One week...
For ordinary people, seven days might pass as swiftly as the blink of an eye. But for me, it dragged on like an endless, agonizing century.
My entire existence had been rebooted. Programmed to revolve around a single man: 'Ren Varis'.
My entire universe had been compressed down to the suffocating square footage he permitted me to occupy.
06:00 AM.
The alarm clock blared, accompanied by the weight of reality slamming into my face.
I had to wake before him. I had to draw his bath, mixing the warm water with his preferred essential oils.
I had to prepare his pressed bespoke suit and stand by with absolute subservience to wake him.
08:00 AM.
I sat rigidly, shrinking myself into the plush leather of the limousine. Heading toward the monolithic V Tower as his voiceless, obedient secretary.
I was nothing more than a living ornament tasked with trailing behind him.
12:00 PM.
Lunch with him. Or, more accurately, sitting and watching him eat.
Serving him like a trained slave—cutting his steaks, pouring his water.
While I could only wait for the meager scraps of time left over to swallow down just enough food to keep my fragile body functioning for another day.
06:00 PM.
Returning to the gilded cage known as the penthouse.
And 10:00 PM...
The most terrifying, agonizing hours of the day.
I was forced to fulfill my duties as his 'living plaything' upon that bed, enduring his feral moods and punishing lust. Until he was satisfied and finally fell asleep.
There were no days off... No shred of personal time...
And the most devastating realization of all... Was that I had been severed from the outside world.
My old smartphone had been confiscated on the very first day. Ren tossed me a brand new device, containing only a single saved contact.
...The number of the man who owned my life.
At the President's Office, 50th Floor. The wall clock ticked methodically.
Tick... Tick... The sound echoed in the heavy silence, warring against the hum of the freezing air conditioning.
I sat hunched over the small desk in the corner, intensely focused. My head was bowed as I typed up summaries for the mountain of documents Ren had dumped onto my station.
My fingers ached from hours of relentless typing. My fingertips were numb and trembling, barely registering the keys.
Yet, the physical ache in my hands...
Was insignificant compared to the searing agony circling my throat. The pitch-black leather choker, adorned with its mocking silver padlock...
Remained fastened around my neck at all times. The faint sweat from my labor caused the synthetic leather to chafe against my sensitive skin.
It had rubbed the flesh into a raw red band that stung with every turn of my head.
And with every single swallow...The freezing, heavy metal of the padlock pressed deeply against my Adam's apple.
As if reminding me every passing second... Whose slave are you?
"Yurin."
The flat, authoritative call caused my body to flinch. My hand jerked, nearly knocking over the glass of water resting on my desk.
"Y... Yes, Mr. President?"
Ren didn't even bother to lift his gaze from the documents in front of him.
He tapped his long, elegant fingers against the teakwood desk in a slow rhythm. Tap... Tap... It sounded like the countdown of a time bomb.
"The small conference room... 40th Floor."
"Finish preparing the documents for this afternoon's meeting, and go down there to wait for me..." Right now.!
"Yes, sir."
I swept the documents into a folder, my hands shaking from the numbness. I pushed myself up from the chair, forcing my leaden legs to carry me out of the office.
It wasn't that I was afraid of the corporate meeting. I was terrified of the location.
The small conference room. It was a highly restricted, compact room utilized for top-secret business negotiations. All four walls were lined with dense, dark grey, soundproof material.
There were no windows... no visible ventilation shafts. There was only the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights illuminating the center of the room.
The second I stepped across the threshold...
A wave of crushing pressure assaulted me.
The stagnant, frigid air, laced with a faint, suffocating mustiness, instantly felt far too thin to breathe.
Those four narrow, solid grey walls... Felt as though they were closing in on me.
Thump... Thump... Thump... My heart began to hammer against my ribs in an erratic, terrifying rhythm.
Cold sweat beaded along my hairline and soaked my spine, causing my body to shake. The hands gripping the file folders shook so severely that the papers rustled.
PTSD... The paralyzing terror of enclosed spaces and the blinding fear of being locked away.
It was the festering, rotting scar carved into my mind from the storage room incident all those years ago. The nightmare that had hunted me for a decade.
I can't breathe... I have to get out...
I have to get out of here right now!
I tried desperately to draw in a deep breath.
I silently chanted to myself that it was fine, it was just a conference room. But my traitorous body refused to listen to logic.
My hand shot out, lunging for the doorknob, praying to tear it open and inhale just one lungful of fresh air.
Click!
The doorknob twisted from the outside. The heavy door swung open. Revealing Ren's towering figure stepping into the room.
His dark eyes swept the perimeter. Before he reached back, grasped the handle... and locked the door.
Clack! The sharp sound of the deadbolt sliding into place echoed in the dead silence.
It was the exact sound of the final, fragile thread of my sanity snapping.
A broken sob tore from my throat.
My legs gave out, sending me collapsing into a pathetic heap on the floor. The file folders slipped from my grasp, scattering classified documents everywhere.
Ren paused momentarily.
He leaned against the locked door, crossing his arms, staring down at my pathetic state with a dead gaze.
"What the hell is wrong with you now?"
"R... Ren... I... I can't breathe..." I thrashed, scrambling backward.
My hands clawed at my collar, desperately trying to rip off the tie and the leather choker.
But my fingers were trembling so badly I couldn't grip the fabric.
The horrific imagery of the past superimposed itself over my blurring vision.
The image of that storage room door sealed shut... The deafening sound of fists pounding against the wood...
And the agonizing screams of my best friend.
"Help... Somebody... Please help..."
I babbled incoherently like a shattered madman.
I pulled my knees tightly to my chest, rocking my shaking body back and forth in a futile attempt to soothe my fractured psyche.
Ren finally peeled himself away from the door.
He began to stalk toward me. Slowly. Agonizingly slowly. The heavy leather shoes of his struck the floor.
Tap... Tap... It sounded like the Grim Reaper strolling over to collect my soul.
He did not approach to offer comfort. He did not approach to ask if I was alright.
He stood towering over me, his massive shadow eclipsing the fluorescent light. He stared down at my agony with eyes dripping with disdain.
"Are you afraid?" He asked smoothly.
But the corner of his lips twitched, curling into a sadistic sneer.
"Afraid of a tight little room? Afraid of a locked door... is that it?"
He slowly crouched down.
His hand shot out, grabbing the collar of my shirt, yanking me upward until my tear-stained face met his gaze.
"Good..."
"Burn this exact feeling into your memory, Yurin."
"Memorize the terror of being 'locked away' and 'helpless'."
His pitch-black eyes blazed with a decade of festering hatred as he delivered his next sentence.
"Because this is exactly what I felt... on the day you abandoned me!!"
Instead of dragging me out of that suffocating hell...
He chose to enact the most devastating cruelty a human being could inflict.
Ren reached his long arm toward the wall panel right beside him. His fingers pressed firmly against the switch.
Flick! The harsh fluorescent lights instantly died. Plunging the windowless room into impenetrable darkness.
"Ahhhhh!! No!! Don't turn off the lights!!"
I shrieked at the top of my lungs in primal terror. My raw scream bounced off the soundproof walls of the cage. The pitch-black darkness felt alive. It crawled over my skin, constricting my lungs.
It felt as though hundreds of demonic hands were grabbing me, dragging me down into an endless, suffocating abyss. My sanity evaporated. There was not a trace of the original Yurin left behind.
"Sob... Ren... I'm sorry... I was wrong... Yurin was so wrong..."
I groveled blindly in the pitch-black void.
I scrambled forward like a blind animal, sweeping my hands across the floor until I collided with his legs.
Both of my arms wrapped around his calves, clinging to him with a death grip, as if he were the only floating log in a raging sea
"Turn the lights on, please... Sob... I'll do anything you want... Sob..."
Scalding tears streamed uncontrollably down my ruined face.
A suffocating silence dominated the room. The flow of time felt frozen. Until I felt the heavy weight of his palm resting upon the crown of my head.
He slowly stroked my sweat-drenched hair. The touch offered absolutely no warmth or gentleness.
"You will do anything... won't you?"
His dark, gravelly whisper echoed chillingly in the void. It brushed freezing cold against the shell of my ear.
"Y... Yes... Anything... Just turn on the lights... Please."
Flick! The fluorescent lights snapped back on.
I squeezed my swollen, crying eyes shut against the harsh glare.
Slowly, through the blurred curtain of my tears, I looked up, my consciousness hanging by a thread.
Ren was no longer standing above me.
He was sitting at the head of the long conference table, his long legs crossed. He looked like a tyrannical king gazing down at the lowest peasant in his kingdom.
He stared down at me—a broken creature groveling at his feet—with the triumphant gaze of a conqueror.
He lightly patted his own thigh twice. Pat! Pat!
"Then prove it."
"Get up here. And do your duty."
"Right now!"