[TW]
Friday | March 29th, 2024 | 10:49 PM
Chou Tzuyu - Obtained 3/29/24
My hand was cramping with how many labels I had to make. 23 different pairs of underwear from Tzuyu alone. It was the biggest heist I've had in terms of quantity. I was sitting at my desk after waking up from the floor just moments earlier. The sun peeked through my window, the morning light feeling alien and accusatory.
Off to the side was the famed orange shoebox, nearly filled to the brim before I even added Tzuyu's yield. But the usual thrill of seeing my collection grow was gone. All I felt was a cold, hollow dread. Each pair I labeled felt like another piece of evidence, another link in a chain that was slowly wrapping itself around my throat.
I taped a label around the last pair of underwear and threw it down onto the floor, landing with the pile. Leaning back in my chair, my gaze fell on the special piece, the black thong I had pulled out of Tzuyu's ass. Soiled. The memory of that act surged back, hot and sharp. The feel of her, the sounds she made...
Then the image of her face, wet with tears and contorted in pain. No, no, stop. Don't think about that.
I shook my head and got up from my desk. Glancing back at my collection of previous heists and the lack of room for a fresh new 23 pairs, I decided I needed to get another shoebox before I properly tucked Tzuyu's in. I went over to my closet to go through my shoe collection, deciding on what brand to sacrifice. Finally, I found a simple navy NIKE shoebox. I dumped the shoes I probably never even wore once and took the box back with me to my desk.
I unceremoniously scooped all of Tzuyu's panties into the shoebox, the pristine, stolen lingerie looking both obscene and mundane together. I crouched down and slid it under my bed, grabbing the original collection and pushing it next to its navy sibling.
Out of sight, out of mind. That's how the saying goes but I couldn't shake the events of last night from my head. It was as if my brain was stained from the memories. I tried distracting myself with my phone, but I was greeted with a missed call notification and texts from Nakyung. She must've rang while I was out cold on the floor last night:
Nakyung
hello???
are you good?
did you make it back? call me back
answer the phone
Her texts read as a person in panic which I've never seen in Nakyung. Maybe in the heat of the moment she was scared like how I was, but her texts showed her panicked self had lingered longer on after the fact. I wasn't quick to call but the silence was soon cut off with the tapping of her contact, the call immediately connecting through. I put my phone to my ear, staying silent until she picked up.
"Hello? Minjae?" she said on the other line, her tone laced with a sleepy rasp that told me I must've woken her up. I nodded to myself and sighed.
"I saw your texts. I'm good," I replied. There was a beat of silence on her end. A breath.
"Oh, thank god," she let out a shaky breath. For a split second I could feel her genuine panic seeping through the phone. There wasn't a hint of a taunt or joke she would normally have in her sarcasm-laced voice. She was genuinely shaken by this too. There was a silence between us for a few moments before she spoke again. "What happened after I left? I just started running."
"We almost got caught. Campus patrol," I told her. "I took Tzuyu and ran. Dropped her off back behind the library." My throat was dry, so I made a note to grab some water after we finished talking. I haven't eaten or drank since I got home yesterday.
"Jesus," she breathed. "I mean, that's good. Thank God." She was silent again, and I could hear her rustling around in her bed. "Fuck... I think that's the fastest my heart's ever beat before. I genuinely thought they had us pinned, Minjae."
Tell me about it. But her raw panic was my panic. We had our own near-captured experiences, but this one was different. It felt heavier. "Me too. They shouted too. But they didn't see anything clearly I think. Just our figures before we dipped."
"Did Tzuyu... did she try to run? scream?"
"She was with me," I replied. "I think she was too scared." An image of her, blindfolded and trembling in my arms, flashed in my mind. I pushed it away.
"Okay, that's good, that's good. We're good, Minjae," she said, her normal self slowly starting to trickle back into her voice. She sighed one more time into her phone before the call fell into a silence again.
I didn't respond. I waited for her to say something. I can't explain how I was feeling right now. I knew the sinking feeling I had in my stomach as I collapsed onto the floor last night. I remember how fast my heart had been beating as I ran. But now? After waking up, my head just felt so cluttered that I didn't have room for any emotion. I felt like a walking corpse.
Was this the thing Nakyung has been wanting to push me into this whole time? This state of complete depravity? To let kinky freak Minjae experience the highs of adrenaline and orgasm while casual, default me was left to deal with the hangover of consequences and emotional fallout.
How Nakyung compartmentalized things like a pro, I wasn't sure. But I could already hear the switch in her tone. She was starting to shake it off. She was so good at this. So good at processing trauma. So good at just pushing things down. And there I was, letting it eat me alive.
It told me everything I didn't know about my best friend up until now. All this time, god damn, years and years, she held up the mask of what seemed to be a normal person. She hid the dark parts of her history away so well. How did she never let it show that her second life as a sex fiend ate at her from the inside?
Was her years of experience at holding these dark secrets what made her so skilled at switching on and off the emotional impact? She was like level 50 and I was still stuck on level 1.
What was more confusing was how her panic seemed so real on the phone. I had an itch to believe that she was probably just checking on her bridges. To make sure I hadn't been caught yet, to ensure that Tzuyu wouldn't rat. But in a scenario like that, true colors always show.
So what does that mean? Is the Nakyung that I've known for years, my best friend since middle school, the real deal? Was it the perverted partner who loves seeing things go further, the one she revealed after my secret spilled, who was fake? Or the other way around?
The more and more I tried to think and logically piece my thoughts together, the more it didn’t make any sense to me. It was like one thing was contradicting the other.
"What are you thinking about?" Nakyung asked, breaking my train of thought. Her voice was closer to her normal tone now, a little lighter, but still with an undercurrent of something careful.
"Just... last night," I replied, my voice flat. "It was a lot."
It was an understatement, but I didn't have the energy to elaborate. A huge, enormous clusterfuck was the proper term. I leaned my head back, staring at the ceiling, a landscape of white with a few faint water stains. The water stains were starting to look like a face, a distorted, judgmental face mocking me from above.
"Yeah. Tell me about it," she agreed softly. Then, a beat later. "But we got away, Minjae. We're in the clear. Tzuyu won't talk."
"Probably not," I muttered. But what if she did? The thought was a spike of ice in my chest. What if she went to the police right now? What if she was in a hospital getting a kit done and they'd find my DNA... The thought spiraled, ugly and terrifying.
"Did you give her the account back," I asked, wanting a confirmation to at least help ease at least that part of the night. Nakyung was quick to give her answer however.
"No," she said. "We can probably milk this out for a good bit." My jaw fell slack at her response.
"What?" I sputtered, sitting up straight. "Nakyung, give it back. Now. The threat means nothing if you don't back it up with your promise. If she doesn't get that fucking account back, then she'll have no problem with going straight to the cops for real."
My chest was hurting, what the fuck was she doing? My heart went back into overdrive, this was not the panic talking, it was pure logical reasoning. Nakyung's sudden flip back to her psychopathic game didn't surprise me one bit.
A beat of silence. I could almost hear her processing this, her mind clicking through the angles. "You're right," she finally said, her tone edged with condescension. "We already have the pictures and videos, she can have the account back." That was a relief that was far too brief. I ran a stressed-out hand through my hair, the slight tug of the strands grounding me for a second. I needed that water now.
"There, I did it." Nakyung's casual dismissal of a monumental step made my stomach turn. I sighed, flopping back onto my bed, my arm over my eyes to block out the accusatory sunlight. "I feel empty."
Nakyung won. Her influence won over me and what is worse, I think we both got what we wanted. My twisted desire to possess these women through their most intimate clothing led me down this path. The memory of last night, now that the adrenaline had faded, left me numb.
It made me painfully aware that now, after everything, I was truly alright with it. In the end, Nakyung managed to reveal what had been brewing within me these past couple of months. There was a monster so profound, it's like I've been living with an entirely different person my whole life.
I now saw a clear, distinct line between who I normally am, who my friends think I am, the friendly, goofy Minjae, and... the other thing. The one that felt a surge of power while Tzuyu was crying beneath me. The one that had meticulously cataloged her stolen underwear this morning without a shred of remorse, only a cold satisfaction.
The silence that followed my confession stretched, thick and heavy with all the things we weren't saying.
"Can I come over?" Nakyung's request broke through the heavy atmosphere. "I need to see you."
I didn't want to move. I wanted to just lie here until the world righted itself, or until I faded from it entirely. "No, I'm tired," I hummed out, the words muffled by the pillow my head turned into.
It might have been harsh, but if I had to look at her split-dyed hair right now, I think I would have lost whatever sense I had left. I had to keep these two worlds separate, and right now she was living in that world and I was trying to get back to mine. She was the anchor to that darkness and I was the ship trying to sail away.
Silence on the line again. "Okay. Fine. Get some rest." her tone was clipped, hurt, maybe. It was weird. Usually, she'd push back. She'd tease, she'd whine, she'd find a way to get what she wanted. Her easy acceptance felt like a dismissal. A dismissal of me, and of what we had just done together.
The call ended.
The silence in the room was deafening, amplifying the thrum of blood in my ears. I closed my eyes again, and the darkness behind my eyelids was instantly replaced with the image of a crying, abused girl in a yellow light. Tzuyu. I could practically feel the ghost of her body against mine from when I'd carried her.
My own breathing was loud in the stillness. Shallow, uneven. The exhaustion was a physical weight, pinning me to the mattress, but my mind was a chaotic mess, replaying every moment of last night on a sickening loop.
After what felt like an eternity, wasting away in this miserable haze, I felt a faint vibration seep into my world. I blinked my crusty eyes open, and realized it wasn't my imagination, but my phone humming quietly against my duvet. Someone was calling. With a sigh, I rolled over and peered at the screen.
Tzuyu.
The name was like a punch to the gut. My entire body went rigid. I stared at the flashing letters, my thumb hovering uselessly over the screen. Was this it? Did she see something? Did campus security find her and she confessed? My mind flooded with catastrophic scenarios. With a trembling hand, I swiped to answer, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I put the phone to my ear.
"Hello?" My own voice was a dry, croaking sound.
There was silence on the other end. A loaded, fragile silence that stretched for several agonizing seconds. "Hello? Tzuyu?" I prompted, my stomach clenching into a knot of ice.
"...Minjae?" Her voice was small, raspy, like she’d swallowed sandpaper. It sounded hollowed out, a shell of its usual kind, cheerful self. Just hearing her, knowing what we’d done, what I’d done, sent a fresh wave of sickness through me.
"Hey, what's up," I said, forcing every ounce of energy I had to sound normal, to sound like the Minjae she knew. "You good?"
Another beat of silence. "Yeah... no." she finally whispered. Her words landed like stones in my stomach. This can't be happening. Not now. She let out a shaky, trembling breath. "This is hard to ask. I’m sorry for the weird call out of nowhere..."
"It's no problem, what's going on?" I pressed, my grip tightening on the phone.
"Did you receive a message last night? From someone?" Tzuyu's question was so quiet, I had to strain to hear it. She was referring to the blackmail threat Nakyung had made from the burner account. She was asking me if I got it. She was still in the dark.
"Oh," I acted, pausing for a moment to make it seem like I was in thought, "Yeah, I did. It had your name in the message, but I thought it was a bot."
I heard a tiny, wet sniffling sound. "O-Okay." A single word, followed by another, shuddering exhale. She sounded so, so small. The friendly, beautiful girl from my social circle had been reduced to this. This broken, frightened whisper.
There was more silence on her end before she finally continued. "C-Can we meet up later? Somewhere on campus? I-I need... I don't want to be alone right now. I think I'm having a panic attack," she choked out, her voice cracking on the last few words.
"Yeah, of course," the words were out of my mouth before I could even think to stop it. Minjae shines through in moments like these. The instinct to comfort someone, even one I had personally decimated.
"R-Really?"
"Yeah. Of course, Tzuyu. Let's meet up. Just text me the details," I reassured her, the disconnect between my gentle tone and the horrors of last night making my head spin. We said our goodbyes and I hung up, letting my phone drop from my hand onto the bed.
The irony was so thick I could taste it.
She’s calling me, her assailant, for comfort after being assaulted.
A dark, hysterical laugh bubbled up in my chest, one I forced down. Instead, I rolled out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom, my reflection looking at me was haggard. Dark circles under my eyes, my hair a mess. I couldn't tell who I was looking at anymore. I splashed cold water on my face. It did little to wake me from this nightmare.
I stared at myself for a while, procrastinating this interaction as much as possible.
Friday | March 29th, 2024 | 11:32 PM
I saw her under the shade of a large oak tree. She'd texted me the location. She was sitting on a bench facing the main campus green of the University. She was sitting on a bench, hunched over, a gray hoodie pulled up over her head, despite the pleasant afternoon weather. She looked small, her entire body folded in on itself as if trying to disappear.
I slowly started making my way toward her, my hands jammed in my pockets. My heartbeat, which had finally calmed down back in my room, was starting to pick up its frantic pace again with each step closer to her. Her head jerked up as I got closer to her. Her eyes met mine.
God. They were red-rimmed, swollen, and clouded with a deep, abject fear and exhaustion. There wasn't a flicker of recognition in them beyond the obvious. "Tzuyu?" I called out with concern, playing my part perfectly.
Her lower lip trembled, but she didn't say anything. I sat down on the bench, leaving a careful space between us, the wood creaking under my weight. "Hey, you okay?"
Tzuyu finally let out a shaky, broken breath that was barely a sob. "N-no," she managed to get out. She pulled the sleeves of her hoodie over her hands, wrapping her arms around her stomach. Her eyes weren't on me, they were darting around, scanning the campus, the surrounding trees, the faces of passing students. Her fear wasn't for show.
"What the fuck happened? Are you alright?" I said, pushing the words out, my throat tight. "Tzuyu, what's wrong? You look terrible."
"Did you look at the message they sent you," she asked, finally turning her head fully, focusing on me, but her gaze couldn't hold. It kept skittering away. I sighed and looked away, visualizing how a worried friend would act. What would an out of the loop Minjae look like?
"Uh, um, yes, I did. I don't want to assume anything, because I didn't see a face," I started, making my story up as I went. "But the message mentioned your name, and I-I." I forced my face to turn red with fake embarrassment. "I recognized your, uh, uhm, your b-body."
"Fuck," Tzuyu cried, fresh tears instantly welling up in her eyes. They tracked silently down her tan cheeks. She started to look around frantically again.
"I'm sorry, Tzu. Can you tell me what the fuck is going on? Please?" I urged, my voice soft with practiced sincerity.
My question seemed to open a dam inside of her. Tears spilled over her lashes, tracing glistening paths down her cheeks. "My phone got hacked, or broken into, I don't know." Her voice was so raw and painful. "They found out I do OnlyFans, and logged me out, and they kept my account hostage." Each word was a struggle.
"They threatened to send it to everyone I knew unless I followed what they asked for. I don't know their names or anything but... it was one boy and one girl." She was reliving it out loud for me, and I was taking it all in.
"I'm guessing I was in your list of contacts to send it to, or something?" I said with a feigned, innocent worry.
Tzuyu sniffled and nodded, pulling her knees to her chest, a self-comforting gesture that looked so fragile it might shatter at any moment. "They told me to meet them late at school, behind the library. I did what they asked, I came alone, I brought my underwear for them to take." She paused then choked back on some words. It must've been painful trying to say this. The pause before she continued was almost a minute.
"Tzu..." I whispered gently. The guilt was a physical thing now, a tumor in my gut. I was seeing first-hand what we had done to this beautiful, sweet girl.
"They still sent it. Right in front of me, after I did everything they had asked for, they sent it to you right in front of me. They wanted more. They wanted..."
Her words trailed off again, a fresh wave of horror and humiliation washing over her face. "They..." she sobbed. Her face started to scrunch as a sob ripped through her slender throat. "God.. They hurt me so much..." she said quietly as if talking to herself.
And that was it. That was the dagger twisting in my gut and finishing me through. The friendly me took the wheel and my arms moved without my consent to give Tzuyu an embrace. I went in for a full hug, pulling her small body against me.
For a second, her entire frame stiffened at my touch. A reflex. Of course it was. Her body remembered a stranger's hands, a roughness that mine was mimicking. She probably fought but it was my touch that made her tense.
But then, just as quickly, she seemed to crumble. Her tense muscles slackened and she melted against me, her head falling onto my shoulder. Her hands, which had been balled into fists in her lap, grabbed at the fabric of my shirt, twisting it. Her entire body wracked with a violent, shuddering sob. This wretched, raw sound right next to my head.
I stared at the ground behind her, hearing her cries echo and bounce around in my head. Each sob she let out was a condemnation of what I had become. I held on to her tighter.
"I'm so sorry, Tzuyu," I whispered, the words tasting like ashes. This, right here, was real. I comforted and held my friend, my victim, after committing such a disgusting violation of her. I was holding and pretending to be her hero after having played villain the night before. The lie was so thick I could drown in it.
"How did they even.. you know... did they.." she mumbled into my shoulder, her words muffled by my clothes. "I'm so dumb."
"You're not dumb, you're not dumb, Tzu. Don't say that," I said, patting her back. There were marks there I was sure, from when I held her down, from when I... "This isn't your fault." But it was mine. God damn it, all mine. Every shudder that passed through her body, I thought, "That was me."
She continued to cry her poor, fragile little heart out on my shoulder. After what felt like an eternity, she seemed to get it out of her system. The shudders subsided and she sagged against me completely, spent. It wasn't a peaceful state. There was just an emotional emptiness where the fear had been.
"Hey," I said gently, pulling back just enough to look at her puffy, tear-streaked face. "Come on. Let's go. I'm going to walk you home. You shouldn't be alone. I've got you."
"No, no, Minjae I-I-I'm fine," she shook her head in protest weakly. "I just had to ask you about that message."
"You just told me something awful happened to you, Tzuyu. I'm not leaving you here by yourself." I insisted, my tone firm. The offer of help seemed to finally break through the walls she was trying to desperately keep up. "Did you see their faces, anything?"
"It's... It's really fine," she looked away with a pained expression. "The boy and girl had ski masks on." She looked down at her hands, now picking at a loose thread on her hoodie.
"Damn." I murmured. "What about the police? Did you talk to them? We can go. Right now."
She flinched at the word. Her eyes went wide with fear as they darted around again, searching the empty space behind my shoulder. "No. I can't do that. No. Please, Minjae, don't." Her words were tumbling out in a panicked rush, her breath catching. Her gaze locked back onto mine with an intensity that made my skin crawl. It was pure terror.
"Okay, okay. We won't. We won't," I said quickly, raising my hands in a placating gesture.
My question had a clear answer on why she would be terrified. Nakyung's hold on her was so complete and absolute that Tzuyu was trapped by it. The threat of exposing her "sin" was a cage more terrifying than the one she had just escaped. My lie felt like the truth, even the police wouldn't be safe. Nakyung had meticulously built this prison. And she'd locked Tzuyu in.
Sitting there in silence wasn't good for me. It left too much space in my head to get lost. Her face in profile, the raw anguish etched onto it, was an echo of what we did. The cement of guilt was weighing me down, slowly, suffocatingly. My stomach really hurt. My blood felt sluggish and cold in my veins.
I couldn't explain it but my right eye was twitching badly. I could feel the small muscle jumping frantically, a tiny, manic betrayal of the calm facade I was trying to project. I was trying to catch my breath, but it seemed to always fall short of a full one. Even though no apparent sound was audible, my ears were full of a high pitched, whining sound.
My brain was boiling. I couldn't hold myself together. I felt it in my own body, in the tremor in my own hands. I was cracking, right here on this bench in front of her. This was what came after the fact. Not a thrill, not a conquest, but this slow, corrosive rot.
Tears started leaking from my eyes and onto my hands before I even realized that they were gathering. Not big sobs like Tzuyu had. Fuck, I was falling apart at the seams. Something inside of me, maybe the good part that I have tried oh so so so hard to hold onto, broke off. I was crying because I was a coward. I was crying because I am disgusted that my kink for panties took me this far. But I am also crying because of the feeling of relief of having gotten away.
God fucking damn it, why can't my brain work normally? Fuck, fuck, fuck. A gasp left my mouth and I tried to discretely wipe my tears with the back of my hand, a quick, desperate movement. Tzuyu saw, however. I leaned forward to embrace her again, more for my own sake.
"I'm so fucking sorry this is happening, Tzuyu. I really am," My words hitched as I continued to cry. I was a hypocrite, a monster, and now a blubbering mess. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
"It's not your fault..." she whispered.
That's all it took for me to shatter, hearing her absolve me so completely unaware of who I actually was. My quiet tears turned into real, ugly cries. My guilt was no longer an abstract, personal torment. It had a face. Her face. My head was pounding, and a wave of nausea hit me. I was going to be sick. I pulled away from her, lurching forward to rest my forehead on my knees, my shoulders shaking with the force of my sobs.
I felt like screaming. This vomit in my chest needs to get out. A loud strangled gasp escapes my lips, followed by another. I can't breathe. My vision started to tunnel. The world was closing in. I can't breathe. The grass below my feet swam in my vision. My hands were numb. I can't breathe. Tzuyu's voice called my name, but it sounded distant, muffled, as if coming from underwater.
I fought for a breath, my lungs refusing to inflate. My entire body was seizing up. The high-pitched whining in my ears rose to a deafening shriek. And then, suddenly, it was over. Just as quickly as it came, the pressure in my chest subsided enough for a ragged, shallow breath to get in.
My mind and body had had enough. My brain had shut the fuck down.
After taking a couple more breaths, I lifted my head up.
Tzuyu was still there, her expression still blank. "I'm sorry, you don't deserve this," I heard myself say to explain my sudden behavior. Tzuyu didn't say anything, just looking off into the distance. She didn't hug me, or ask me what's wrong. It wasn't her job. Her emotional battery was already drained by whatever we had left her with. She had nothing left to give to me.
We just shared the somber silence under the oak tree.
The campus continued its day around us. Students walked to and from their classes, heads down in their phones or lost in conversations, headphones leaking tinny music. The world spun on, oblivious to the events that had transpired on this campus.
"They're just pictures," Tzuyu said so quietly I had to lean to hear her. She wasn't looking at me. Her focus seemed to be on an ant marching across a leaf on the ground. "I should... I should've just not cared."
"Tzu." Her self-blame was a bitter taste in my mouth. She was trying to rationalize, to find a reason why this happened that wasn't just 'random, meaningless cruelty.' And the only reason she could find was within herself. "It's not your fault," I repeated, my own voice hoarse.
She just shook her head, the gesture minuscule. She was lost in her own personal hell. "You won't tell anyone right? About the OnlyFans? About..." Her words trailed off.
"No," I said, my promise immediate and unwavering. "No."
She just gave a small, defeated nod in response, trusting me. Her belief in me as a good person was a hot poker in my gut. After another long silence, she continued.
"God... I just... I really needed the money," she confessed to the dirt at our feet. She had whispered it as if to herself.
"My family didn't support my decision to come out here for school. They wanted me to stay in Taiwan, marry a nice boy. Have kids. The whole traditional stuff." She groaned, "But, I wanted this. I wanted to get away from that, see the world for myself before I settle down. So they cut me off."
She paused, squeezing her wrist. I could almost see the memories playing behind her eyes. "The financial aid package they gave me wasn't nearly enough. Tuition, housing... I tried getting a job, but nothing paid enough to cover everything."
A sigh escaped her lips. A deep one, one that's been holding onto itself for a while.
"I was so broke. I couldn't even afford to eat some days, Minjae." Her honesty was disarming. "Sana, She's the only reason I'm still here at school. Her family believed in her dream to move to Korea. She was given their support and knew of my hardships so she pitched in whenever she could. Without her, I don't know what I'd be doing with my life."
She sniffled, her shoulders slumping. "I hated it. Sana's my best friend, but there's nothing more soul-sucking than having to ask your best friend for money to even feed yourself. I found out about OnlyFans from the internet. I saw girls were making a lot more than I ever could just by selling themselves to people's screens."
"It made me feel disgusted, but I told myself it was temporary. I thought I could start and quit once I made enough, save up enough to live out my dream," she explained, her voice heavy. "It changed me. I guess. Seeing the numbers in my account go up, the knowledge that there were people out in the world who wanted this from me."
I stayed silent. Taking in this story that I had no idea about. It made it hurt more. It was her lifeline. It was a desperate, ugly solution she had found. And we didn't just invade her privacy, we threatened her only raft when we took control of her only lifeline.
I couldn't excuse what we did, nothing would. The context just made it so much... worse.
"I don't even know why I'm saying all of this now. The validation... it felt good to get some form of approval when my own family couldn't. Seeing people want to see more of me and spend their money for it," Her words slowed down. "It feels so selfish. So stupid."
"I get it." Those were the only words that my scrambled brain could conjure. And I did, in some weird, dark, parallel way. I imagined Nakyung must have felt some version of this too. Not for a survival reason for her personally, but it seemed to be all about an ugly sort of validation for herself. Tzuyu wanted validation that she was valuable enough for her dreams to come true and the means she used to get there gave her another kind of validation.
But Nakyung...
It wasn't about survival. Or money. She was a black hole of need, a deep craving that could never be filled. The attention, the control... it was all about feeding that endless, gnawing hunger she must have.
As I compared the two women, the arrow shot and stabbed through my head. A rush of nausea returned so strongly it almost made me double over.
The thing that bothered me this morning about Nakyung, it was starting to become clear to me. The tone she had when I told her I didn't want to see her today.
That hurt, disappointed tone. It bothered me because it was so unlike her but I could pinpoint why now. All this time, I made it seem like she was this expert in separating her worlds, but that might have been a mischaracterization I made about her. That unfiltered anger she had towards Tzuyu last night, the humiliation and degradation... That was different. It was deeper.
Nakyung and Tzuyu were, in a way, two sides of the same cursed coin. Both were seeking some kind of validation through exposing themselves, but for completely different reasons. I never imagined Nakyung had an ounce of self-loathing within her like I do. To me, I assumed she embraced it if it ever came.
She must've seen it too. Herself in Tzuyu. She saw the same story in her. The validation on OnlyFans. The validation Nakyung got when she had sex when she was young. That self-hatred exploded and it projected itself onto Tzuyu.
I didn't realize it but Nakyung wanted me. She wanted me like how I wanted her.
"I need to see you."
I was thinking she wanted me like I had just comforted Tzuyu.
In the end, Nakyung is just as broken as I am. Her self-loathing was probably worse, deeper even given she’s been dealing with that for years now. And instead of hating herself on this bench and having a panic attack, she just pointed that hate to the easiest target.
And I was a willing accomplice.
"Shit," I sighed to myself. The world swayed.
I looked at Tzuyu, her profile as blank as a new slate. She looked up and her glassy eyes met mine, searching. They weren't hostile. They were empty. And in their emptiness, there was a void that was screaming for the one thing she thought I could provide.
"Will you..." She paused, her brow furrowing with the effort of forming the request. "Will you stay with me a bit? Sana is out with friends and won't be back to the dorm until much later. I don't want... I can't be alone right now."
I froze. My brain screamed no. Being alone with her, it'd only eat at me more, it'd only dig this trench of self-hatred deeper. My proximity to my crimes was suffocating. I was standing in the epicenter of my own personal earthquake. I couldn't be here.
But then my eye twitched again. I saw her trembling lip and a part of me, the Minjae I wanted to be started to peer through. The one who carried her away from security guards. The one who just held her as she broke down on my shoulder. I came here because she asked for my help, her comfort she needed from a friend she trusted. I shouldn't leave until I knew she'd feel at least a little bit better.
That part was still there. It's what led me to reply, "Yeah." My own voice was a low monotone.
There was no relief on Tzuyu's face, but she did give a slow nod. That small confirmation. Nothing I do will ever make this better. I could never do enough penance for the role I played. Maybe the only thing I can ever do that's close to being something decent is this. Just be here for her.
Definitely one of the smallest chapters I've written for this story up to this day! I wasn't too sure about how I wanted to go about this chapter. I knew for a fact that I wanted to see the aftermath of Minjae's consequences, just so I could properly establish Minjae's inner turmoil and the negative effects it's taking on him to sustain this type of life. On the other hand, I saw an oppurtunity to flesh out Nakyung's motives and charatcer more. The revelation that she's just as broken as Minjae was a design choice I liked writing, it hammers the idea that she's essentially Minjae in a female body!
The next few chapters upcoming are definitely ones you should keep na eye out for, they are, BY FAR, my favorite and the most important chapters of this ENTIRE STORY. They involve my three favorite characters, Minjae, and uh, try and guess the other two! I will definitely be spending the most time on these chapters, just becuase the concept, the character building, the way it pushes this story's direction towards the eventual ending, UGH! I'm so excited to get them out to you! Hope you enjoy, and I'll forver love all of you! - PI
PS. I finally got around to adding those Obtained XX/XX/XX on every chapter. Just a continuity error that bothered me once I realized how many chapters I forgot to put them in!
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