When he came out of the bathroom, Gong Haejin had apparently finished his call — he was sitting with his long legs crossed, watching Dohui with unhurried attention. He could feel the gaze traveling upward — toes, ankle, calf, knee.
“You only washed your face?”
He tilted his head to the side and looked at him with a small smile.
Dohui gripped his slightly damp shirt and quietly looked away. Outside the window, bare branches swayed in a forlorn way. Still winter. Time had left him behind without a word.
He didn’t want to ask Gong Haejin anything — but the more he kept his mouth shut, the worse off he’d be. If he didn’t bring something up first, Gong Haejin never did anything on his own.
“I…… was going to wash up. I sweated too much.”
“Looks like you had another nightmare.”
“…….”
“Go wash.”
Dohui opened the drawer. The same clothes, the same underwear, and…… a pill bottle.
Dohui swallowed.
It was something Gong Haejin had left. Tossed over carelessly, with a casual remark — take half a pill at a time if it gets hard. Something about how the body had been treated for the drug damage, but the memories and the urges would remain. As if he were doing him a favor, telling him to take them freely, there was plenty. It was hypocritical.
The moment he registered the pill bottle’s presence, his palms broke into a sweat. Terrible memories floated to the surface. His body trembled on its own. A stark, visceral rejection.
Dohui took out the pill bottle. In the gap of silence, Gong Haejin’s phone rang again. As he answered with a low “Yeah,” Dohui flung the pill bottle at him.
He caught the bottle sailing toward him with one easy hand. Then he looked back and forth between the bottle now settled calmly in his palm and Dohui seething where he stood.
“……I don’t need it.”
Dohui turned and fled to the bathroom. He stepped under the shower, the water rushing out in a forceful stream, and hid. Hoping the darker emotions would be swept away by the weak current of water.
Dohui came back out with only the surface moisture wiped off. Gong Haejin was right there. Broad shoulders, thick muscle running along those lines — a form that came close to perfect. His neck too was so thick Dohui doubted he could wrap both hands around it.
Would letting me go actually work if I really did kill him. He entertained that ridiculous thought. Nothing about being here has made sense from the start.
Dohui lay down on the bed while still damp. He didn’t care whether the moisture seeped into the bedding. It’d be nice if Gong Haejin had to change the sheets himself — though that’s not going to happen.
The moment he lay down, the sheets seemed to pull him in. The limp, heavy body felt unfamiliar. How did I used to live? After he started working the part-time job, he’d wake up around noon and cook ramen. Standing in front of the gas stove, dozing off, and his mother would scold him.
‘A person isn’t meant to work through the night like that. Even when you’re young, you have to take care of your body. Moping around like a sickly little hen — it breaks your mother’s heart, it really does.’
Half-asleep, he’d exchange a few more words with her and linger a little longer before heading off to work when it was time. He’d come back in the early hours of the morning, eat something instant like ramen again, and fall asleep.
Dohui replayed those moments constantly. So he wouldn’t forget. So he could keep it nailed down as proof of who he actually was. The way he was living now — that wasn’t him.
When he shifted his gaze, there was the man as always — black slacks, white shirt — phone still pressed to his ear. As if it didn’t matter whether Dohui was listening or not.
“Yeah. So how many days.”
“…….”
“Leave that one alone.”
His eyes were fixed on Dohui. I want to get away — but there is nowhere to go. The moment he stepped outside the door, it was obvious the man would come running and grab him by the hair.
Dohui couldn’t do anything with his exhausted body. Between the excessive sex the night before and the fact that he’d had his legs spread again that very morning, they didn’t feel like his own legs anymore. Like someone else’s legs had been forcibly attached, and the pain radiated from somewhere near the seams. There wasn’t a part of him that didn’t hurt.
The man liked rough sex. As if pushing through his hole wasn’t enough, at some point he’d started strangling him too. And then Dohui’s own length would drip something in a thin, unsteady stream. What he could be leaking in a state where his consciousness was flickering in and out…… the moment that thought went far enough, a sigh escaped him.
Gong Haejin, seeing Dohui pressing a hand to his forehead, said “I’ll call you back later” and ended the call.
Gong Haejin’s large frame was drawing closer. Dohui’s attention wasn’t on Gong Haejin — it was on the phone in his hand. If I only had that. Even without knowing the passcode, emergency calls didn’t require one. He could contact the police.
Gong Haejin slipped the phone into his back pocket.
“You’ll catch a cold lying around like that.”
“…….”
Dohui said nothing and turned his back. With the phone out of sight, the man’s presence just irritated him. Go back to your call.
Fundamentally, Gong Haejin was not a gentle person. Expecting gentleness in a coerced debt relationship that began with kidnapping was absurd to begin with. So whenever he did something that resembled caring, it only ever meant he didn’t want to deal with the trouble of calling a doctor. That was all.
“Does it add to my debt every time you call the doctor?”
At Dohui’s question, Gong Haejin paused, one hand on the edge of the blanket. He looked with displeasure at the damp pillow and the damp head on top of it, and answered.
“Maybe.”
Keep racking it up with every visit and you won’t pay it off even if every wrinkle in that hole of yours smooths out. Not that things are much different now. The words that followed were quiet and steady, and they resembled a threat. If you don’t want the debt growing, behave.
Dohui bit his lip and stretched one arm out long. He tapped the empty nightstand.
Gong Haejin, who understood what that meant, gave a short laugh. He took out his wallet and set down whatever bills his hand happened to grab. Dohui had never once counted how much it was. He simply gathered it and put it in the drawer.
On occasion, after sex that had gone too far — Gong Haejin’s way of being spiteful — Dohui would lose consciousness, and he’d scatter bills over his body. When Dohui came to afterward, he’d gather the crinkled notes. He’d thought about throwing out the ones stained with semen, but his reason had held him back — start being picky about this and that, and you’ll never make it out the door of this place. He folded and folded what little pride he had left.
Dohui was reaching out to grab the bills when Gong Haejin moved faster. A warm hand closed around the bony wrist.
“What did I say?”
“……What, what did you say.”
“…….”
This happened sometimes. He’d blank on a conversation from just moments ago, or Gong Haejin could be talking right next to him and it wouldn’t reach him. More precisely — his ears received the sound, but it never made contact with his brain. It just disappeared, like air passing through.
“I said smile for the guest.”
“……Guest.”
“Yeah, guest. Patron. Whatever.”
Gong Haejin’s face was drawing closer and closer. Which meant Dohui had no choice but to take him in piece by piece. The slightly furrowed thick eyebrows, eyes with the reflection of his own bare body caught in them, a straight nose…… even with a face suddenly thrust into his, he couldn’t recognize it. Without a voice or a scent — nothing.
No matter how hard he tried to cultivate recognition, his memory no longer obeyed him. That was his reality. He could look directly at something and his brain wouldn’t register it. Like a machine with one component missing.
“Your face……”
Dohui got that far and looked away. The moment the words left his own mouth it felt like acknowledging his own deficiency.
Accepting something and overcoming it were entirely different things. He hadn’t even fully accepted it yet — and Gong Haejin carried on as though he had no time to wait for any of that. A cruel and merciless human being.
“Finish what you’re saying.”
It wasn’t a mocking tone at all — but Dohui received it as one. There was no room left in him for ease. Everything Gong Haejin said or did, he twisted and received through a distorted lens.
“Please don’t shove your face at me.”
“…….”
The man’s eyes seemed full of displeasure — but he made no effort to interpret it.
“No matter what, if you don’t let me hear your voice, I can’t tell who you are. Who……”
“In this house, the only one you ever see is me.”
“…….”
I know. I know it far too well — but I don’t want to admit it. And he couldn’t afford to settle into that fact. There was no telling when Gong Haejin would decide he was done with him and throw him back into a cage of men. No knowing when he might put the pills he’d barely managed to stop back onto his tongue in a heap.
The image of Gong Haejin that formed in Dohui’s mind was something like a monster without a scrap of human warmth.
“Monster……”
At the murmur, Gong Haejin let out a sudden laugh — pfft. Words like that didn’t hurt him. He just laughed. Treating it as a joke, a tease — or perhaps he simply enjoyed it.
Gong Haejin pinched Dohui’s damp cheek. The cheek stretched long between thumb and forefinger, and it hurt in a low, persistent way.
“Come out and dry your hair. Don’t soak my whole bed.”
The irritation in his voice had thickened since a moment ago. Dohui rubbed his stinging cheek.
As if he couldn’t tolerate another second, Gong Haejin grabbed him by the forearm hard enough to hurt and hauled him upright. The sudden shift in his field of vision sent a wave of dizziness through him — he staggered slightly — but the other person had no patience and just pulled.
“Ugh……”
Dohui steadied himself shakily on both feet. He stood in a loose, uneven posture and fixed his gaze for a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass. And then from behind came the sound of a tongue clicking — tsk — and something in him stung. Strange. Sound was something you heard with your ears — so why did it leave a chill in his chest.
Dohui turned his back on the bathroom mirror. So as not to look at his face at all.
A memory surfaced of a horror film he’d watched as a child. A ghost jumping out from inside a mirror. Its hair hanging long, thrusting through first. Looking in a mirror felt just like seeing that ghost.
Who would understand something like that.
When will it get better. When will it improve.
Can I ever go back.
An endless stream of sighs just kept coming.
When he came out with his hair dry and fluffy, the bed had already been made up with fresh sheets. On top of it sat a single white T-shirt. And a pair of pants that were slightly large. Too small to be Gong Haejin’s, too big to be his.
Dohui put on the pants as well and folded the waistband down once at the hip. That made them wearable enough.
