“I hurt more.”

“Heueuheuk……!”

“Every time you guys shoved those brutish things into my hole… I… felt like I was being pierced every day with pain greater than your pain right now. I……!”

A single tear flows down beneath the boy’s palely trembling face.

You don’t know how painful I was.

My feelings of living unable to die day by day.

My life of living with held breath, hoping only for this day to come.

The boy mutters in front of the man who has become a rag.

…Rather, I’m glad K cut off your left fingers.

If it had been the right hand, it would have been a bit inconvenient to use the knife. The police might have suspected me then too.

You’re really a fool.

You lived together by K’s side for so long, yet you don’t know his personality? How suspicious, petty, and mean he is. Didn’t you know that he secretly installed CCTVs throughout the house and monitored our activities…?

So I calculated the time K would arrive and destroyed the CCTVs in advance.

Because I expected that when he found out the monitors weren’t working in real time, he would soon barge in. Of course, he wouldn’t have expected us to be stuck together like this. You’re an outstanding coward… and I also had to endure countless sexual tortures from him because of the last time I stuck together with you.

Unless he’s a fool, he would have thought we couldn’t commit the same act.

Still, I thought he would come… and he came and ended up like this. Haha….

“You….”

J, who was panting in tremendous pain, shouts at Min with bloodshot eyes.

“You dare… you…… how……! Keuheuk……!!”

The boy wipes the traces on the floor and raises his expressionless gaze to look at the man’s face filled with rage.

“Evil dwells in everyone’s inner self.”

“……”

“All the people in the world are wrapped up in strange rules. Watching you guys, I thought too. That we don’t necessarily need to apply those rules to our lives. I want to eliminate you guys now. That’s simply what I want, my current feeling. I decided to trust the power of evil within me without caring about rules.”

J trembled all over his body as he looked at the boy. With a gaze of disbelief. With a face that absolutely… absolutely cannot accept this situation.

“You once told me. That you and K are people who don’t care at all about the world’s rules.”

“Heueu……”

“So I’m going to try living like that too. You didn’t forget already, did you?”

Kwagwang!!!

With a tremendous thunder sound, J bursts into laughter like a madman in the lightning.

Haha!

Hahaha! Keuhahahaha!!!

“Look at this.”

The boy looks into J’s madness with a cold gaze. Is it still not enough? Is this situation funny? Am I funny to you….

“Even if your scenario is quite plausible… heuht! Do you think the world can look at you normally after you’ve been subjected to all kinds of perverted things by men for such a long time? Hm? Haha… isn’t that right?”

“……”

“Even if you leave this place, you’re alone anyway. And you’ll be branded as nothing more than a whore who lived eating men’s cocks. Keuheuk… fuck! In that… case, rather…… wouldn’t it be much happier to live like a dog under me forever? Hm? Hahahahaha!!!”

The boy strides forward and punches the man’s nose hard with his fist. After punching him several times like that, the man who finally fell backward with a scream, euak!!!, had his nose bone crushed, and blood flowed endlessly with moans of pain.

“Don’t worry.”

“Keuheup……! Keuheuk…… that bitch…… dog-like bitch!!!”

“Compared to the wounds you guys gave me, it won’t hurt that much.”

Flash! Under the endlessly flickering lightning, the boy’s face distorts bizarrely.

“I’m going to stab myself too. If only I’m clean without any wounds alone, it could raise suspicion. Isn’t that right…?”

“Keuheuheu…… heuheue…… heuheuk……!”

Min, who sat down in front of the man sobbing in pain, picks up K’s knife that fell on the floor and aims it at his own shoulder.

“Would you like to stab me? That would make a more perfect scenario.”

The boy was smiling in the darkness with a blood-stained face.

***

Final Chapter. Traveler in the Rain

If there’s one fact that doesn’t change despite the changes of time, it’s habits and imprinting. Even without setting an alarm, waking up automatically at the time you habitually woke up every day. Or things like imprinting from brainwashing.

I walk through the rain without an umbrella.

I’m sure I brought one in the morning, but since I can’t find it no matter how much I look, I must have left it somewhere again.

It’s always like this on rainy days.

To the point where I can’t count the umbrellas I’ve lost so far.

On days when thunder and lightning strike, it enters an even more terrible state.

Last time, I suddenly had a seizure on the bus, causing a commotion. It was a July evening when it was raining heavily. Thanks to the help of kind citizens, I was taken to an ambulance and received emergency treatment quickly, but I couldn’t go out for a while after that.

I lowered all the blinds in the house and completely hid inside a shell that could hide me most safely. When I’m like that, no one can stop me.

I hated summer days when it poured heavy rain every other day.

The stickiness of summer days… makes me think of a face I never want to recall again.

The deep scar on my shoulder, engraved like a brand, throbs faintly and returns me to the time of that terrible day.

***

Grandmother passed away that year from shock, and by my side there are still grateful friends, including that guy Dowon.

Without their help, I wouldn’t have dared to start studying again.

I’m especially grateful to Dowon. Even after knowing all those facts, I didn’t know what to do with his thoughtfulness in extending his hand to me without prejudice. However, I couldn’t openly express my gratitude.

After sending even Grandmother to the other world, I became a complete orphan. Since I was already an adult age anyway, the term “boy head of household” no longer suited me.

I still sometimes think.

About the words that beast-like man gave me. Those words now kept in my brain as an indelible imprint.

Nastassja.

My Nastassja.

He used to call me that.

If I had become his son as his crazy words said.

What kind of life would I be living now.

That madman gripped by insanity disappeared into screams long ago, but he still lives in my heart. He engraved an eternally indelible brand within me. He was a man who persistently tormented me even in death.

***

I requested my lover, an ordinary office worker three years older than me, to call my name ‘Nastassja’ instead of ‘Min’ just once.

At first he just laughed. Nastassja? Isn’t that a woman’s name? Is that your English name?

I was looking at him unnecessarily seriously. Only then did he realize that my words weren’t just a passing joke and awkwardly pronounced that name. Nastassja.

That night, embraced frantically in his arms and screaming shamefully, I requested once more. To call my name. Please call me ‘Nastassja’, ‘Nastassja’.

My heated lover granted my request. The man already gripped by lust was not the shy daytime lover who thought that name was awkward.

He called me with a breathless, desperate voice and dug deeper inside me.

Nastassja.

My Nastassja.

***

Jeongmin-ssi.

Are you taking the prescribed medicine well?

…Yes, doctor.

That medicine contains ingredients that can stabilize your mind and body and also somewhat suppress sexual desire.

It means it contains elements to calm Jeongmin-ssi’s self-destructive urges.

So under no circumstances should you stop taking the medicine.

Jeongmin-ssi.

Jeongmin-ssi…?

Are you listening to me?

Ah yes… I’m sorry.

…….

Doctor.

I have one question.

Please speak.

Do you also think of me as a fucking gay bastard?

…….

Ah… I’m sorry if the expression was too vulgar. Since I’ve received such finger-pointing from people in the world so often, expressing it so explicitly ended up like this.

…….

It’s already been five years since that incident.

I’ve also aged quite a bit.

But you know, doctor.

As time passes, rather than the essence of the incident, people only condense and distort the parts they want to remember.

…As you know, I submitted my honest account to a magazine a few months ago. People who wanted to adapt my story into a novel or movie had been appearing endlessly. Since the situation was like this… I eventually developed anthropophobia.

……Please continue, Jeongmin-ssi.

I didn’t know that article would cause that level of impact.

Even though it’s an incident from five years ago, more people than I expected remembered it.