The faint light I had kept on in the room must have been visible from outside, and he might even have been standing guard in front of the building the whole time after leaving me here last. No matter how much I tried not to look like I was home, he would soon snort and just punch in the door lock code to come in. Once I thought that far, I hurriedly locked the chain over the door lock.

Clack-

Maybe he caught the sound of the chain being hooked from inside the front door, because Gyuseok hyung’s head on the intercom suddenly lifted. My spine went cold, and I grabbed the front door handle and pulled with all my strength.

If he tried to open the door and break the chain through that narrow gap, the only thing I could rely on was pulling the door hard from inside. Of course, even that wouldn’t be enough to beat Gyuseok hyung’s strength.

Bzzzz-.

But the hyung’s next action was less aggressive than I expected. The screen of my phone, which had been lying on the topper, lit up. Checking the intercom screen, I saw hyung hold his phone up and shake it toward the intercom camera. He had just called me, and he was showing the lit screen with my name on it…. I had no choice but to move my fingers and answer the call.

“…H-hello?”

“You were inside.”

“…Why did you come….”

“Open the door. I have something to say to you too.”

Even in the sweltering summer heat of a night so hot it felt tropical, the air around me was cold.

After a few seconds of hesitation, I eventually opened the door. I knew very well that keeping him standing outside wouldn’t solve anything. Gyuseok hyung, who strode inside the entrance, must not have slept for hours just like me, and yet his face was so neat he didn’t look like someone who had stayed up all night. It was such a contrast to my face, which was all swollen up.

“…What do you have to say?”

“What did you talk about with Hyeon Jinhoo earlier? Are things between you two completely over?”

“I, I’m… planning to break up.”

“Looks like you didn’t finish it properly.”

He was right. Hyung had gone back after vaguely soothing me, saying we should talk again tomorrow or later…. I was the one who wanted to make sure this rotten, tangled-up relationship was completely finished.

But Gyuseok hyung was looking at me as if he thought I was a fool who couldn’t let go of Jinhoo hyung even when this situation had come down on me. Frustration surged up, and I shouted with veins popping in my neck.

“Tell Jinhoo hyung to go date your cousin properly, I won’t interfere anymore! You two should stop coming here too! Both of you are disgusting-.”

“How about you meet me instead?”

“…W-what?!”

It took several seconds for those unbelievable words to reach my brain through my ears. What was this hyung even talking about…. What did he mean by suddenly saying to meet him…. Did he mean to start a normal, common-sense kind of “dating”? Was he out of his mind?

Just as I was about to snap at him for such absurd nonsense, he suddenly held up his phone close to my face. It was the paused screen of a video saved in his phone gallery.

“……”

Even without him pressing play himself, I could tell. The screen was paused on a scene where I was wearing a blindfold and lying down, receiving someone’s cock below me. The place in the video was a hotel, and the room lights were brightly on. I vaguely remembered when that was. As hyung watched my expression, he soon pressed play.

Even though the me on the screen was blindfolded, it still contained enough of my features that people who knew me would immediately be able to figure out who it was. On the other hand, the man who was thrusting into me didn’t seem to show many outward features that would identify him, other than a few glimpsed parts of his body.

The only guess I could make was that, judging by how his skin was fairer than Jinhoo hyung’s, the person in the video must be the Gyuseok hyung in front of me…. That was all. His face wasn’t even filmed above the neck, and the thighs, dick, arms, and hands that occasionally appeared were all extremely fragmentary.

“The one fucking you is me, and the one filming with my camera was Hyeon Jinhoo.”

“……Why. Why is this, why….”

“Luckily, he only shot it on my phone, so all the videos are with me.”

All the… videos? I remembered that whenever my eyes were covered, the lights were mostly on bright. If he recorded it every time, then how many more videos like this could there possibly be.

“You should sleep. Your face has been awful since earlier, all swollen up.”

“…W-where are you going?”

“I’ll come back in the evening. Let’s keep talking then.”

Leaving behind the implication that there was more to discuss later, just like Jinhoo hyung had done, Gyuseok hyung turned and left. He stood right in front of the entrance without even taking off his shoes. As if his only purpose had really been to tell me about the videos.

Fear and panic gripped me. It felt like Gyuseok hyung might walk out into the street right this instant, call over everyone who knew me, and show them that video from earlier. The sex videos were in his hands. The videos, however many there might be left, could all be exposed to the world whenever he wanted.

After learning that Gyuseok hyung had been involved in me and Jinhoo hyung’s sex all this time, and still not recovering from the shock, I was forcibly taken by the hyungs one after another.

After that, they even stormed into my house and committed the bizarre act of rummaging through my space, and after hearing the horrible backstory of these past few months from Jinhoo hyung’s mouth…. I couldn’t get a single wink of sleep, and there was no way to calm my torn-apart heart in utter bewilderment.

And the judgment that there could be no bigger shock than this had been a mistake. Now that I knew the even more horrific truth that they had recorded videos, I really didn’t think I would be able to fall asleep for even one second. This house and my world seemed to become more harmful and terrifying than anything else, pressing down on me whole.

* * *

I kept failing to sleep, and I spent the entire Saturday without even knowing what I was doing. With no motivation to do anything that could calm my churning mind, I turned off every light and lay blankly on the topper, killing time. I was nothing different from a corpse with its eyes open.

Then, every now and then, I checked my phone. I was afraid that a video had been uploaded somewhere, and that the whole world would be buzzing about me, cursing me as some perverted gay bastard. I was scared that people I knew, even my parents, might send messages asking if the gay man in the video roaming around right now was really me.

Crying, falling asleep for a bit, waking up and denying reality, then checking my phone again…. It was the same thing over and over. The thought that Gyuseok hyung might come looking for me again tonight only crossed my mind when the darkness outside the window, which had been open all this time, started to deepen.

My head was a mess, wondering what he meant when he said that, that suggestion to meet him. Was he saying that he knew I would never refuse because I was scared of the video being spread, and that he wanted us to keep being the kind of people who have sex together?

Ding-ding-ring-.

– Changed.

The fact that the door lock password was Jinhoo hyung’s birthday made me shudder. If I left the password as it was, those hyungs could come in whenever they wanted, so I had hurriedly changed it right away. To a six-digit number they could never figure out.

But all of that would only be a temporary fix. As long as they knew where my studio room was, it would be impossible to hide and disappear forever. Even if I hid now, it would not mean they could not find me, and of course, if I pissed them off, threatening me with the footage would be the obvious next step.

I hugged my knees and curled up in one corner of the room, starting to tremble. It was the middle of a hot summer, and I had not even turned on the air conditioner, but I did not even have the time to feel the heat.

Ding-ding-ring-.

Creak.

It must have been that I had dozed off for a moment. The sound of the door lock being unlocked rang clearly in my half-sleep. Startled, I lifted my head, and saw the entrance sensor light turned on brightly, with someone already inside the entryway. The tall, long silhouette stepping into the room while taking off his shoes was Gyuseok hyung. Did I not… change the password earlier…?

“How did you get in-.”

“This.”

Only then did the object dangling in Gyuseok hyung’s hand catch my eye. It was the plastic backup key for the door lock that the landlord had handed over through the real estate office on the day I signed the lease for this place. Since I did not need to carry the clunky backup key around as long as I knew the password, it had long since vanished from my memory.

It seemed that the thing I carelessly stuffed somewhere on a shelf by the front door had ended up in Gyuseok hyung’s hands while he was secretly coming and going from this place. That was why changing the password could not stop his intrusions.

“Why did you change the password again? It was never going to stop me from getting into this place anyway.”

“W, why are you barging in all of a sudden?”

“Not curious how many more videos there are?”

He brought up the video first, making my heart drop instantly. He was so brazen, so shameless, so wicked. Looking at my dried-up, weak state, after I had only had a few sips of water all day, he clicked his tongue and said he had given me enough time to sleep, then asked why I looked like shit.

“How are you supposed to get your dick in smoothly like this? I’d feel guilty about sticking it in a corpse that’s practically already dead.”

It was absurd, hearing that from someone who had committed deception and rape, filming and blackmail, as if he were some bastard without a shred of conscience. So that was why he could do this, because he was shameless enough to have no awareness that what he was doing was a crime. A foreboding feeling crept up my spine that simply begging him to delete the video would not solve anything.

“So, you came here to have sex after all?”

“What did you think I meant by telling you to meet me?”

Gyuseok hyung dragged me out from the corner of the room, where I had been slumped limply like someone who had not eaten a single proper meal. With no strength at all, I was dragged along by him, and my body suddenly started shaking like a willow tree in the wind. Because it was so clear what he was about to do from now on.

“At dawn, are you still the same as when we washed you? You didn’t wash again, did you?”