Chapter 23
In her desperation to somehow devour the man’s genitals, Sarin’s body twisted, and she involuntarily opened her entrance in response to the intense motions over her panties.
“Hmph…ugh…. Ahhh…. Hmph….”
Only a stifled, cracked sound emerged from her throat.
The hand that was supposed to push the man away lay powerless on the sheet, and her body swayed like a scarecrow.
“Aaah…!”
The inside of her pussy, hidden by her closed wings, opened a little with a blunt, merciless invasion. The fabric of her panties curled and came in with it.
On top of her, the man pulls his wet tongue out of his red lips and flicks it across her bottom lip as if savouring a taste.
“Beg me, this wet, gaping hole wants my genitals.”
“Si… le….”
Her voice barely escapes, unable to tell if it’s a no or a moan. Owen poked Sarin’s bottom viciously, bending his upper body toward her. The dark, lust-filled face of a man in heat tilted to the side of her ear.
Licking her ear, he said.
“I don’t care if it’s your sister’s man, your pussy is wet and ready to be f**ked right now.”
His snake-like whispering tongue sent a shiver down her spine, and everything changed as Sarin blinked open her eyes, a cold sweat breaking out all over her body.
She could see the now-familiar ceiling, and Owen, who had just been weighing her down, was nowhere to be seen, gone, and she realized it was all a dream.
Her body was tingling, and under the covers her thighs were spread wide, as if someone were trying to grope them.
Her back felt damp. Despite showering her pajamas were soaked.
“…What the hell.
A dream, what the hell.”
She could feel his hand on her thigh, and the pain was still there. It even tingled down there, as if someone had actually probed into the wet skin between her legs.
Unable to distinguish whether the events of last night were a dream or a daring reality, Sarin touched her earlobe, which Owen had whispered to. It felt moist. It was as if he had truly sucked and whispered into her ear, so lifelike it seemed.
It’s probably just the sweat from her head. She tried to calm herself down.
His visit to her bedroom is a dream, but the rest of yesterday’s vivid memories are real.
Either way, it’s clear they’re on an irreversible path.Sarin flipped the blanket over and didn’t want to think about it further. Her body felt sluggish, and she had no desire to do anything.
Her muscles ached from the efforts she had exerted during her sleep, and a sense of both pain and lethargy alternated in her body.
“How did my sister survive a year in a place like this?”
Sarin murmured though there was no response.
All the morals and ethics she knew were destroyed. They shook her to the core and made her dizzy.
No matter what she chose, she always chose the worst.
It couldn’t get any worse, it couldn’t get any better. There was no one in this world who could answer her questions.
She couldn’t stay buried under the blanket forever, so she stood up, her sweaty body felt cold once she was fully outside.
She went into the bathroom and quickly stripped off her soggy panties, forcing herself not to think about the dream, because today was real.
When Sarin came out of her room, she found Yuri standing next to Owen, who was just leaving the car.
“You don’t look well, are you unwell?”
Well, being under Owen, even a pain-free body is likely to feel pain. As Sarin began to earn money in earnest, Yoori’s behavior became somewhat kinder. In his cold-blooded eyes, one could sense a hint of pity, perhaps recognizing a fellow sufferer in the same boat.
She looked as if her life had been ruined by the fact that she had been rolled into a suite in another country and had her passport taken from her by an inhuman man.
“I just… couldn’t sleep.”
She couldn’t look back at Owen. Dawn’s dreams made her hesitate.
“I heard her grunting, so I called the doctor in the afternoon.”
Yuri, who had received the call in the early hours and came to work, showed kindness to Sarin. Behind that kindness was the implication that if Sarin remained unwell, Yuri would have to take the dogs for a walk himself.
Yuri’s back still throbbed from slipping on the ice on rainy days. Most importantly, whenever he held the leash, he revealed the raging beasts, with bared teeth and growls. Trying to soothe and control them had left him exhausted, so being Owen’s side twenty-four hours seemed more comfortable.
“No, it’s okay.”
A groaning sound.
The words made Sarin’s face flushed with embarrassment.
As Owen casually walked away, a distant hint of a smile could be felt. She had a premonition that Yuri, who was unusually kind today, knew the meaning behind the groaning from the early morning.
“I think I have a fever.”
She shook her head at Yuri. He leaves a note saying the doctor will be on his way in the afternoon and hurries after Owen, who’s already ahead of him. She is left alone.
Already in the newly cleaned suite that she couldn’t get up from, Sarin sighed deeply.
Tap, tap, tap.
Three dogs approached her, their claws scraping over the marble floor.
“Shall we go out early today?”
Scratching the back of their necks with her hands, Sarin spoke as the dogs responded with a sincere gesture, their red tongues playfully sticking out of their mouths. Even though they expressed their feelings through expressions, deciphering Owen’s intentions was impossible.
After drinking a glass of milk because she had no appetite despite her empty stomach, Sarin grabbed the dogs’ treats and headed out the door, then took the elevator down to the hotel with the leash firmly in her hand. She knows that no matter how tightly she holds the leash, the dogs are only holding on to her, and they can run away if they want to.
“Whoa, there I go again.”
Yuri, who was smoking a cigarette in the smoking area of the hotel lobby where Owen had gone in the meantime, raised his hand and motioned to her. He shuddered and lowered his hand when he saw the three black as hell dogs in front of him. There was pity in his gaze as he looked at Sarin.
“Uh, yeah. I’m going to take them for an early walk today.”
It seemed like a good idea to get out one more time after the doctor’s appointment in the afternoon.
“Today we’re going down Libernia Street.”
Sarin looked confused when he told her to go in the opposite direction of her usual walking route. It was as if the dogs always decided the route, not her. They could still listen to her when she said no, wait, etc., but they were very stubborn when it came to their walks.
Sarin preferred the familiar route.
She was always nervous before doing something new and would get sick, and when she did, her sister always got sick with her. She could hear her sister’s voice muttering to herself as they lay in bed together, skipping school.
Irin told Sarin not to be afraid of adventure.
It was a bruise, a reminder that everything comes to a point of choice, that life is full of choices, adventures, and attempts, and why should it hurt like this every time. She pouted at the ridiculousness of someone who was born only 10 minutes earlier than her and yet sounded like she had lived 10 years longer.
But now she doesn’t have an older sister to tell her that. She was left to make her own choices and adventures.
As comfortable as the familiar is, adventure is proportionally scary, which is probably why Irin’s love of new places and trying new things made her so well-suited to living abroad.
She wondered when she’ll be able to forget the half of her that comes naturally to mind when she’s been told to give up the familiar and take a different path.
“But….
The dogs aren’t listening.”
Understanding her unfinished sentence, Yuri shrugged.
“They’re smart, they’ll figure it out. There’s a very good tart shop in Libernia. You can get something there and go to….”
He didn’t say he’d done her background check. He’d clucked his tongue when he’d created the file on the sarin, and he’d felt some human sympathy for her, even though he’d rolled over and over on the job himself.
When Owen confirmed this, Yuri knew he was going to be seeing her for a very long time.
“I know, you mean ‘jam’?”
She didn’t know where it was, but she knew.
“Have you been there?”
“No, I haven’t. I saw it in my sister’s diary.”
It said that they always went there when they were closed and ordered the sweetest peach tart.
“We loved peaches”. A tear flickered in Sarin’s eye before being washed away by the cold wind.
“Ah…. It shouldn’t be hard to find, there’s a long line of people in front of it.”
Someone had introduced it as an attraction in Eden City, and it was always packed with tourists. One part of his hard voice softened.
“Hopefully they’ll take a different route today.”
“I’ll get there, it’s not like I haven’t been there before. They changed the course to Sandal Street because they got tired of Liberia. You can smell it already.”
“Smell?”
“There was a shootout on Sandal at dawn, and they haven’t washed all that blood off the floor yet.”
Yuri shrugged, and the word gunfight, thrown out so casually, reminded her of how dangerous Eden City was.
Even tourists don’t venture out at night. In the safe zones, the crowds for the fireworks show were fine, but anywhere else it was dangerous to wander at night.
It was an unspoken rule of the city.
“Thanks for the heads up.”
The three of them urged her to go faster. Sarin’s upper body jerked forward as if dragged.
“I needed new clothes anyway, and I was going to tell you when I got up there.”
Apparently, Owen needed new clothes for something. Sarin nodded, exchanging a quick greeting, then trotted after the dogs.
