SM Ch 8

I exhaled the breath I had inhaled. Pitch-black darkness stuck thickly to the glass outside the window. I shook my head once. Without even a change in expression, he looked as if he had expected as much.

“Bag, coat. Take them off.”

This time, it was not an invitation.

At the end of his sharply dropped words, I intuitively felt that my toes had finally crossed an invisible line.

Without a word, I took off my bag, set it down on the floor, and unbuttoned my coat. My cold, frozen fingertips slipped out of place several times. Every time a button unfastened with a thud, thud, a chill penetrated through the opening gap. Ironed white shirt, necktie. Seeing the exact same attire as when I went to work, he said nothing in particular. I draped my coat over the chair and lowered my hands onto my knees. Looking out the window, the man only then gave me a brief glance out of the corner of his eye.

“Did you wash before coming?”

“Yes.”

“Then take off the rest and get up onto the bed.”

I stood up. Facing for the first time the large bed that had blocked my view brightly the entire time, I tore apart the firm knot of my necktie with my fingernails in front of it. I unbuttoned the shirt buttons beneath it as well. The man behind my back lit a cigarette and put it between his lips. Clack, the sound of a lighter was heard. As I unbuckled my pants and lowered them to my ankles, he added as if just remembering:

“Fold the clothes you took off and set them aside. I loathe the area beside the bed not being neat.”

I picked up the shirt that had slithered down to the floor and folded it again. I also shook out and folded the pants caught around my ankles. The tobacco smoke spreading pale white behind my back was acrid. Suppressing my cough, I lowered my underwear. Placing it on top of the pile of clothes, I set it aside.

After doing that, there was nothing left. There was nothing more to cover my body, nor anywhere else to direct my attention. I climbed up onto the bed on my knees. The touch of the white sheet contacting my bare legs was smooth.

At the edge of my field of vision, I could see him standing up. Instead of approaching the bed, he pulled back the chair I had been sitting on and dragged it to a spot facing the bed directly. Perching there, he crossed his legs. Holding the cigarette between his lips, he instructed:

“Do it by yourself.”

It was an indistinct and nonchalant pronunciation. Unable to comprehend, I just stared at him blankly. Faintly digging a furrow between his eyebrows, he detached the slender cigarette from his mouth.

“Spread your legs there, look at me. Touch yourself in front.”

His voice, which was calm to the point of being serene, lacked a sense of reality. Even after ruminating over the meaning of his words several times, I remained frozen. My force-applied fingertips dug into the bedsheet.

“Can’t you understand plain words?”

“…I, don’t know how to do it…”

“Don’t know? How do you do it when you do it alone? Do you use the back too?”

As if hot water had been poured over me, belatedly, in an instant, my face burned intensely. The person who actually uttered the words was completely unphased. He simply instructed again with a cool expression whose patience was slowly wearing thin.

“Insert a finger in the back too. Spread so it’s clearly visible.”

“…Team Leader…”

For a moment, I thought. Is this normal? Behind closed doors in a hotel room, does everyone do it like this? Having no experience, there was no way for me to know. The invisible silence was stinging. He hadn’t flicked a single finger, nor was there a single instance of urging, yet my heart beat faster and faster.

Unable to withstand the pressure in the end, I tentatively sat up and extended my legs. I opened my toes a little in the direction facing him.

“More.”

As if flabbergasted, he dismissed it.

“Spread them until I say that’s enough.”

I couldn’t look up. Bowing my head, I spread my stiffly frozen legs apart to both sides bit by bit. Even when the inside of my thighs pulled painfully, he said nothing. Both my toes, which had dug into the sheet, kept slipping.

At his continuing nonchalant signal with his eyes, I placed my trembling hands between my widely spread legs. Covering my limp penis, I rubbed it a few times with my fingertips. Far from getting aroused, goosebumps broke out. The feeling was strange and terrible.

“Well, really.”

Watching me, he spat out as if incredulous.

“I didn’t even expect you to get on top and roll your waist, but if you can’t even masturbate by yourself, what am I supposed to do?”

“…Can’t we, just, not do this kind of thing…”

It was cold. Even if it was winter outside, there was no reason for the temperature inside the hotel to be cold, but my bare body was stiff as if frozen solid. From the moment I called him, or from the day I met him on the rooftop, among the imaginations that persistently churned through my head, there had never been one like this.

“Can’t we just do it right away?”

The end of my words trembled. The tail end of my sentence was thin like a plea. Staring at me intently, he let out a dry laugh.

“What should we do right away?”

“…”

“Tell me, so I can do it for you.”

As if frost had formed inside my head, my movements were slow. When I kept my mouth shut, his face slowly sank into expressionlessness. Uncrossing his legs, he slowly raised his body. As the difference in eye level widened sharply, a sense of intimidation pressed down on me as if to crush me. Reflexively, my thighs closed rapidly.

Before I could even gather my legs, stepping swiftly toward the bed, he grabbed both my ankles with his firm, large hands.

“Ah-ggh…!”

With a single pulling motion of his hands, my legs easily spread open again. Beyond the limit of what I had spread on my own, he did not let go of my ankles until the insides of my thighs pulled painfully.

“Hng, ngh.”

“Did you do an enema?”

Pushing up my waist so that the space between my buttocks was exposed, he took a brief look and asked. It was a voice of unexpectedness.

“If you were going to do it, you should have done it properly. It’s swollen immensely.”

Over the swollen entrance, a firm fingertip pressed down.

In that moment, I thrash my arms and legs as if having a seizure. Turning my frozen body, I tried desperately to escape. My one ankle held by him twisted painfully. As I tried to crawl toward the top of the bed, he forcefully pulled down my leg. Weighting his body down over my thrashing upper body, he subdued me.

I couldn’t breathe properly.

“I can’t do it, I can’t… stop, please let me stop—.”

“I gave you that opportunity earlier.”

It was a neat voice that left no room for counterargument. I thrashed with all my strength. In my blankly white mind, tinnitus rang sharply.

At that moment, I didn’t even remember the fact that I had walked here on my own feet. I even forgot why I was here for what purpose. My fist, flung into midair as if flailing, struck his shoulder with a thud. It was a fairly heavy hit. In an instant, my wrists were held with a strong grip, and he mounted over me. Before tightly closing my eyes, I could see his frighteningly, coldly frozen expression.

“I don’t want to, don’t, please don’t…”

“Shut your mouth.”

Over my opened mouth, he tightly pressed and covered his palm down. Both my wrists were overlapped and fixed above my head. Sounds that failed to become language struck and were blocked inside his firm, hot palm. No matter how much I twisted my body, I couldn’t overcome his grip or weight. Even wringing out every ounce of strength I had, I was unmoving. With my strength, any further resistance was impossible.

The moment I realized it, a distant, absolute terror, like falling from a high place, swept in. My entire body stiffened rigidly as if dead.

When I suddenly became quiet, the hand covering my mouth was removed. Beyond my closed eyelids, I could feel a gaze falling upon my face.

At the end of an endlessly stretching heavy silence, he spoke:

“It seems Mr. Lee Seodan has a tendency to overestimate your own capabilities.”

The fingers holding my wrists tightly fell away. As if blood rushed in all at once, my hands throbbed hot and painful.

“Either that, or you are taking me very lightly.”

It was a nonchalant voice devoid of any trace of the vivid anger from earlier. Groping around, I pulled my legs together and retreated my body away from him. Clutching the sheet with trembling fingertips, I huddled my body.

“I hope you don’t regret today’s affair.”

From the sloshing of the mattress, I could tell he was standing up. Soon, the dry sound of fabric brushing was heard. The metallic sound of a belt and zipper. While he dressed, I buried my trembling breath over the sheet. Like an ebbing tide slipping soundlessly, the terror of sharp teeth receded inch by inch. Over the exposed sand, things he would call impatience and I would name regret were still breathing.

“…Team Leader.”