The man’s exhaled breath seemed to tremble slightly. At the subtly changed flow of air, Lee Jeong slightly raised his head. The man’s gaze, which had been staring at him, abruptly turned away. The man, now neatly dressed, took out his wallet from his pocket. Taking out several yellow bills, the man commanded Lee Jeong in a dry voice.
“Lee Jeong-ssi.”
“……”
“Get on all fours. Head that way.”
For a moment, Lee Jeong didn’t quite understand the man’s words and blinked his large eyes. However, following the man’s command gesturing with his chin as if urging, Lee Jeong hesitantly got on the bed on his knees and palms, face down. The fluttering shirt hem drooped downward, exposing Lee Jeong’s naked body defenseless. With his buttocks presented to the man, Lee Jeong held his breath.
Is he going to do it one more time…? Did his body react again? His chest trembled slightly with anxiety. He thought it was all over… From experience so far, unlike other men, the man didn’t annoyingly insist on doing more after washing up. So why suddenly.
The man’s dry lips parted and spat out coldly and dryly.
“Hold your hole and spread it yourself.”
The humiliating command pierced his ears. After swallowing for a moment, Lee Jeong soon bit his lips and slowly brought both hands behind him. He deliberately tried not to think about anything. Like a robot. Like a doll without a soul.
His unusually small hands gently rested on his plump buttocks. The touch of his hands holding his buttock flesh and slowly spreading it clearly trembled finely, but thanks to his calm actions and expression, no sign showed.
And that further fueled the man’s anger. The man, coldly raising the corner of his mouth, slowly approached and gathered the bills he had been holding together neatly. He rolled the paper tightly like a cigarette.
Then, he slowly pushed the bills into the wide-open hole.
“Good work today.”
The rolled-up paper entered indifferently, scraping the entrance and inner walls of the hole. The bills, having been used, had their corners appropriately worn down, but they felt sharp enough against the tender mucous membrane. Lee Jeong’s waist trembled with surprise and shock. His face contorted involuntarily more from wretchedness than pain.
Even in the midst of this, the fluttering hole habitually tried to swallow the dirty money the man offered. In the bizarre and vulgar appearance with bills stuck in his rear hole, Lee Jeong could only pant desperately and couldn’t bear to lift his face from the pillow it was buried in. He wished his very existence would just sink beneath the bed and disappear.
The man tapped Lee Jeong’s buttocks holding the money. The sound of flesh slapping against flesh made him feel even more humiliated.
“Our Lee Jeong-ssi’s hole is truly greedy.”
The words the man spat out slowly as if enjoying them flowed in one by one through his ears and stabbed his chest like daggers.
“You craved my cock like that, and now you crave money like this too. Look, you’re trying to chew and swallow the bills while fluttering? I want to bring a mirror and show you. Ah, should I take a picture and show you? It’s too good to keep to myself.”
Saying so, the man couldn’t hold back and burst into laughter. Hearing words that seemed to rot and decay his chest the more he listened became too hard to bear, and Lee Jeong wanted to raise both hands to cover his ears if only he could. However, not knowing what outlandish thing this bastard might do if he did that, all he could do was keep his trembling buttocks raised as they were.
The man’s laughter slowly subsided.
“Making a living is really fucking awful, isn’t it?”
“……”
“That’s how it originally is, you know. Making money. I also work like shit to earn this money.”
The man wore a smooth smile on his face.
“So, Lee Jeong-ssi should work hard at Lee Jeong-ssi’s job.”
“……”
“If you’re a male prostitute, act like a male prostitute and just spread your legs. Don’t do useless things.”
With those words, the man turned away. Even during that time, Lee Jeong remained with his buttocks thrust in the air, his face buried in the pillow.
With a bang and the sound of the door closing, Lee Jeong slowly raised his body. He bit down hard on his uncontrollably trembling lips. Then, slowly reaching out his hand, he pulled out the money the man had stuck in his rear hole and left. The unpleasant foreign sensation of the paper scraping the inner walls as it came out was felt as is. Looking at the bodily fluids smeared on and stretching from the paper, Lee Jeong put down the money on the bed with a miserable heart.
‘If you’re a male prostitute, act like a male prostitute and just spread your legs. Don’t do useless things.’
The words the man had just said kept replaying in his ears.
Why did I do something useless? When I can’t even take care of myself. Why did I show such kindness to that man?
To him, I’m not a person.
He deeply inhaled to greatly expand his chest, then exhaled again. He repeated this three times. After that, Lee Jeong returned to emotionless eyes like a doll.
He pulled out a tissue and wiped the bodily fluids on the money. As if wiping away the humiliation inflicted by the man, he rubbed and rubbed the bills with mechanical hands. Fortunately, the transparent, sticky bodily fluids wiped off quickly. When he unrolled the money that had been rolled up, it looked quite clean. Lee Jeong stared at the money in his hand for a long time. Despite its presentable appearance, he felt nauseous. But he didn’t feel like throwing it away. Who would he show his pride for? Money was essential to sustain this dirty, petty lifeline.
For Lee Jeong, who was bound to the organization, no matter how hard he worked his body, what came to him was minimal. That’s why tips like this that customers left were something Lee Jeong couldn’t help but welcome. Even if it was money received while being humiliated like this.
With this money, he could buy Dokyung a new padded jumper. The toes of his sneakers were all worn out too, so he should buy new ones. He could buy a sack of rice that was running out, and it seemed like he could even pay the gas bill.
Yes, that’s all that matters.
Taking off the loose white shirt meant to seduce men and changing into his warm hoodie and jeans, Lee Jeong closed his eyes. He carefully put the collected money inside his clothes.
Being humiliated by men doesn’t matter much. From the moment he decided to raise a child alone as an omega, he had trampled and burst his self-esteem himself and thrown it in the trash. The emotions that had burst from being trampled stained Lee Jeong like dirty filth, but he was detached.
He had to raise the child even with dirty hands. No matter how hard it was for Lee Jeong, and even when he sometimes wanted to die, the child honestly grew with the passing time. When young, he had to buy and feed formula, and diapers ran out as soon as he turned around. He had to make baby food on time and changing ingredients, and he had to replace clothes whose sleeves quickly jumped up above wrists and ankles after wearing them for just one season. Buried in the tasks that rushed at him frantically according to developmental stages, he didn’t even have time to feel miserable about his trampled self-esteem.
Days like this when he received a lot of tips were fortunate. Whatever he heard from the man, whatever treatment he received. That kind of thing didn’t matter at all.
Having put on his clothes, Lee Jeong let out a small sigh and turned off the light in the room. Since the Manager didn’t let him take any more customers on days he took that bespectacled beta man, today’s work ended here.
Since it was still too early to go to Yoonkyung’s house, Lee Jeong stripped off the dirty sheets and curled up on the bed. In the quiet darkness, sleep rushed in quickly. Strangely, his body had been feeling chilly since earlier, and his vision was spinning.
*
In his flickering consciousness like a candle, he dreamed of that day again.
It was a day when rain poured down enough to make his ears stuffy. When he got out of the car where he had been taken with his eyes suddenly covered, what he saw before his eyes was an unfamiliar place and people. Seeing that the atmosphere was similar to the previous place, this place also seemed to be an organization of the same nature as Daneum, just in a different location.
The omegas dragged before the men in suits were thrown down powerlessly. The men checking their faces by lifting each one by the hair one by one, upon seeing Ido’s face, dragged him toward a middle-aged man who seemed to be their leader.
‘Looking at your dazed expression, you didn’t even know your alpha abandoned you.’
The man in the wheelchair spoke in a vile voice and burst into laughter. What he said to Lee Jeong that day were words Lee Jeong would never forget.
‘Didn’t he tell you he was going to hit President Park? Looking at how he hid it even from his own imprinted omega, that bastard Choi Wookyung is really a ruthless guy.’
He wanted to ask. What that meant. Why he was dragged here now, what it meant to hit President Park. He hadn’t said a single word about such things to him. The confusion about how the current situation was unfolding was the same for the other omegas who were dragged along.
‘It’s a lie.’
Even while trembling, he thought so. The man in the wheelchair smiled with a satisfied face and gestured with his chin toward his subordinates.
‘I got a good look at Choi Wookyung’s omega’s face. Hey, send them down now.’
‘Boss, should we send them to Yeodanhwa? The quality is good…’
‘No. I can’t let that bastard’s omega enjoy such luxury. Where was it, send them to the place where the most troublesome bastards come.’
The man’s laughing voice sounded like the devil’s.
And then, the place he was dragged to next with his eyes covered again was exactly that place he had only imagined and feared.
No one explained to Ido where this was, why he had to be here, or what kind of work he had to do from now on. However, Ido knew instinctively. How he had to exist from now on in this place. And the work he had to do here.
Until he naturally realized that, he was beaten until his whole body was bruised. Resistance was useless. Though the resistance of a frail omega’s body was feeble, the consequences that returned were cruel. He was cursed at again, saying he wouldn’t be able to work for several days due to the visible traces of beatings and lingering pain. Confined in a dark room for several days, Ido cried endlessly.
The dark room, which created the illusion that he had gone blind because he couldn’t see anything, was enough to completely shake Ido’s mind. Only the occasional faint moans, curses, and dirty sounds of flesh slapping reminded Ido of where this place was. In the darkness, Ido sat curled up, comforting alone the wounds from being beaten, crying until no more tears would come out.
