The Black Rift
“I’m sorry. I can’t... protect you anymore.”
It was not a voice so much as the sound of a soul being torn apart.
Tears long since dried began to slide over eyes that had gone empty.
As the arm that had hung limp slowly lifted,
the tip of the sword began to turn toward her.
Her form, blurred in his failing vision, was swallowed behind the blade.
If only by my own hand.
Tap. Click-clack. Tap...
The low clatter of the keyboard that had filled the studio for so long had at some point gone silent.
Seong-jun sat buried in his chair, staring at the monitor for a long while without moving.
The screen still showed the manuscript for the fantasy novel he was serializing, but
the cursor did not budge.
Even the obvious, cliché-ridden writing was crawling forward at a miserable pace.
He had little buffer stock left, too.
The pressure of the deadline was beginning to tighten around his neck.
“Hoo...”
With that long sigh, he thought of cigarettes, which he had quit long ago.
His gaze naturally drifted to the bag holding the roleplay props.
But that only brought another problem he had been trying to ignore back into his head.
His mind felt knotted up, like a ball of tangled thread.
The sense that his daily life had gone out of alignment was growing stronger, and now it was threatening even the work that fed him.
Something he had managed to keep isolated until now kept trying to intrude on his ordinary life.
The more he tried to shake it off, the more unpleasantly it clung to him.
Inside Seong-jun, a black energy was slowly seeping through him, and then, as if extending outward like tentacles...
Jiiing-
The vibration that rang through the room dragged Seong-jun back from the thoughts he had unknowingly fallen into.
Jiiing-
His phone, left face down on the desk, vibrated again in quick succession.
Seong-jun picked it up and checked it.
Min-a♥: Oppa, are you done?
Min-a♥: What should I make for lunch?
A snort of laughter escaped him.
Lucky timing... or not.
A KakaoTalk message sent from just beyond one door. It was Min-a’s way of being considerate, of not bothering him when he was working.
And whenever he thought of her, handling the housework and supporting him all these years, Seong-jun always made himself a promise.
To love her beyond the limits of her devotion.
Seong-jun let out another deep sigh and picked up the phone.
Seong-jun: Want to just order in?
Min-a♥: Come on, why would I do that? Is there anything you want to eat?
He had no appetite. But for just a moment, he wanted nothing more than to bolt out of this suffocating studio.
Seong-jun: Then keep it as simple as possible. Tteokbokki or something?
The menu he tossed out without thinking dragged up memories of his tiny college boarding room.
Tteokbokki they had made together in that cramped room, with barely any cooking tools to their name.
Back then, Seong-jun could barely boil ramen, yet the tteokbokki he had made for her, drenched in gochujang,
Min-a had devoured as though it were the most delicious thing in the world, sauce smeared all around her mouth.
That smile from back then, so dazzling it made him fall for her all over again.
Even fifteen years later, it was still turned toward him.
Seong-jun felt a little lighter.
Seong-jun: Want oppa to make it?
Min-a♥: Tteokbokki?! Hehe, I’d like that, but...
Min-a♥: No, oppa’s tired, so I’ll do it! I’m good at it now, too.
Min-a♥: Not as good as you, though.
At his suggestion, Min-a’s lovely expression flickered in his mind for just a moment.
Seong-jun: No. I want to do it. Do we still have rice cakes and fish cake at home?
Min-a♥: No, we’re out. Then I’ll run out and buy some quickly!
Seong-jun: Then let’s go together. Might as well get some fresh air.
Min-a♥: Shall we? Yay, okay♥
He could almost see her smile in the letters themselves.
For some reason, just looking at that smile made it feel as if even the darkness he did not want to face would be blown away.
Seong-jun: I’ll head out right now.
Min-a♥: Mm-hm, I’ll get ready quickly too.
After checking Min-a’s message, Seong-jun pulled his cap low and switched off the studio light.
Maybe because of the bluish flicker of the monitor, the room felt colder than usual today.
Once he stepped out the door, the living room, though still inside the same house, felt warmer somehow.
With that pleasant heat around him, Seong-jun drew in a deep breath.
“Oppaaa~”
Min-a burst out of the dressing room and threw herself against Seong-jun’s arm.
“To the mart, gooo~”
Unnoticed, a smile that resembled hers had already settled on Seong-jun’s lips.
The large mart in front of the apartment complex.
“Is the room on your side not getting sunlight, oppa? Are you cold?”
“No, it’s not that...”
The mart was bustling with families out shopping for the weekend.
The sound of carts bumping together, the store announcements, the smell from the tasting corner, all of it mixed together in lively disorder.
“Still, it’s lucky summer’s almost here. Maybe we should buy you a foot warmer before winter.”
“No, there’s no need... ah—oh! This! This fish cake is good. And it’s on sale, too.”
Seong-jun handed her the fish cake, redirecting the conversation successfully as he did so, while Min-a fretted over him with a serious expression.
“Wow, really? But this is way too big a pack, isn’t it?”
Min-a looked conflicted as she held up the oversized bag of fish cake.
“No, you like fish cake. If we have leftovers, we can make fish cake soup. Just throw it all in.”
“Hehehe, nice, nice. Ah, then should we get lots of rice cakes too? Oppa likes rice cakes.”
At her words, Seong-jun gave a lewd grin and tapped her butt.
“Heh heh heh. I do like rice cakes.”
“You shameless man! Haha!”
Min-a giggled and swayed away, slipping out of his hand.
“Okay! Then I’m going to pick out ice cream!”
For Min-a, who wasn’t good with spicy food, ice cream was essential.
She trotted ahead toward the freezer section.
“Then I’m getting red bean Big Big!”
“Oh, you old man!”
Watching her back, Seong-jun felt himself healing.
Yeah, this is happiness. What more could I want?
An ordinary married life. Everyone lived like this. No, the two of them were the kind of couple anyone would envy.
The problems on the bed felt like petty whining in front of this peaceful picture.
The mart scene, with Min-a woven into it, was restoring Seong-jun’s misaligned daily life to its proper place.
That was when it happened.
As Seong-jun turned around the fresh food section, someone came into view, cutting straight into his gaze.
A massive figure, overwhelming the air around him.
He was a Black man who looked to be at least 190 centimeters tall, his dark skin gleaming.
He wore loose shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, the kind of outfit basketball players might wear.
His biceps and trapezius muscles, bulging as if they might burst, rippled like some black beast.
And what seized Seong-jun’s attention more than anything else was beneath those baggy shorts.
With every step he took, a huge outline swung heavily between his thighs.
Gulp.
Seong-jun swallowed hard.
He had only seen him a few times in the apartment complex.
They were not even close enough to exchange greetings or meet each other’s eyes.
And yet, in Seong-jun’s head, he was already a familiar character.
Seong-jun’s internal delusion switch flipped on all by itself.
Beep-
The noise of the mart vanished in an instant, and in his head, a grotesquely obscene video began to play.
A huge black hand grips Min-a’s white butt.
Black fingers dig into Min-a’s skin, and Min-a lets out a scream tangled with fear and pleasure.
And that thing hidden inside those shorts, a weapon-like cock so massive it seemed impossible for it to belong to a human being...
It mercilessly spears through Min-a’s small, narrow hole.
Thud-squish, creak.
Min-a’s eyes roll back. A beast-like cry bursts from her mouth, opened wide.
“Oppa...! Ahh...! It’s so big... I’m tearing...!”
How about it? Does this cock feel like oppa too? How does it feel getting stuffed with something like this?
“Oppa... help me!
No... now I can’t protect you any longer...
“Oppaaa!!”
“Oppa!!”
Min-a’s voice burrowing into his ears jolted Seong-jun back to his senses.
“Uh... huh? Oh, why?”
Instead of the black beast, Min-a was standing before him with two ice creams in her hands.
“What were you thinking about so hard? I called you like, five times.”
Min-a looked up at him with a pouty expression.
Only then did Seong-jun realize he had been staring fixedly at the Black man’s back.
The man was already moving farther away toward the checkout.
“Ah... no, just. Thinking about something.”
“Take a look at this for me. They didn’t have red bean Big Big, so I bought this instead. It used to be your favorite.”
Min-a held out a vanilla bar and waited for Seong-jun’s verdict with a bright, innocent face.
“Uh... yeah. Right.”
Seong-jun answered with a dazed expression, his eyes still locked on the retreating figure of the Black man.
The excitement still hadn’t settled. His heart was pounding, and sweat that had not yet dried clung to his palms.
“Oppa?”
Sensing something strange, Min-a turned her head to follow his gaze.
And at the end of it, she too spotted the large Black man.
“Ugh...”
Min-a shook her head and put the ice cream into the cart, then linked her arm with Seong-jun’s again.
“We bought everything, so let’s go now. Stop imagining the wrong things.”
She tried to drag him away, but Seong-jun couldn’t bring his feet with him, caught in lingering frustration.
He wanted Min-a to become aware of the real Black man.
He wanted to overwrite her head with his own delusion.
A sticky desire that did not seem like his own leaked out of Seong-jun’s mouth.
“Look at how it’s hanging over his pants. Can’t you imagine it? How big...”
“Hah! What are you saying? He’ll hear you.”
Min-a hurriedly glanced around and poked his side.
At that moment, Seong-jun lost sight of the Black man, and his eyes, deprived of purpose, wandered for a second over empty space.
His gaze drifted helplessly back to Min-a, and there he saw an expression on her face that was a little less familiar than usual.
“What do you mean, what am I saying? It’s just... I mean... it’s amazing, isn’t it?”
“Mr. Im Seong-jun. This isn’t a motel right now. Pull yourself together.”
“!”
An expression settled onto Seong-jun’s blank face.
Disappointment? Irritation?
But soon, even more expressions mixed together and dissolved back into that blank emptiness.
This isn’t a motel?
At Min-a’s rebuke, Seong-jun felt a sharp sting in his chest.
So... is it different at a motel?
It had always been Seong-jun, not Min-a, who imagined other men.
The acting and staging he had no hope of fooling anyone with only grew into a concentrated essence of dissatisfaction the more he repeated them.
I can’t even think what I want to think?
But those words never made it out of his mouth. His hand tightened hard around the cart handle.
“Yeah... let’s go.”
Unlike his words, his gaze was still raking over the mart to the very end, as if trying to burn the Black man’s shape into his retina.
Without Seong-jun noticing, that sting in his chest was moving him, almost like another heartbeat.
The peaceful ordinary life was collapsing, just like that, too easily, too thrillingly.