Vol 6. Ch 1

Chicken Game.

My body, driven to the edge of the bathtub, felt as precarious as standing on a high-rise balcony. Face down, with the back of my neck submerged, I screamed silent screams. I looked utterly beast-like. From Kwon Taeha’s body, which loomed over me, a scorching heat seemed to rise.  

The soaked shirt clinging to my skin felt icy, but my lower body was unbearably scalding.  

He rammed into my tight hole relentlessly as he yanked at my n**ple, fused with the fabric of my shirt. The sudden pain made my back tense, and his movements grew even rougher. Every inch of my vulnerable flesh was being violated.  

Kwon Taeha’s s*x was closer to exploitation. He squeezed me dry until my balls were empty, thrusting repeatedly until my hole loosened enough to take him without resistance. Skilfully avoiding my prostate, he pistoned deep and fast, leaving pleas for mercy trapped on my tongue.  

It wasn’t s*x—it was a fight. A forceful pressure demanding my surrender. He grabbed my hair and yanked. My head snapped back as I lay prone like a dog, moaning. He pounded into me without rhythm or restraint, like a boy who’d just learned about s*x, blind to anything but his own hunger.  

“Ah—it hurts.”  

I whimpered, unable to endure being treated like nothing more than a hole. When his c*ck pulled out, the swollen heat between my legs throbbed even more painfully. I trembled, one arm barely propping me up as I covered my entrance with a shaking hand.  

“Move your hand.”  

Gritting my teeth, I held my ground, bracing for him to overpower me. Instead, he flipped me onto the bath floor. Lying exposed in the tub large enough for an orgy, I stared up at him. Kwon Taeha lifted my legs. When I covered myself again, he clicked his tongue. “I told you to move your hand,” he muttered lowly.  

I averted his eyes and shook my head. He gripped my forearm and dragged me out of the tub.  

Kneeling on the hard floor, I watched his c*ck approach my lips. Parting them slowly, I let him slide in all at once. His hand cradled the back of my head, forcing me down. My legs twitched as my throat constricted around him, but he showed no mercy. Instead, a satisfied sigh escaped him, as if my struggle only heightened his pleasure.  

I couldn’t tell if Kwon Taeha had ever truly cared about my enjoyment during sex—or if he was just taking his anger out on me now. His rigid c*ck scraped against my throat and the roof of my mouth. Gagging, I found even that reflex stifled by his length.  

“…Hk—stop.”  

Leaning against the tub, I covered my mouth with both hands. Wet coughs burst through my fingers. This time, he pried my arms away. My face was damp—but not from the water. I was crying.  

“…President.”  

He ignored my plea and bit down hard on my tattooed wrist. “Ah—!” A muffled scream escaped me. At this rate, it wouldn’t be strange if he devoured me whole. I still didn’t know how much he knew about me and Aeil Kwon. He never said, as if waiting for me to confess. But all that had happened between Aeil and me was one encounter during the filming he’d witnessed—and afterward, a fleeting moment of pity. If he dismissed my heart as fickle for that, then there was no humanity left in Kwon Taeha’s own.  

He shoved me face-down onto the bathroom floor. Too weak to brace on all fours, my body slumped against the cold tiles. Straddling me, he spread my legs and pushed inside.  

“Ah… ah…!”  

My cheek rubbed against the floor as his hard c*ck pressed into my lower stomach. Forcing my knees up might’ve eased the pain, but he pinned my thighs in place. Each thrust drove deeper, stirring my insides until he was on the edge, only to slow—then start all over again. He never let himself finish. My skin burned red from friction, but my clenched fists were bloodless. In this endless act, I wished my body would dissolve and drain away like sewage.  

A weak moan escaped as even my head throbbed. Pulling out, he grabbed my hair and forced me to look up. Thick cum splattered across my face, mixing with tears as it dripped down. Even after coming, his c*ck stayed hard, grinding against my cheek.  

“Even if I… had something with Aeil Kwon—or anyone else… there’s no reason to treat me like this.”  

My voice wavered, pride fracturing. I hated that I was crying in front of him.  

“No reason?”  

“No.”  

“You know who ordered my kidnapping.”  

My vision darkened. Even without direct violence, my head rang as if struck.  

“And yet you still went to him. You knew TEX was involved in my abduction, and you still went. Didn’t you?”  

“……”  

Back then, I had no choice. Or—had I?  

“So it’s true.”  

At my prolonged silence, his face twisted.  

“You knew, and you still went. I didn’t want to believe it.”  

“I—I was…”  

Giving up on carefully chosen words, I told the truth.  

“I was afraid of you, President. I couldn’t run otherwise.”  

“If you were truly afraid, you wouldn’t have even considered Aeil. But you chose him like you’d been waiting for it.”  

Disinfectant over an open wound—my whole body burned.  

If he had ruled over me like an absolute monarch, I might never have dared to run. Like a peasant too terrified of a cruel lord to flee despite backbreaking taxes, fear would’ve chained me in place. Or if he’d been endlessly tender, like a lover, guilt might’ve made me hand over WikiLeaks without hesitation.  

But he had fAeild at both.  

And now, he was admitting it with his own words. He’d instilled fear but fAeild to fully control me; he’d shown occasional tenderness but never enough to move my heart.  

“So this is my punishment?”  

I asked desperately. Kwon Taeha’s wet suit looked like it had been caught in the rain, as if we hadn’t just had sex.  

“Look at me.”  

I forced myself up. My face was a mess, and beneath my shirt, my torso was mottled with bruises. Marks of sadism.  

“This is rape. This is why I said there’s no difference between you and Aeil Kw— ngh!”  

His hand closed around my throat before I could finish. Though his actions were wild, his gray eyes were lucid. I clawed at his wrist, thrashing, then struck his shoulders—but he didn’t relent.  

As his grip tightened, my strength drained. My vision blurred. Only then did he let go.  

“Hah—hk—!”  

Gasping, I crumpled to the floor, clutching my burning throat.  

“Even so, I didn’t… surrender. Even if I ran away, I never surrendered to Aeil Kwon!”  

“If you had, you wouldn’t be unharmed like this. I repaid all your debts, played along with your schemes—I’m not usually that kind of person. Tell me, what else happened between you and Aeil?”  

Ha… A strange laugh escaped me. His words sounded as if he’d forgive me if I just gave the right excuse. Kwon Taeha, even without you saying it, I’d always carried some guilt because of my father. But the path I had to take to survive came first, so I ran to the opposite side of you. Was that so wrong? I did what I had to do to live—why should I be treated like this?  

“Why should I have to understand your feelings, President?! I wasn’t the one who kidnapped you! Do you even realize how you’re acting right now? You’re like a pimp interrogating a runaway whore. From start to finish.”  

I, too, couldn’t care less about the process. The only difference was that things had ended badly.  

“What’s the point now that you’ve seen right through me? You said you found me. That you found me after my father died. But once you did, you didn’t bother to reach out, did you? Was it funny, watching me crawl through the gutter like a beggar?”  

I meant to sneer, but my wet face and trembling voice stripped the words of their bite.  

“But then, when you needed WikiLeaks, you finally decided to use me… That’s the truth. That’s the reality.”  

I steadied my ragged breath and faced him. My vision was too blurred to see Kwon Taeha clearly. I forced myself to blink away the haze, clenching my trembling lips.  

“That man was as pitiful as I was. So I pitied him. I sympathized. What’s wrong with that? If my emotions told me to, why should I stop them?”  

My emotions told me to…? He seemed to doubt his own ears, his face twisting in disbelief.  

“Impressive. So your cheap sympathy extends to everyone—except me.”  

“…You don’t deserve sympathy, President.”  

“I know that bastard forced himself on you. I know you didn’t want it. But I didn’t realize your heart was so generous that you’d pity the man who raped you.”  

He dragged me out of the bathroom by my arm. My legs gave way, forcing me to clutch at him, but he grabbed me by the hair instead.  

“Then why don’t you start pitying me too?”  

I called out to him, but he ignored me, yanking off my soaked shirt. When I tried to scramble away on the bed, he seized my ankle and pulled me back. The sheets crumpled under my desperate grip. Annoyed by my resistance, he untied his necktie and bound one of my wrists to my ankle. Then he shoved my legs up, leaving my hips suspended in the air, fully exposed. His fingers dug into me, stretching me open.  

“Ugh—!”  

After testing whether I could take him, Kwon Taeha stripped off his soaked suit.  

He pushed in without hesitation, and my body shook from the cold—or maybe the pain. Even naked, the only parts of us that touched were below the waist. From the start, his thrusts were brutal, slamming into me with enough force to make my vision blur. Every time he pulled out, I could feel myself being dragged up with him. It wasn’t just my lower half that felt broken—my back creaked under the strain. He didn’t come inside me, choosing instead to torment my tightness, drawing out the violation. A cold, stabbing sensation spread through my head, chest, and arms until my whole body went numb.  

I tried to wrap my free arm around his shoulder, but the heat radiating off him felt like it would melt my skin. He shoved my hand away, as if suspecting another trick. Now I couldn’t touch him at all.  

With every thrust, my skull rattled, nausea rising in my throat. My swollen neck made it hard to swallow, and drool spilled from the corners of my mouth. When he finally pulled out, he came all over my gaping hole, openly treating me like nothing but a c*m dump.  

His c*ck was still hard, and soon it was pushing back inside, filling the mess he’d made.  

“It hurts… It hurts too much.”  

I sobbed the words between gasps, but he only stuffed a handkerchief into my mouth. The dry fabric scraped my cheeks, sticking to the wounds. When I looked at him with desperate eyes, he covered my face with his palm, shutting me out completely.  

In the darkness and silence, I thrashed helplessly as he erased me, piece by piece. It was long. It was cruel. And by the end, Kwon Taeha was no longer someone I knew—just a stranger carving his way through my night.  

***

As soon as I left Aeil Kwon’s villa, the place I headed to was Kwon Jaehee’s house. The first time, I’d just wandered aimlessly. The second time, I was conscious of what was in my pocket. And the place I instinctively found myself going to was Kwon Jaehee’s.

It wasn’t because I particularly trusted Kwon Taeha’s brother. All we’d done was talk briefly, and that wasn’t nearly enough for me to judge his character. He was simply a bystander, someone who had taken a step back from this entire conflict. Maybe that was why.

Walking the forest path we’d taken by car took me nearly half a day. By the time Kwon Jaehee’s house came into view, I stopped in my tracks, making the long climb feel meaningless. Choosing Aeil Kwon right after seeing the video of Kwon Taeha’s abduction had been somewhat impulsive. I could’ve chosen to confront Kwon Taeha and asked him directly if he still meant what he said about taking revenge on me. That option had existed. But I think I was afraid.

Because if he had said yes, then there’d be no way out…

The reason I thought about handing over the unrecovered STA data to Kwon Jaehee was simply because I had no intention of giving it to Aeil Kwon. Being called a bitch or a whore—I could let that go. Aeil Kwon had his own trauma tied to my father, and I had provoked him just to get out of the villa. I didn’t feel even the slightest guilt about that.

I sat down on a rock embedded in the ground and reached into my pocket. Even if I gave the files to Kwon Jaehee, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t betray Kwon Taeha. Kwon Jaehee had been the original successor to STA, and it was only because dealing with Kwon Taeha had become too much for him that he stepped back from the front lines.

He might be smiling on the outside, but deep down, he could still be harboring the ambition to reclaim his position. Of course, I wasn’t certain the STA data even contained anything that could be used against Kwon Taeha. But knowing my father, I doubted he would’ve left behind anything clean. Even if it wasn’t about Kwon Taeha, there had to be some kind of weakness in STA.

I pulled my hand out of my pocket and started walking back down the path. Afraid I might run into Kwon Jaehee, I veered off the unpaved road and took the forest trail instead. I’d taken this route in the first place to shake off the observer Aeil Kwon had assigned to me—switching between trains and buses multiple times.

That observer would probably be penalized for losing me, but technically, my release didn’t include any terms about being watched. So getting rid of them was only natural.

I tightened the bandage wrapped around my wrist and quickened my pace. When Aeil Kwon let me go from the villa, he said:

‘I’ll let you go, just like I promised. But you’ll need to prove to me that you really have Wikileaks and that you’re not going to disappear.’

‘In what way?’

‘Any way’s fine. Sending something by mail wouldn’t be bad. Coming to see me would be even better.’

‘I’ll think of another method.’

‘If you break your promise, I can make sure the whole world recognizes you. I could even turn you into a global porn star, you know.’

‘I’m sure you have the power to do that.’

Ever since I left the villa, I’d thought it over many times, but there was only one method I could choose: to reveal Wikileaks to the public. Of course, Aeil Kwon had no idea I was planning to blow it wide open. But what he thought didn’t matter.

All I needed to do was prove that I really had Wikileaks and that I hadn’t gone into hiding. That would be enough. Of course, the “freedom” Aeil Kwon promised me came with a one-year time limit.

After a year, I was supposed to hand over the STA data to him. Before then, I had to find another way. Because I had no intention whatsoever of giving it to Aeil Kwon. The moment those corrupted files were recovered, they’d become a seed of chaos. I fought back the impulse to hurl what was in my pocket deep into the forest.

The sun was gone before I realized it, and night came fast in the mountains. It took another long while to find my way out of the maze-like paths.