PAPER HEARTS

21

It was too direct, too lacking on my part to have simply pranced over to the girl, Minjun and his disabled self with so much as mere words to garner me the strength to face him. And myself. I smile at the girl acidly, and her eyes widen to the size of lime at my cotton-mouthed presence. I direct my attention to the man who'd started it all, and the one who will potentially bring an end to everything.

"Why, hello, Junnie." My smile remains in place. "Getting your mattress-mates to help you back home, I see?"

Minjun shifts in a daze, his arm slackening around the woman. She has, comparatively, a smaller frame from anyone his age and her face still owns a decent amount of baby skin, and fat in the sockets of her cheeks. Then, his eyes blink rapidly as he attempts to make out the outline of my figure in the murky shadows of his dungeon.

"J-Jaehwa," he garbles, "I didn't know you'd be out today!"

I tie my fingers together behind my back, their crevices beginning to sweat from my unkempt distress. The gears in my mind begin to churn and my smile begins to twist into a smirk as he stumbles away from the girl as if the milk hasn't been spilled already.

"Ah - she," Minjun slaps his hands over his face and rubs his clammy forehead, "my receptionist - no, no, my -"

"I'm his m-manager," she squeaks, reaching forward with a hand for me to shake.

A simpering voice echoes from the back of my throat, "I see."

"Yeah," Minjun lets out a half relieved, half nervous chuckle, "my manager."

His words are highly in contrast with the purple, and pink bruises plastered to the sides of her neck and the revealed skin of her collarbones. She has a sheer film of perspiration over her own glossy cheeks, and her crimson lips quiver to hide their smudged ends as her teary eyes flit across the place. Minjun had probably promised her the luxuries of one night, thinking I wouldn't be here to know, and vowing to her that he was only a lonely man in this wide world of dollar notes and rum. For a split second, I find myself pitying her; poor lamb, she had to walk into his trap and have her respects ripped.

A world full of colors, and all I see is red.

"You know, Minjun," I whisper, a sardonic tone overlaying my suppressed anger, "I came here thinking that I'd had a lot to say to you. Essays, in fact."

His Adam's apple visibly bobs down as he swallows thickly, feet shuffling around like a madman in distress. Minjun brings his fingers to his lips, biting down on his nails as he stares at the floor.

"But look at me, now?" I let out a short laugh, "Look at my struggle to find my narration back. It seemed all too easy to practice my speech in front of a mirror, but saying it out loud - to you - would be a waste of my breath."

He doesn't stop me from speaking such derogatory words, and I don't stop delivering him the truths. Everything in front of his new mistress, as if she never knew the way of the world otherwise.

"Stick it in, Junnie!" I scream hysterically, throwing my head back as I laugh, "Stick it in and have your way with me now. Slap me across the face, call me names, starve me, and beat me to pulp now you cowardly son of a bitch!"

Tears stream down my face and I gulp, "After all, that's what you always wanted. Women. Women here, women there, you only cared about having your body twisted in a mess in sheets of silk and someone's feverish skin against yours. To feed you with pleasures, to make you gasp with excitement."

The girl looks at me uncertainly as he drops to his knees, no longer able to sustain his stature in the muddled state that he is in. I straighten myself, sliding my fingers across my face as I brush away the wasteful tears from under my eyes.