“Why are you making me angry! What exactly do you want to gain by making me angry! When you know that no one but me will do! Why are you saying such things!”
As the man’s shouting ended, his palm struck upward against Geun-yeong’s cheek. Distracted by wiping his tears, Geun-yeong bit his tongue from the unexpected slap without even having a chance to close his mouth, and he had to grimace from the sharp pain in his tongue, which hurt more than his burning cheek.
“I can’t even stand to see you crying! How dare you make such a face! Straighten your face!”
Before his words ended, the hand that flew again struck his ear. After the loud noise like thunder, there was a piercing pain in his eardrum. Unable to stop his face from contorting against his will, Geun-yeong tried to raise his hands to cover his face. But the man couldn’t stand even that. He grabbed the wrist going toward his face, twisted it, and shouted:
“Don’t cover it!”
After pulling down the arm so roughly that it felt like his shoulder might dislocate, forcing him into an attention stance, and then pinning that arm down with his knee, the man struck his face again. And again. He struck the spot that had just been hit and was already hot and red.
“Tell me! What! You’re! Thinking! Right! Now! Without! Covering! Your face!”
The blows came without pause. At first, it hurt, but later there was a dull numbness. It didn’t hurt, but he was disoriented. Not because his face was being hit, but because his arm hurt, though he was so disoriented he didn’t even know why his arm was hurting.
The man’s blows, which had a habit of concentrating on the same spot, momentarily ceased. The tears that had insensitively burst forth while he was being severely beaten had dried up. The man, catching his rough breath, said:
“Tell me everything you did with that bastard for the past two days!”
“…Noth—”
There was no time to answer. The moment he tensed up seeing the man raise his lowered arm again, the sharp palm was already approaching his face. Geun-yeong tightly closed his eyes again.
“Don’t! Lie!”
The man, who had no intention of letting him out of the house for the next two weeks, hit his face again and again and again—a part he usually avoided touching. The man was right-handed. The man, who had never shown mercy during punishment, continued to hit only the left cheek, which he could strike with the most force.
The lips, being the softest skin, tore first. The blood that burst from his lips had no chance to coagulate. It splashed in all directions from the relentless blows.
The dozens of continuous slaps paused briefly. It wasn’t because Geun-yeong’s left face was noticeably swollen or because his torn lips were severely split. It was simply so the man could catch his breath after exerting such force.
“Huff, this, huff, ungrateful, gasp, son of a bitch,”
The man, who had been bent over and panting heavily with his hands on either side of Geun-yeong’s face, stood up.
Even a while after the slapping stopped, Geun-yeong’s left eye, which he barely managed to open, was severely swollen. It couldn’t open to its full size. And the pupil trembling beneath the narrowly opened eyelid was as red as the blood flowing from his lips. All the capillaries had burst.
Geun-yeong didn’t know what state his face or eyes were in. He had no time to focus on such things. His pupils were only following the man’s hands. They were constantly trailing the man’s hands as he rummaged through the desk, pulled out packing tape, and approached again.
Because he knew too well what would happen next, his heart began to race wildly with terror. The camera, Detective Kyung, diabetes, the pump, insulin—he couldn’t think of anything. He had no choice but to submit because of the fear inspired by the object in the man’s hand.
His hands and feet, conditioned by severe beatings and terrifying false threats worse than death threats, were useless in front of the man who had lost his reason to anger. They were worse than a doll stuffed only with cotton.
Seokhun glanced at the terror-stricken face. The reddened and swollen left cheek, the bloodshot eye with burst capillaries, and the torn lips. Though clearly his own doing, he was angry. He was angry at the guy who had provoked him to this extent. He was especially angry at the man who had made the guy say such things.
He tore off a long piece of tape. He roughly pulled Geun-yeong’s arms forward, crossed them, and wrapped the tape around his wrists. He continued wrapping until it became a thick bundle that could never be untied alone. He wrapped it dozens of times.
“Tell me properly what you did with that bastard. If I find out myself, then I won’t forgive you. Did you sleep with him? Did you offer your ass? Huh?”
“No—”
A slap came in the middle of his answer. Geun-yeong had to bite his tongue hard again and curl up his body, which had jerked from the intense pain. This time it wasn’t just painful. The fishy taste from his severely bitten and torn tongue triggered extreme fear.
“I’ll ask again. Did you have sex with that bastard?”
“I didn’t, ugh!”
Seokhun struck upward with all his might again. Geun-yeong buried his severely hit and turned head in the bed and groaned. Bloody saliva flowed and smeared on the white sheet.
“Urgh…”
Something hurt terribly, though he couldn’t tell exactly where. He couldn’t stop the blood, saliva, and groans leaking from his mouth to his chin. But he had no time to worry about what was happening to his face now. The man was now removing Geun-yeong’s pants. He shook them roughly, like a predator with only instincts left tearing at the neck of freshly caught prey. After violently shaking, tearing open, and removing the pants, he threw them on the floor, grabbed his knees, and spread them. He spread his limbs as if to tear them apart and pushed up his thighs.
“Do you think I’m blind? Your hole is all torn and ragged, and with a hole like this, you’re insisting you didn’t do anything! Huh!”
Geun-yeong was dumbfounded. He really hadn’t done anything, and the last person who had penetrated him was this very man who was now making absurd accusations. He had made it that way himself, yet was blaming someone else—it was incomprehensible. He didn’t know if his hole was really torn and ragged, but he didn’t care about such a hole that he wished didn’t exist. He just felt wronged and dumbfounded. In pain, wronged, and dumbfounded. For various reasons, he was holding his breath with his mouth tightly closed. But that wasn’t what the man wanted.
“Tell me! Did you! Or didn’t you!”
A stubborn feeling arose—maybe he should just say he did. But Geun-yeong couldn’t bear the way the man was spreading him as if about to tear him apart down there, and he had to scream. The stubbornness that had briefly emerged was quickly subdued by the extreme pain.
“I didn’t— ack!”
“Don’t! Lie!”
Before he could even finish one syllable of the truth that automatically emerged from his terror—that he didn’t do it—the man’s beating began.
He hit the already severely beaten face again and again and kept hitting.
At some point, Geun-yeong stopped feeling pain. The whole world was becoming distant. Even the red dreams he had desperately wished for were fading away. He thought things were turning white, but they weren’t.
They were just black.
* * *
Lee Dongjae, bored thanks to his unusually quiet and brief-answering hyung, was taking a nap. Since they both thought it wouldn’t happen today, Kyung Jiho didn’t say anything about sleeping during what was technically work hours.
Kyung Jiho, whose chest felt tight with emotions difficult to pinpoint, was neither sleepy nor particularly tired.
While looking up meaningless things, he was waiting for the guy. Though he knew it wasn’t time for a report to come in yet, he was waiting.
He was worried about the guy in that house. He wanted to know as soon as possible that he was okay. He wanted to see the face of the guy walking out with his body intact, saying he was fine, that nothing had happened.
The guy who said he’d take a short nap was now snoring.
A look of displeasure crossed Kyung Jiho’s face. It wasn’t just because of the severe snoring that made the listener’s nostrils itch. His intuition was being triggered. There was an ominous feeling, like there was a problem of a kind that couldn’t be predicted within common sense.
* * *
Geun-yeong, who had briefly lost consciousness, woke up due to dizziness. The ceiling was shaking severely. The man shaking Geun-yeong’s body was constantly complaining that he felt dirty, that he felt nauseous, in breaths that fell short compared to the guy who had supposedly used the hole before him.
Despite the situation, Geun-yeong found it absurdly funny. The person who had used that place before this man was also this man himself. Whether he believed it or not, that was the truth. In the end, it was funny that he was cursing and being irritable with himself. So he laughed, but no actual smile formed on his severely swollen face.
Anyway, the slapping had stopped for now, so it was tolerable. His face, which seemed completely numb, didn’t hurt much. His tongue, which had swollen after being severely bitten twice, was a bit uncomfortable. He was thinking this while being shaken by the man.
As he was being shaken tediously, his pelvis, severely spread by the man’s hands pushing up his ankles, cramped. His back, folded while suspended in the air, hurt. Being shaken non-stop in such a position made him dizzy and also made him feel like vomiting. Especially, his wrists, bound tightly with tape and rubbing against each other, stung.
There were many uncomfortable places all over. He frowned with a face that didn’t move well, then startled, erased the expression. He was afraid that if his frown was noticed, hands might fly again. It seemed better not to make any moaning sounds either. With his mouth tightly closed, he endured the moans rising in his throat and all sorts of other discomforts.
After watching the ceiling rocking up and down, he turned his head. Through his hazy vision, he could see the camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling next to the built-in closet. Seeing the camera, he remembered something he had forgotten. There was still something he needed to do. That camera had captured the man’s confession, the violence he had suffered, and even more obscene facts. And one more thing. There was something that absolutely had to be captured on that camera.
Looking at the camera that was shaking breathlessly, he spoke to the man who would eventually see him in this state.
“I wanted to live.”
To the man who, after seeing all of this mess, would not offer a side of the bed or pass him rice scraped from a pot, he said:
“Because I wanted to keep living.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
