The Artist's Almost-Nightmare Commission
Sunset never lasts long.
After grinding away all day, the sun just hangs on the horizon for a brief breather—that’s all it is. Give it a little time and even that resting sun slips under the line and vanishes beyond the sky. If you added up how long it actually spends perched there in a whole day, it wouldn’t even come to an hour.
So by the time Eun-byul got home, evening had already settled in.
The door creaked open onto a pitch-black apartment.
“Haa…”
She flicked on a light without much care and face-planted onto the bed. No formal “I’m home.” She lived alone; there was no one to say it to. The fact that she’d at least washed her hands was about the only proof of her basic hygiene.
“Ugh. I’m wiped.”
The second she hit the mattress, a groan slipped out on its own. Tension she’d been carrying all day finally started draining from her body. It felt like the bed was slowly swallowing her whole, pulling her down into it—and the sensation wasn’t half bad. After everything that had happened, she could have fallen asleep right then and there.
A friend had stabbed her in the back. A scenario she’d spent days preparing had turned into scrap paper. She’d nearly gotten Lee Se-won into serious trouble. Her lungs and legs had been run ragged on top of it all. It felt like she’d packed several months’ worth of chaos into a single day. The emotional toll had been even worse.
She lay there staring blankly at the ceiling.
“……”
The quiet of the room sped her thoughts right up. There was no better place to carefully untangle a knot of worries. She’d been turning the same problem over the whole way home, and she meant to put an end to it now.
After gazing at the ceiling for a long while, Eun-byul muttered under her breath.
“…Yeah. This is the right call.”
She grabbed her phone and started typing a message—to Yu Bo-ram, the friend she’d once made a certain bet with.
A few taps on the screen, and the money left her account along with the message. She was done with the bet. Done dragging it out.
Bo-ram must have been on her phone already—the read receipt vanished almost instantly.
A barrage of mockery followed—the kind of light, careless jabs you only throw when you have no idea what the other person is actually feeling. Eun-byul’s brow twitched for a second. Then she sighed and decided to let it go.
Ah, whatever.
Honestly, she didn’t think of it as a loss. She hadn’t cut him off, either. Still, this felt like the right answer. She just didn’t want to keep the bet going. No matter how you spun it, the wager meant deceiving Se-won, and every time she saw his face after that it would only get harder to look him in the eye. She’d already piled up enough bad karma. She didn’t want any more weight on her conscience.
She gave a bitter little smile and nodded to herself.
This is right.
The whole relationship had been built wrong from the start. She’d fastened the first button in the wrong hole—better to take a small loss and start over than keep stacking more on top of a crooked foundation. In that sense, a hundred thousand won was a fair price for the damage: the excuse she needed to throw out the misaligned button and do it properly. Taking that hit on pure impulse still stung… but she could live with it. Thanks to all of this, she’d gotten to see a new side of him. She’d count that as the value received.
Eun-byul tossed her phone aside and went back to staring at the ceiling.
The worry she’d been nursing was settled—but her mind still wouldn’t stop. For a moment, Lee Se-won’s face took shape against the white ceiling. Imagining him smiling gently at her, she couldn’t help smiling a little herself.
“Heh… how is a person even like that?”
In her head he was smiling down at her with real warmth, the sunset on him, that usually cold gaze holding something soft. Bathed in colors so much warmer than usual, he was ridiculously attractive. The way he’d mercifully forgiven her sins almost made him look like a saint.
Of course, Lee Se-won had just been too lazy to deal with it and let it slide. But with things like this, what mattered was how the person on the receiving end felt.
Thump. Thump.
It was only imagination, and still her heart was racing. The anxiety from earlier was long gone—and now her pulse was hammering even harder than it had then. The suspension-bridge effect was apparently a real thing. She didn’t bother denying what she was feeling. Even if she had a little crush fogging her judgment, the side of himself Se-won had shown today lined up almost perfectly with her ideal type.
He hadn’t been passive like other guys. He’d known how to take control of a situation. He’d had a charisma all his own. That furious look he’d turned on Ho-cheol had been genuinely terrifying… and, at the same time, sexy.
Yeah.
Sexy.
Ironically, that cold edge was what felt most magnetic to her now. If those eyes weren’t permanent—if they only lasted a moment, if the anger wasn’t real but part of a scene…
“Oh…”
A little sound of wonder slipped out of her unbidden.
She kept turning thoughts of Lee Se-won over for a long while—until she suddenly noticed an itch between her legs. And with it, a simple realization.
Come to think of it…
She still hadn’t performed the day’s sacred ritual. Ordinarily she needed to work off the day’s built-up need at least once if she wanted tomorrow to feel clean and clear. Today had been pure chaos from start to finish, so she hadn’t touched her libido at all. On top of that, she’d put her heart through the wringer several times over. When stress piled up past a certain point, you needed a “reward” to bleed it off. If only to flush out the sludge of a brutal day, she had a duty to drain the bad stuff.
Just one round?
She rationalized it to herself as she slowly peeled off her pants. Stretchy leggings slid down, baring smooth thighs; she didn’t stop until her panties were down too. The sleek pussy she’d kept cooped up all day met the open air. In the quiet room, the cool breeze alone was its own kind of pleasure.
She didn’t hesitate. She brought her fingers to her sex.
Squelch—
“Hnn…”
A small moan escaped before she could stop it. Eun-byul’s entrance was already wet. Slick arousal had soaked the folds around it. When had she gotten this worked up…? Had she been dripping just from imagining him?
The question flickered through her mind; she let it go with a wry smile. In the end, she really was a hopeless pervert.
She moved her fingers slowly, stoking the heat. Her phone was packed with nudes, porn, commissioned art she’d ordered herself, and that Geumtaeyang comic she’d been into lately—but for some reason she didn’t feel like using any of her usual material tonight. Fantasy alone felt like it would be enough.
She breathed his name like a murmur.
“Hnn… Se-won oppa……”
Thump. Thump.
Just saying the name once wrapped her heart in a rush of guilt. Right now she was masturbating to the face of a guy from the same school—watching a guy friend she was normally close with through a thoroughly sexual lens. It wasn’t exactly a moral activity. Eun-byul couldn’t stop her hand. If anything, she used that sense of wrongness as fuel and sped her fingers up.
Squelch—squelch—
The wet sound of her rubbing herself filled the silent room. She kept the fantasy going.
“Mmnh…”
She wanted him to look at her and smile that gentle smile again.
“Hah…”
She wanted those warm hands to stroke her hair one more time.
And last of all…
“Haa… Oppa, I’m sorry…”
She really, really wanted him to punish her. Eyes full of contempt, that same cold expression he’d worn when he tore into Ho-cheol. Sometimes spanking her ass, sometimes biting her breasts, sometimes spitting humiliating words at her—any of it would make her so happy.
She unfolded each scene slowly in her mind, savoring them one by one. Every time that thick desire spilled through her head, the pleasure climbed higher. Eun-byul stripped her top off entirely and pinched a nipple with her free hand, gradually tightening her grip like she meant to twist it.
“Hnnn…!”
A sharp sting lanced through her nerves and pleasure crashed in right behind it. Pain like this was nothing but a tool to wind her up further. Feeling like she was right on the edge, she pushed her fingers faster for the finish.
Squelch—squelch—squelch—!
Every stroke of friction made her skin burn hotter. The ticklish pressure intensified; feverish moans spilled into the room.
And then, at last—
“Ghhhaah…!”
Spurt—! Spurt—!
The moan broke free as every scrap of pleasure she’d been holding back slammed into her at once. A full-body shiver of climax raced up her spine; Eun-byul’s legs trembled for a few seconds.
“Hnn… haa…”
A satisfying orgasm. A damn good session.
“Hnn… mmnh… mm.”
But as she caught her breath, something still felt incomplete.
It’s kind of… unsatisfying.
The material had been good. The scenario she’d spun in her head after so long had been deeply satisfying. And yet she couldn’t shake the lingering sense that something was missing. Deep down, Eun-byul knew exactly why. There hadn’t been any visual stimulus.
For a human hooked on the conveniences of modern civilization, pure imagination-only masturbation had a hard ceiling. A few minutes of browsing online turned up endless filthy media; crude analog methods simply couldn’t compete. It was kind of sad. If only she could fuse modern tech with her own fantasies…
“……”
Eun-byul’s gaze drifted to her phone.
“Hmm……”
Like she was turning something over very carefully. For a long, long time.
In the quiet room, her deliberation refused to stop.
—And so, a few days later.
For the first time in a long while, a commission request landed in my inbox. From none other than Good-for-nothing Me.
I opened the brief without a second thought.
“…Huh?”
And promptly short-circuited.
“Isn’t this… me?”
The male character Good-for-nothing Me had commissioned—
was pointing straight at me.