Seeds of Suspicion
Yurin and Seon-a went to his parents' house for a formal introduction.
Seon-a's mother, Mina, and his father, Hyuntae, welcomed the two of them warmly.
"Our son came back to visit. It's been so long. How have you been, Yurin?"
Mina was glad to see Seon-a again, but the sight of him looking somehow gaunt filled her with pity.
"Hello. It's been so long since I last paid my respects that I wanted to come and greet you properly."
Yurin offered a bright greeting, and Mina smiled back in kind.
"Have you two eaten?"
"We already had a meal before coming."
"Then let's at least have some tea."
Mina led Yurin and Seon-a into the living room while Hyuntae went to the kitchen to prepare the tea.
The three of them sat around the living room table and began to talk, exchanging little more than the usual check-ins about how each of them had been getting by.
Then Hyuntae called out that he needed an extra pair of hands with the tea, and Seon-a went to the kitchen.
Left alone with Yurin, Mina suddenly asked a pointed question.
"Yurin. Seon-a seems to be struggling these days. Is something going on?"
Yurin fell silent for a moment under Mina's sharp inquiry. Caught off guard, she couldn't produce an answer right away. She needed a little time to compose herself and prepare a casual reply.
"Now that I think about it, he might have developed some trauma after the kidnapping."
"I suppose that would make sense. No matter how strong he tries to be, Seon-a is still a man."
Mina's words sounded as though she accepted the explanation, but the look in her eyes said otherwise. The suspicion there had not faded — if anything, it had grown sharper than before.
"Still, if you ever see Seon-a struggling, I hope you'll look after him well. This is a dangerous world for a man to navigate alone."
Without any hard evidence, Mina couldn't directly accuse the girl she had known for so long of tormenting her son. So she wrapped a warning inside an indirect request.
"Of course, Mother."
Yurin finished speaking as if in agreement just as Hyuntae and Seon-a returned with the tea.
"Now that we're all seated, I'll get straight to the point," Seon-a said. "We've decided to get married."
After the two of them brought up marriage, we as a couple had no choice but to give our blessing. We even set a date for a formal meeting with Executive Director Yura — or rather, I suppose I should call her our in-law now. In any case, we arranged a meeting with Yurin's parents as well.
Mina had known for a long time that Seon-a and Yurin's relationship was a good one, and that they had been lovers for years. There was no way a girl like Yurin wouldn't know about Seon-a's worries or his pain. She was definitely hiding something.
That expression on Yurin's face earlier, when Mina pressed her about what was making Seon-a suffer — the flustered look she couldn't quite hide. It was something that might need to be resolved before the wedding, but without evidence, Mina couldn't move yet. If anything, she needed to proceed even more carefully.
Unless Seon-a opened up about his troubles on his own, the two of them seemed determined to keep it buried together. If Mina dug too hastily, they would only seal it away even tighter. Of that she was certain.
In Mina's heart, the seed of suspicion had already begun to sprout.
Yurin drove her own car, heading back with Seon-a toward the place she had rented near the university district.
She couldn't forget Mina's words, or those eyes that seemed to look at her with suspicion. That slightly sharp gaze — so much like Seon-a's — had felt as though it could pierce straight through to the inside of her heart.
But she decided it wasn't anything to worry about too much. Sexual intimacy took different forms between every pair of lovers. Seon-a, who liked things a little rough, and Yurin, who wanted rough sex, were an almost perfect match.
It was true that what she had been doing to Seon-a all this time counted as violence against a man, and by social convention it was nothing that would ever be accepted. But as a private matter between them, she thought it was different.
If Seon-a had truly hated it, he would have told his parents — or even her own mother and father. Instead, even after she took care of his sexual needs, he behaved so meekly, as if nothing had happened at all. If he had hated what she did, he would have run away long ago. And yet here he was, sitting right beside her, looking out the window and watching the world go by.
Thinking of how passive he was on the bed, and how that body of his still rose for her again and again no matter how many times she took him, she felt herself growing wet once more.
There were about two weeks left until the formal meeting with both families. The thought of being able to spend that time thoroughly with Seon-a filled her with joy. Once alternative service began, even if Yurin and Seon-a worked near each other, stepping into a Gate meant being stuck inside for anywhere from a day at the shortest to a week or two at the longest. The time she had with him now was precious beyond measure.
For someone who had spent nearly every day with Seon-a, the idea of so many days without seeing him was frightening. She wanted to leave proof that Seon-a was hers — but having a child was impossible.
As she turned that worry over in her mind, a good idea surfaced. If she was afraid of not being able to see Seon-a, she simply needed to make it so she could see him every day. Recording their sex on video would be perfect. She would capture him as he was now, before the wedding, and keep recording even after they were married — preserving Seon-a on film forever.
The thought of filming him the moment they got home, crying out and moaning, brought a smile to her face all on its own. She couldn't stop the corners of her mouth from curling upward. Fortunately, Seon-a was busy looking out the window and never saw that wicked smile.
The moment they got home, Seon-a collapsed across the living room sofa as if utterly spent. Becoming an Awakened had made his body stronger than an ordinary person's, but it hadn't strengthened his mind. Between visiting both households and having to bring up marriage, both Yurin and Seon-a were mentally exhausted.
Lately, Seon-a had taken to lying still and staring blankly at the ceiling more and more often. At times like these, he was so deep in thought that he wouldn't even notice if she approached.
She moved slowly to his side and began to touch his body with gentle hands. The soft, yielding feel of him before his Awakening had been wonderful, but the springy, firm texture he had now was just as pleasing. With a body that felt like this, she could knead him forever.
Startled by the sudden contact, Seon-a flinched — then, realizing there was no one else who would be touching him, he spoke.
"Let's wash up first."
"We both showered at your parents' place before coming straight here. This much is fine, isn't it?"
"Still, no. We have plenty of time... so let's take it slow."
Looking at that lewd body of his, she nearly forgot about the video she had planned to record. She almost put her hands on him right then and there. It had been several days since they'd last had sex, and her body — already heated from handling his needs — was hard to rein in. But filming came first.
Her place had two bathrooms, but they always washed together in the master bedroom's bath. Watching Seon-a's naked body, running her hands over skin slick with water — it felt too good to give up. At first he had hated how insistently she groped him, but now he seemed used to it, accepting her freely no matter how thoroughly she kneaded him.
Thinking about recording made her bitterly regret that she had never filmed the early days, when he still resisted her touch, so she could compare them to how he was now. Still, she had found a way to leave traces of their memories together. Better to focus on the ones she would create from here on out.
She regretted not capturing his firsts on video — first kiss, first time, first climax — but there were still plenty of firsts left for Seon-a to experience.
Come to think of it, she still had some of the drugs she had fed to Minji's younger brother last time. Judging by the photos the client had sent, the way he looked after being dosed and taken had been genuinely satisfying. Feeding Seon-a a large dose of narcotics, aphrodisiacs, and stimulants, then having sex with him, seemed like an excellent idea. Their first drug-fueled session would be deeply rewarding to capture on film. If she took the drugs herself, she wouldn't be able to record properly — so she would dose him instead, and use him until he couldn't get hard anymore. That ought to be fun.
Yurin stared at Seon-a with eyes full of hunger, licking her lips. Midway through washing his hair, Seon-a suddenly felt a chill run through him. Even under the warm water, he got these shivers from time to time — enough to make a man barely in his twenties wonder if menopause had somehow arrived early.
Yurin pretended to keep washing him, kneading his trembling body over and over, savoring the feel of it.
After they finished washing and dried off, Seon-a went to the bed first and lay down. In this world, woman-on-top was the most normal sexual position, so a man lying on his back looking up at the ceiling was only natural — and since they always did it this way, he settled into place without a second thought.
But Yurin, who would normally have rushed straight to the bed, began pulling something out of the master bedroom drawer instead. From a slightly translucent plastic pouch that looked like a medicine bag, she took out pills. She pulled out several kinds — at least five different ones.
He didn't know what they were, but bringing them out in a situation like this meant she clearly intended to use them before sex.
"Yurin, what is that?"
Yurin smiled brightly.
"Arousal pills, aphrodisiacs, narcotics, arginine, and stimulants. Five kinds."
Seon-a's face went white. He shook his head rapidly.
"No. I'm not taking that. Let's just do it normally. I'll try harder, okay? Please..."
"What did you just say?"
Camcorder already in one hand, Yurin looked down at Seon-a with a cold stare, her expression hardening. Ordinary sex was already off the table.
No matter how many times it happened, Seon-a was always stunned by the sheer variety of deranged acts she wanted to try. Even though his own sexual values leaned closer to those of the women in this world, Yurin was a complete pervert — and on top of that, she was coercive in bed.
Lose by day, win by night. That was what he had wanted from his girlfriend. But her idea of "winning at night" was so vicious it crossed every line. She wasn't just a tyrant in bed — she was practically a Demon King.
"I'll lay them out on the bed for you. Once the recording starts, take them in order."
Hoping against hope, Seon-a asked her something.
"You're not going to... spread them around anywhere else, are you?"
"What do you take me for? Once service starts, there are going to be a lot of days I can't see you. I'm only filming this as something to keep me company. Don't get the wrong idea."
Yurin's expression was the picture of someone making a firm promise that nothing of the sort would happen.
"Recording starts now."
"Introduce yourself. Name and age. How many people have you had sex with?"
As if copying something she had seen in porn, Yurin made Seon-a introduce himself on camera.
"My name is Lee Seon-a. I'm twenty. I've had sex with two people."
The moment the words left his mouth, his face said he knew he had made a terrible mistake. Minji's confession and what she had done to him had been treated, by unspoken agreement with Yurin, as something that never happened. Counting that encounter as one of his partners was an enormous blunder.
The instant he included being taken by Minji in the number, Yurin's teeth ground together and her grip tightened. A metallic creaking sound came from the camcorder, as if it might crack under the pressure.
After a few ragged breaths, Yurin fixed the camcorder on the desk and started toward him. She had been holding it by hand, but now it was locked in place on the desk, zoomed in on him.
Then her left hand clamped around his throat, and her right scooped up every last pill scattered across the bed.
"Open up, you fucking bastard."
With the curse came the full force of Yurin's rage, directed straight at him. Crushed under that terrifying presence, formal speech spilled from his mouth on its own.
"Y-yes..."
And then, out of pure terror, he opened his mouth just as she ordered — and Yurin violently forced every last pill down his throat.