Work Text:
Choi Seunghyun stood barefoot on the floor. A mess of pink hair, dulled and brittle from over-bleaching, its color a pale, weary pigment clinging weakly to the strands.
Three days off. A rare blank space in a densely packed schedule, yet it made certain intangible things feel increasingly oppressive.
Seunghyun paced to the room near the entrance and stopped before his newly acquired wooden sculpture—a chair simulating a human form twisting in struggle. The wood grain, under the dim light, resembled stretch marks on splitting skin. He traced the smooth, hard surface with his fingertips—a constancy that promised not to collapse or disintegrate.
The doorbell rang.
On the monitor screen, a man stood outside, dressed in a well-tailored dark uniform, his posture erect. He held documents in one hand and an unremarkable metal toolbox in the other. He didn't look like a missionary or a salesman.
"Annyeonghaseyo, Choi-ssi. I'm a specialist from the ■■■ Agency. My colleague contacted you before." The voice through the intercom was deep and steady, devoid of unnecessary inflection. "Regarding your acquired wooden piece by artist ■■■."
Seunghyun opened the door.
The man gave a slight nod and offered a document.
"The interior of the piece you acquired last week may show signs of active insect infestation. It requires prompt non-destructive testing and preventive treatment. You scheduled an appointment for today's in-situ service."
The document bore official logos, serial numbers, and his photo. His words were precise. His gaze rested frankly on Seunghyun's face for a moment before shifting to assess the space behind him. This look reminded Seunghyun of certain high-end gallery curators—calmly measuring the relationship between an exhibit and its space, judging its value and condition.
The man's gaze passed over him without the slightest change, as if he were merely another asset within the room, like the furniture or paintings, worthy of careful handling. An appraisal that stripped away subjectivity. A slight tightness formed in Seunghyun's throat, but he couldn't say anything.
He stepped aside to let the man in.
The man put on a pair of white gloves and opened the toolbox, revealing an array of delicate, specialized tools Seunghyun couldn't name. The man approached the wooden chair sculpture and began his examination. His movements were economical and exact.
He worked for a while, then, as if compelled, began to speak about the chair's creative motif and wood treatment techniques. His insights were quite unique, his tone carrying an almost devout fervor.
"Um, would you like something to drink?" Seunghyun asked, a host's polite formality. An attempt to correct the invaded private space.
"Thank you. I brought my own water." The man didn't turn around, his attention entirely on the artwork. He picked up a matte silver thermos beside the toolbox, unscrewed it, and took a sip.
Seunghyun walked to the small bar and poured himself half a glass of red wine. He needed something familiar to soothe his inexplicably agitated nerves.
He carried the glass back to the living room and sat nearby, watching the man work. The other's movements possessed a practiced precision, a mechanical stability. Measuring, recording, lightly touching the artwork with specialized tools.
The man seemed to encounter a detail requiring closer inspection. He adjusted his posture, slightly bending one knee, lowering his body. The shoulders and back of his uniform tightened, outlining clear, solid muscle lines.
Seunghyun unconsciously took a sip of wine. Perhaps infected by the man's focus, he relaxed slightly, casually placing the wine glass on a small side table.
The man's elbow shifted back, a seemingly unintentional movement, brushing against the thermos also placed on the side table. The cap was loose. The bottle wobbled, a few drops of water splashing onto the table surface, just an inch from Seunghyun's wine glass, thankfully not landing inside.
"Apologies," the man said immediately. He swiftly righted the bottle, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and with a flick of his wrist, unfurled it mid-air, perfectly creating a visual blind spot between Seunghyun's gaze and the wine glass. He deftly wiped away the few drops of moisture on the table surface, his eyes not even fully leaving the wooden sculpture, as if this were merely a trivial interruption in his work.
"It's fine," Seunghyun said.
The man returned to his work, explaining pest prevention methods in a calm tone.
Seunghyun picked up his glass and took a sip. The wine slid over his throat, carrying its familiar richness and fruitiness. A faint, unfamiliar astringency bloomed on his tongue, fleeting. That hint of something different was instantly submerged within the complex aroma of the wine and the somehow captivating atmosphere constructed by the man's voice.
It wasn't until he finished the glass that the astringency grew heavier, a thick numbness spreading from the root of his tongue to his brain. Dizziness overwhelmed him; the scene before his eyes began to blur and sway. The figure before him stood up and walked towards him, forming an out-of-focus image in his vision.
"Choi-ssi, you look unwell," the man's flat, indifferent concern was the last sound Seunghyun grasped before plunging into darkness.
"You should rest."
He felt movement. No, not him moving, but the entire space, including him, swaying slightly. Beneath him was a hard, curved surface, conforming to his spine and the backs of his knees. Choi Seunghyun felt like a carefully placed commodity.
The world jolted. Like wheels rolling over an obstacle. His shoulder blades knocked gently against the hard surface behind him.
Panic instantly seized him. Where was he?
Smell. A strong, fresh scent of pine wood, mixed with the faint odor of some chemical agent, tightly enveloping him. This smell filled a narrow, dark space. He was inside a… wooden crate?
The rumble of an engine. Low and continuous, coming from below. A van. He was in a delivery van.
The sound of a door opening and closing. Distant, yet unnervingly near. The light seemed to change once through a crack, then darkness returned.
Sensory fragments refused to cohere into a whole, only spawning primal fear. He was being moved, like an object, to an unknown place. That man… that specialist…
An unfamiliar yet somehow recognizable voice came muffled through the barrier.
"This one requires special care. Transport it directly to the restoration room."
It was the man's voice. That flat, businesslike tone pierced his chaotic consciousness like an icy needle.
He wanted to move, to scream, but only found the commands from his brain couldn't reach his limbs. His body was like a lead-filled sack. Only his eyes could roll frantically beneath their lids.
Dizziness dragged him back into the abyss.
Sharp tinnitus pierced the darkness first. Other senses rushed back disorderly like shattered waves.
The bright light shining directly onto his face was like a familiar stage spotlight, pinning him as the sole focal point.
Choi Seunghyun's eyelashes fluttered constantly as he struggled to open his eyes, his pupils still semi-dilated.
The ceiling was a monotonous white, devoid of any decoration. The walls were all smooth, sterile white, without windows. The smell of disinfectant mixed with dust lingered in the air.
He vaguely felt himself lying on a hard surface resembling a workbench. A trolley beside it was neatly arrayed with instruments gleaming with a metallic coldness.
He wanted to turn over, sit up, speak.
Couldn't.
Utterly, completely powerless. His neck couldn't lift, his arms couldn't move, he couldn't even perform the slightest action like bending a finger. Like a soul sealed inside a wax figure, still perceiving the outside world but unable to respond in any way.
Despair soaked through Seunghyun's body bit by bit like ice water.
Footsteps approached from his blind spot at an unhurried pace.
The man had removed his uniform jacket. His shirt sleeves were rolled to the elbows, revealing developed, smoothly defined forearm muscles. He wore a pair of thin latex gloves. His face held no expression.
The man's gaze fell upon Seunghyun, the same assessing, evaluating look he'd used earlier in Seunghyun's home to survey him and his artwork, only now with an unmistakable heat in his eyes that no longer needed hiding—like a collector finally able to admire a coveted unique piece up close, without interference.
The man walked to the side of the workbench, stood under the strong light, and looked down at Seunghyun.
Seunghyun wanted to speak, to roar, to ask Who are you?, but his vocal cords were also paralyzed.
A gloved latex hand landed on the collar of Seunghyun's shirt.
Snick.
A slight, crisp sound. The threads of the first button on Seunghyun's shirt were neatly severed by the man using professional thread snippers.
The man's movements held no hesitation, flowing seamlessly like a predetermined ritual. The scissor blades slid along the fabric. Buttons popped off, one after another.
The man's gaze followed the path of the scissors, a purely objectifying observation, more chilling than a gaze filled with straightforward desire.
Seunghyun's shirt was parted to the sides. The slightly cool air kissed his abruptly exposed chest.
The scissor tips slid towards his waistband.
Absolute passivity. Not even the slightest tremble was his to control. His consciousness screamed in terror, but his body remained silent and humiliatingly yielding.
The scissor tip probed into the gap in the fabric. The cold metal slid over the skin of his waist. The man's wrist gave a slight twist. The light sound of tearing fabric spread in the silence. After a dozen or so precise and efficient movements, all fabric restraints on his body were completely removed, stripped away.
The air wrapped around his motionless form without obstruction, raising goosebumps on his utterly naked skin.
Darkness began to churn before Seunghyun's eyes again, not from the drugs, but from fear and shame that will itself could no longer withstand.
Yet the strong light still cruelly stabbed into his eyes, followed by a deeper, chemical clarity. The muscle relaxant was beginning to wear off. A faint prickling sensation arose in Seunghyun's fingertips, like countless tiny ice needles melting inside him, yet it was far from enough for a waking capable of resistance. It only made all sensations more clear and brutal.
The man's gaze swept over every inch of exposed skin on the figure on the table, observing muscle texture, skin tone, and the tension born from being forced under this gaze.
The man picked up a metal tape measure. The tape brushed against Seunghyun's skin, pressed against his collarbone, the other end pulled to the point of his shoulder. The tape retracted. A number was recorded.
Then the man supported Seunghyun's back, lifted his upper body, and sat him up sideways. The man stood by the table, pulling him into an embrace. A faint scent of pine mixed with aftershave enveloped Seunghyun. Warm breath blew against his conspicuous ear.
The man held his arm, his thumb slowly stroking the inner side of his forearm, lifting his limp hand, deliberately rubbing over the old scar on the back of his hand. The rough texture of the special gloves left behind waves of strange tingling on his skin.
The tape measure wrapped around his chest, biting into the soft, full flesh of his pectorals—the man began measuring his chest circumference. The cold metal pressed against his nipple, eliciting an uncontrollable shudder deep within him.
Retracting the tape, the man laid him flat again. His arm slid behind Seunghyun's knees, lifting his legs together, rotating and moving his entire body ninety degrees on the table surface. Seunghyun's waist and back remained on the table, his buttocks and legs suspended in mid-air, his lower body entirely supported by the man's arm.
Although this was probably the thinnest Seunghyun had been in his life, his buttocks still maintained their full, pert curve, made even more pronounced by gravity into a heavy arc. The man steadily held the backs of his knees. The metal tape wrapped around the peaks of his buttocks, pressing out an exact number.
The man then pushed his waist and hips smoothly upward back onto the table surface. Then, holding him by the backs of his knees, he pried his legs wide apart, standing between them. The man held one bent knee, letting the tape wrap around the most plump part of his thigh, sinking into the elastic muscle. The man's body heat penetrated the thin fabric of his clothes, feeling even more piercing than the cold metal.
That hand slowly slid down along the sensitive skin on the inner side of his bent knee, gliding along the curve of his calf, the action somewhere between handling an object and a kind of obscure defilement, finally encircling his ankle too slender to grasp. On the ankle bone was a dark, vaguely shaped birthmark.
The man lifted his foot, his breath brushing the skin of his calf. His feet were slender, with a beautiful arch, but the toes curled slightly inward, bearing a pitiable posture, either innate or formed from long confinement in delicate footwear. The man's fingers slowly traced the curve of his sole, his fingertips brushing over the most sensitive hollow of the arch, measuring the distance from heel to toe, as if merely assessing the curves and lines of an artwork.
A calm, prolonged violation. Every touch, measurement, record was slowly stripping away his human attributes, defining him as a series of quantifiable parameters. A specimen about to be dissected.
And it was far from over.
The man still stood between his legs. He picked up a sterilized silver scalpel and a small bottle of clear gel from the nearby trolley. He squeezed out the gel and applied it to Seunghyun's pubic hair. Gloved fingers stroked the tip of the penis on the table, pinching the fragile organ. The icy blade touched the skin at the very root.
Seunghyun jolted violently inside. A wave of intense nausea and an indescribable, tickling numbness rose from his lower abdomen, making him almost vomit.
He could clearly feel the slight pulling sensation of the blade scraping, could hear the faint rustling sound of hair being stripped from skin. He could feel himself being utterly, undignifiedly laid bare.
The man soon removed all his pubic hair completely.
Yet, amidst this ultimate humiliation, a certain shameful, will-defying physiological change was quietly unfolding within his body—this pathetic flesh. Blood flowed disobediently downward. A swelling, heating sensation began to gather, running counter to the despair in his heart.
His body was shamelessly, continuously arousing under the other's twisted observation, touching, and recording. Extreme fear and physiological response twisted together, forming an unprecedented torture that crushed the soul.
Seunghyun's breathing became ragged. Finally, a broken whimper escaped from deep in his throat, as faint as a delusional murmur. Tears uncontrollably slid from the corners of his eyes, disappearing into his temples.
The man leaned down, looking into Seunghyun's tear-filled eyes.
"I've seen the reactions of many people in fear," the man said, his fingers enveloping the engorged organ, beginning to slide up and down slowly. The slightly abrasive feel of the latex was coated by the seeping pre-ejaculate, becoming slick and warm. "Incontinence, vomiting, seizures."
His other hand rested on Seunghyun's immobile chest, pressing against the frantically beating heart.
"But you," the voice tinged with a perverse fascination, "are about to die, yet hard as rock."
The man picked up another knife from the trolley beside him—an extremely fine, sharp carving knife, its tip fine as an awn of wheat.
The icy knife tip lightly touched the engorged tip of Seunghyun's lower body. It made his breath catch, his blood seeming to freeze instantly.
The knife tip slowly slid down the shaft, the pressure exquisitely controlled, bringing a sharp threat of imminent dissection without actually breaking the skin. Then the blade lifted. Its cold, flat side pressed against his cheek, sliding along the superior curve of his cheekbone.
"Don't be afraid," the man's voice was very low, his eyes examining him like a fragile collection piece. "I'll be especially careful with your face. So pretty… perfect symmetry. The skull is also impeccable."
The blade moved down, pressing against the smooth Adam's apple in the center of his neck, applying slight pressure.
"From here," the man stated, as if describing an established procedure, "one cut, straight down."
He meant it. The sharp knife tip pierced the thin skin below Seunghyun's Adam's apple, bringing a sharp sting. Seunghyun let out a short gasp. The man's hand was terrifyingly steady. The blade moved downward flatly, slowly, across the center of his chest, past his tense upper abdomen, finally stopping above his navel. It only cut the most superficial layer. Like outlining a precise boundary with a red pen.
An extremely fine line of blood appeared on the honey-colored skin. Tiny beads of blood, like red coral beads, slowly seeped from the line.
The man bent down, replacing the blade with his tongue. He followed the blood line, starting from the throat, licking all the way down, gathering the seeping blood beads. The rough surface of his tongue, his exhaled scorching breath, the stinging pain of the cut skin, and the metallic taste of blood mingled into an obscure defilement.
Under the crushing weight of shame, Seunghyun's disobedient body still pathetically throbbed, growing even more sensitive.
That fine carving knife fell again. Its tip fixed on Seunghyun's lower abdomen, three finger-widths below the navel. The man's wrist moved steadily. The carving knife precisely sliced the skin, outlining a twisted, coiled serpent's head circling back. The serpent shape bit its own tail fiercely, forming an infinite, closed loop, symbolizing desire, death, and eternal cycle. The ancient Ouroboros, now became a lewd totem on the sacrificed flesh.
The man bent down and, with a tongue both devout and profane, licked clean the blood beading on his lower abdomen.
The man's kisses traveled downward. He hoisted Seunghyun's limp legs over his shoulders, his hands lifting, kneading, parting the pale globes of his ass. A hot breath ghosted over the most intimate furl before he pressed his mouth there without hesitation.
A slick, insistent tongue forced its way past the tight ring of muscle. It laved, probed, and fucked into him with ruthless precision. The muscle was clever and stubborn, prying him open, delving inside to lick and swirl and press.
A panic, turning him inside out, drowned Seunghyun. Every sense was magnified, a filthy, savage pleasure streaking up his tailbone to tangle with overwhelming fear and shame, twisting into a force poised to tear him apart.
He was paralyzed, powerless to resist, unable even to squeeze his eyes shut. He could only stare at the blinding light on the ceiling and feel the slow, violating push toward the precipice.
Abruptly, the man stopped and straightened up. He looked down at Seunghyun's face, slick with tears and sweat. He peeled off the latex gloves slick with fluids and discarded them.
Two fingers, slick with saliva, replaced where his mouth had been, thrusting inside without warning. The entrance yielded with shocking pliancy, inner walls clenching around the intrusion with a fervent welcome, its familiar muscle memory far more honest than its owner's shattered consciousness.
The man's fingers scissored and curled inside, his fingertips scraping deliberately over that specific bundle of nerves within. A bolt of electric pleasure shot up Seunghyun's spine, triggering helpless, convulsive contractions deep within him.
"Thought it was a virgin saint," the man mused, his tone laced with dawning insight and self-mocking irony. "Turns out it's just a used-up whore. How many," he continued, his fingers never stilling, his voice now that of an appraiser assessing wear on a collectible, "...have used this? Your artist friends? Some eager assistant?"
Seunghyun couldn't refute it. His lashes were wet, eyes swimming with unshed tears.
"No matter," the man's voice softened with a terrifying tenderness. "Restoring defiled treasures is, after all, a restorer's vocation."
He picked up an object from the nearby trolley—a white, cylindrical marble tool handle, its end smooth and bulbous, the shaft thick, solid, and heavy. He pressed the cold stone head against Seunghyun's slick, ravaged entrance and, without preamble, shoved the entire length inside. The narrow passage was stretched to its absolute limit, a sharp, tearing pain blooming instantly. The cold, unyielding stone grated against searing, sensitive flesh, imparting a terrifying sense of fullness.
Gripping the stone handle, the man began a deep, punishing rhythm, mimicking the act of intercourse. The torn entrance bled, the blood providing a grim lubrication. Pain and terror threatened to make Seunghyun's cock wilt, but the man's other hand closed around it again, stroking with cruel, relentless pressure.
Seunghyun sobbed soundlessly, forced over the edge into a humiliating climax by the relentless invasion of the stone and the brutal hand on his cock. Come spattered over the bloody serpentine cut on his abdomen. More tears spilled over, blurring his vision completely.
Seeing him finish, the man pulled the stone handle out with a wet, obscene pop, almost pulling inner flesh with it, and tossed it aside. The ivory-white marble was streaked with blood and slick fluid.
The man pushed his own trousers down, freeing his fully erect cock, and drove into the swollen, flushed hole beneath him in one long thrust, filling the channel that had just been violated by cold, inorganic stone.
In stark contrast to his previous precise, controlled actions, he now held Seunghyun's hips and fucked into him without a shred of mercy. The rough, jarring thrusts were purely about conquest and use, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing in the room. He shifted angles, deliberately stimulating the oversensitive body that had just climaxed.
Seunghyun's body trembled violently under the man's control and torment. He was jolted upward with each thrust, his abdomen and thighs tensing and twitching involuntarily, toes curling. From the sensory overload, his eyes rolled back white.
In this brutal coupling, his body began to conflate agony and pleasure. It felt as if the man was fucking through his guts, into his organs, his throat, his very brain. He was pushed into a dry, pain-wracked orgasm composed entirely of suffering and loss of control. His inner walls clenched and spasmed violently, greedily milking the intruding flesh of his rapist.
His face was a mess of tears, sweat, and utter blankness, eyes completely glazed over, saliva trickling uncontrolled from the corner of his mouth.
"See, this is you," the man lowly scoffed, "...a little slut that gets off drooling when wrecked."
He looked into the unfocused pupils beneath him. "Seems you like this... being treated like a numb hole."
Tears continued to seep from the corners of Seunghyun's eyes, his breathing ragged.
The man chose that moment to pull out, leaving the utterly exposed, gaping hole to clench and weep helplessly.
The man took his own cock in hand, stroked it quickly, and ejaculated onto Seunghyun's abdomen, his chest, the final spurts landing on his cheek and slightly parted lips. The air grew thick with the smell of sex and blood. The white semen mixed with tears, sweat, blood, and existing come on Seunghyun's skin into a debauched tableau of ruin.
The man ran his fingers over the serpent cut on Seunghyun's abdomen, smearing the fluid there, a final, perverse act of sealing.
"I really anticipate," he said, his voice hoarse, saturated with a dark satiation, "seeing you fully restored."
Like a sculptor who had found his muse, the man set to work with alacrity. He fetched a warm cloth and, with surprising gentleness, meticulously wiped Seunghyun's body, cleansing the sweat, tear, blood, and his own filth. The pious care, so starkly opposed to his prior violence, was chilling.
Finished, he turned to the lower tier of the trolley. Different instruments were retrieved; metal clinked together with a cold, crisp sound that hammered against Seunghyun's frayed nerves.
The man picked up a long, narrow scalpel.
Next, a saw—small but evidently capable of cutting bone—perhaps an electric one. He then took out several glass containers and a clear liquid, arranging them neatly.
His movements were deliberate, unhurried, displayed for Seunghyun's benefit without concealment, almost didactic, as if revealing his final destiny—his beauty would not be buried nor rot.
You will be deconstructed, preserved, become my eternal treasure.
Seunghyun's pupils contracted. He understood. Death was not the end, but the beginning of being dismembered, stared at, permanently stripped of dignity and peace.
The cool blade of the scalpel pressed against the carotid artery in his neck, the weight of death now mere grams of pressure away. Just as that killing cold was about to end everything—
A force, born of sheer desperation, broke through the drug-induced lethargy and his body's exhaustion.
From the depths of his constricted throat, torn and ragged, emerged syllables, broken yet unnervingly clear—
"—Anpu."
The blade halted, perfectly still.
The fervid glow of creative frenzy on the man's face solidified, cracks appearing in the icy composure. The eyes that always assessed and toyed with their prey now showed unadulterated astonishment.
This deviation from the script impacted him more than any victim's scream ever could.
The man raised his head slowly, his gaze boring into Seunghyun's dilated pupils, searching for the source of this absurd utterance.
Seunghyun's chest heaved like a broken bellows, each ragged breath gurgling. Marshaling the last dregs of his will, he spat words from his ravaged throat.
"...Stop... the... deal."
The man's pupils constricted almost imperceptibly.
For those few seconds, the only sound in the room was Seunghyun's death-rattle breathing.
The confusion on the man's face gradually receded, replaced by a look of dawning, amused comprehension. He slowly withdrew the blade, his eyes re-evaluating Seunghyun—the sacred effigy he was about to dismantle, already cracked from within.
"Heh," he let out a short, breathy sound, half laugh, half sigh, and voiced the ultimate absurdity. "The one who wanted you dead... was you?"
The words scraped through Seunghyun's hazy consciousness.
The world was shrouded in a grey haze, vast and void, gnawed at incessantly by a great beast.
He had thought of death countless times.
That tempting, serene endpoint.
An absurd notion had taken root in the endless dark—to outsource the right to end it, to turn death into an external, certain event—a precise full stop suspended in the future.
He needed this anticipation of death as a sickly crutch to keep living.
He had ventured into the dark web's depths, anonymously sending out an invitation to his own death:
Kill Choi Seunghyun. But it must be painless while he is utterly oblivious.
Even offering an exorbitant price, it initially sank without a trace—of course, no one would take such a job—any rational professional would see it as a high-risk trap or a setup. You could buy a life on the dark web for three hundred thousand, but even thirty million wouldn't get his order a glance.
Just as he was about to abandon this twisted whim, a mysterious entity named "Inpw" accepted the impossible commission. Anpu. Anubis.
The down payment was sent. Then... a long, dead silence of waiting.
Each day stolen, a reprieve.
Waiting for the sword of Damocles to fall, for the promised oblivion.
This state of suspension strangely made him feel alive.
Months passed, uneventful.
—He'd been scammed, played. His pre-ordered death had come to nothing.
Just as a thread of indignation began to replace the death-wish in his heart—
He met his wait—a rogue, sadistic killer who defied all professional codes.
Hell had opened up in a way far beyond anything he had imagined.
What he had ordered was a dignified long sleep, not this naked, humiliating, painful, destructive imprisonment.
Extreme indignation forged a savage will to live.
He would not die—not here, not like this, in such disgrace, defeated by a madman who broke all contracts only to possess him.
What he sought was liberation, not a cage.
This was wrong.
None of this was meant to be.
The killer's fingers trailed over Seunghyun's violently trembling skin. "...Transaction terminated?"
Seunghyun's lips moved, but no sound emerged. His eyelashes fluttered, a large tear rolling down.
The man seemed thoughtful. "The basis of a transaction is good faith. I did not...adhere to your terms." Yet his words held no apology.
He walked to the side, picked up a camera, the soft click of the lens cap removal echoing. "We must establish a new contract."
The camera was raised. The lens, like another unfeeling eye, focused on Seunghyun.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap.
The blinding flash consumed his outline.
The man put down the camera, picked up a delicate knife from nearby. He looked at the beautiful form before him—the hair, damp with tears and sweat, plastered to pale cheeks exhausted from prolonged torment, like a famous painting of a drowning.
The blade touched Seunghyun's temple, and a strand of pink hair was cleanly severed.
The man picked up a prepared syringe, flicked it to clear air bubbles.
"Au revoir."
The needle pierced the skin of Seunghyun's neck. Icy liquid flooded his veins.
Seunghyun's pupils dilated, swallowed by boundless darkness.
Sunlight burned behind his eyelids.
Choi Seunghyun woke, a violent headache making him curl instantly. The bed beneath him was familiarly soft. He looked around, disbelieving—the paintings on the wall, the view of the Han River through the floor-to-ceiling window...
Everything was normal.
The muscle aches, the lingering strange sensations on his skin, the raw dryness deep in his throat—all could be blamed on a hangover and terrible sleep. A nightmare.
He struggled up, stumbled into the bathroom, turned on the cold water, and frantically scrubbed his face, his body, until his skin was red and stinging. The person in the mirror was pale, with dark circles under his eyes, a section of faded pink hair missing from his forehead.
Any scabs might have been washed away; no obvious wounds were visible. Only the peculiar sensations in private parts known only to him, and a hollow echo in his ears.
He staggered into the living room. That twisted wooden sculpture chair still stood in its place, casting a bizarre shadow in the morning light.
He found his phone. No missed calls. No unknown messages.
He might almost have convinced himself it was all a ridiculous hallucination born of alcohol, drugs, and stress.
Until an icon he had almost forgotten lit up with a red '1'.
The sender was "Inpw"—death itself—an address he had stared at countless times before.
He paused for a long time, so long the screen darkened again before he jabbed it awake. Finally, manipulated by invisible strings, he opened it.
No text.
Just an encrypted attachment.
Download. Decode. The progress bar crawled.
The photos loaded one by one, stunningly clear, bearing a cold, documentary aesthetic.
His shoulders, bearing the faint marks of restraints. His chest, its normally healthy tone rendered pale as marble under the harsh light. His abdomen, the newly etched serpentine cut. His thighs, red marks from violent handling. His... privates, his shaved cock, his ravaged, unpresentable entrance. Every unwanted detail was laid bare under the clinical light.
The last one.
His blank face, streaked with tears, lips parted, eyes utterly empty and shattered, stripped of all defense and dignity. His cheek and the corner of his mouth were stained with dried residue.
At the bottom of the image, a small line of text was burned into the pixels like an auction house lot number:
#2016 - Collection Preview. Balance Pending.
The phone slipped from his hand, hitting the floor with a dull thud.
Choi Seunghyun stood motionless. Outside the window, sunlight was brilliant, the city's roar washing over him, a glamorous world operating as usual.
He had not died.
But a part of him was forever sealed in that white room.
The order was not completed, merely postponed into an indefinite... delayed fulfillment.
-END-