Coercion and Persuasion
Friday night.
They called it a burning Friday — the day students and office workers alike looked forward to more than any other. When the workday ended, people headed home in high spirits.
But I was not in high spirits. I was trembling with dread, praying the lecture would never end. Because every Friday, without fail, Yurin would say those words — Let's go to our place — and I knew exactly what kind of ordeal awaited me.
Yurin's obsession was nothing ordinary. She remembered every single contact I made with another woman, then used it as fuel when our bodies tangled over the weekend — so aroused she showed no mercy as she took me. Every time she flipped like a switch, eyes gone cold and terrifying, her voice dropping into something that no longer sounded like her, a shudder of fear and anticipation ran through me.
It was the same relentless possessiveness of a child who refuses to share a favorite toy. And every time she claimed me, something inside me felt like it was snapping.
Under that absolute fixation and coercion, resisting her was becoming harder and harder. The questions she asked during sex felt eerily familiar, too — like a warped echo of the "lessons" I used to give her back in elementary, middle, and high school. The difference was that where I had once granted her wishes and indulged her dirty requests, the roles were now reversed: I was the one being taken until I blacked out, forced to give her the answers she wanted. Teacher and student had switched places completely.
She was my girlfriend, and still the thought of climbing into bed with her terrified me. The rough, violent sex she demanded was something I had never experienced in my previous life — and it was exhausting beyond measure. Sex in my past life had been something mutual, a sharing of pleasure and feeling. Sex with Yurin was a one-sided imposition of her will, a relentless drive to thoroughly violate and break the other person until they submitted.
And yet there were so many reasons I could not leave her.
I did not want to disappoint the parents I had for the first time in this life. They already knew Yurin and I had been together for years, and our two families — already bound as superior and subordinate within the same company — treated each other like in-laws on the verge of a wedding. I myself addressed her parents with something close to the respect reserved for a father- and mother-in-law. The thought of destroying that relationship terrified me. Breaking up with Yurin was no longer just about the two of us. If I ended things, too many people would see their connections fracture. In my previous life I had two-timed and left two women full of regret; I did not have the courage to ruin relationships with others all over again.
But thinking back on yesterday — meeting Minji at the café — I had the sense that Yurin had changed, just a little. She had introduced me to Minji, the most popular girl in our department, calling her a recently made friend. Yurin, who never brought other women near me, had sat there while Minji and I talked and shown not a flicker of displeasure. If anything, she had watched the two of us with an expression of genuine interest.
When I tried to figure out why she had suddenly shifted, I landed on the conclusion that Minji must have had a positive influence on her. This was Yurin, who flew into jealous rages if I so much as approached another woman, let alone brought one in front of me. For her to bring Minji to me herself meant there had to be something special about her. So I started thinking of Minji as a trusted friend who had earned a place in Yurin's heart. I had no female friends of my own, but from now on, I thought, Minji might be one I was allowed to talk to.
Today, as always, Yurin came to collect me the moment the lecture ended. Maybe it was because she had introduced Minji yesterday — her expression seemed full of generosity. Something about her really did feel different after what had happened. A flicker of hope rose in me: maybe tonight she would be considerate. The fear had largely drained away as we headed toward "home" together. Seeing this changed version of her put me in a good mood. It would have been even better if she would stop kneading my body like dough.
Trusting her had been my mistake.
She took me the same as always — no, worse than always — scolding me, devouring me. Had she changed? She had. This time she had dug a trap in advance and used my own actions to drive me even harder. The calculated way she had brought a girl to introduce me, then flipped once we were alone, was chilling in its thoroughness.
It was unfair, but if I did not apologize, she would clearly keep knocking me out and taking me all weekend long. I remembered the last time I had resisted — locked in the master bedroom for two nights and three days, forced over and over. I had genuinely almost died. The most shocking part was how, while I drifted in and out of consciousness, she would chew food and water herself and push it into my mouth through a kiss. That had been barely two months ago; I had been so wrecked I spent three days bedridden and missed every class.
If I did not apologize right now, she would come after me with that same relentless intensity. So through moans and ragged breathing, through a mouth that would barely open, I apologized to her.
But as if she did not want to hear the usual I'm sorry, she sealed my mouth with hers and rode me even faster, even harder. In the middle of that obsessive, brutal act, she behaved as though my opinion did not matter at all. Her possessiveness seemed worse than before. The pleasure was so overwhelming I blacked out and came to dozens of times.
I was not released until Sunday night.
She had thoroughly educated Seona so he would not do anything "wrong" again. For a while, at least, she could rest easy. She had wrung him out so completely that he would not be getting hard anytime soon — even if another woman tried to force him, it would be impossible. That thought was almost reassuring.
What remained was the punishment for Minji, who had dared to show interest in her man. The agency she had contacted through the detective firm — the one that handled discreet work — had said the job would be ready sometime next week.
Yurin had plenty of money. Between the generous allowance her mother Yura gave her and the profits she made through stocks and investments, she was well off. Her father — Yura's husband — was a full-time investor, and she had absorbed his knowledge from the sidelines, earning since high school. What she was spending now was only a fraction of what her investments had brought in. The more money she had to build a happy life with Seona, the better — but money was secondary. Making Seona hers came first.
A woman in a black suit and black sunglasses, a cigarette clenched between her teeth, was moving a carefully "packaged" crate.
Money solved almost everything. Food, clothing, shelter — even grudges. But this was excessive even by those standards.
"I don't care how loaded someone is — what kind of crazy bitch dumps this much cash on something this petty? She must be filthy rich."
That kind of money could fund the assassination or kidnapping of a corporate executive or a politician and still leave change. Using it to order the abduction of ordinary civilians made her wonder what kind of relationship could justify a request like this.
"Don't overthink a job that ends the second the money hits your account. You know how many people got their lives ruined digging around out of curiosity?"
Her partner — a colleague in the same line of work — spoke from behind her. They were unregistered Awakened who moved between China and Korea, fixers who handled whatever needed handling as long as the pay was right.
After the Gates appeared, law and order outside the safe zones had collapsed. Public authority out there was worth less than trash on the roadside. The unregistered Awakened who lived in those zones were called Scavengers — people who possessed an Awakened's power but had never properly registered, who had faked their own deaths to stay off the books. With no clear identity, they were ideal for discreet jobs and vanishing afterward. Even the major guilds occasionally used Scavengers to "resolve" rivals or threats to their organizations.
The job they had taken this time: kidnap two civilians, perform a few acts of the client's choosing in front of her, then sell them into China's human trafficking market. Whatever money remained after the sale was theirs to keep, and the detective firm the major guilds sometimes used would scrub every trace clean through its back channels.
Turning it down would have been insane. In all their years as fixers, they had never landed a contract this good.
The steel-banded crate rattled. She kicked it once, and it went quiet. One target was already nicely "stowed." All that remained was collecting the other — simple work. She looked at the crumpled paper with the next target's personal details, studied the attached photo, and lit the cigarette she had been chewing on.