I looked at her — not with hunger, not with pity, but with a calm seriousness that had settled into my bones over two years of darkness.
"Can you explain to me," I said slowly, "exactly what is going on?"
She did not meet my eyes at first. Her hands twisted in the fabric of her white robe. Then she spoke, her voice flat, as if she were reading from a script she had memorized long ago.
"This task is named Desire. The only way to survive the three months is to force yourself on me." She paused, her throat moving as she swallowed. "I am not going to tell you that I will not fight back. So if you try that, know that—"
"Cut the crap." My voice was sharp, but not angry. Tired. "I am not here for that. Anyway. Continue. Tell me exactly what is going on. Why did they have to... finish?"
She blinked, surprised by my interruption. Then she continued, her tone unchanged.
"If you do not comply with the task, you will be punished every night. And it is either you let yourself fall into desire, or you suffer. Every day, every night, a new type of torture. Most of the people break down after one and a half months."
"What about Jeffrey?" I asked. "The old man."
A strange sound escaped her — a short, dry laugh, devoid of humor. "Hah. You are asking about that old man? You really do not know anything about him. The old man is nothing."
I did not want to force the issue. I had only curiosity about him. But her answer unsettled me. Nothing? How could a man like Jeffrey be nothing? I let the question hang in the air, unanswered.
"So what happened last night will happen again tonight?" I said, more to myself than to her. "Oh my God."
Then I lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The stone was cracked, stained, ancient. And as I looked, the past came flooding back — not as a flood, but as a slow drip, like the water from the bag.
*The glimmer of the past.* The second chain that kept me grounded. My father.
That crazy man. The one who beat us until my brother lost an eye. The one who raged like a wild animal, who raped his own daughter. What kind of monster completely surrenders to desire? I thought about my brother, my family, my little sister. Right now, I did not know where she was. How she was doing. It had been years since I last saw them. I cut all relations after my father died — with all of them. And now I sat in the dark with a girl, thinking about them. What a pitiful thing.
---
I turned my head toward Wing. "Tell me," I said. "Do you have family?"
"No." Her answer was immediate, hollow. "I was orphaned before the war. And after the war... I became a sex slave."
"Do you have a dream?" I asked. "Something you want to do in the future? Something that keeps you waking up each morning?"
She did not answer. Her lips pressed together. Her eyes lost focus, staring at a point on the wall that only she could see. The word *dream* hung in the air between us, fragile as a moth.
She stayed silent. The whole day passed. We had no food — only water from the tap, which we drank in small, measured sips. The grey light from the small window shifted, grew weaker, turned golden for a brief moment, then faded. The darkness of night crept in, slow and patient, like a hunter who knows his prey has nowhere to run.
She had not spoken a single word since I asked about her dream. She simply sat on her bed, her knees drawn to her chest, her eyes fixed on nothing. I watched her in the growing dark. Her silhouette was small, fragile, a shadow among shadows.
And I thought: *This is what they take from you first. Not your body. Not your freedom. Your dreams. The ability to imagine a tomorrow that is different from today. They starve that part of you until it shrivels and dies. And then they call you broken.*
But she was not broken. Not yet. She had cried. She had spoken of her past. Somewhere beneath the numbness, a fire still smoldered. I had seen it.
---
The room was now completely dark. The only sound was the drip of water, steady as a heartbeat.
I closed my eyes and listened to the silence. It was not empty. It was filled with the weight of six years of her suffering, two years of mine, and the unspoken question that hung between us: *What is desire, really?*
Desire is not just the craving of the flesh. It is the tool of empires. The leash of tyrants. Gu wanted me to become an animal because animals are easy to control. Feed them, threaten them, give them a mate — and they will do anything. But a man who has mastered his desire? A man who can look at beauty and feel compassion instead of hunger? That man cannot be broken. That man is free.
I thought of the political systems I had studied before all of this. How every dictatorship, every regime of cruelty, uses the same formula: keep the people hungry, keep them afraid, and give them just enough pleasure to make them compliant. Desire is the chain they do not need to forge — because we forge it ourselves, link by link, every time we choose want over will.
Gu was not a devil. He was a politician. A master of the oldest game: divide, tempt, punish. And I was determined not to play.
I opened my eyes in the darkness. I could not see Wing, but I knew she was there.
"Tomorrow," I said softly, "I will teach you how to meditate. It helps."
She did not reply. But I heard her shift on her bed, the rustle of cloth, a small breath.
Then silence again.
And the water dripped.
---
And then, for the second time, the same thing happened.
The door opened. The three giants entered. Chains on my wrists. Dragged across stone, then wood. The wooden room. The wall. The whip.
*Strike.* Pain.
*Strike.* Silence.
*Strike.* I lost count. I lost myself.
The world faded. I thought: *This is goodbye. I think I am dead.*
Then nothing.