Chapter 31
“Die! Die, you crazy bastard…!”
It's not as if I've never been hit in my life, but I've never been seriously hit by a woman who was a head shorter than me.
She doesn't even know how to hit, so she balls her fist up and pounds me with her knuckles; it looks like she's hurting herself more than me.
Well, I suppose that means she's that pissed off.
“Hey, why are you hitting me? Stop.”
“You—fuck, marriage? What are you talking about? Are you crazy? You? And what the hell is this manager nonsense!”
I grab Seo Ha-eun's wrist as she pounds my chest while screaming, and look into her teary eyes.
Shame.
Anger.
Self-loathing.
They’re all negative emotions, plain as day,
so in a way, she looks easy to manipulate.
“If we're going to live together, I have to lay down something like that so you won't kick me out.”
“That—that's not what's important!”
The reason she's this angry at me can be explained with a single word.
Inferiority complex.
What else is there?
Of course, Seo Ha-eun doesn't feel inferior to me.
She feels that way toward her younger sister.
Seeing the look in Seo Jia's eyes as she treated her own sister and the man who was ostensibly her future brother-in-law like a pair of cockroaches, it's only natural she'd freak out like this.
“Then what is important? We already agreed to say we're dating, didn't we?”
“That's not what I mean…!”
“If that's not what you mean, then what is? If two unemployed bastards say they're going to sit around and live off someone in a three-bedroom house, do you think your sister's going to happily agree?”
“….”
At the very least, she could've talked me up and lied that she was living with some respectable man,
or talked herself up and made it look like I was living with her to wait on her; then she wouldn't have gotten this angry.
This woman is angry because her roommate dressed like a slob and pretended to be her boyfriend.
What a hassle.
Honestly, she's not a woman I want as a girlfriend.
And her personality has too many flaws for her to even make a good sex friend.
“Ha-eun. Stop being annoyed and sit down and eat first. You're just getting cranky because you're hungry, right? Eat first, then think about it.”
“You—you really… I thought I was your… what, exactly…?!”
“…Sit down, Ha-eun. Before I get angry too.”
…Still, she's hot, so I'll let it go.
The way she quickly becomes obedient when I lower my voice is just like the dog I raised when I was young.
It was a small dog, timid and ill-tempered, so it would growl and bark whenever it got bored, but after I trained it properly, it listened well.
Of course, training a dog and training a person are worlds apart,
but in the broadest sense, the basic framework is similar.
“Ha-eun, I didn't bring up marriage or being your manager to fuck with you. Huh? If I just leave you to deal with this, what are you going to tell your sister? Are you going to tell her I raped you, like you keep telling me?”
“….”
“And if she asks why you're eating with a rapist, what are you going to say? That you were threatened into it this time? Fuck. Then I’d get sued by a famous celebrity, so I’d have to show everything—the recordings and all. In court?”
The most important thing in communication isn't what you say, but your tone and eye contact.
You can growl and glare while saying, ‘I really like you.’, but no one will hear it as a confession of love.
Whispering ‘I'm going to kill you.’ sweetly and lovingly into your partner's ear while gazing at them tenderly turns it into an invitation to bed rather than a death threat.
Likewise, when Ha-eun says, ‘I’ll report you!’, in that frightened voice it doesn't mean she's going to report me; it means, ‘Please punish me.’
“Ha-eun, whatever you were thinking when you agreed to live together, you and I are living together because we need each other. When we're alone, you can swear at me or do whatever you want, but if you say things to me in front of other people, both of us look crazy. Do you understand?”
“…We only did that when it was just the two of us….”
“So that's not the important part. Either way, we're going to live together for half a year, so you can't just keep getting pissed off like that. If I move out tomorrow, how are you going to pay your debt? If you don't pay it, your sister's going to get pissed at you every time she sees you, just like earlier. Right?”
“….”
Even if I occasionally veer off the point like this, if the other person has no intention of talking back, I can switch tracks without the slightest hesitation.
I'm not exactly used to scolding women my age,
but Ha-eun didn't have enough life experience for me to treat her as my equal.
The art of dealing with people—treating your seniors well ten times, then giving your juniors hell nine times and treating them well once—is something you have to experience firsthand; it's not something you can learn from a lesson.
“Let's stop fighting for now and eat. Ah, fuck. It's all gone cold from some weirdo barging in. Still, it's edible, so try some. I cook well.”
“….”
“Tell me if you need more. We can heat it up, anyway.”
“…Fine. I'll eat.”
After finally getting this incredibly bothersome woman to sit at the table, I serve her a meal.
Seo Ha-eun, nibbling at the cold rice with a sullen expression, looked terribly surly, but strangely, I found her cute too.
Ah, I shouldn't be enjoying this.
Now I understand why my seniors used to insist that I'd absolutely have to become a manager when I got older.
…It really is fun taming other people.
If the woman has huge tits and is fucking gorgeous,
it's obviously hundreds of times more fun.
**
I want to die.
I've said I wanted to die many times in my life, but today was the first time I genuinely felt like dying.
I wasn't even this depressed when that man raped me.
My sister nagged me.
He treated me like a cockroach.
That oblivious bastard kept spouting weird shit.
I got scolded,
disciplined,
…and then I ended up accepting food from him with swollen eyes.
What am I doing?
Am I stupid?
I've never hit anyone in my life, so why couldn't I hold back today and pummel that man's chest?
I knew that no matter how hard I hit him, it wouldn't hurt him at all.
I also knew that if he so much as lifted a finger, I'd be helpless.
“Ha-eun, can I come in?”
“…Fuck off.”
“No, hey. Give me a blanket. I didn't bring a bed or blankets in my suitcase.”
After showering, I sat hunched over without even drying my hair, but that bastard, still completely unable to read the room, knocked on my door.
…Just leave me alone.
You said you wouldn't touch me first.
“Ha-eun. I won't count you hitting me earlier as touching me first, so just throw me a blanket. I need a pillow too.”
“…Haa.”
But this time, there was no excuse: I was in the wrong.
I hit Kang Joo-hyuk first,
and all he did was grab my wrist; he didn't do anything worse.
…If he'd just pounced on me and raped me then and there, I could have kicked him out because I had the recording on.
Or if I'd honestly told Jia I'd been raped when she came home, it might have ended easily.
….
Or maybe not.
When I think of that recording that still won't leave my head,
even I had to admit it didn't seem like rape.
“Thanky-thanky. Where are the blanket and pillow?”
“…There are some spares in the closet over there.”
“Which closet, exactly?”
“The one at the far right.”
“Be more careful when you say things like that. I might accidentally open the wardrobe.”
But what he did to me sometime yesterday or today—anyway, in the middle of the night—was unmistakably rape, no matter how I tried to excuse it.
Just because I'd fiddled with his phone a little, he kept pounding into me without even using protection.
And in the end, he even forced himself to come in my mouth.
He even dragged me, already depressed, to the bathtub and kept touching me until I collapsed from exhaustion.
…You fucking perverted rapist bastard.
“Are you going to sleep now too?”
“…Yeah.”
“Then sleep well… Ah. Sorry about earlier. I did get pretty angry, didn't I?”
“What…?”
But that vicious criminal casually tosses out words I can't even bring myself to say.
He did it when I was so embarrassed I could barely breathe because everything would be solved if I just shut my eyes and lied that he was my boyfriend.
…And when I had to ask him not to do anything weird because I was sorry I'd hit him and had started it.
“Hey, why are you so surprised? We have to live together for half a year. Are we really going to keep fighting over something like this?”
“….”
“I more or less understand that you're throwing a fit because your sister's so rude, so don't sit there hunched over with wet hair over something like that. What's so impressive about earning good money and being popular?”
How can this man chatter so casually in front of the woman he raped?
He really seems to
treat me like a roommate, which scares me.
It clearly isn't such a simple relationship.
“And eat when I tell you to. I went to the trouble of making it, so eat it properly. When you pick at it like that, it makes cooking feel pointless.”
“…Are you a psychopath?”
“I've been called a sociopath, but not a psychopath. I cry my eyes out at sad movies too.”
Watching him fire back without getting flustered even by my ridiculous question,
it feels like a genuinely psychopathic kidnapper is lurking beside me.
He's certainly frightening,
but he doesn't seem like he'll kill me.
“And I have something I want to propose to you tomorrow, so get a good night's sleep tonight.”
“…What is it?”
“I don't think you'll listen if I tell you while you're depressed.”
“I won't listen even if I'm in my right mind. …Just tell me.”
He keeps listening to me,
and keeps trying to get me to do something.
I don't know why.
Maybe he's trying to win me over,
…or maybe he wants to get me into bed somehow.
“Uh… Earlier, I got the rooms mixed up and went into the one next door, and there was a soundproof booth. That's where you play guitar, right?”
“…Yeah.”
“You didn't go in there today. Are you quitting YouTube?”
“I don't know. …There's no one watching anyway.”
“If you're going to quit anyway, will you listen to me just once?”
“…What is it?”
“No, it's just… I told you. It makes no sense that you can't get popular with your face and figure.”
“…Are you telling me to show my face?”
“Well… if you really hate that, you don't have to show that much. …You could probably just film from the neck down, right? For someone like you, that should be enough.”
“….”
Who cares.
That man is too good at lying.
Whether he means it.
Whether it's another lie meant to tease me.
Whether he's up to something.
…I don't know,
but I find myself nodding.
Because somehow,
it feels like it might actually work.