Having flesh gnawed into brought a sense of dread before it brought pain.
The strength drained out of my body, tense with fear, and I nearly sank to the floor right there. He was biting down so hard that an intense pain followed, sharp enough to make me think a piece of flesh had actually been torn off.
At the same time, a hopeless certainty settled in — there was no escaping this man.
Was he planning to eat me alive?
I’d run into all kinds of difficult customers, but I’d never met someone this much like an animal before.
Trying not to provoke him any further, I kept my voice low and stopped resisting, speaking instead.
“I’m sorry. If you let go, I’ll leave right away.”
“You washed up before you came.”
Ah… fuck.
The sweet-smelling shampoo came to mind. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again, and spoke in as calm a voice as I could manage. With a difficult customer like this, raising my voice would get me nowhere — I needed to placate him as much as possible and find a way out.
“I’ll have your room changed right away.”
“…….”
No answer. Was he unhappy with that? Right, this was supposedly the best of all the VIP rooms. In that case…
“I’ll make sure every service you want is arranged.”
Not by me, of course — by the owner.
“…….”
Why was he silent again?
Heat kept radiating off my body, still pinned and unable to break free.
My twisted arm felt like it was going numb, and then something slowly brushed against the back of my neck, still damp from the bite.
Soft, wet, and warm.
A tongue.
This lunatic!
Not satisfied with chewing on me, was he going to actually taste me now?!
He licked the spot he’d bitten with the tip of his tongue, and the sheer horror of it sent a shudder through my entire body. My heart pounded fit to burst, and my throat felt as tight as if he were strangling me. My body wouldn’t obey me, flinching every time his tongue touched me, and the feeling was honestly…
Disgusting.
I ground my teeth, barely holding myself together, but the man didn’t stop there.
He asked, in a low, wet voice,
“You’re stretched open down there already?”
I couldn’t immediately grasp what he meant.
“What?”
So all I managed was a stupid, blank response. While I was still flustered, his hand moved toward the front of my pants. He undid the buckle, and a hand in a black leather glove slid right inside.
“…!!”
I jolted, my back arching in shock, but the man paid no mind, pushing further, into the inside of my thigh. As my body began to react despite the absurdity of the situation, I quickly spoke up.
“Sir! I’m not an escort!”
“Arch your back.”
This son of a bitch!
I didn’t hold back any longer — I braced one arm against the door and shoved with everything I had. Then I twisted around and swung my fist down at the man’s face, but he pulled back, and my punch hit nothing but air.
And at the same moment, pain slammed into my stomach.
His heavy fist had driven straight into my solar plexus at some point.
I think my body lifted briefly off the ground, but I was too consumed by pain to register anything else. My already-wrenched left shoulder throbbed, refusing to take any weight, and I crumpled to the floor, limp. I couldn’t even think to lift my head before the man grabbed me by the collar and started dragging me.
“Let… go of me!”
I pushed against the floor with my feet, trying anything to keep from being dragged along, but it was useless. With nothing but the grip on my collar, the man hauled me — a grown, able-bodied man — across the floor and threw me down. My already-weakened left shoulder slammed into the corner of the bed frame, and I curled up on the floor, clutching it.
“…….”
Fuck.
This hurt like hell.
It was a wonder I hadn’t screamed yet.
I saw the man’s feet. I could feel him looking down at me, right in front of my face.
He was watching me, curled up flat on the ground, still groaning, the mascot head still on my own. Bastard.
A curse rose up automatically, but I couldn’t get it out of my mouth.
The man grabbed my arm and yanked me up onto the bed in one motion. Then he climbed on top of me and pressed down on both my thighs, forcing them wide apart.
Realizing what he was about to do, I lifted my hips and shoved hard at his chest with my hand, speaking again.
“I told you, I’m not an escort.”
“Open up properly. Unless you don’t want to be walking on two legs tomorrow.”
“…….”
This guy’s ears were broken.
Realizing words weren’t getting through to him anymore, I swung my right hand straight at his face. Whether he failed to dodge this time or simply chose not to, my fist landed squarely on the man’s face.
“Get off me, you piece of shit.”
“…….”
The man slowly turned his face back from where it had snapped to the side and looked down at me. If there had been even the slightest sign of him pulling back, I might have been able to slip free right then, but he didn’t move an inch. As if he hadn’t felt the hit at all, his expression stayed indifferent.
His eyes were so beautiful it didn’t suit a psychopath like him at all, which only made it more unsettling.
He opened his mouth.
“Starting tomorrow, you’re crawling.”
With that, he yanked my pants off in one motion.
Left in nothing but my underwear, my legs pinned apart by his knees so I couldn’t even close them, something touched against my backside. A dull, twisting ache spread through my lower stomach, on top of the pain already wracking my whole body. I made one last desperate struggle, twisting my body to flip onto my front, and tried to crawl away — but the man grabbed me by the throat.
“Gck!”
While I choked and thrashed, the man tightened his grip on my throat. And just as he was about to force his way, agonizingly, into me—
My body trembled violently, as if screaming a scream I couldn’t get out through my mouth.
He stopped.
For some reason, the man’s movements came to a halt.
But by then, the repeated shocks to my body had already dragged up memories of being abused as a child.
In the face of merciless violence, there had been nothing I could do. I’d been too young, too powerless, with no adult there to help me. It felt like my father was right in front of me again, soju bottle in hand, smashing it against my head while spitting crazy bitch, crazy bitch. I could see the small knife in the doctor’s hand too, about to carve the organs out of my living body.
I could do nothing but tremble, unable to resist at all. I remembered the overwhelming powerlessness that had drained every ounce of strength from my body, and the crushing terror of knowing there was no escape.
As if some switch somewhere inside me had simply shut off, my throat closed up, my eyes shook, and I couldn’t think at all.
My whole body trembled, from my fingertips to my thighs, my stomach, my chest, my jaw, and I went cold as ice. Breathing out damp, hot breaths, my hearing muffling around me, I couldn’t even summon the thought that I should run.
The one small comfort was that once the man pulled off my mascot head and saw my face, he wouldn’t want to do this to me a second time.
Because I looked like shit.
Once I stopped resisting entirely, the man stopped driving into me so roughly as well.
He looked down at me silently, then spoke.
“You should keep fighting.”
I couldn’t. Because I’d been dragged back to that time when my speech was clumsy and my thoughts moved slow.
When my body went completely slack, unable to put up any strength at all, the man pulled me up by the waist and arm. My shoulder screamed in pain, and a cry nearly escaped, but I bit down on my lip and swallowed it.
Because my father used to hit me even harder whenever I cried or made a sound of pain.
There was no point making noise here either — no one would help. All I could do was endure, and endure, and wait for the man to lose interest in me.
“…Can’t even bark.”
You idiot, cats don’t bark to begin with.
Breathing inside the damp mascot head grew harder and harder. Still, I gripped it tightly, terrified it might slip off.
Looking down at me, the man seemed to lose interest, as if the mood had broken, and let go, stepping back. I stayed frozen, still face-down on the bed, when I heard the smell of cigarette smoke, followed by the man’s voice.
“Get out.”
I looked at him, wondering if he was really letting me go.
Seeing him standing by the window with a cigarette in his mouth, I flinched without meaning to. Working here, I’d met plenty of people with looks too perfect to feel real. Escorts especially put so much effort into their appearance that they often outshone even famous celebrities. But this man made even those escorts look unremarkable by comparison.
Is it even allowed for an athlete to look like this?
A different kind of creature, from a different world than mine.
Even through eyes that had no particular standard for beauty, the man in front of me looked like something that shouldn’t exist in this world at all.
Too much. Dangerously too much.
While I stood there dazed, he spoke.
“If you’re not leaving, then let’s continue.”
I saw the corner of his mouth curl up faintly. If I lingered even a little longer here, he looked ready to pounce on me again like before. I braced myself against the bed and forced my screaming body upright. My legs shook with every step, and my stomach throbbed like it was about to tear open.
I could feel his gaze on my back, but I gritted my teeth, kept a hand on the wall, and walked toward the front door. If I stopped, it felt like the beast behind me would sink its teeth in again, so I couldn’t stop. I grabbed the front door handle and threw it open in one motion. My body sprang out like a coiled spring released, and I broke into a run.
For that moment alone, every sense of pain in my body seemed to go numb, and I was briefly freed from the agony.
I ran. I ran like a madman, trying to put as much distance as I could between myself and that VIP room. By the time sweat had soaked through even my underwear, making the earlier shower pointless, I spotted the familiar back door.
I pushed through that door, made it outside, and only once I’d reached an alley some distance away did I finally collapse.
“Hah… hah.”
My breath came in ragged gasps, all the way up to my throat.
I pulled off the mascot head I’d kept on. Cool air rushed into my lungs as if it might tear them apart. Gasping out breath after breath like someone narrowly escaping drowning, I crouched there, staring down at the ground. Drip, drip — water fell to the pavement.
My breathing gradually steadied, and I lifted my head.
There wasn’t a single part of my body that didn’t hurt, but I braced a hand against the stone wall and slowly stood up. I decided not to dwell on today too much. By tomorrow, today would just be another unlucky day, same as any other.
Dragging my stumbling body forward by force, I passed the slope and opened the old green gate beneath the stone steps. I opened the swinging door to my room and stepped into the one-room flat. I set down the mascot head and dropped onto the freezing floor. I should have dried off my wet body and dried the mascot head too, but right now, I didn’t want to think about anything — I just wanted to sleep.
I curled my body up and forced my eyes shut. Just like back when my father used to beat me until he wore himself out and fell asleep, and I’d hold my breath, waiting.
