The NSFW Shut-In
I had always liked the atmosphere of cafés. There was something about them that put a person at ease. The soft beige lighting that washed over the whole place, the warm feel of the interior, the sweet scents rising through the air—all of it had a way of sorting out whatever cluttered up the inside of your head.
And if you sat there long enough listening to the quiet music drifting through the room, you could almost feel a focus you didn't know you had start welling up from nowhere.
That's why I used to go all the time back when I was a student.
These days I only drew, but back then I'd had studying to do on top of the art. Whenever an exam was breathing down my neck, I would show up at a café the way other people showed up for work.
Sure, there were quieter places—libraries and the like. But I was the kind of person who preferred a little ambient noise over total silence.
I sent one last text to the other party and strolled into the café at my own pace.
Ding-a-ling—
The little bell over the door chimed, and the scenery around me changed. The heat that had been baking the street fell away the moment I stepped inside, and the exhaust-fume smell of cars was replaced by a sweet coffee aroma that tickled the inside of my nose.
Come to think of it, I'd barely set foot in a café since I'd started living on my own. The familiar sight after so long left me feeling almost sentimental for a second. Only for a second, though—then I turned my gaze toward where the other party was sitting.
She must have just checked my message, because she lifted her head and started looking around. Her short hair swayed as her eyes flicked this way and that. Our gazes brushed for an instant, but either she didn't see me or didn't recognize me—she ducked her head again and started tapping at her phone.
Had she really not seen me? Or could she simply not believe it was me?
I started walking toward her, slow and easy. One step, then another. With every step, she came into clearer focus.
Bright, round eyes. The dark circles under them. A cute face—and a chest that stood in almost comic contrast to it. Each detail slid into view and doubled the fun of the approach.
I sent another text as I walked.
The reply came at the exact same moment I spoke.
"Here."
I was already standing right beside her. My low voice cut through the café music and landed clean. At the sudden sound, she quietly turned her head.
"…Huh?"
Then a brief stretch of silence. Our eyes met. Across a distance of barely a step, an invisible line drew itself between us. As I took her in head-on, little pieces of information stacked up in my head—and at the same time, she reacted.
"H-huh? Huh?!"
Her gaze stayed frozen, but everything else about her was pure motion. Those bright eyes flew wide open as shock flooded her face. Her still body gave a little jolt, and her upper half leaned away from me.
"What—what is this? You're—wait, Artist, you're a guy?"
She looked like she had never once considered the possibility. The idea that the person churning out dirty pictures from some corner of the internet might be a man had clearly never crossed her mind—not even a little.
Moments like this always drove home that I was living in a gender-reversed world. Drawing NSFW art was something "women" did; it was supposed to be a million miles from anything a "man" would care about. I felt that fact all over again.
Not that it put me in a bad mood.
"Yes. Hello."
I said it lightly and took a seat. Confusion still painted her face; she clearly hadn't processed the situation. She was about as far from composed as a person could get. I was looking straight at her, and yet our eyes barely met—because she kept dodging mine. She didn't seem good at holding eye contact with the opposite sex.
Well. I did that a lot myself.
Anyway, I finished the introduction. First, the handle.
"I'm Hala."
Even as I said it, I was turning over how to handle her. What to bring up first. Which topic to go with.
…Actually, the question had been decided from the start. We'd opened the conversation with dirty art, and we'd met because of dirty art. So the conversation ought to stay on that track. Besides, I'd come here specifically to get an explanation out of her.
"So—what kind of commission were you saying you wanted to place?"
A man and a woman discussing NSFW art from the very first meeting. I was looking forward to her reaction.
Rape Legalization—Seong A-rin—liked to think she had a pretty solid grip on reality.
It wasn't that she knew much about economics, or that life had handed her a wealth of experience. She simply understood, as an ordinary person living an ordinary life, that the world was not a particularly dramatic place. Especially when it came to chance encounters.
Unexpected meetings were the stuff of comics and dramas. The world was wide and complicated, sure—but it wasn't the kind of place where miraculous things happened just because it was complicated. The perverted molester who showed up in doujinshi stayed inside the doujinshi. The schoolboy sprinting with a piece of toast in his mouth never stepped out of the panel borders. Even if something like that did happen somewhere on Earth, she figured it would never apply to her. The odds were simply too thin.
That was why she hadn't thought much of anything while waiting to meet a total stranger. She'd just assumed the artist called "hala" would naturally be a woman—someone more or less like herself. After all, there was no way a man would be the one drawing that kind of hardcore stuff. The idea that the person who listened to her filthy requests without flinching could be a guy had never once entered her head.
So she'd been able to wait as calmly as a still lake. For a girl who'd gone through all-girls middle school and all-girls high school, dirty talk between women wasn't anything to get tense about.
……And yet.
"So… I need a little more detail on how you want this part drawn. What's the situation supposed to be?"
Why was there some ridiculously handsome guy sitting across from her?
"Ah, th-that part is… the stockings are all torn up, and then an aroused woman is, um, rubbing her thighs against…"
And why was she explaining her own fantasies to that guy?
It didn't make sense. No—it made sense, but her brain refused to accept it. She had requested some dirty art, and somehow she'd ended up sitting down to talk with the artist. That was all it was. The problem was that the other party happened to be the opposite sex.
"Her thighs…"
That alone was enough to turn a simple commission briefing into a humiliation session. Every time she had to describe another piece of her fantasy out loud, shame lit her face on fire.
"…Her thighs?"
Maybe because she'd stalled mid-sentence. The man across from her asked it flatly—quiet, level, stripped of any feeling. For a second their eyes locked. Sharp, narrowed eyes were staring straight through her.
He was quite handsome. A high-bridged nose, a clean jawline, dark brows. Objectively good-looking—and to a girl who rarely got the chance to meet men, he looked even more so. But that face combined with the sharp atmosphere around him put out a strange kind of pressure. It felt a little like looking at the delinquent boys who'd existed back in school—not that she'd ever actually met any, having graduated from an all-girls high school years ago. Still, the intimidation was definitely that flavor. The automatic flinch of prey under a higher predator—
"Her thighs?"
The question came again while she was thinking. Because his voice carried no emotion, her mind spun it in an even worse direction. And because the negative thoughts got stronger, the voice started to sound like it was carrying something ugly… a vicious little cycle. His questions felt like he was grilling her for a crime.
He was waiting for an answer. She didn't have a choice either way. Dragging it out would only sour his mood. Seong A-rin squeezed her eyes shut and answered the question one more time.
"A-a woman squirting and soaking her thighs—that kind of scene…!"
Ah.
Her face went scarlet. Everything above her neck felt like it was burning. It was the exact feeling of some loser writing a love letter, getting caught by the school delinquents, and being forced to read it out loud at a recital. Ahh, so this is what a public reading feels like. She could almost hear laughter that wasn't actually there.
Seong A-rin dropped her gaze back to the table.
I want to die…
All she wanted was for time to hurry up and pass.
…Cute.
That was what Lee Se-won thought, watching her. Her face had gone red as a beet, and her eyes were spinning in little circles. Leave her a little longer and steam would probably start rising off the top of her head. She looked so much like a terrified squirrel that the urge to mess with her came flooding up all on its own.
He hadn't planned on teasing her this hard at first—but her reactions were just too good. From the moment they met she could barely hold eye contact, and the second the conversation started she fell apart so thoroughly she could barely get words out. Watching it was so entertaining he couldn't bring himself to stop. At one point he'd even deliberately kept his face blank because the way she shrank into herself was that adorable.
As he'd said before, when he shut his mouth he had a pretty nasty-looking face. This time, he'd decided to put that face to work.
"Ahh, so you'd want a sort of water-soaked texture, then? Maybe darken the stocking color a bit."
"Y-yeah……"
Another answer that sounded like it was crawling into the floor. Honestly—where had that lively "Rape Legalization" gone? All that was left now was one shut-in NSFW addict curled up in a corner.
"There's one thing I'm curious about, though. Looking at the scenario, it feels like the female character is being forced into it—so why is her face flushed like she's enjoying it?"
"That's…"
"That's?"
"E-even if it's forced, you can still feel pleasure…!"
Ahh. As expected of an authority in the field. Every word of hers carried a whole philosophy.
Anyway, that was how the conversation went. Lee Se-won would ask questions like he was cross-examining her, and Seong A-rin would answer like she had no other choice. She never once took the lead. She seemed too busy holding her own psyche together; whenever he asked something, she just spat out a reply like a broken machine.
Unfortunately the conversation didn't last long—if he'd pushed any further, he genuinely thought her face might explode. There was a faint sheen of tears gathering in those spinning eyes. And in a world like this, what kind of weight did it carry when a "woman" started crying?
With that thought, Lee Se-won cut the conversation short.
"Man, though—you're awfully quiet."
The commission talk, that is. There was no way he was just going to set down a toy this fun.
"Y-yes?"
She reacted to his words. She'd already been thinking she was coming off like a total loser. Originally she'd planned to talk a little more freely, but… what could she do? He was a guy! And a handsome one at that!
For a "woman" who'd gone through all-girls middle and high school, the opposite sex carried a weight beyond the simple fact of being different. Strip away the gender and he was just another human being—someone you could talk to, someone you'd probably find common interests with if you looked. She knew that. And still, the moment she actually met one, she shrank. It was an involuntary physical response.
"You were so lively in the chat window."
And the second Lee Se-won said that, every chat log she'd ever typed started flashing through her head like a life review. All the things she'd blurted out with zero filter, trusting in the flimsy shield of anonymity. Every last vulgar exchange from last time.
"!!"
The commission wasn't even the problem anymore. The things she'd said were critical hits just from grazing them. If someone walked those chat logs into a police station, the cops would probably throw her straight in a cell.
"What was it—‘I want to get wrecked by a huge one.' ‘This dick is so fucking hot.' ‘I've already finished three times.' You said stuff like that all the time."
"P-please stop…"
"Saying that kind of thing to a guy could get you in real trouble, you know. What do you think?"
"I was wrong…!"
Her gaze buried itself even deeper. Her heart was hammering in the worst possible direction. Her eyes had already been glued to the table—now they were practically stuck to the floor. The heat flooding her head made it feel like her brain had shorted out. The guy across from her was probably staring at her with pure contempt right now.
I'm so fucked…
That was what she was thinking when—
"Pfft."
—it slid into her ear.
"Pahaha! This is fun. You're so good to tease. Don't worry—I'm not actually scolding you."
Once more, a man's voice poured into her ear. A voice she'd never heard from him before—one laced with laughter. The range in his tone still wasn't huge, but the words themselves weren't empty of feeling anymore. His whole way of speaking was packed with the sense that he was having the time of his life.
Only then did she lift her eyes. The sharp look in his eyes was the same as before—but set against it was a mouth curved into a wide grin. At last, Seong A-rin could more or less grasp the situation.
H-he was messing with me!!
From the very beginning, he'd been teasing her. Enjoying her reactions. The moment she realized it, a strange anger welled up in her head. All the mortification she'd been feeling started converting into a sense of grievance. Seong A-rin shot Lee Se-won a sharp glare.
Seeing it, Lee Se-won spoke through a laugh.
"Heh. Sorry. Your reactions were just too good. Calm down, okay?"
Of course, even angry, Seong A-rin didn't actually say anything back. He was still too scary for that. The furious delinquent who'd forced her into a public reading had simply turned into a laughing delinquent. A delinquent was still a delinquent, and the pressure coming off him was still there.
Even so—she could finally meet his eyes properly. Maybe for the first time, she was really looking at them. And with that, the whole shape of him came into view.
Those sharp eyes didn't stop at sharp. The calmly settled hair set the mood, and the dark circles under his eyes gave him a strangely decadent air. From there, a slender line of neck, and collarbones faintly visible past the short sleeves. Shoulders that were quietly broad, and long arms stretching down.
For a moment A-rin forgot to be angry and just stared.
"Hm? Still mad? Ah, now I actually feel a little bad. Hold on a second—come to think of it, I've got something to send you."
Maybe he'd mistaken her dazed staring for continued glaring. The man picked up his phone and started tapping at something.
Ding!
An alert chimed—not from his phone, but from Seong A-rin's own. She immediately picked it up and checked the notification. A photo from the account named "hala." A light tap, and she could see what he'd sent.
It was another commission she'd placed a few days ago. Come to think of it, she still hadn't received the art. She'd assumed he just hadn't finished it yet—but apparently he'd been planning to hand it over in person.
Seong A-rin looked back and forth between the picture and the man sitting across from her.
The piece showed a man and a woman on their way to a motel. The woman looked faintly pale, as if she were being dragged along against her will, while the man wore a strange little smile as he looked at her. The arm draped over the woman's shoulder ran straight down so his hand could knead one of her large breasts. The woman in the drawing had her brows drawn together like she hated it—and yet she couldn't seem to fight the pleasure rolling in, her breathing gone faintly ragged. It was only a still image, so the action was frozen, but the situation it captured was pure motion. That distinctive expressiveness and style of his, the kind that pulled people under.
Only then did it truly hit her that the artist who'd drawn this was the man sitting right in front of her. At the same time, the smile on the man in the picture overlapped with the smile on the man across the table, and the whole view of him shifted. The corners of a mouth lifted in something like enjoyment. Eyes you couldn't read. The inside of clothes you could almost—but not quite—see.
The fact settled in: a handsome man who would turn heads automatically on the street was casually sending her dirty drawings. An unreal situation, followed by one unreal thing after another.
A-rin looked at him again, half entranced. The man watching her with that strange little smile was… fine, she'd just say it.
Kind of hot.