My body smelled fresh and clean, as if I had bathed and gone to bed. The bandage wrapped around my wrist, which I had painstakingly lifted from the man’s arms, had been replaced with a new one. With dazed eyes, I touched my burning waist. A familiar numbness lingered inside my tender insides, near my back hole.
Realizing what must have happened during the time I couldn’t remember, my entire body stiffened. My face turned pale, and the blood drained from it. First, I wanted to escape from the man holding me. I struggled with all my strength to break free from his grip. Even though he was asleep, it was difficult to escape his hold. As I thrashed, he woke up and slowly opened his eyes. His gaze, which had been dazed as if he had been in a deep sleep, shifted to my hands pushing him away. Then, he furrowed his brow and let me go.
As soon as he released me, I scrambled to the corner of the bed and curled up. I swallowed the saliva that had formed from the tension and tried to organize my thoughts. I had lost my memory entirely. There was no reason for it, like a head injury or anything. I just couldn’t remember anything from the middle—maybe even the end. I was becoming increasingly abnormal. Maybe I was turning into a dried-up piece of wood or an inanimate object.
“Baek Siwoo, what’s wrong?”
I glanced at his obscured face with fear-filled eyes, then closed them again. Should I tell him? Should I ask what happened, that I couldn’t remember? No, I was afraid of him finding out that I was becoming strange.
“Nothing.”
The man’s gentle expression hardened coldly. He deliberately exuded a chilly aura and remained silent. His terrifying silence didn’t last long. He soon sat up, tapping the bedding with his fingertips as if it were a habit when he was deep in thought. Then, he lazily muttered,
“Why are you hiding again?”
“…….”
“I feel bad every time you try to hide something from me.”
“……I’m not hiding anything.”
“Maybe it’s not time yet.”
The man stood up and pulled me by the wrist. I hadn’t noticed, but the iron chain connected to the shackle had been removed. Only then did I realize I had been given a tremendous privilege. I didn’t know what had happened yesterday, but perhaps I had done something worthy of a reward. Dragged by his hand, I stumbled out of the room. As I tried to pull away, the man turned to me and smiled faintly. Then he said,
“Do you hate it again?”
“Where are we going?”
“To eat.”
“…….”
“Don’t make that face.”
The man’s expression hardened strangely. I didn’t know what kind of face I was making, but it was clearly one he didn’t like. He let go of my hand and sighed. Then, suddenly, he grabbed my collar and pulled me out of the room. I gasped and turned my head, thinking he might hit me again.
“Decide now. Are you going to eat with me in the kitchen, or are you going to be locked in the dark? Siwoo, there’s a limit to my patience. If you keep refusing, it’s not like I’ll feel good about it. I don’t mind you wavering, but it feels like I’m being tortured with hope every time, so I wish you’d do it in moderation.”
I turned my head to look at him directly. Wavering? I bit my lip and repeated it a couple of times. After hesitating for a moment, I frowned and asked him,
“Wavering?”
“Did you really think you could hide it in this small house with just the two of us? Where did you forget from? From when your head hurt?”
I was caught. My face turned pale, and I avoided his glistening gaze. Then, I barely managed to answer,
“……I didn’t forget.”
“…….”
“We had sex. Yesterday. I didn’t forget.”
The man fell silent. He stared at me expressionlessly, then let go of my collar. He walked to the kitchen first and said,
“……Follow me.”
My mind went blank with worry that he had found out about my lost memory. This meant he had discovered another weakness of mine. I didn’t want him to know if I could help it. I obediently followed the man out of the room as he led me. He impatiently sat me down at the table and put water in the coffee pot. Even as he took cocoa from the cabinet and poured it, tapping his legs anxiously, he seemed to relax only after the water boiled and he poured it into a mug and handed it to me.
“Drink.”
I looked at him nervously, took the mug, and looked down at the poorly mixed cocoa powder. I took a sip, and suddenly, my stomach churned. The sweet cocoa tasted like bitter water, and I wanted to spit it out immediately. But I knew his glistening eyes were watching me drink. So, I didn’t spit it out and drank it all. The man’s anxious mood only subsided after I finished the cocoa.
The man took the mug I had drunk from, silently rinsed it, and started preparing the meal. A savory sesame oil scent wafted from the small iron pot he was boiling. I swallowed my saliva and sniffed. Even in a situation where I wasn’t sure if I was sane enough to lose my memory, I was hungry. I looked blankly at his back with a gloomy mood. As he stirred the pot with a spoon, he said,
“Today’s my birthday.”
“……Oh.”
Was he saying he was boiling seaweed soup because it was his birthday? I could guess what he wanted to hear by mentioning this auspicious day, but I couldn’t bring myself to say “happy birthday,” so I just let out a short exclamation and cut my words short. The man didn’t seem to expect a particular answer from me. Silently, he placed the kimchi he had taken from the fridge on the table and put a bowl of white rice in front of me.
He set the iron pot containing the finished seaweed soup in front of me and let go of the sleeve he had been pulling to hold the hot pot. A bubbling sound came from it, and the lid of the pot opened. The seaweed soup had a greenish tint. The man handed me a spoon. I took it and, while watching him, scooped a large mouthful of rice and chewed it. Then, I hastily reached for the seaweed soup he had boiled but stopped. I slowly closed and opened my eyelids. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen them before—disgusting, tiny black things were wriggling all over it.
My appetite vanished instantly. My lower jaw, which had been chewing the rice, twitched and stopped. I couldn’t bring myself to scoop the soup with the spoon I had extended. My arm, fixed over the soup, refused to move. Somehow, I had thought he was being too kind lately. His rewards had been too sweet. He had installed a lightbulb in the small room, and now he had removed the chain from the shackle, but I couldn’t forget that he was the man who had kidnapped me and swung his fists so mercilessly that I thought I might die.
I bit my lip as I looked at the dirty seaweed soup with bugs floating in it. I wanted to eat it defiantly as if nothing were wrong. But— I had drunk the cocoa, but this, this was just too revolting. I felt like the rice I had swallowed would come back up. The man tilted his head and asked,
“Not eating?”
“……I don’t want to eat it.”
I barely managed to answer after swallowing the remaining rice. The man tilted his head. He stared at the seaweed soup, then looked at me with sunken eyes and said,
“Why?”
Because you boiled bug soup to screw with me. I’m still human. I want to eat something human-like. “You want me to eat this?”
“It’s my birthday, so you should eat it, Siwoo.”
“You’re completely insane. You’re determined to drive me crazy. You bastard. You’re so damn petty.”
“…….”
The man rested his chin on his hand and stared at me. I put down the spoon and stood up from the chair. My ankle wobbled under the weight on my left leg. I held onto the chair to steady myself and glared at him venomously. Suddenly, the man smirked and stood up. He pushed the chair away and came toward me in big strides. I stepped back and fell with a thud. I tried to support myself with my bandaged arm, but my butt hurt. The pain wasn’t something I could worry about.
“Wait, just a moment.”
“Shouldn’t you congratulate me and eat the seaweed soup I made?”
The man grabbed my wrist and pulled me up.
“That’s forcing it. Just a moment, let go of this. It’s too dirty. The bugs are disgusting and dirty, I can’t eat it. I don’t want to, I hate it!”
In an atmosphere where he might force-feed me, I panicked and backed away. The man caught me as I stumbled and made me lean against him. Terrified, I pushed him away with all my strength and moved away from the table. I couldn’t think straight, overwhelmed by the vague fear that if I were caught, I might be forced to sit in the chair and have the disgusting, bug-infested food shoved into my mouth.
He, who had been pushed away, came closer and lowered his head toward me, asking,
“Bugs?”
“Just kill me, damn it. Huh—please, don’t do this to me.”
The tears I had been holding back burst again. I raised my bandaged hand to wipe my tears and slumped against the wall. The man stood still for a moment, then suddenly went to the table and picked up the pot of soup. As I watched him out of the corner of my eye, I thought he was going to force-feed me the bugs and panicked, crawling away on the wooden floor with nowhere else to go. But the man looked into the pot and said, as if surprised,
“They’re really there.”
Then he went to the sink and poured out the soup. Even after I saw him pour out the soup in front of me, I couldn’t calm down easily and sobbed. The man crouched in front of me and patiently waited for my crying to stop. After I stopped crying and looked up, he was holding a peeled Choco Pie in front of my eyes. On the floor was a mug of cold milk that I didn’t know when he had brought.
The man split the Choco Pie in half in front of me and offered it to me, asking,
“It’s a bit old, but the expiration date hasn’t passed. What do you think? Do you see bugs in this too?”
I examined the cross-section of the Choco Pie he offered and shook my head. It wasn’t something he had made, so there was no way there would be bugs in it. “Want to eat it?” It felt like he was giving me poison and then the antidote, but I was hungry, so I took the Choco Pie he was offering. I shoved it into my mouth. As I devoured it, the man offered me the mug of cold milk. I gulped it down like someone with a blocked throat. The man crouched, resting his chin on his hand, and watched me eat.
When I finally stopped eating and looked up, the man was smiling. Somehow, he seemed to be in a very good mood.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
