Females in Uniform (5)
The devil at the crossroads!
One of the most famous legends of the West rose unbidden in Woo-joo's mind — the old story that the uncanny gift of certain Black bluesmen, playing as if possessed, had been bought by putting their souls up as collateral in a bargain with the devil. Stale vodou superstition, and yet it sat strangely close to the fix he was in now.
"…Either way, in one sense or another, you're about to offer me something I can't refuse. Isn't that right?"
To Seo Woo-joo the man, Gaehwagi was the succubus of a nameless diner. Just as she had implied through the lovely waitress's extravagant service, she was a creature angling for his soul, with revenge and pleasure for bait.
A femme fatale.
She was someone he ought to fear, truly. So why did she tempt him this badly? Was it the gaze pinning him from behind those polished sunglasses? Or was it Dana, gagging because she couldn't breathe, and still not resisting?
"See? I do like how quickly you catch on."
All of it was an excuse. Woo-joo understood at last. This succubus had not come looking for him by chance. She had seen it — that the only blood left of Robert Seo, dead with a grievance still on him, was a truly magnificent piece of trash.
"Did you know there's a region in the human brain called the ventromedial hypothalamus that governs sexual behavior and aggression? It sounds difficult, but all it means is that sex and violence were one branch to begin with. Sadism and masochism are just side effects of that hypothalamus firing too hard."
"So it's the hypothalamus's fault that every time I have to listen to your incomprehensible talk, the irritation spikes until I want to rap poor Dana on the back of the head and torment her? Please. Explain only what an undergraduate could follow."
"Correct! And from what you just said, I'd say you're following along just fine. I can tell you're dense enough to recoil the moment a conversation climbs even a little, but bear with me a bit longer. Your whole life is riding on this, Woo-joo."
Gaehwagi flicked him a light little taunt — getting it yet? — and Woo-joo, patience spent, wound the ponytail in his fist around Dana's neck. The waitress was already sobbing tears and snot from the facefuck; he choked her on top of it and took his anger out on her throat.
"Ghk— ghhk…!"
"Shut up, you toilet."
Conscious of the femme fatale in front of him, he cracked the crown of Dana's head where Gaehwagi could see it — smack — and lifted his eyes. She was watching him with the look of a woman who had chosen well. He answered her in a tone he made deliberately gentlemanly.
"…Please. Go on."
"Hehe. There are people who've lived with chronic social frustration, you know. The frontal lobe — the part in charge of reason and control — weakens. And then the limbic system, which handles instinct and emotion, runs wild. Just like now."
The urge to come rolled up through him. Woo-joo, who had dropped out of college and gone without a lover ever since, poured the stale load he'd been sitting on deep into Dana's throat. Even while he did it, he imagined the eyes behind the sunglasses and met them, warning her.
I'm not the easy mark you think I am.
That was also why he tried provoking Gaehwagi with the satisfied filth he spat at the waitress he had driven so hard.
"You've got a lot of complaints about society, don't you, Woo-joo?"
"Fucking bitch. Suck what's left inside, and do it properly."
"Your mother died of illness when you were little. Your father was poisoned by a woman after his fortune. The one he took in as your new mother all but drove you out to a college dorm, and just when life was starting to look livable — well. You were accused of gang-raping some girl during a fraternity initiation, and it went all the way to trial."
"Haah. A woman really is prettier when she keeps quiet. Nothing to do but get stuffed, and look how lovely that is."
"Except you were actually on the side trying to stop it. You were the one who blew the whistle anonymously, and you got framed for your trouble. Even the victim was bought off and turned her back on you. You're out on an enormous bail right now, aren't you?"
The resentment clenched his fist on its own. His body started to shake. Gaehwagi was the one being provoked, and yet somehow the one who couldn't master his anger wasn't her. It was him.
"Do you even know Cheryl was behind that, too?"
"…Fuck! So what!"
Woo-joo spat out his rage, shoved Dana aside, and lurched to his feet. Only afterward did he haul his pants back into order, and when he caught the stares needling him from all around, he shrank in on himself a little.
How?
He had assumed it was some magic whose principle he didn't need to understand — that the people around him simply failed to register him. He had guessed wrong. Gaehwagi chuckled and tapped the smartphone engraved with the word Moonlight. Only then did the customers who had been glaring go back to whatever they had been doing.
"Ahaha! You look cute when you're spooked, but you've still got a long way to go, don't you?"
"You really mean to take this all the way to—"
"I told you. I put a great deal of care into the balance patches. The other customers don't think Dana is sucking your cock and working you with her tits. Not even she does. That's what Uniform Master is."
Woo-joo seethed for a long while, then sat back down. Part of it was realizing that throwing a fit here would change nothing. More than that, he knew the person this anger belonged to was someone else entirely.
"What is it you intend to make me do? What's the price for helping me with this revenge you call the most thrilling in the world? I understand the power between us perfectly well, so enough of the teasing. Please just tell me."
Every last thing the woman called Gaehwagi did was infuriating — and yet, for now, wasn't she his ally?
"Do you know why those people were looking at you just now, and not at Dana? From their side, she only seemed to be doing the work she was supposed to do. You were the one who screamed."
"You mean…"
"Females in uniform. Uniform Master is an app that, true to its name, exercises absolute command over any woman wearing the dress of a group or an organization. It's on a different plane from some hypnosis app you can fire off at whoever you like."
A semi-leaf cut. A height of about six feet — some hundred and eighty-three centimeters. Not a beauty who made the eyes fly open, but a face handsome enough. And the app inside the Moonlight smartphone given to Woo-joo, twenty-two years old, was none other than Uniform Master.
"The bitches who made off with my property — including Cheryl, there are five of them."
"……!"
"From what I've looked into, every one of them is currently working in a profession that wears a uniform."
Cheryl Kim, the paralegal, put on a women's suit with plenty of skin showing every time she went in to work. If this app applied even to a business suit — a company woman's uniform — then Woo-joo's revenge was anything but impossible.
"So. A deal. I'll give you this smartphone as a gift, and you put those bitches in their place. Find the five traitors and make them pay the price, and I'll recognize your permanent ownership of the thing as well. After-service included, of course."
Learn the details by using it. With that, Gaehwagi slid the smartphone across the table and offered her fair hand along with it. If he meant to take the offer, he was to shake.
"…There's a part I don't understand."
"What is it?"
"With the power you've shown me, crushing those bitches wouldn't be hard. So why go out of your way to use me as a stand-in? Is the app on the phone Cheryl's side stole that dangerous?"
"Hardly. If I felt like it, I could have them putting on a strip show in front of the Statue of Liberty. I can shut off the functions of the apps in there whenever I want, too. You can tell just from the fact that they went to the trouble of poisoning your father — Moonlight was made to condition women, so most of its functions barely take on men in the first place."
That made even less sense. Woo-joo hesitated to take her hand, asking why, then, she was arranging something like this.
Gaehwagi answered.
All of this was nothing more than a hobby.
"Just imagining the filthy porn you're going to make already has me tingling. It's as intoxicating as kneeling naked at my husband's feet, bowing and barking like a dog while I beg him to fuck me. But listen — don't get the wrong idea. You will never get to fuck me. That's a privilege reserved for my husband alone."
"Crazy bitch. Your looks might be to my taste, but what's inside, I hate just as viciously as you hate me."
"So. Your answer?"
Woo-joo took Gaehwagi's hand. Like the empty formality of a fleeting business arrangement, the two of them shook.
"If only for my own sake, I won't disappoint you."
"Good. Then get going. By now Cheryl will have reached the courthouse to challenge your bail. With the connections she has, putting you in a cell would be nothing. For the time being you'd be better off going abroad and concentrating on learning how to use the app. Do ruin the lives of plenty of pretty bitches for me."
"I'll take the advice to heart…"
"Oh! Don't forget to tip Dana for her hard work."
He dug through his pants pocket, picked the most worthless of the coins — a penny, one cent — and dropped it on the floor as her wage. Then, leaving behind Dana, who beamed as if grateful for a generous tip, and Gaehwagi, delighted that she had chosen well after all, he walked out of the diner.
There was no more time to waste.
Not if he meant to take his revenge on the females in uniform…!