“……”
“Like the baby mice in the lab, I’m going to make him that way.”
He smiled showing his white teeth.
***
PM 10:40
The boy blankly raises his eyes in his fading consciousness and follows the patterns on the ceiling.
How much time has passed since I was captured here?
Perhaps not as much time has passed as expected, or maybe more time has passed than he predicts. To that extent, the sense of time has dulled here. Days where even the passage of time is meaningless.
Grandmother’s face.
And his friends’ faces appear one by one.
I didn’t know that sending Dowon ahead that day and following J would become such a great disaster. If only I had parted with J at that place. If only I hadn’t stubbornly insisted on greeting his colleague with unnecessary meddling.
If I had, could I have at least avoided this situation?
…No.
That’s not it.
In life, there exists a yoke of fate that cannot be escaped, that absolutely cannot be resisted. Though still young, Min belonged to the type who believed in fate. Perhaps it’s because he experienced losing his parents in a tragic accident overnight at an early age.
Even if I hadn’t done that then, they definitely would have targeted another opportunity.
Anyway, once marked as their target, there’s no way to escape anywhere.
Will they kill me?
Will they end up killing me after all?
The boy thought while blankly looking at the ceiling. It didn’t seem like there was any hope of being able to escape this place. Then he’d have to endure with only the hope that they might let him go someday, but looking at things now, it doesn’t seem like they’ll easily let him go.
I’ve already exhausted all my energy. The energy to resist, even the will to escape, disappeared long ago.
The boy lowers his helpless gaze downward and starts nodding off.
Becoming sleepy often is also a newly formed habit since being captured here.
After being imprisoned like a beast all day and having all actions except sex blocked, it felt endlessly sleepy no matter how much he slept.
Are they perhaps putting drugs in the food they give me?
He vaguely overheard a conversation they had. It’s a memory from early on, not long after coming here.
The man called K told J that if it came down to it, there was also a method of taming with drugs. The fact that the ‘drugs’ they were talking about weren’t simple cold medicine or such was something even an innocent elementary student would know.
The boy was afraid.
He was so scared of the men.
Especially K. K, who shows the absurd words and actions of telling him to call him father.
When his cruelly shining eyes blatantly scanned every detail of his naked body, the boy shuddered with the illusion of being violated by gaze alone.
That’s not to say J isn’t frightening.
In some ways, J could be said to be a more fearful and terrible existence than K.
So to speak, I’m someone whose foot was struck by the axe I trusted. Because he couldn’t even imagine that J would commit such cruel and brutal acts to him.
J, wordless and gloomy, sometimes looks at him with a strange expression that can’t be interpreted. At those times, he was an object of fear in a different sense from K.
Like K, J also doesn’t like an overly rebellious attitude.
Even the slightest resistance brought fierce violence flying in, and J was no exception. K and J. In the early days when he was beaten by these two men every other day, there wasn’t a single day when the bluish bruises all over his body would fade.
At least now such violent acts have subsided considerably.
Instead, the men tormented him in other cruel ways.
“How about a strip show, a strip show?”
K, who had been smoking a cigarette, raises a mischievous gaze and stares piercingly at the boy. The boy felt extreme fear that made him feel like wetting himself from just that alone.
“From now on, put on a little show for your hyungnims.”
“……”
“Why is being young good? It means don’t waste that young body.”
K laughs pretending to be generous with both arms spread wide.
“You have to make Dad happy, son.”
J is staring intently at the boy while holding a drink. His Adam’s apple gulps down cold alcohol—gulp gulp. The boy looks up at J like a savior with a tearful face. I hope he’ll give some kind of comment. K’s mischief and sadism. I hope J will at least protect me from this perverted amusement.
But J is no longer the ‘good hyung’ he knew from the convenience store. He changed. No, more precisely, he didn’t change—his foolish self misjudged the person from the beginning. He was a monster from the start. But I was miserably deceived by only the false goodness revealed on the surface.
Music plays.
The luxurious living room interior with built-in speakers is decorated entirely to K’s taste. Being a music lover, he has the refined hobby of collecting old LPs. It contradicts his usual perverted behavior and vulgar speech.
He takes out one record from among those numerous LPs and displays it before Min. There are photos of unknown foreign singers embedded. Min is an outsider who doesn’t know much about music. Even less so foreign music.
“Putting Out The Fire.”
He ran his eyes up and down the trembling boy’s body—swoosh.
“It’s the original sound from the movie ‘Cat People.’ It’s an old work that can’t even be obtained now.”
He raised a satisfied gaze and whistled sharply—whiik.
“A woman who transforms into a black panther when she has sex with a man… I first saw this movie in my teens and fell head over heels for Nastassja Kinski. She became my ideal type. So I embraced countless women… but no matter who I embraced, there was no woman who transformed into a black panther.”
So as if very disappointed, he exaggeratedly shrugged his shoulders.
“Especially the beginning is spectacular. A magnificent and elegant sound as if accompanied by thunder and lightning.”
“……”
“Now, shake your body.”
The boy’s frightened pupils flinch and shake.
“Satisfy me.”
“Heu……”
“I want to see clearly with my own eyes whether you can transform into a panther or not.”
The man’s lips, who had been coldly watching the boy crying softly and shaking his head, hardened in an instant.
“J.”
K calls for J who was beside him. J, whose name was suddenly called, just wordlessly looked at his dark gaze whose intentions were unknowable.
“Give the child drugs.”
“……!”
Min’s pupils widened. Drugs… drugs? What on earth is this.
“Don’t worry, kid.”
K approached the boy step by step with a gentle smile as if nothing had happened. The boy’s whole body shriveled with fear as he looked at the shadow of the giant man a full head taller than himself.
“Soon you’ll feel good and be able to do something like a strip show without a care.”
