for the door. The way she draped her jacket over her shoulders without quite closing it offered one last, faintly indecent glimpse of what lay underneath. Then she yanked the collar, pulling him right up to her face.
"Ngh...!"
"Jeon Hanbyul."
The way she said his name was so tender, so aching, it was as if they were about to be parted for a long, long time. Something from their dating days surged up in his chest all over again.
Anxiety, agitation, and urgency all tangled together in her eyes. After so long of seeing nothing but that fierce, sharp, commanding gaze, this look on her face made her seem almost pitiful.
"I understand, honey."
They whispered it so that only the two of them could hear.
She spread both arms and pulled him tight against her chest. The peach-scented warmth of Jiwoo's skin felt especially soft today.
"I'll be back."
She shot Jia one last glance and walked out.
Jia sat there in a daze until the door was nearly shut. Then, the instant it started to close, her mouth split into a grin.
"Mo.ther. Have a nice trip."
Soft enough that it wouldn't carry. Soft enough to load every syllable with contempt and mockery.
The door clicked shut. Now it was just the two of them in the house—Jia the daughter, and Hanbyul the father.
He was still staring at the front entrance, so he couldn't see what was behind him. But one thing he could feel with absolute certainty.
A sinister presence.
And given that he was still on all fours like a puppy, it felt even worse.
What do I do...?
Should he go to Jia? Should he stay in the room like his wife had told him? He wavered, torn in two. If he went, Jiwoo would scold him. If he didn't, his daughter would.
Alright. I've decided.
He would listen to his wife.
"J-Jia... Daddy's a little tired, so... I'm gonna go lie down first, okay...?"
The floorboards creaked as he turned around. What he found waiting for him was Jia, arms folded, one corner of her mouth hooked up in a look that said, Go on. Try it.
Dread washed over him, but he wanted out of this situation as fast as humanly possible. He went into the bedroom.
"Haa..."
He tried to settle his nerves by straightening the sheets, still wrecked from everything he and Jiwoo had done. It didn't work.
His wife's words rang in his ears as vividly as if she were whispering them right against his eardrum. His chest felt tight. Whether it was the aftershocks of his heat or something else, the fact that he had gone through with it with Jia—without any hesitation at all—kept stabbing at him. And Jia looked so much like Jiwoo to begin with...
"I just have to wait until Jiwoo gets back, right?"
Just to be safe, he started toward the door to lock it. The door burst open.
"Daddy?"
His daughter stood there staring at him with dead, empty eyes.
"J-Jia...?"
"What were you about to do?"
"H-huh...?"
She called him out on exactly what he'd been about to do, as if she had been watching him the entire time.
"Daddy...?"
Her face was a blank mask, but her voice sounded almost happy. The mismatch was deeply unsettling.
"Daddy♡"
"Jia..."
"Daddy♡ Daddy♡ Daddy♡ Daddy♡ Daddy♡ Daddy♡ Daddy♡"
She said nothing else. Just that one word, over and over, in a hollow voice that carried no feeling at all. It was terrifying.
"Why were you trying to lock the door? Do you trust me that little? Or is it that you actually like real Mom better than me? That's disappointing. Fuck. Then everything I've done this whole time would've been for nothing♡ Don't you think?"
"Jia. I've told you before—"
"Fuck! Fuck! I know that already! But I'm not doing that anymore. You son of a bitch."
He tried to stop her by invoking the words father and daughter.
"Mmph...!"
She lunged at his mouth like she was starving for it, kissing him with wet, greedy sounds. She had clearly been holding back for far too long. Both hands clamped roughly around his face as she twisted her head this way and that, drinking down his saliva.
"Pwah... Daddy, let's wash up. You smell weird."
"H-huh...?"
"I said you fucking smell weird."
Tears welled in her eyes as she said it. A moment ago she had been furious; now she was crying, her face twisted with grief. Looking at her, Hanbyul felt a pang of fear—was she getting hurt because of him? Was she starting to break?
That worry did not last long.
She yanked the collar.
"Aaah!"
Jia copied exactly what her mother had done. Sadism mixed with a swelling sense of superiority—I'm her equal now—and the combination had her trembling with excitement.
"No talking back. You're coming with meee...!"
Her mouth itched. The urge to sink her teeth into the nape of his neck and drink was so strong it nearly spilled over, but she held it back. Barely.
"Khhhnnh♡"
She used the collar to haul him flush against her, and the hand that dragged along his cock had him hard in an instant.
"You perverted little shit."
The words came out rough, and she tried to sound like she had all the time in the world. Inside, she was more frantic than anyone.
He smells like Mom.
She wanted her own scent on him, and she wanted it now. Collar in one hand, the other fist bunched in whatever she could grab, she dragged him blindly into the bathroom.
They hadn't even been inside for a full minute before a man's lewd, melting moan spilled out through the door.
"Heaah... hhk... knnh..."
Hanbyul's body had flushed as red as his face wherever a woman's skin had touched him. The thought of running finally broke through. He staggered out of the bathroom on unsteady legs.
"Ah—!"
His foot caught on the threshold. His body pitched forward, the towel slipped off, and his cock—slick and filthy with a mixture of semen and her fluids—was left completely exposed.
A heavy thud. Then a sharp crack. For a second he thought he had broken a bone, but there was no pain. The impulse to flee vanished as he looked down.
Huh...?
His phone was shattered. The screen wasn't just cracked—it was spiderwebbed so badly it was about to crumble apart. He had no idea how it had even gotten there. A cold, sinking feeling settled in his gut.
"Oh my. Now you can't call Mom, and you can't pick up either♡"
Jia stepped out naked, shaking the water from her hair, and looked down at his devastated face like it was the cutest thing she had ever seen. Then she rubbed herself against his face all over again.
"Nnghhmmph...!"
"Was it that good, spending three whole days mixing your body with Mom's?"
Father and daughter had a brief meal in the living room, then moved to the master bedroom. The wife who was supposed to be back any minute kept not coming, and with every passing hour their behavior grew rougher, the line they were crossing darker.
"Don't you remember what you did with me? What am I, then? Was I just okay? Something you eat and throw away?"
All the resentment from her earlier war of nerves and arguments with her mother had piled up inside Jia until it had nowhere left to go.
"Why do you make better sounds with her? Why do you pant harder? Why do you roll your hips all by yourself, you piece of shit. You fucking asshole."
Her face was twisted with irritation—and then she kissed him anyway, deep and filthy and wet.
It was uncomfortable, but she had left the puppy ears and the collar on him. For the visual.
"Haa... fuck..."
Jiwoo was on her way back from seeing her mother. She had finished dealing with the business-trip situation, but a sense of impending disaster clung to her and would not let go.
She left her mother's words behind and threw herself into the car. She pushed the speed up in her panic, but the lights kept stopping her, cars kept cutting in, and getting home today of all days felt like wading through tar.
They're alone together. Nothing's happening... right?
She wanted to believe that. But if it had been her in Jia's place, she would have done it already—and then some.
"I have to hurry. I have to hurry. I have to hurry. I have to hurry. I have to hurry. I have to hurry. I have to hurry. I have to hurry. I have to hurry. I have to hurry. I have to hurry."
The anxiety spiked fast, and the endless crawl of traffic frayed her nerves down to the wire.
"Get out of the way! All of you, move!!!"
She screamed herself hoarse and kicked at the floorboards, but it was a tantrum that changed nothing. Of course she had hit rush hour. The drive home stretched on and on, slower than she could stand.
"Haa... haa... fuckfuckfuckfuck."
Jiwoo got home far later than she had planned. Her hair was a mess. Her clothes weren't even fastened properly. Anyone who saw her would have thought something terrible had happened to her, and she could not have cared less.
She skipped the elevator and took the emergency stairs at a run. Sweat plastered her hair to her face. Her chest heaved visibly as she gasped for air. She punched in the door code and burst into the entryway.
The front hall was unexpectedly bright. That much was fine. What came after was not.
The scene waiting for her was a wreck. Clothes were strewn across the floor, and Hanbyul's in particular snagged her eye and would not let go. Everything from cheap, vulgar underwear to outfits designed to get a rise out of someone—most of it stretched out or wrinkled, as if someone had been dressing up a doll, gotten bored, and ripped it all back off.
"..."
Her husband's clothes and her daughter's clothes, tangled together on the floor. She drifted into the living room like she was under a spell, and even that was nothing compared to the kitchen.
The dining table looked blood-soaked, wine splattered across it in dark arcs. One chair in particular had an unnatural amount of liquid running down it in slow, heavy drips. Drip. Drip. It looked like something out of a horror movie. Or rather—she could already picture exactly how it had happened.
Someone pinning another person down, riding them, rolling their hips in a frenzy... and the one underneath twisting, writhing, crying out...
Snacks and food were scattered everywhere without a shred of order. The chairs, the table, the sink—all of it was a filthy mess.
And then, in the middle of that blood-draining silence, a sound began to seep from the bedroom. A sound she had been praying she would not hear. A sound that had been choking her for hours with the most sickening imaginings she could conjure.
No. It isn't. It can't be. It isn't...
As if to crush that hope, that effort, that entire wish under its heel—as if to laugh in her face—the thick, erotic, frantic cries of a man and a woman came rolling out of the room.
Was every happy hour she had spent with him, every memory, every precious thing they had built, about to shatter like glass?
With a face she never wore in ordinary life, wild and undone, she sucked in a useless breath and ran for the bedroom. The room where she and Hanbyul had made love so fiercely. The room where, right now, he was making love just as fiercely with another woman.
The room the sounds were coming from. The room she had been desperately hoping, praying, begging would hold anything else. She threw the door open.
And what she found was her daughter Jia, twisting her body in lewd, sinuous waves as she ground herself down on top of her husband.
Hanbyul looked completely gone, his mind somewhere far away. Jia caught her mother's eye, smiled with her eyes as if to say what took you so long, and held the gaze.