【Her · Bitch】
The afternoon we landed, the air was stifling, like a damp cotton quilt laid over everything. I had followed A into this city whose street names I could not even fully pronounce, and the hotel luggage was not yet unpacked when he was already rushing me to change — saying his four friends had booked dinner and were waiting to meet me. As I pulled the dress over my body, I stole a look at myself in the mirror: I knew what I had come here to do, A had told me long ago that this trip was not a vacation. Yet at the very moment of having to walk out the door, that little flicker of wishful thinking in me was still alive, as if only I smiled a bit more demurely, sat a bit more properly, tonight might stop at the dinner table. My hand was steady as I put on my lipstick, and that steadiness made me oddly proud, as if holding my hand steady meant holding something else steady too.
At the table the four men took turns serving me food and pouring me wine, their courtesy so excessive it carried a layer of something else beneath it — the kind of courtesy meant to keep the goods pleased before the inspection. I could not remember which of them was named what; while A introduced them I was only busy counting: one, two, three, four. Four. Plus A, five. That number kept rolling around in my head, heavier with every turn. One of them, sitting kitty-corner from me, smiled with unmoving eyes, only the corner of his mouth moving; I stared at him for two seconds then hurriedly bowed my head to sip my soup. The soup was too hot, hot enough to numb my tongue, but I found that little sting useful — it could drag me out of that number for a small while.
On the walk from the table to the room, A held my hand the whole way, held it very tight, like leading a thing afraid it might run off. Five of us crammed into the elevator, no one spoke, only the ding of the floor numbers ticking upward. I counted that sound, counted until it stopped, the door opened, and the corridor carpet swallowed every footstep. The instant we stepped inside I caught the cool of the room’s air conditioning, and a mingled smell of strange men — cigarettes and aftershave — that scent made everything I was to go through tonight suddenly concrete. From behind, A steadied my shoulders, turned me around, made me face that window straight on. He said: face the window, strip.
【A · Lover】
Before I brought her here I laid a lot of groundwork, so much of it that even I nearly believed my own line — I told her this was liberation, letting out the thing that had been pressed down inside her body, a gift only a man who truly doted on her would be willing to give. How much of that was true I could not even say myself, but I knew it worked on her. She is the type who says no with her mouth while her body is more honest than anyone’s; the first time I played the exposure game with her I saw right through this: she was afraid, yet within the shape of her fear there was arousal seeping out. This time I deliberately picked this room, the floor pressed low, the window facing the shopping street, people coming and going below, able to look up and see. This was the first dish I had prepared for her.
These four friends I had screened. It is not any random man I would be willing to hand her over to. In the circle that plays this, the rules are actually simple: no names left, no faces shot, everyone scatters afterward, no one knows anyone’s daytime self. What I wanted was exactly this clean strangeness. I stepped in, first turned her toward the window, then briskly undid my own shirt and pulled off my belt — I stripped for her to see, wanting her to know this was nothing, that taking off clothes was the lightest thing tonight. As I undressed I kept watching the back of her head, watching how her shoulders tensed, watching her fingers stall on the first button and not move. I know this pause all too well. This pause is the part of herself she has not yet handed over.
She stalled too long. I was still wondering whether to go over and give her a hand — or wait a bit longer, better to let her cross it herself. In that very second of hesitation, the man sitting kitty-corner from her, who had barely spoken all night, moved first. He walked over, raised his hand, and a slap landed on her face, crisp enough that the whole room went still for a beat. Something lurched in my chest, half of it not expecting him to be so fast, so hard, and the other half — I have to be honest — the other half was some kind of thing being lit. I did not stop it. I told myself, let her be a little afraid, she will be more obedient later; but I knew that was only a reason I had made up for myself. The real thing was that seeing her take that blow, the way she stood there stunned, I got hard.
【The Men · Group】
The four of us are all old acquaintances of A’s, each doing our own thing, no dealings between us in normal times — only a setup like this brings us together. A had sent her photos and a few rules in advance: no faces shot, no leaking, play is play, strangers by day. In the photo she kept her brows lowered and her eyes meek, the kind of newcomer you can tell at a glance has never truly let herself go — this type is the most interesting, ten times more fun than a veteran, because the shell on her is still there, and you get to watch with your own eyes as it is pried open bit by bit.
We followed them into the room and watched A turn her toward the window. The zipper of that dress of hers still had not been pulled down; her hands trembled so badly she could not even manage a single button. That kind of dawdling is the biggest killjoy — what our setup is about is order, is her understanding that from the moment she steps through that door, her body is no longer hers to negotiate. So when that slap came down, none of us found it surprising; if anything it spared the nonsense. After the crack she froze there, one hand covering her cheek, eyes wide open, that dazed look more of a rush than any moan — because it was real, the real she had not yet learned to disguise. The one who hit her stepped forward, pointed at the neon outside the window, his voice pressed low: strip, now. She was afraid of taking another, and her movements at once quickened. The shell — it started cracking from that very slap.
【Her · Bitch】
When that slap came down my head went blank. It did not hurt, or rather the hurt was covered over by something else — the blankness of being denied in front of everyone, of having the last layer of dignity peeled off. I covered my cheek, tears spun in my eyes but did not fall, I did not even dare look at A, afraid I would read off his face the fact that he had not shielded me from that blow. Yet the very second I thought I would burst into tears, I discovered my knees had gone soft, gone soft in the wrong direction — not wanting to flee, but wanting to kneel. That discovery alarmed me more than the slap.
He told me to strip, now. Afraid of taking another, my fingers moved on their own. The zipper slid from the nape all the way to the waist, cool air creeping in through the parting seam. As I peeled the dress off my shoulders, I was facing that window with no curtain drawn, the glass reflecting the outline of my half-naked self, reflecting the shadows of the four men behind me, and reflecting that shopping street outside that refused to sleep — neon flickering on and off, someone below passing under an umbrella, someone looking up. I knew that if anyone glanced twice, they could see what was happening on this floor. That thought should have made me so ashamed I wanted to find a crack in the ground to crawl into, but I looked down and the inside of my thighs was already stuck wet with a patch.
I wrapped my arms around to cover my chest, the last shred of instinct I could not quit. They did not laugh at me, only watched, and that watching made my skin burn. The world beyond the glass still ran on normally — red lights, green lights, umbrellas and footsteps, the glow of signboards — while on this side of the glass, I was stripping piece by piece down to nothing. The most absurd thing was that when I finally peeled off the last scrap of cloth and stood naked before that window, what rose in my heart was not begging for mercy but a question I did not dare admit: if someone downstairs really were looking up at me right now, what then? That question sent another surge of heat below, and I clamped my thighs together, but that only made the wet sound clearer. The night had only just begun, yet I had already lost.