Chapter 55: One Hard Talk

[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.