HBK Ch 1

I gathered the scattered crumbs of the biscuit and brushed them into my mouth.

The sunlight, fiercely piercing above my tilted head, dazzled my eyes, causing me to furrow my brow. The sliver of blue sky, wedged between the modest buildings, was no larger than the palm of my hand, and the midday street, past noon, was so silent that the remnants of the chaos swept away with the dawn seemed colorless.

Biting another piece of the biscuit held in my hand, I lowered my head. The ground at my feet was blackened. The two steps leading directly to the entrance of the cheap apartment were worn, haggard, and aged by the countless traces of people who had come and gone and the sediment of time.

I was born on these steps.

When the sunlight faded and darkness descended, the decadent noise that floated through the street like daily life filled the air, and these steps were just one of many.

Even as my mother, with legs limply spread, let a bloody lump fall like filth, she continued to receive customers. The sediment on these steps, as old as the city’s lifespan, surely included the bloody lump my mother expelled back then.

I bit another piece of the biscuit in my hand. If I held it in my mouth long enough and let it slowly dissolve, the three pieces of biscuit, with their characteristic floury dryness, were the only kindness my mother ever showed me. Until the door behind me opened, I sat on the steps, gazing at the empty street, savoring the biscuit as it melted. Through the thin entrance door, my mother’s screams and moans alternated.

My mother, who, even after eleven years of spilling filth, still maintained a body that was somewhat usable, was a fruit so overripe it had burst. The rough breathing of the men who crushed and oppressed her body, slashing it recklessly, mingled with her lively screams.

Oh, it’s not just one today.

Realizing through the thin entrance door that the customer my mother was frantically clinging to was not alone, I bit into the second biscuit. Her screams intertwined with the men’s shouts, like the strings of a raucous guitar, creating a frenzied duet. It was a painful dissonance that scraped at my eardrums and heart. But I knew it was neither oppression nor slashing.

That dissonance was my sustenance.

When the customers began to find my gaze unpleasant, I was driven out from the cramped apartment’s worn cradle to the entrance. My mother’s screams, which I had heard from within her womb, continued relentlessly even after I was born, even after I was chased from the cradle to the entrance, filling my hungry stomach, however inadequately. With those chalky biscuits or hard bread crumbs that tasted of nothing unless melted.

My mother was the sewer of Yeast Street.

She was a prostitute of Yeast, where it was natural to receive “customers” who got aroused watching a mother give birth, a woman tied to the street who couldn’t retire even as she was treated as refuse after childbirth.

And I was another sewer she had birthed.

🍯

A sweet yet tranquil violin melody languidly melted into the serene space.

The eyes of a man, idly passing time in a guest chair in the spacious parlor, suddenly sharpened into focus. They were heavy, desolate eyes, like gray stone. The man, who had been lounging carelessly, straightened his body, and the air around him instantly tightened with tension. Alerted by a faint sound of air being displaced, he focused reflexively, but the tiny noise had already vanished without a trace.

His gaze turned toward the upper floor of the opulently adorned mansion. Beyond the golden railing shimmering under the lavish chandelier, a towering golden lion statue caught his eye. The massive entrance door was engraved with the moment of a roar, crafted by a skilled artisan’s hands. The source of the fleeting sound that had brushed his eardrums was the second-floor parlor, firmly guarded by the great lion.

The man, hands thrust into his trouser pockets, scanned the golden railing where the chandelier’s light cascaded like a fountain, then withdrew his gaze. In the excessively vast space, he could no longer detect any further sounds. The second-floor entrance, with the golden lion as its gatekeeper, remained firmly closed, and without the master’s permission, it would never open.

For now, the man had no tasks to perform.

With that simple judgment, he relaxed his taut muscles and sank back into the guest chair. Staring at the golden lion beyond the railing, he recalled the back of a young man who, forty minutes earlier, had ascended the spiral staircase before his eyes.

The young man, showing neither tension nor excitement, had paused briefly before the second-floor entrance, which was wide- open wide at the time. The white fingertips that brushed his slightly protruding Adam’s apple, as if adjusting his attire, betrayed that his calmness was feigned.

Before his fingers left his throat, the heavy door slowly closed, narrowing the gap. Soon, the young man was sucked into the vanishing sliver and disappeared. The only sound the man could hear afterward was the violin melody faintly enveloping the vast.capitalize hall, until that subtle sound grazed his hearing.

The man, who had lived his entire life sustained by judgments born of intuition and experience, had recently found his nerves unusually relaxed. Even in that state, he instinctively knew the sound was no ordinary one. It was a threatening noise. But the young man was a prostitute. At the same time, he was also the unofficial mistress of some high-society figure. Thus, whatever happened in there was not the man’s concern. Whatever it was, whatever its nature, whatever benefit or harm it brought the young man, the man’s duty had been temporarily suspended the moment he sent the young man up the stairs.

That was the contract.

It was neither particularly exhausting nor unusual, but in truth, just half a year ago, it was something he could never have imagined. Personal security for an elite prostitute would naturally fill the last line of his unremarkable career, but the oddity of it was so striking that anyone who knew him would be unable to hide their surprise and unease.

But that was not a significant issue for the man.

He had been requested, he had accepted, and the safety of the prostitute, currently fulfilling his role in some manner inside, was his responsibility only within the permitted scope. In other words, the one-on-one contract, secured at the cost of his life, had to be upheld, however unfair or irrational it might be.

🍯

The return journey was eerily silent.

Without turning on the radio, the man deftly turned the steering wheel, navigating the complex maze of the mansion. The pitch-black car merged onto Route 13. At the late hour, well past midnight, few cars traveled the outskirts road. In fact, the sedan the man drove was the only one.

The eight-lane road, lined with streetlights rooted in newly renovated guardrails, was the only path to the suburbs. The young man’s residence was in the southernmost outskirts of West, where aristocratic retreats clustered. After passing a checkpoint guarded by private security without issue, the man glanced at the speedometer, now exceeding 80 km/h, and gradually increased his speed. His gaze, scanning the endless road ahead and all around, shifted to the rearview mirror.

There was no sign of movement.

He recalled the slight weight that had collapsed into his arms the moment the young man descended the long spiral staircase. Before setting off, he had checked the faint pulse while seating him in the back, but the motionless young man might as well have been a corpse.

Glancing at the speedometer climbing from 120 km/h to 130 km/h, the man gently pressed the accelerator. The landscaped trees planted by the city whizzed past the window. As the speed increased, the sedan, unable to withstand the pressure, trembled, roaring down the center of the road like a beast. Yet, inside the vehicle, it was as quiet as the deep sea. For the man, who had driven an old military truck through the midst of a battlefield under a hail of bullets, the silence within this immense noise was still unfamiliar.

The black sedan glided into the garage of a modest private residence, far humbler than the gilded mansion, like a beast holding its breath. A stagnant silence lingered around the sedan as the engine was shut off with a heavy thud.

Faint heat dissipated from the sleek hood. Closing the driver’s door and circling the front bumper, the man opened the rear door and leaned in. The young man’s consciousness, which had been faintly present when he was propped against the seat, had long since faded.

Examining the pale face lying still with eyes closed, as if dead, the man touched the young man’s pulse with his fingertips. Placing two fingers gently under the jawline, where adulthood’s boundary was ambiguous, he confirmed the laborious but steady pulse before withdrawing his hand from the silk-smooth skin. Even within the limited conditions, this was a high-maintenance charge.

Staring closely at the long curve of the young man’s eyelids, the man leaned in further. Just as he was about to lift him, one arm around the young man’s back and the other under his thighs, the eyelids, previously still, slowly opened.

Beneath neat eyelashes, clear black eyes gazed at the man for a long moment. It took some time for the blurred vision, long shut, to focus sharply. The moment the man’s face fully registered in the young man’s convex eyes, the eyelids slowly closed again, and his consciousness sank.

The young man closed his eyes, fully aware that the person touching him was the man. It was a silent permission, an unconscious trust.

The young man’s thin boundaries, allowing such deep acceptance and reliance on another simply because he was his bodyguard, struck the man as remarkable. It was a common trait among those with nowhere to lean, a facet of the young man’s impoverished circumstances. Whenever such a return occurred, carrying the exhausted young man was the man’s task, but these repeated moments of eye contact were as unwelcome as conversations with strangers.

The beautiful mistress of some aristocrat.

A type that, in any circumstance, would have had no connection to the man.

Caged in a suburban villa, content with the food provided and the candies handed out, quietly breathing like an ornamental bird. The man did not know how much value the young man’s pleasure, derived from eagerly answering calls and serving as his master’s joy until he was broken, held. He felt neither the desire nor the need to know, though a certain degree of understanding was part of his duty.

With little effort, the man lifted the limp body, straightening up and closing the car door behind him. A breeze from the open surroundings lightly brushed the young man’s disheveled hair. His pale cheeks, starkly contrasted by long eyelashes, were, as always, enveloped in a bluish calm. Silently observing the young man’s complexion, the man soon stepped inside. Compared to just six days ago, the body felt significantly lighter, almost devoid of substance.

🍯

Something hot gushed between my legs. A bony hand savagely slapped my stunned cheek.

Useless brat. Worthless leech. A rag even a dog wouldn’t touch.

The insults my mother’s pimp periodically hurled were passed down to me in full. Sparks flew from my mother’s eyes, unable to control her fevered body. The flames of hatred and resentment toward me poured endlessly from her frenzied eyes and swollen lips, laced with raw vitriol.

It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t sad, nor did it newly wound me. From the moment I curled in my mother’s womb, I had been exposed to sharp verbal abuse and violence. My mother’s hatred was the womb that conceived me, her chilling intent to kill was the umbilical cord tying me to the world, and the beatings that battered my body were my cheap cradle. My mother’s curses were my identity.

As another slap struck my face and head mercilessly, I cleaned the vomit my mother had spewed between my legs. Amid the vomit, mixed solely with alcohol and semen without any food, I found a few undigested pills. My mother, showing severe signs of opium addiction, had long been unable to digest anything she swallowed, frequently expelling it.

The pills in the vomit were stimulants her pimp had forcibly shoved down her throat the previous night when she could barely hold her head up. Though she seemed to feel their effects, handling a dozen oil rig workers through the night, the pills had remained perfectly preserved in her stomach. The “customers,” fresh off weeks on offshore rigs, likely wouldn’t have stopped even if my mother had been a corpse last night.

After cleaning the vomit, I knelt again before her. Thick bodily fluids oozed from her limply spread legs, emitting a foul stench. The business-use evening dress, torn to her thighs, had been shredded into rags by the greasy hands of the oil workers. Beneath the red dress, barely covering one breast, dark, dead skin and crimson fluids starting from her groin glimmered.

As I reached with a towel in hand, another slap struck my head. My cheek was clawed, my hair yanked. My mother’s hysterical screams battered my ears. Her venomous gaze, demanding not to be treated like a rag, landed on the towel in my hand. Even washed and sun-dried, it was indistinguishable from a floor rag. I understood her misunderstanding and neurotic reaction, but there was nothing remotely decent in this household.

Enduring the torrent of insults and blows, I cleaned her groin as thoroughly as possible. If it wasn’t neatly cleaned before the pimp arrived, she’d be kicked, and I’d have to scrub her groin with a dry rag until it was raw. With trembling hands, I wiped her private parts to the end, whispering ceaselessly.

Please don’t do this, Mother. The bleeding won’t stop. It won’t clean properly. Mother, they’ll come again today. Please save your strength.

My mother let out a furious scream.

It’s because of you!

Yes, I know.

It’s because of you!

Yes, I know, Mother.

Because of you!

Like lightning, she lunged, pinning me down and pressing my throat with all her strength. Her emaciated body, like crumpled paper, flew off. My mother, crumpled in a corner, unable to even groan, was skin and bones. Her once-full breasts had long sagged, lifeless, and her once-curved body had lost its vitality, rotting like spoiled porridge.

Now, the only “customers” seeking my mother were oil workers who wouldn’t refuse even rotting meat for two baren. The pimp, who kicked my mother like a dented tin can, lifted my chin with his gleaming boot. It was the gaze of someone appraising merchandise. He was extremely cautious, in his own way, about letting my body be damaged. If I came home beaten from wandering the streets, he’d half-kill the culprits, and if it was my mother, he’d beat her until she couldn’t take customers, sometimes leaving her to perverts for an entire night.

To the pimp, I was still an unwrapped sewer. A new filth receptacle to profit from in place of my mother. Letting the merchandise be mishandled or touched by others wasn’t the way of a proper businessman. His wolfish eyes scoured every inch of my face and body. It was a quick, concise glance, but precise and without excess.

Lowering my chin, his boots leisurely crossed the filthy floor and kicked my mother’s stomach. As she barely curled up with a groan, he stared, he glared at her as if she were something foul, nudging her groin open with his toe and scowling at the still-dirty private parts from last night. He gestured to me.

Clutching my trembling hands, I crawled quickly to him. Propping my mother, who kept collapsing, against the wall, I spread her skeletal legs and reached beneath. From the layered dry rags, sticky liquid trailed long. Sneering, the pimp tapped my head with his toe. Had I not braced myself, my face would’ve been buried in her groin.

You’d better watch closely. This bitch’s crotch will soon be yours. If you’re grateful for the food and clothes, don’t act out like last time. Stay holed up here and guard that hole well. If you’re itching to death, learning to suck cock would do you good. Got it? Don’t even think about stepping outside.

Nodding frantically as he grabbed my collar, baring yellow teeth in warning, I satisfied him. As he shook me off like dust and turned, I crawled and clung to his leg. Facing his harsh glare, I groveled desperately.

Please, give my mother opium.

My mother was an opium addict. After giving birth to me, her value plummeted, and the only “customers” who sought her were perverts and deviants. She’d survived countless years with her bare body, but when customers demanded acts she couldn’t endure sober, she turned to opium.

Initially, the pimp supplied quality opium for profit, but as her value dwindled, he stopped even providing cheap opium. Now, she couldn’t stay sane for a second without it. Only while addicted could she forget the horrific pain of her body rotting.

My body, pleading with my nose buried in his boots, flew back. That, even to him, must’ve been unbearably disgusting. Born from filth, my body, no matter how scrubbed, reeked of its innate stench, living a life less than a maggot’s, like a parasite. I was a maggot. The pimp, profiting by shoving maggots into the maw of a rotting beast, was a heartless fence. His leniency toward me was only because I was a freshly born maggot.

Please.

His boot struck my abdomen again as I clung.

Spoiled you, and now you forget your place, you filthy bastard.

Kicked so hard I nearly lost consciousness, it was a miracle my guts didn’t rupture.

I awoke to my mother’s piercing screams seeping through the thin closet door. Through the slatted door, I saw her surrounded by burly men. Her screams, from a woman hardened to all cruelty, were chillingly horrific. I’d never seen her in such agony. Instinctive fear paralyzed my thoughts. Like a bug, I cowered in the closet, listening to her screams.

Before she began receiving “customers” in earnest, it was likely the pimp who shoved me into this closet.

To sell me for even a bit more, wary of oil workers who’d begrudge even two baren laying hands on me, he didn’t bother moving me elsewhere for isolation.

Her screams tore through the shabby apartment again. Her skeletal legs convulsed in the air, crushed into the worn sofa. Five men in greasy work clothes circled her.

I tried not to look but couldn’t help it. Gurgling, gurgling, the sound of blood refluxing spewed from her throat like vomit. Trembling, I pressed my face to the closet door. An oil worker, kneeling between her legs, had his right arm’s muscles twitching as if alive. His thick, glistening arm slowly withdrew from her groin. She let out a hoarse scream. I shoved the closet door with my body and rushed out, screaming incoherently at them.

Give my mother opium. Give her drugs. If you can’t, just kill her.

They laughed, watching me collapse from a single punch, and graciously showed mercy.

That night, I gave them both front and back for five stimulant pills.

Enduring the pain of my hips splitting, barely filling their palms, I clutched the five pills earned as payment.

Mother, swallow them. Please swallow them.

An oil worker’s cock, thicker than my forearm, tore through my bleeding anus relentlessly. Sobbing as my pierced body thudded, I shoved the pills into my mother’s gaping throat. When I finally forced all five down, one of the “customers” circling the sofa shoved his rapidly stroked cock into my mouth. Another forced his into my mother’s.

That night, until dawn, I was only freed after servicing all five oil workers’ cocks from mouth to anus. Sprawled on the floor, my fading eyes saw a hand moving between my mother’s legs shove into her mouth, and I lost consciousness. Fully high on stimulants, my mother no longer screamed.

Nine years had passed since that noon when I ate biscuit crumbs, waiting for my mother’s tryst to end.

🍯

When he finished assembling the trigger, the young man appeared.

His black hair was wet from a shower. The man, averting his gaze from the young man descending the open cloud staircase, quickly and precisely packed away the tools he’d used to clean the firearm.

The news reported fierce protests by workers opposing the closure of oil rigs. Sitting on the sofa, the young man changed the channel. The screen shifted from a burning city to beautiful scenery, the anchor’s mechanical voice replaced by a lover’s tender whisper. In a classic drama, the two leads, wrapped in a lavish dress and sleek suit, embraced with crashing blue waves behind them. The young man’s pale skin, gazing at them, took on a bluish hue.

“Do you know where that is?”

His eyes, still fixed on the large screen, sat across from the man.

South Beach.

A place of natural beauty but also a military stronghold due to its fickle weather and rugged terrain. But that likely wasn’t the answer the young man sought.

“I’ve never seen the sea.”

Clarifying his question’s meaning, the young man finally shifted his gaze. Since escaping the mansion last night, he’d been overtaken by sleep, only shaking it off past noon. Yet, dark shadows lingered under his sunken eyes, though they didn’t detract from his appearance.

A smooth forehead and sharp features. Flawless skin evoked a perfect porcelain doll. His beauty alone had propelled him from the gutters to an elite mistress. His allure resembled the mist rising from that pristine nature.

“Even while awake or asleep, I later realized the sound I heard was waves. But I’ve never seen the actual sea.”

His gaze shifted again. From the man’s unreadable face, to the TV screen with solemn music and subtitles over the blue sea, and then to the outdoor pool on the left side of the veranda.

Imagining the young man slicing through the water was easy.

When the man first arrived here, the young man was rhythmically moving in the pool. While waiting for him to come ashore, the man paced the open pool area, assessing the visible terrain. Emerging from the water, the young man, not bothering to dry off, stood basking in the sun. It was long after that he noticed the stranger.

Accustomed to solitude, the young man was naked and merely shrugged his Adam’s apple once upon spotting the stranger. When handed a beach towel from the sunbed, he silently accepted it, belatedly covering his sun-warmed, wheat-colored body.

That he didn’t mistake the stranger for a customer was purely due to the man’s appearance. The heavy metallic presence inside the man’s jacket and his brief bow, offering neither a handshake nor a full introduction, also played a part. As did his hand.

Cedric Baltar. Your bodyguard.

The young man didn’t share his name.

Leaving the drama with rising credits behind, the young man gazed at the blue water where golden sunlight gently lingered, then rose to his feet.

As he crossed the parlor and stepped outside through the veranda door, the clothes on his body fell away one by one. Before even reaching the pool’s edge, he was completely naked, and refracted light draped over him like a cream-colored curtain from above his head. The countless red slashes drawn from his neck to his calves also vanished beneath that curtain. Then, with a leap, the young man melted into the water like a salt statue.

When the man first witnessed the young man’s naked body here, his wheat-colored skin had been entirely stained with blood. It was enough to guess the sadistic tendencies of the master who owned him, and that guess was not mistaken.

The young man often smiled.

When a call came from his master, whom he called his lover, he greeted it with a radiant smile, as if the unseen face were right before him. If the news was disappointing, he wilted like a drooping petal, and if a gift arrived, he adorned himself with it, taking photos to send or making video calls to model them. The young man knew exactly how to please his master. Most of his other time was spent submerged in the pool or sitting on the sofa, his gaze fixed on the television screen that painted his face with colors.

The young man was also an avid reader.

The first-floor study was filled with books sent by his master, and every two or three days, he would carefully write a reflection on what he had read, sending it to his master for review, like submitting homework. It was a behavior tailored to the master’s distaste for unintelligent beauty. However, the young man’s inability to do math or hold simple conversations hinted that he had never received a proper education.

The man’s expression, as he patrolled the sun-parched pool deck, was devoid of warmth. The house had no walls. To the rear, a dilapidated farm warehouse stood sealed off, forbidden from entry, and endless pineapple fields stretched in every direction.

The house faced west. The indicator of this was the low mountain range in the distance, cradling a blue lake in a crescent shape. At sunset, watching the blood-red shadow spread from the lake, which turned crimson first, and encroach upon the vast pineapple fields, one might feel the illusion of standing alone at an island harbor where the tide rapidly rises.

The house was not secure. The flat plain, with pineapples densely planted across nearly its entire expanse, grew close to the ground, leaving the view unobstructed. When the ground temperature rose, the haze shimmered faintly, and vehicles on the outer road could be seen in the distance. It was a terrain difficult to defend but equally hard to ambush.

However, the young man was not currently a high-priority security target under threat to his life. In other words, he did not require an advanced security system. The man had been assigned this role through a personal request from a long-time colleague.

Physical comfort often opened the door to contemplation. Yet the man felt no need to guard against mental or physical lethargy. For a man who had been barely passing his days steeped in alcohol and sleeping pills, his colleague’s suggestion came at the right time. Had he delayed any longer, he might have willingly drowned in his own ennui.

The sound of splashing ceased.

The man, who had been looking up at the roof of the dilapidated warehouse, turned around.

The young man’s upper body was slumped over the pool’s inner wall, his lower body pressed against it. His chest and cheek rested on the floor, finished with natural wood instead of tiles, as he exhaled slowly. Wet hair clung to his pale skin like claws, forming strange patterns. His legs, previously pressed against the wall, floated up, tracing the water’s surface. The skin on his backside, which should have been pristine, was mostly tattered with torn and cracked wounds.

A red haze rose around him.

There were no signs of proper treatment. For someone who should have meticulously cared for his body, if only to satisfy his master’s obsession with cleanliness, the young man’s neglect was unusual, but the man felt no curiosity. The master, who had whipped the young man with a leather belt until his skin split and left him unattended for two days, was that kind of person.

The master forbade anyone from touching the wounds until he personally treated them, and the young man complied. Sprawled on the parlor floor, he endured the excruciating pain raw until his master arrived. For two full days. This, too, was a kind of game. The young man would willingly bear the pain of his wounds, anticipating his master’s tender touch.

The man did not despise the young man. To him, the young man was a protection target within a limited scope. In fact, he rationally understood the young man’s situation. Trained and used as a lethal weapon for years, the man was also an exceptional keeper.

“Let’s go together.”

Wearing a light shirt and shorts instead of a towel, the young man followed him outside.

Soft sandal straps were delicately laced between his white, elegant toes.

Even in casual attire, his refined appearance fully reflected the tastes of his master, who was also the man’s employer. His black hair, dried to the roots and delicately curled, swayed lightly in the breeze, brushing against his clean forehead, cheeks, or nape.

Whether his master was present or not, the young man had ingrained the habit of adorning himself perfectly. Smiling brightly, he stood beside the man. A fresh, non-frivolous grassy scent emanated from him. Like a porcelain doll that belonged in a shop window, he urged the man to move.

Strolling leisurely around the house and following a narrow path eastward, the man glanced from the sky to the left horizon and back. The dilapidated warehouse, now far off, and the house standing well behind it came into view in a single frame. Looking forward again through the opposite horizon, he caught sight of the young man’s white back, now a fair distance ahead. No blood had yet seeped through.

He resumed walking. Soon, the entrance to a hill overlooking the entire area came into view. The young man took the lead, and the man followed, occasionally glancing at the sky or trees. At a glance, he might have seemed like a wanderer out to enjoy the scenery, but in reality, he was carefully inspecting for impurities in the clouds, broken branches, trampled bushes, or deep soil, searching for signs of spying or ambush.

After taking time to survey the surroundings and confirming the five entry points from the outer road to the house, the man circled the wide, low hill and walked along a farm worth tens of millions of bakers. He stopped when the young man, who had been moving steadily, halted. Standing still and staring somewhere in the sprawling pineapple farm, the young man turned and extended a hand toward the man.

What he requested was a knife.

Drawing a military knife from his waist and placing it in the young man’s hand, the man watched as he smiled brightly and turned aside.

Bending down, the young man struggled for a moment before deftly picking a pineapple from among the sharp leaves. Its ripe scent was more than enough to whet the appetite. As the young man offered the knife back, the man silently took it, also accepting the pineapple tucked under his arm and pointing ahead. At the unspoken command to lead, the young man obediently moved forward, his back now soaked red. It was the trace of vomit spewed by the gaping wounds beneath his shirt.

🍯

Groaning, shallow sighs, and the faint sound of water trickled from the open bathroom entrance. The house, neither large nor small, had all its doors removed except for the exterior entrances and windows. That it wasn’t originally designed this way was evident from the fittings on the doorframes. As a result, the young man had no privacy. This condition applied equally to the man.

Once or twice one or two times a month, the master’s irregular visits had a unique way of stirring his ornamental bird. Even standing outside the entrance, the young man’s prolonged screams and moans pierced the man’s ears unfiltered. The noise, different in nature from battlefield clamor, disturbed the man’s relaxed nerves, but that was all.

If the master said not to touch him, the young man was left in place until the master returned to embrace him again. If there was no resistance, the man’s assigned task was to carry him to bed. His colleague’s warning that this job would involve more caregiving than life-or-death protection was not wrong. Still, witnessing and understanding someone’s intense trysts didn’t translate into a pleasant experience.

Having completed his third shower of the day, the young man emerged from the bathroom. Naked, with patches of water still clinging to his body, he headed to the second-floor bedroom. His back, as he turned, still bore countless gaping wounds. A body permitted no touch but the master’s. Wounds deliberately made to prevent treatment by anyone else.

Standing by the window, the man silently gazed at the darkening horizon. Turning, he saw the pineapple they had picked on the way, sitting alone on the dining table. Drawing a paring knife, the man skillfully peeled and sliced the fruit, placing the flesh on a plate. His methodical movements were devoid of excess. Carrying the plate of sweet-smelling yellow fruit, he ascended the stairs.

The young man’s bedroom was the last of the three rooms on the second floor. Knocking on the doorframe in place of a missing door, the man showed the pineapple to the young man, who turned to look. Making no effort to cover himself, the young man belatedly rose. In an attempt at courtesy, he opened the wardrobe and threw on a loose T-shirt that reached his bruised knees. The man did not sit in the chair the young man offered, as if receiving a guest. Instead, he seated the young man there and placed the plate on the metal desk.

“Let’s eat together.”

The man declined. Staring at the pineapple pieces dripping with ripe juice, the young man picked one up. The man, unaware of the need to bring a fork, leaned against the window frame, looking outside. Darkness had quickly fallen, and beyond the pineapple farm, a single light on the outer road slowly faded into the distance.

“It’s delicious.”

The man, who hadn’t been listening, turned to the young man.

“Let’s eat together.”

Though he seemed briefly annoyed, the young man couldn’t read the man’s expression, which showed no other reaction. Making no further effort to persuade, the young man bit into another piece. It was sweet and delicious. Feeling the pain ease slightly, he slowly finished the remaining pieces.

“I said I liked pineapples.”

Immediately, the master uprooted orange trees and planted pineapples. Thousands, tens of thousands of pineapples that no one but the young man could pick or take were created that way.

“I didn’t even know it was a pineapple when I said it.”

He had greedily devoured something unbelievably sweet. To the master, who watched him with satisfaction, he had said it was good. The master, agreeing, spread the young man’s legs and fed him plenty of ripe fruit below. Not sharing that past, the young man swallowed the last piece.

“It’s whetting my appetite. How about beef stew?”

The young man, who was also adept at cooking, took the empty plate and led the way.

🍯

The frenzied pimp charged with wild eyes.

My wrist and ankle each broke, and a rib cracked. Unable to quell his rage even after trampling me, the pimp grabbed my collar and yanked me up, slapping my cheeks until they split.

Only when my face was bloodied was I thrown into a corner like a deflated balloon. I could only watch as the pimp’s wrath shifted to my mother. She said it was all my fault, pointing at me with yellow, festering nails, her bloodshot eyes flashing. She promised to birth a new one if given opium. The pimp responded with kicks.

When she vomited blood, he finally stopped the violence, cursing instead. Every piece of furniture in the house was smashed. Useless things taking up space were shattered under his feet. Unable to contain his anger, he kicked the entrance door so hard it nearly came off and stormed out. The door, slamming shut with a deafening bang, didn’t open again for a month.

Hunger blinded me. In the pimp’s words, since I became “decently appetizing,” I was forbidden from leaving freely. My mother’s world was confined to the sunken bed and sofa. The biscuits and bread the pimp tossed with stimulants or opium when customers came had also stopped for a month. I was starving, terrified, and half out of my mind.

My mother had been losing her sanity since the pimp stormed out. She begged, pleaded, threatened, and clawed at me, losing all reason in her demand for opium.

Even then, I couldn’t leave. A few steps out, and my hair was grabbed, dragged back, and I was beaten, stripped, and whipped until I “learned.” The pimp said he liked that I was dim-witted. Perhaps that’s why he often disciplined me harshly, calling me a brainless fool when I disobeyed. My mother clapped in delight. Unable to ignore her cries for opium, if I stepped outside, she’d snitch to the pimp for a few stimulant pills.

That mother beckoned to me, laughing and crying as if her insides would burst, for an entire month. Her face, smeared with heavy makeup she hadn’t washed off once, seemed to rot and collapse. Her decaying shell seemed to melt, as if it would turn into sewage.

Fear kept me from taking her hand or even approaching. Huddled in the closet corner, I could only glare with bloodshot eyes at her gentle beckoning, melting grotesquely like a snowman in the midday sun. Watching her go mad in that sealed room was a terror beyond comparison.

An inexplicable fear gripped me. Disgust, gloom, foreboding, and eeriness. Every kind of polluted emotion soaked me from my toes. When that black water finally reached my chin, what moved me was not pity for my mother but a ferocious hunger.

I scrambled outside. The cracked and broken bones, healed diligently during starvation, caused no pain. Dodging my mother’s rose-vine hands grasping at the air, I forced my barely moving body through the door. The scorching midday sun pierced like thorns. The street was desolate, like an abandoned city, and the sky between my palms was dizzyingly clear. I fumbled through the unfamiliar street, searching for food. Driven by the hunger kicking my insides, I wandered like a dog, sniffing desperately.

A hairy red hand waved a sausage. I rushed to it, biting into it. My mouth, unused to chewing for so long, forgot the simple act and dribbled sausage grease. As I stuffed the spilling meat back in, a thick arm crushed my chest, pulling me close. I was lifted into a large dump truck. The passenger seat was littered with half-eaten food: a pack of sausages I was biting, an unfamiliar chocolate bar, candies, jerky, beer cans, cheese, a burger, fries, ketchup.

My pants were pulled off. I wore no underwear; I never had. I was suddenly on the dump truck owner’s lap. Positioned toward the steering wheel, a bulging mass of flesh rubbed beneath my hips. A furry hand grabbed my pelvis and buttocks, spreading them. Then, something thick and hard pried open my anus and thrust inside.

I screamed in pain, twisting and crying out, but the hand on my pelvis was like steel, unshakable. Hunger made me cry harder. Each time the hot, massive weapon stabbed my insides, I writhed in pain but sobbed that I was hungry. The hand spreading my hips picked up a chocolate bar from the passenger seat and shoved it in my mouth. It was delicious, and I devoured it without chewing properly.

Each time my body jolted, I felt I’d vomit what I’d swallowed, but I was already salivating, eyeing the passenger seat. I wolfed down a half-eaten burger, ate soggy fries, and licked ketchup off my hands. As I did, something hot gushed inside my anus, like someone had urinated there. The dump truck owner’s strange moans and trembling contributed to the sensation.

When he said I’d eaten enough and should earn my keep with my mouth, he flipped me over, burying my face in his crotch. That’s when the driver’s door flung open. A black hand grabbed my nape and yanked me out. Nearly naked, I was thrown to the ground. The dump truck owner, dragged out next, rolled on the ground, his lower body grotesquely exposed, and was kicked until he passed out.

The sound of breaking bones roared like thunder. My turn came soon, trembling in a ball on the roadside. Instead of being whipped with my hips bared, my cheeks were struck until blood streamed from my ears. Having given my hips to five oil workers for five stimulant pills, I had also sold off my only value: my marketability.

The pimp had no reason to spare me, and that message was well conveyed to the gatekeepers who served him. Beaten until I lost consciousness, I was thrown into the apartment and beaten again until I came to. As soon as I opened my eyes, I vomited everything I couldn’t digest, and the gatekeeper stopped hitting me.

My cheeks were split, bleeding profusely, my ears were deafened, and my swollen eyes could barely see. Confirming my state, the gatekeeper finally withdrew. I vaguely heard the door close but wasn’t sure. I buried my face in my vomit and passed out again.

When I woke, I was in a dark warehouse.

I panicked at my swaying body and the first-time nausea, though I hadn’t moved. I couldn’t move a finger. Without restraints, I was too broken to budge. The strong smell of oil crept through my blood-crusted nose. I had been thrown into the hold of an oil tanker. The pimp had sold me to oil workers, casting me as prey into a living hell filled with vicious criminals, social misfits, and the lowest of the low.

I spent a year there.

I learned obedience, survival, and the sound of waves.

🍯

Fixing the channel to a music show and lying on the sofa, the young man opened his eyes.

The man, already sensing an outsider’s approach, stepped away from the window frame and headed to the entrance. The luxury car speeding down the quiet outer road from afar belonged to the master. As if sensing it, the young man tidied his disheveled hair, adjusted his clothes, and sat obediently on the sofa. The blaring television had long been turned off.

The sound of the large sedan shutting off its engine in the front yard, not the garage, echoed inside. The car door opened and closed, the master’s steady footsteps approached, and finally, the entrance door was lightly knocked on twice. The young man, with a smile spreading across his red lips and white face, opened the door. A lavish bouquet was presented to him. Holding the bouquet, meticulously stripped of thorns and leaves and woven solely with red roses, the young man smiled brightly. It was a scene of apparent happiness.

The large sedan the master arrived in was a product launched five years ago by Eagle, which accounted for 80% of the nation’s car production, to commemorate the king’s birthday. At the time, sixty-two units were custom-made to match the king’s age, and thanks to its monumental backstory, the discontinued model still commanded a high price. From body to engine, the sedan was a fitting tribute to a king, though its overly formal and ceremonial design somewhat diluted its excellent engine and durability. It was a bespoke sedan tailored to the vanity of aristocrats and tycoons who could afford it.

The man stood facing the sedan, his back to the entrance.

The young man’s moans drifted through the open window.

Standing on the wooden terrace by the entrance, the man shifted his gaze from the sedan to the pineapple farm ahead. The outer road, connected by a rough path of dry dirt and gravel, was far from commendable. Of the five paths from the outer road circling the pineapple farm to this place, only two were practically used: the front and rear paths. Staring at the lake beyond the outer road where farm trucks passed, the man looked up at the sky. Rain would likely fall around sunset.

The door opened, and the master, not a hair out of place, stepped out as he had arrived. Without a glance at the man, he descended the terrace steps. The driver, spotting him, stepped out to open the backseat door. The master’s movements as he lowered himself into the sedan were impeccable—confident, refined, and truly aristocratic.

The large sedan circled the yard and exited via the outer path. The man, leaning against the wall until its massive rear disappeared, straightened and entered the house.

The young man was tied to the dining table. Crossing the parlor, cool with air unlike the muggy outside, and turning left, the man found the young man spread on the six-person dining table like a frog for dissection. The only differences were his unopened abdomen and his position lying face-up.

“Untie me.”

Seeming unconscious, the young man noticed the man’s deliberate noise and made a soft request. Drawing a military knife, the man cut the cable ties, starting with the one binding the table leg and the young man’s right ankle.

The wounds, untreated since the city mansion visit, had been perfectly treated, down to the smallest scratches. Though no large gashes required stitches, the wounds, neglected for four days, gaped hideously, exposing raw flesh. Even the seemingly unhealable wounds were coated with high-quality medicine and neatly bandaged.

After freeing the left wrist, the young man stepped down from the table but couldn’t fully close his legs. The man neither wondered nor found it strange. When he found the young man tied to the table, he had seen the object inserted in his exposed anus, poised to pop out at any moment.

As his position changed, the deeply inserted objects shifted. Standing awkwardly until he adjusted to the renewed foreign sensation, the young man soon straightened his back. Closing his awkwardly spread legs, he walked upright, as if the master were watching his gait nearby.

The young man dampened a dry cloth, wrung it out, and cleaned the table thoroughly. Dinner time was approaching. Most people wouldn’t consider eating at a table they’d been tied to moments before, but the young man covered the spotless table with a new cloth and looked up at the man.

“You can eat elsewhere.”

The man bundled the cut cable ties and tossed them in the trash. Though he had no appetite, he didn’t leave the kitchen past the young man. Instead, he opened the fridge, pulled out simple ingredients, and assisted the young man. It was duty, not kindness, as the young man well knew. Still, he smiled with crinkled eyes, saying thank you.

🍯

Mist from the lake had crept close.

After a simple meal of pineapple slices and sandwiches, the young man, reading a new book on the sofa, was now in the pool. Raindrops, starting at dusk, grew heavier as darkness fell. The white body sliced through the rippling surface, disturbed by arrow-like raindrops falling without wind. Only one of the six lights illuminated the pool’s center.

Swimming through the water as softly as a breeze, the young man emerged as the rain grew fiercer. Swinging his arm, he grabbed a plastic bead the size of a baby’s fist floating on the surface. Kneeling on the wooden floor, he pushed it into his anus. While swimming, the object he’d held inside had slipped out, and he dutifully retrieved and reinserted it.

He was his master’s loyal pet bird.

Lying face-down on the floor, thick rain poured over his body. The man moved when, after thirty minutes, white foam rose like waves around the still young man.

He was asleep. Sometimes unable to distinguish rain from waves, the young man slept soundly, lulled by the rain’s song and blanketed by its streams. The man, also soaked, carried him inside. Wrapping him in a dry towel, he laid him on the sofa. Choosing heat over cooling, the man headed to the bathroom. After showering, he found the young man sitting on the sofa, staring at the torrential rain outside.

The young man’s drenched appearance had never been unfamiliar to the man.

With a dry towel over his shoulders, his profile, gazing at the rain pounding the darkened pool, was wet. Water dripping from his soaked hair soaked his knees and the floor.

🍯

Buttoning his dress shirt to the collar and slipping a shoulder holster over his shoulders, the man slid a hefty pistol into the open slot. Compared to other firearms, the MK.Gold, with its long barrel and 1.2 kg weight without a magazine, was an assault pistol also known as Lady Gold. Designed with a suppressor and laser sight in mind, it boasted high accuracy and top-tier durability but was too costly to be widely adopted, a tragic Lady.

It held twelve rounds. Unlike standard self-defense pistols, Lady Gold was a combat-specific firearm with a unique origin, a luxury item issued only to elite mercenaries, dynastic aristocrats, or corporate nobles’ private soldiers. His colleague, handing the Lady Gold to the man instead of an old standard pistol, had entrusted him with the young man’s care.

That night, when he had drunk half the bottle of whiskey bought from a convenience store, a drizzle was falling outside the car window. The Lady Gold, handed to him by his colleague, lay loaded on the passenger seat floor, and the phone screen, displaying his colleague’s number, was flashing loudly.

He hadn’t kept the promise. Or rather, he simply hadn’t shown up at the appointed time and place unilaterally set by his colleague. Draining the remaining liquor in one gulp and leaning his head back on the seat, the man’s gaze caught the raindrops pattering against the windshield. Beyond the thick mist, the silhouette of a grand mansion, brilliantly lit with golden lights, wavered. Dropping the empty bottle to the floor and picking up the Lady Gold sprawled on the passenger seat, he pulled the trigger mechanism.

That was when the passenger door flung open, and a small beast leaped inside.

🍯

“Looks like it won’t stop until tomorrow, doesn’t it?”

The man, brushing back the hair touching his temple, raised an eyebrow.

The young man, shifting his gaze from the pool to the man, smiled with a pale face. As if regretful, as if disappointed.

“I have to go to a hotel.”

The young man, who wasn’t usually summoned until his existing wounds had healed, added a follow-up.

“Until seven tomorrow evening. The VIP room on the thirty-eighth floor of the Balashi Hotel.”

I hope the rain stops by tomorrow.

Muttering, the young man wiped his wet hair with the towel draped over his shoulders and walked out of the parlor. Watching the raindrops outside rather than the young man’s naked body ascending the second-floor stairs, the man caught his consciousness, which was trying to slip back into the past. It was a night that called for a drink.

🍯

The radio was broadcasting news of violent protests by oil workers. The young man, sitting in the back seat with his eyes closed, said he wanted to listen to music. Changing the channel, a melancholic jazz tune played. The young man didn’t ask to change it again.

After passing through the checkpoint guarding the West gate, a land only the permitted could tread, other vehicles began to appear one by one. The mist, born from the rain that was thinner than yesterday but persistently falling, had taken over the city.

The young man wanted to visit a hair salon and a dress shop, spending three hours at the former and one at the latter before ordering to head to the hotel. Perfectly adorned with the help of professionals, his appearance evoked a young heir of a storied aristocratic family. Yet he was merely a street prostitute who had risen to become an aristocrat’s mistress. And he never forgot that fact for a moment.

The young man took the lead upon stepping onto the thirty-eighth floor.

The red-carpeted hallway, befitting a six-star hotel, was designed with antique elegance, giving the impression of a royal audience chamber transplanted wholesale. The hotel, designating the entire thirty-eighth floor as a VIP area with walls removed, had invested heavily in security. No unmanned cameras were visible, but entry was impossible without an ID issued by the hotel, and unauthorized use triggered a lockdown of the entire floor. Only those on the invitation list could enter, which was why royals and aristocrats, enamored with clandestine games, favored this hotel.

The man stopped walking.

The bodyguard’s range of movement extended only to the guest chair against the wall. The young man walked a few more steps alone and stood before the extravagantly adorned entrance. Knocking, the door opened from within. The person who opened it was not visible. Watching the young man’s back disappear through the gap, the man soon leaned back in the guest chair.

It was the start of a refined frenzy.

🍯

The pimp used the oil tanker as part of discipline, not just punishment.

If I disobeyed even slightly, he sent me to the tanker, leaving me there for one or two months, pulling me out just before I was completely broken. That practice continued until I was twenty-one. By then, I had become a seasoned male prostitute, more famous than my mother, contributing to filling the pimp’s pockets.

The pimp called me “the only one worth his keep.” Everyone else called me Swallow. They said I took everything offered without refusal, a name given to me by someone on the tanker. Until then, I had no name. I learned that everyone has a name while swallowing the semen of the worker who named me Swallow. He was a former wrestler who monopolized me for a year on the tanker.

The time I could rest comfortably after being thrown onto the tanker, unaware of where I was, was short-lived. A young male prostitute had arrived. A fresh adult, a bloody lump. Rumors traveled fast through the oil pipes. Starving perverts swarmed in.

I don’t remember much of that time. Whether my eyes were open or closed, the sound of waves clung to me like a nightmare, along with the stench of oil, the sweat of men, and the acrid gasoline smell stuck in my numb nose. The moment I buried my nose in the oily shoulder of the former wrestler, shaking uncontrollably, was the memory my dim mind was allowed.

The former wrestler, who had swept all domestic and international competitions, was serving time for fifteen counts of minor rape. Released early as a model prisoner, he, like most ex-convicts, naturally drifted to the tanker.

He claimed he was falsely accused but loved penetrative sex with me to a crazed degree. Or rather, he was obsessed with the clear alignment with his depraved tastes. But as I turned twenty-one and drifted from his preferences, his protection, bartered for sex, also faded. That’s when I truly began to experience the hell of the tanker.

The pimp, who had kept me on the tanker for a year, collecting fees diligently, found me resilient after four seasons and deemed me useful, taking me back to Yeast Street. But I was far from useful. I underwent two anal reconstruction surgeries by a shady back-alley doctor, each bad enough to make death seem preferable, and sold my body in that worn apartment in place of my mother.

The pimp calculated every cent of the surgery costs, saddling me with debt. While suffering high fevers over forty degrees and vomiting in a customer’s crotch, I was thrown back to the tanker for the first time since losing the wrestler’s protection. The next two days were memories I never wanted to recall. Yet they were memories I could never shake.

I didn’t want the pimp, who threatened the tanker at every misstep, to see my fear, but for a while, my body was beyond control. Just the hardening of his face made my knees buckle, unable to stand properly. When he grabbed me, threatening to send me to the tanker, I clung to the entrance wall until my nails broke, resisting being dragged. In the midst of it, the pimp, who slapped my urine-soaked cheeks hard, let go. Instead, a gatekeeper came in and kicked me.

After selling my only marketability for five stimulant pills, the pimp treated me as less than human. Even animals wouldn’t be treated that way. Years later, he still gritted his teeth over my past act of selling myself recklessly. My pathetic state, pissing myself at the mention of the tanker, was the only thing that soothed his resentment, and he used that excuse frequently and effectively. But its effectiveness lasted a year at most.

At twenty-two, I stopped pissing myself. At twenty-three, I stopped trembling. Still, when loaded like cargo into a rickety van from Yeast Street to the tanker’s hold, I often lost myself to the rough sound of waves. Even with my ears plugged and my face buried between my legs, I suffered from inescapable afterimages. That’s why, in five years of being shuttled to and from the tanker, I never once saw the sea.

One spring, I don’t know when, my mother died.

I wanted to hold a funeral, but I had to take customers immediately. If I showed any laziness, the pimp threatened to discard my mother, forcing me to do even the acts I dreaded, and in that sense, he regretted her death.

When the tanker lost its power as a weapon to wield over me, the pimp chose my foul-smelling mother as a substitute, and it proved an excellent choice. But he no longer treated me as harshly. As I became a seasoned prostitute, I learned to cater to even the filthiest clients. The pimp was a successful pig.

I said I’d spend two days on the tanker if he let me rest today. He dismissed it, saying even there, a has-been like me wouldn’t be welcomed. That wasn’t true. The tanker’s many beasts, who threw me to perverts like hyenas tossing rotten meat because young ones didn’t suit their tastes, went wild as my frame matured. Even after the former wrestler lost interest, and four years later, they still salivated at the sight of me.

Compared to other prostitutes, my price was even one baren higher, and demand was high. Two days on the tanker earned what others couldn’t in a month. The aftermath was severe, but having endured four reconstruction surgeries over five years, I was more skilled than anyone. I could satisfy the tanker’s beasts without completely ruining my body. Thus, to the pimp, I was a valuable commodity.

The pimp was a shrewd man, more cunning and sinister than a snake’s tongue.

I asked what I could do to hold my mother’s funeral, this time phrasing it properly.

With a reluctant expression, the pimp spoke.

He told me to make a video. It might not kill me, but I should be prepared for serious injury. As he spoke, his face was dark, but inside, he was likely laughing, showing his red tongue. My answer was predetermined. He maintained his reluctant expression to the end. I agreed to the video in exchange for my mother’s funeral.

Instead of the tanker, my mother became the bait I was dragged by, but to me, she was a pitiable being. My mother, who never once stroked my face, even by chance, lived consumed by too much pain. She died screaming in agony no one could fully understand. I felt both sadness and relief. I still don’t know if I loved her or clung to the fact that I wasn’t alone, but I felt relief at her death. I wanted to send her off properly, freed from the pain of life.

If I didn’t hold the funeral, her body would surely rot on the apartment sofa. It was one of the pimp’s ways of indebting his prostitutes. There was Kini, who, drugged at a young age, took customers for a month amidst the stench of her mother’s rotting corpse without realizing she was dead, but my nerves weren’t that strong.

My mother’s funeral was my payment. Spreading my legs for a black camera lens was far better than doing so beside her rotting body.

As the pimp said, even if I got hurt, I wouldn’t be crippled or die.

He was a shrewd man.

🍯

The young man, emerging from the door only at dawn, was deathly pale.

His neatly styled hair was disheveled, soaked with unknown liquids, and his perfectly tailored suit was wrinkled or unbuttoned. As the man stepped closer, the young man leaned against him as if waiting, a cloying rose scent wafting from him.

The young man, who usually fell into a faint-like sleep on the return trip, said he wanted fresh air. The man, knowing from his breathing that he hadn’t fully lost consciousness or fallen into deep sleep despite closed eyes, wasn’t surprised. When asked where to go, the young man, silent for a moment, said he knew nowhere else. Without further questions, the man turned south before entering the outer road, pressing the pedal. The young man suddenly recalled the southernmost rocky cliffs, and the man didn’t miss his murmured words.

South Beach.

The rough sound of furious waves relentlessly crashing against the cliffs flooded the car’s interior.

After a two-hour drive, they arrived at Noringer Temple, also called East’s South Beach. Following the Lane River connecting West and East southward, Noringer Bay, nestled against rocky cliffs, came into view.

The ancient temple, towering atop the cliffs, held the legacy of Count Noringer, a founding hero. Below, fierce waves crashed with full force, as if to carve the cliffs, breaking into white foam.

The young man’s complexion worsened as he stared at the waves of Noringer Bay through the car window. Unable to bear looking longer, he buried his face between his knees and said,

“Let’s go.”

The dark clouds that had cleared overnight had moved from West across the Lane River to East. The sound of rain hitting the window was barely audible, drowned by the waves, but the young man seemed as if he’d been drenched in it. Or perhaps swept by the waves, plummeting into an endless abyss.

The man activated the wiper and turned up the heater. The young man said he felt nauseous. Through the mirror, the man saw him, still with his face buried, saying he’d try to endure but urging to leave quickly.

🍯

Despite his pale complexion, the young man rose after a two-hour nap, meticulously grooming himself, anticipating his master’s visit. The man, circling the house without disturbing the young man, who sat staring at the calm water after finishing his preparations, stopped walking.

Two limousines, trailing the red sunset tilting toward the lake, glided down the narrow path. As usual, they stopped in the cramped yard instead of the garage. From one, the master emerged, flanked by two blonde beauties, and from the other, five burly black men in ill-fitting tight suits stepped out. They looked up at the modest house, unbelievable as an aristocrat’s property, bursting into laughter and tossing crude jokes. At the center, the master wore a gentle smile.

After ushering the guests through the entrance, the master stood rigidly on the wooden terrace, putting a cigarette to his lips. It was an incongruous scene. The master, who belonged in a lavish palace or golden mansion, was clearly out of place in the middle of a pineapple farm. Above all, he acted as such. His fastidious refusal to let even a fingertip touch the railing, tainted by common hands, was thoroughly aristocratic, even unconsciously so.

Ascending the terrace steps at his usual pace, the man stopped again. The master, extinguishing his cigarette in a portable ashtray, eyed him with thin, narrow eyes. His naturally downturned eyes gave a friendly impression but also revealed a shallow, suspicious nature. Curling his lips elegantly, the master pointed to the other side with the ashtray.

“You’d better stay here.”

He indicated a spot where, with the curtain drawn, the parlor inside was fully visible through a large window. The man gave a slight bow, showing minimal courtesy but no further reaction. Through the already open door and windows, the young man’s bright laughter, mingling with the guests, drifted out.

Here.

Before entering, the master signaled the exact spot with a glance and passed through the entrance with a languid but upright gait.

🍯

The young man’s screams grew so intense they were hard to bear.

Leaning against the terrace wall, staring at the pineapple field already swallowed by dark blue night, the man’s expression remained hidden. As the young man’s cracking screams mixed with sobs, the man straightened from the wall and moved. Standing in the exact spot the master had indicated, the scene inside the window hit him fully.

Turning his back completely to the pineapple field, the man leaned against the terrace railing.

At the same time, the young man’s tortured screams, as if wrung out, began to subside, as if on cue. The hands tormenting him fell away one by one. The master, sitting with blonde beauties under each arm, his lips curling upward, was reflected in a wall mirror. The naked young man was placed like a turkey dish in the center of the parlor table.

Having succeeded in attracting an audience, the master gave a signal.

Five black men swarmed the young man. All were naked, their menacing bodies glistening with heat. The young man, lying on the wide table with legs spread, flipped over to lie face-down. One man’s member was thrust into his mouth, another’s into his anus. The violent pistoning from both ends shook him mercilessly.

The man penetrating his anus shuddered first, pulling out his deeply thrust member. The one thrusting into his throat took his place, shoving his fully erect member into the anus, ejaculating, then withdrawing. The master’s firm voice rang out, commanding not to spill a drop. As the young man clenched his buttocks, the reddened flesh trembled.

Soon, two other men took his front and rear, and the act repeated. The young man aroused all five men’s members with his mouth and anus, receiving their semen only anally. As their turns cycled three times, the young man, trembling uncontrollably, was sternly warned by the master not to spill a drop.

The master, watching with a smile as the five men poured thick semen into the young man’s anus over three rounds, gave a simple gesture. The five men withdrew from the young man in unison. The blonde beauties, who had been kissing and fondling each other beside the master, stopped and looked at the young man.

The young man sat facing the window, legs spread. His flushed face and tear-soaked eyes met the man’s gaze on the terrace. Sliding both hands under his thighs, he lifted them, exposing his reddened buttocks. One of the men above the table held his raised ankles and supported his tilted back. Finally balanced, the young man lowered the hands propping his knees and spread his anus. The loosely puckered folds parted easily, and thick semen flowed out.

Before it hit the floor, the young man placed one hand beneath his anus, using the other to scrape semen from the inner walls. With so much poured inside, the hand beneath quickly filled. He poured it into his mouth, swallowing it all, licking his palm and lips, and placing his hand beneath again. Repeating the process once more, by the third time, the semen began to run dry.

As he meticulously emptied the semen filling his rectum until the red inner flesh was visible, not a sound of swallowing echoed in the room. His slender fingers thoroughly scoured the loose anal walls, scraping out the last drop. The concave palm held semen with a sour smell, half-full. The young man swallowed it all, licking the semen between his fingers clean and, lying down, cleaning the semen he’d spilled on the glass table with his tongue.

Only after swallowing the last drop did the young man smile contentedly, met with cheers and applause. The surrounding men took turns making him suck their members clean. During this, the young man’s gaping anus, turned away from the window, quivered toward the man. Through the wide-open window, the man watched the young man faithfully perform his role as a receptacle.

The master was satisfied.

With a latex-gloved hand, he kneaded the young man’s nape thickly, finishing the feast by ejaculating into a blonde beauty’s mouth. The two limousines, carrying all the guests, snaked out of the pineapple farm, a comical sight.

Soon, the sun set. After circling the house, the young man was not in the parlor, bathroom, kitchen, or study. Unable to find him in the second-floor bedroom, the man rushed down the stairs.

Stepping into the outdoor pool through the wide-open veranda door, he heard no splashing or water parting. Still, he turned on all the pool lights. Six beams flooded the pool with light, but the young man was nowhere. Yet the man dove into the dark blue water.

The young man was at the pool’s bottom. His left hand was tied to an aluminum ladder with a cable tie to keep from floating, his pupils loosely dilated. Drawing a military knife, the man cut the tie in one stroke. Holding the young man’s rising body, he kicked off the bottom.

The young man, pulled to the surface, was barely breathing. His body was ice-cold. Listening to his pulse with an ear to his pale chest, the man began chest compressions and artificial respiration. In the starkly lit space, only the man’s rough breathing, counting in a low voice, repeated multiple times.

“No need to be so rigid. The real danger isn’t external enemies.”

His colleague had said, smiling.

The file he tossed was thin but more than enough to contain the young man’s meager life.

One suicide attempt.

One day, the young man rose from bed, opened the back door, and went out. On a moonless, pitch-black night, guided only by the feel of his bare feet, he slipped into the dilapidated warehouse along the outer path. Climbing a haystack, he tied a rope from the floor to a beam and hanged himself, but the rope broke, sparing his life. The master’s driver found him in the warehouse, both legs broken, ten days later.

The warehouse was sealed.

And the master hired a bodyguard to prevent the young man’s suicide. That was how the man became his protector.

Holding the young man’s forehead and chin, blowing deep breaths into him, the man’s movements stopped. Under slowly opening eyelids, black eyes gazed up at him. They were empty eyes. And thus, eyes where the desire to live was all the more wretched.

On that rainy night, the small beast that had flung open the passenger door and leaped in came flying before him again. Outside, the rain grew fiercer, and the man was drunk. The small beast that flew in was wounded and terrified.

🍯

Returning the pulled trigger mechanism to its place and lowering the barrel under the seat, the man stared at the beast that had leaped in. The underdeveloped body bore clear marks of abuse, naked. Shivering and curling up smaller, it flinched and slid under the passenger seat. Outside, the menacing shouts of men scouring the area roared threateningly. They were searching for the escaped prostitute. The small beast, gripped by despair and fear, wishing to disappear, made sounds as if its breath would stop.

Save me. Save me.

The desperate cry, undirected, resembled a scream that couldn’t form into sound. The man had heard too many such sounds. It was a call no one would answer. The men’s shouts, pushed far off, returned close. Only the faint trembling of the small beast, unable to breathe, stirred the cold air.

The window was tapped. With no response, it was struck as if to shatter, then click, the passenger door handle was yanked. The doors weren’t locked to begin with. Realizing this late, the men cursed and flung open the passenger door. Spotting the prostitute under the seat, they dragged him out. The naked body was stretched out as if peeled, pulled in one motion. His hair grabbed, the prostitute was helpless. Unaware of the thin skin of his heels tearing off in chunks as he was dragged, he begged with both hands.

Save me. Save me. I was wrong. I was wrong.

The resisting body was thrown aside. A man slapped his face, raising a foot high, but faint voices of restraint came from around. Or perhaps, buried in the rain, they were hard to discern, merely inferred from their gestures. The limp body was dragged by rough hands. This time, there was no resistance or pleading.

When the black silhouettes, dragged and dragging, vanished into the rain, the man realized. The small beast, trembling like an aspen in fear proportional to death, hadn’t once asked him for help. It was possible only because he had no expectations of others. He hadn’t leaped onto the passenger seat to seek help. He had merely thrown his terrified body into a hiding place.

Silently staring at the passenger seat, where the vivid afterimage of the trembling beast lingered, the man’s fingers brushed the cold barrel. It was a hand that had never been used for anyone.