Branding (2)
Branding (Part 2)
Sunday morning.
On a normal day, she would have been calling it a date day with her lover Kang Cheol, worrying about what combination of clothes to wear from the fashion magazines she mindlessly bought while trying to doll herself up with makeup she wouldn't have even done before meeting him. But at this moment, she couldn't do anything.
"What on earth is that photo..."
The day before, after her stream ended, a mysterious text message arrived on her smartphone.
A message with no subject or body, containing only a single attached photo file, sent from an unknown number not saved in her contacts. Kim Ye-rim instinctively knew.
"Selena Kim..."
A low, sunken voice and an expression filled with anger and helplessness.
The devilish woman who had brazenly appeared before her, revealing that all the recent fortune that had come to her and her family was due to Kang Cheol's sacrifices, and that she, Selena Kim, was the one behind it all.
A woman who deserved to be beaten to death for the mere fact that she had raped her lover, Kang Cheol, without her knowledge.
She had taken Ye-rim and her family hostage and threatened that fragile man to force the relationship to continue.
At the same time...
"She even made me hurt Oppa with my own words!"
She had hurt him without knowing what kind of pain Kang Cheol had been enduring and with what feelings, until Selena Kim revealed all these facts.
If it were any other man, he would have abandoned such a woman and gone over to the perfectly capable and wealthy Selena Kim, but Kang Cheol did not. Kim Ye-rim also deeply regretted her mistake, set aside her female pride, and clung to him.
Thanks to that, contrary to Selena Kim's expectations, Kang Cheol and she dramatically reconciled and were able to form an even stronger bond than before.
And just today, on Sunday, a day that was promised as a date without even being explicitly said, she planned to honestly confess that she now knew all about the hardships Kang Cheol had been through and try to save him from Selena Kim.
Abandon the Paprika TV platform and move to another streaming platform, or tell her parents that the increased workload at her mother's company was thanks to Kang Cheol's sacrifice and find another compromise.
That was the plan she had for today, and she would have done it if there were no major variables.
Yes, if there were no major variables...
The text that flew to her smartphone wasn't labeled as from Selena Kim, but she knew that the day before, on Saturday, Kang Cheol and Selena Kim had met without her knowledge, and coincidentally, a mysterious text arrived on her phone that day?
It was obvious that it was a text from Selena Kim to Kim Ye-rim.
She was worried that the devilish woman was up to some trick again to drive a wedge between her and Kang Cheol, so she tried not to check the photo attached to the message, but...
"I ended up checking it anyway..."
Knowing full well it was a poisoned apple, just like Adam and Eve, Kim Ye-rim also couldn't resist the temptation and checked the photo attached to the mysterious message.
And the photo, presumed to have been sent by Selena Kim, contained something truly bizarre.
"The character 'Jeong' for 'right'... What on earth does it mean?"
A meaningless photo that seemed to be a close-up of something. On something smooth like flawless white porcelain, the character 'Jeong' (正), meaning 'right' or 'proper', was drawn three times.
In Hanja, it's the character for 'right', but in Korea, it's most often used to mark the number of times an action has been performed. The first 'Jeong' was written neatly, but the subsequent ones were scrawled roughly, as if the person writing them was very excited or the smooth, porcelain-like surface they were being written on was shaking.
For Ye-rim, who had been worried the photo might contain some horrific image of her lover Kang Cheol, she was filled with nothing but anxiety and worry about what intention this could possibly hold.
"It kinda looks like something from a manga... Right, I'll just ask Oppa directly! Anyway, when we meet today, I was going to tell him I know about Selena Kim, that bitch, and discuss how we'll get through this together, right?"
>
Pushing the unease aside, she decided she would go escort him from his house today and began hurriedly changing her clothes. Shortly after, the appearance of Kang Cheol she encountered at his house was...
--------------------
"Huhu~ They must have met by now, right?"
Inside the luxurious hotel room where she had toyed with a male streamer named Cat the day before.
Leaning back on a huge chair reminiscent of a high-end sofa, Selena, who had been resting while looking at her smartphone, blooms a sinister smile.
The smartphone screen she was looking at contained photos of Kang Cheol's horrific state from the day before, heavily intoxicated by the aphrodisiac and raped by her.
Not one or two, but dozens of photos.
The pictures taken before the man regained consciousness were each and every one terrifying and lewd.
The 'Jeong' characters carved into her hand, the sharp tooth marks and red kiss marks left all over his body.
The traces she left on his flawless white nude body were more lewd than any AV video could compare.
"Kim Ye-rim, how will she react when she sees it? Keukeukeukeu~"
It was a lewd sight to her, but would it look the same in the eyes of Kim Ye-rim, the man's lover?
Perhaps Kim Ye-rim, upon confirming that sight, would go crazy, or Kang Cheol, anticipating Kim Ye-rim's reaction, would try to hide his body somehow...
"I wonder if she'll just stay quiet even after seeing that photo~?"
She went through the trouble of carving the letter of the brand onto that beautiful man's body; wouldn't it be a shame if Kim Ye-rim didn't see it?
It only has meaning if Kim Ye-rim confirms the brand carved into him herself and despairs.
She could have sent photos blatantly showing Kang Cheol's ruined state, but doing so risked making their relationship even stronger, like last time.
That's why.
She deliberately sent Kim Ye-rim an ambiguous photo whose meaning couldn't be understood at first glance.
Humans, by nature, hold fear and curiosity towards the unknown, and only when that unknown is realized do they receive a great shock.
Whether it's in a good meaning or a bad meaning.
"And for Kim Ye-rim, that bitch, it will be a bad meaning~"
The dice had been cast.
A dice infinitely disadvantageous and unequal to Kim Ye-rim and Kang Cheol...
-------------------
"Oppa...?"
Hearing Ye-rim's voice from the living room, he hurriedly adjusted the turtleneck knit he had hastily bought last night, checking if it properly covered his neck.
Originally, he hadn't planned for this.
Just yesterday, he had planned to confess everything that had happened with Selena to Ye-rim and definitively end the relationship with Selena.
But that too became all for nothing due to the tyranny of Selena, that crazy woman.
'Selena, this crazy woman...!'
There wasn't a single undamaged place on his entire body.
How roughly she had treated his body when he was intoxicated by the aphrodisiac and lost his reason.
His groin and pelvis, which had endured her piston-like thrusts, were not just red but swollen purple, sending excruciating pain with any large step. The brand of the 'Jeong' character, carved to show off her conquest of his body, was starkly imprinted on his thigh.
If it ended there, he could have somehow endured the pain and hidden it as long as he didn't get intimate with Ye-rim, but on his neck, visible at a glance, were sharp tooth marks and blatant kiss marks that were too obvious to brush off as bug or mosquito bites, as if she had tried to devour him.
'I can't tell her the truth...'
He needed to quickly tell Ye-rim everything and escape Selena's clutches, but he couldn't.
What lover would stay calm after seeing their partner in such a horrifically violated state?
Even he would be furious beyond belief if Ye-rim had such blatant marks on her, and moreover, in this gender-reversed world, his position as a man was a gender where purity was enforced.
In the previous world, it would have ended with 'Ugh! Hot gaysh! What kind of look is that for a guy? We're breaking up!' but it's not like that here.
It's a bizarre world where, while most women see men as sexual relief tools, the shattered gender ratio also means male purity is highly valued.
And on my body, a man's body, there are 'Jeong' character tattoos like something out of a hentai, along with tooth marks and red kiss marks?
'There's no way Ye-rim would just stay still!'
Ye-rim, with a mother who runs a small-to-medium business, might be a silver spoon, but she's no match for Selena, who is beyond a gold spoon—a diamond spoon.
It was as clear as day that if Ye-rim, driven mad by the sight of me, officially went after Selena, not only Ye-rim but her entire family would fall into ruin.
This time, he had to hide it.
The tooth marks and red kiss marks would disappear in 2 or 3 days.
'But the tattoo marks...'
No, right now, hiding this state from Ye-rim comes first.
The tattoo... I'll have to meet Selena again on Saturday.
Everything is going according to Selena's plan.
But there was nothing he could do.
Just like before and now, for Ye-rim's sake, he had to lie.
But...
"Oppa. Do you know what this photo is...?"
She shows me the screen of her smartphone as I hurriedly come out to the living room at her call.
And on that screen was a photo of my thigh with the 'Jeong' character carved into it...