“Why?”
The man asked.
“It’s too dirty….”
I barely managed to answer. It felt like something was blocking my throat, making it hard to get the words out properly. But I’d said it — so if the man had eyes, I figured he’d understand. The man glanced at the sofa, then wordlessly readjusted his hold on me and started walking somewhere again.
We seemed to be getting closer to the front door, and I thought maybe he’d finally come to his senses and was going to let me go. But the man suddenly changed direction and moved even further from the front door.
Where is he going now?
I lifted my head to look at him. He must have felt my gaze — but whether he was gritting his teeth and ignoring it on purpose, he didn’t look back once. Where he’d gone into was the bedroom. The man moved to set me down on a bed that was less luxurious and more outright lavish.
My heart plummeted and I flailed like a freshly caught fish yanked out of the water.
Is he insane?! Is he out of his mind?!
My body thrashed as if screaming, and I tightened my arms around his neck. Then I shook my head hard and said:
“Why! Why! I told you it’s dirty!”
Hearing that, the man paused again. My startled heart was hammering like it was going to shatter, and once again the man glanced at the bed and opened his mouth.
“This one too?”
“…….”
That short question stopped me cold for a moment.
The man was saying it as if — because I’d said the sofa was dirty, he’d moved to the bed, thinking it was cleaner.
I barely pulled myself together and said:
“Could I… wash up first?”
The man heard my question and gave a small nod, then headed toward the bathroom.
He opened the bathroom door and stood me inside — then silently moved to take off my clothes. I grabbed at my shirt as it started to rise and held on for dear life.
“I’ll wash up on my own.”
“…….”
The man looked at me quietly. A thin thread of confusion crossed his face. Like he genuinely couldn’t understand why I’d need to wash by myself. I smiled at his baffling reaction with everything I had.
“By any chance — would there be something I could change into?”
“…I’ll find something.”
“Ah, thank you. Then I’ll be quick and out before you know it.”
The man gave a small nod, and only then let go of me and stepped out of the bathroom.
Thud.
I watched the door close — and then I sank down where I stood.
* * *
If I hadn’t used the VIP bathroom at West Hollywood before, I would have been lost in here for quite a while. I still couldn’t tell the shampoos apart, but I grabbed something that lathered up and managed to wash well enough with one arm.
I opened the door.
The moment I stepped out of the bathroom, I startled badly.
“……!”
Someone was standing right there.
Thud, thud. My surprised heart hammered.
It was the man.
Thank goodness. That I’d come out with a towel around my lower half instead of completely bare like I usually would.
We’d nearly both seen something neither of us needed to see.
The man was holding clothes. Was he — had he actually been standing here waiting this whole time, holding clothes to give me? I couldn’t believe it even seeing it, so I decided to just deny it.
He was probably about to leave them and ran into me.
That seemed plausible enough — I tend to finish showering in under ten minutes.
I reached out a hand toward the clothes in his hand and said:
“Thank you.”
I put on the top he’d given me and was about to pull on the underwear and trousers too — but I could feel eyes on me the whole time. From a moment ago, the man had been watching me get dressed.
Why is he staring so hard at someone else putting on clothes — and then it clicked.
Oh right. This person is gay.
I was surprised that someone like me, with nothing going for me, could be an object of interest. Maybe gay men have a whole other set of preferences I don’t know about.
The gaze was relentless enough to make me uncomfortable.
“I’ll just… go back inside.”
I stepped backwards toward the bathroom to go back in and finish dressing — but the man caught me by the waist.
My body tilted forward, and the towel that had been wrapped around my lower half came loose and dropped to the floor.
“……!”
Cool air concentrated right below.
I was clearly wearing the top — and yet I felt like I was standing naked at the edge of a cliff. The man’s gaze moved slowly downward to my lower half. I flinched violently and frantically pulled the top down with one hand.
“Don’t look….”
I could die from embarrassment.
And there was another reason for that.
The man’s eyes traveled down — and widened slightly.
“…Nothing there.”
“…….”
Yeah. I have no pubic hair. For fuck’s sake.
Without realizing my ears and neck had gone completely red, I pulled the hem of the top down even further to cover myself. Good thing the top was oversized.
The man had been studying me intently, and then suddenly asked:
“Can I touch it?”
Is this man insane?
“No!!”
I shouted reflexively.
And shoved him back, then scrambled frantically into the underwear and trousers. Only once my lower half was covered did I feel my composure begin to return — and I glared at the man warily.
Is he out of his mind? Touch what, exactly.
Gay or not, this person has no sense of boundaries whatsoever. Even someone who seems perfect can have a fatal flaw — and this man’s flaws were being unnecessarily brutal, and a wildly reckless approach to sex. How freely must he have rolled around with other staff that he could casually ask to touch someone without even blinking.
“No?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Even as he asked, the man suddenly pulled me into his arms. His long, straight fingers slid over the top and stroked along my lower stomach. If his hand dropped even slightly lower, it was going to land somewhere decidedly unwelcome. My taut body bent forward slightly as if about to buckle.
I managed to open my mouth.
“You weren’t planning on asking permission from the start… were you.”
“I was.”
Liar.
I was giving him a sideways look, wondering what he was trying to sell me — when he suddenly buried his face in the nape of my neck. My already-tense body nearly gave out at the knees right then. Because that spot was somewhere the man had bitten into more than once before.
What grudge he could possibly have against the back of my neck, I couldn’t fathom — why he kept going back to the same place every time. I’d just gotten out of the shower, and yet cold sweat was running down my back. I blinked once, hard, and bit down on my lip. First I needed to calm down.
I knew this man just a little — enough to know how to handle him.
It’s like a snare.
The more you struggle, the tighter it pulls — so I let every bit of tension drain out of my body as if releasing it all at once. And the arms wrapped around me loosened in response. He pressed his nose persistently into the nape of my neck and kept breathing me in.
What could possibly be good enough about it to keep doing that.
When I’d just gotten off a deep-sea fishing vessel, the smell of fish didn’t leave for over a year. When I worked part-time at a restaurant, I smelled like charcoal and the particular heaviness of grilling meat. When I went around doing day labor at construction sites, it was sweat with a sour edge. Special cleaning jobs and slaughterhouses brought the smell of maggots, rotting flesh, and blood that soaked through everything.
No matter how much I changed clothes or washed, years of absorbed smell made people instinctively avoid me. Would now be any different.
But this man was different.
He pressed into me the way a bee or butterfly presses its face into a flower.
After a long while of that, the man suddenly lifted me up. By this point I’d given up on whatever he did, and just let myself be carried — he was heading steadily toward the bed.
“It’s not working hours right now, and I don’t do overtime.”
I went ahead and refused, knowing full well that if he actually decided to force it I couldn’t stop him. Still — he had listened to me a few times before.
But the words had barely left my mouth before the man sat me down on the bed. Then he grabbed one of my legs and pulled it out in one smooth motion — I lost my balance and ended up lying flat on the bed.
The ceiling appearing without warning.
…He’s not listening to a single word I say.
I’d known it would come to this, but actually being on the receiving end — it really did feel awful.
Should I kick him? Could I shake free and make a run for it?
In the midst of all that, the man’s hand found my foot and began to stroke it, then slipped under the hem of my trousers from the bottom and started pushing them up. His body temperature ran notably low, and goosebumps rose all across my skin.
His hand was already reaching my knee —
Sting, sting.
“……??”
At the unfamiliar sensation, I propped myself up and looked down — the man was applying antiseptic to my knee. More precisely, he was treating the wound that had split open and made a mess there.
Once he finished with my knee, the man reached for my foot. No matter how freshly washed, feet are feet — not something you’d easily grab hold of. But the man did it without hesitation — disinfecting the wounds on my foot, then applying ointment.
And he was quite skilled at it.
I watched without blinking until he’d finished treating my entire leg.
Then the man exhaled slowly and asked:
“How did you hurt your arm.”
“…….”
I was at a loss for words in every sense. At this man who could give the wound and treat it too, I drew in a short breath.
Everything in me wanted to shout because of you! You, you, you!!! — but I swallowed it down, because I’d benefited from him too.
“I got hurt at a construction site.”
“How.”
“Some materials toppled and I braced against them.”
“How.”
“Some crazy bastard stepped on a nail and knocked into them.”
He was asking, so I answered… but why was I telling him all this so willingly? And I could have given a vague answer, but I’d gone and said it plainly.
The man seemed to turn something over in his mind for a moment, then opened his mouth.
“Want me to kill him?”
“……?”
What is this lunatic saying.
I said it calmly.
“That would make the news.”
I didn’t know what company he ran, but being a representative and all, he’d be splashed across the main headlines no problem.
“It won’t.”
“I’ll report it.”
“You can.”
“Are you planning to kill me too?”
“…….”
…No, why isn’t he answering. Is he actually planning to kill me?
