Fair Trade

Part 2. Blue-eyed Monster (1)

I never imagined that so much blood could flow from a human body. A stream of madness naturally oozed out from the dying person, and the sight of it paralyzed my body. 

The blood that flowed out entered my nose, mouth, and ears. It was fairly warm and smelled somewhat fishy.  

The nauseating blood drenched my body as I lay flat on my back. Like a sponge, my body soaked in all the blood.

But I just held my breath and looked into the dying man’s eyes. Knowing that I would die if I moved, I turned a blind eye to the man and just kept watching him as he drew his last breath. My body stiffened with guilt. I felt like I was becoming a corpse.

I barely moved my fingers to touch the blood. Then I immediately closed my eyes. As he spitted out a mouthful of blood one after another, I struggled and held my breath. The blood kept flowing without fail until the red and blue lights flashed painfully before me.

Even in the dream, I was still a blood-devouring monster.

* * * 

Even though her eyes were closed, she could clearly feel the presence of light. So she defiantly did not open her eyes. Whenever she had a bad dream, she would rather reflect on its content and then try to accept that none of it was real.

She normally came back to reality by feeling the texture of the bedsheets or smelling the scent of the fabric softener, but today was a little different. Today, she woke up to the sound of the keyboard being tapped irregularly, the sound of someone talking, and the smell of a man’s cologne.

Sei blankly turned around in the direction of the man. As expected, last night’s events were not a dream. She could still feel the touch of his hand between her hair.

Who would have known that she would fall asleep from a hand patting her head?

That, too, from the hand of a member of the Red Mafia… 

“No way, did you stay up the entire night…?” she asked in a raspy cracked voice. Yuri, who withdrew his hands from the keyboard, turned his head towards her and smiled.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, I slept well, but why didn’t you leave after I fell asleep?”

The bright rays of light shone into the open eastern window, lighting up the room. Adjusting her gown, she took a bottle of water from the refrigerator and approached him. A video was playing on the screen and it looked like some sort of CCTV footage. Her hand, opening the lid, slowed down upon seeing the familiar room.

“This – what is this?”

“Every computer in DE:A has a backdoor client installed.”

In short, it meant that he could control any computer from here without much effort.

“From the first to the 17th floor – basically, everything.”

“So, where is this now?”

“This is the 17th floor.”

“Giulio’s room?”

“There was a problem with your earrings. All the audio of the conversations got deleted and only the video is left. I needed to find out if this is a simple malfunction or intentional damage, so I was looking for a video from yesterday…”

Yuri didn’t finish his words as if dissatisfied. He stroked Sei’s smooth chin and suddenly pulled her waist down. Sei lost her balance and flopped down on his thigh.

“Do you think Giulio Parenti has a choking kink? He got really hard in there.”

As soon as he finished talking, an unexpected video began to play. This was when she just got out of the bathroom and was grabbed by Giulio. So… It was the scene after the wine bottle shattered where she was shoved against the wall and strangled.

Fortunately, it didn’t have any audio, but the situation was still terrible. Embarrassed, Sei tried to block the man’s view by slightly raising her torso. But the man had a bigger head than hers.

Placing his chin on the top of her head, he tightened his arms around her waist and lowered his head to her nape. She then felt something soft and squishy. The man lightly licked and sucked her bruised skin. Every time his teeth grazed her skin, her shoulders flinched.

“If he strangles people every time he gets hard, then what would he be like while having sex… you, are you really alright?”

He had clearly misunderstood, but she didn’t want to correct him.

Giulio had never touched her. Rather, since the first day they met, he told her to resist him with all her might. Only then could she survive. These words that he said with a wicked and cruel chuckle were, without a doubt, pretty sincere.

Sei concealed her nervousness and clutched the hem of her gown.

“Well, since I’m here, at least I didn’t die.”

“Oh…”

The soft acknowledgment seemed like a bad sign. He lowered her gown down her shoulders and kissed her bruised nape and back. Her body stiffened as his lips descended down her body.

Sei curled up her upper body while clutching the table. She suddenly recalled that she was completely naked underneath her gown.

She felt a soft tongue touch between her wing bones, dangerously close to her narrowly covered chest, followed by his warm breath.

“Anyway, make sure to remember to stick close to me from now on. Got it?”

Crazy bastard.

Saying so, he licked her auricle erotically and bit her shoulder hard.

“Ah! It hurts!”

“With just this much pressure?”

A mischievous chuckle was heard over her head at her shrill shriek. Sei slammed the laptop shut and got up from his lap. Yuri, who was settled in the soft armchair, was rubbing his lips and smiling.

The Pristine Adonis. Strangely, she thought of the advertising copy* that she saw while passing by some room in the past.

[*An advertising copy is a term used to describe the main text used in the advertisement.]

Embarrassed, she sat down facing Yuri with a bitter face.

“If you were curious about what Giulio and I talked about, you should’ve asked me rather than looking at those things.”

“Well, I was just bored. Also curious at the same time. Anyway, my curiosity has been sated, so let’s talk about work now.”

“Isn’t this considered Molka*?”

[*Molka is the Korean term for hidden cameras or miniature spy cameras secretly and illegally installed, often in order to capture voyeuristic images and videos.]

“If you had opened your legs to Giulio in there, then it would have been a Molka porno, but since that didn’t happen, let’s say it’s a surveillance camera video.”

“It’s still a crime.”

“Well, you are also a criminal.”

“… So annoying.”

Sei shrugged his shoulders and drank all the cold water from her water bottle. Fortunately, her discomfort was less now than yesterday. She could no longer smell the fishy odor of blood on her body.