Chapter 04 - A Lesson in Power

Notes:

Warning: The male lead in this one is -not- a good person.

○

Su-Min glowered at the men standing in her way.

"Could you please move aside? I'm late for kendo practice," she said testily. Well, that was the usual excuse, of course. In reality, she'd been summoned for another round of fucking in the dojo by Min-Jung, where they'd dominate her worthless ex-boyfriend Ji-Ho like the beta male he was.

Except, standing before the doors of the dojo were two large, muscular men in pristine suits – men who looked like bodyguards that someone had torn straight from some manga. Even down to the pitch-black shades!

"I'm afraid not, miss," one of them replied curtly.

Su-Min's glare deepened and she was halfway tempted to threaten them with a beating from Min-Jung, when the doors to the dojo opened and out walked another man in a similar pristine suit, gently guiding out none other than Ji-Ho, who looked shell-shocked and was wearing a blanket of some sort around his shoulders.

So surprised was she by his sudden appearance that her anger evaporated for a moment as she exclaimed, "Ji-Ho?"

But her weak ex-boyfriend said nothing as he was led away by the muscular man. Only by following them with her gaze did she realize Ji-Ho was being led towards what seemed like a rather high-end stretch car. The kind that one wouldn't normally see in these parts.

But that beta cuck was beneath her consideration; what had gone on in the dojo?! Where was Min-Jung??

She whirled on the spot and again tried to move past the men, who staunchly barred her way. "Let me through!"

Neither men replied to her, seemingly unbothered by her attempts but unwilling to budge. The act infuriated her as it reminded her of the disparaging, judging looks people had shot her when news broke of her relationship with Min-Jung.

"My boyfriend—!"

"Oh, do shut up."

Neither men had spoken, and yet the commanding tone of the sudden voice made Su-Min comply, even as a shiver went down her spine. It'd been a normal phrase, and yet the iciness of the tone was such that she'd instinctively realized this was not a person used to being defied without consequence.

"Let her through."

The voice's command seemed to instill life in the two well-dressed giants before her and then calmly took one step to either side, forming a breach in their formation that allowed her to finally see the interior of the dojo. It was dark – darker than it should be, but as the source of her anger was removed, she began to notice a few things – like a particular stench she hadn't really paid any heed to previously.

Suddenly, she wanted to leave. Immediately. Whatever was inside was not good news.

And yet, even as her feet and body turned to do just that, the previously inert guards lashed out and grabbed her, preventing her from fleeing, and all but threw her into the dojo before blocking the way out again.

Su-Min cried out in pain as she hit the tatami roughly, her head bouncing once off of the surface before she slid to a halt.

Wait.

Slid?

Belatedly, Su-Min realized the side of her that had hit the ground felt wet, and even as she turned to push herself up, she felt that wetness cover her hands.

And then her vision adjusted and she threw up.

Covering her palms was copious amounts of blood – not coagulated blood, either, but fresh, liquid, and warm. Her clothes, similarly, and even the side of her face was covered in it. And as she looked back towards the entrance, she realized she'd been tossed into a pool of it.

What was this? What had happened?!

"Welcome to kendo class, Miss Su-Min," the silky voice greeted her from the darkness.

She heard a clap and, quite suddenly, the dojo lights were turned on – and she finally got a good look at what had happened.

Lying all around her were the bleeding bodies of people she recognized as either members of her kendo club or Min-Jung's gang of followers. All of them either had deep, disgusting cuts in their bodies or sported severe, bleeding facial injuries.

And standing above the collapsed body of Min-Jung was a man she'd never seen before, holding a very bloody shinai. If she had to describe him, she would've said he looked painfully average – nowhere near handsome like Min-Jung, but also not exactly ugly. A regular-looking man who sported the bloody shinai and blood-splattered kendo clothes he was wearing with a carelessness that chilled her to the bone.

Slowly, the man glanced around the room before settling his gaze on her as she sat there, rooted to her spot, terrified beyond belief.

"I'm afraid I may have gone a little too far in my admissions bout," he delivered his faux-apology with all the mock sincerity of an uncaring sociopath. "But then, I'm told that's the requirement for joining, no? A fight? First person to score a point wins?"

Su-Min whimpered at his words. It was almost word-for-word the terms of the arrangement she'd made with Min-Jung prior to understanding his superior worth as a man to her cuck of an ex-boyfriend.

"Sadly, they believed that I would fight fair and then challenged me to a gauntlet," the man continued insouciantly as he shouldered the bloody shinai and put a foot on Min-Jung's prone body. He then gave it a swift kick to turn it around, revealing to Su-Min the extent of his injuries.

Her lover was, fortunately, in one piece – but that may have actually been a cruel turn for him. Both of his arms had bone fragments piercing out of his skin, as did his legs. His nose had been visibly obliterated, becoming a mass of cartilage and blood and torn skin. His jaw was hanging oddly off to one side, indicating a broken, dislocated jaw. His left eye was so swollen she couldn't actually see his eye anymore, while the right one was such a battered mess she imagined he'd be lucky not to lose it.

"And then I got to this one," the man said as he kicked Min-Jung's body in the side, "and everyone was begging him to beat me. Claimed he would wreck me, I believe they said."

In a flash, the shouldered shinai came down and slammed into Min-Jung's gut, tip-first. To Su-Min's horror, her lover let out a sudden wail of pain the likes of which she'd never heard before. Even her own cries while he'd raped her didn't come close. It was the wail of a man who was utterly and decisively broken.

"So I broke him first."

The sadistic glee on the man's face as he stared down at the wailing student chilled Su-Min to the bone.

"W-Who are you?" Su-Min finally managed to ask as Min-Jung's wails rang still in her ears, even after he'd stopped.

The man shouldered the shinai and regarded her with a look of…contempt? Disdain?

No. She recognized what those looked like well enough. And this man was not staring at her with such emotions.

If anything, it felt like he saw right through her. Not metaphorically, but literally. As though she merited so little attention, so little care, that she was beneath his consideration. It made her feel small, worthless, judged…

Like an ant staring up at the sole of a human about to trample it.

She swallowed nervously before repeating her question. "W-Who are you?"

"I heard you the first time."

She squeaked in fear at the annoyed tone in his voice and quickly dipped her head to look down, fearing that further eye contact might be taken as a challenge.

"I suppose you might say I'm a passerby."

Su-Min slowly looked up to see the man nudging Min-Sung's unconscious body with his foot.

"P-Passerby?"

The man stopped and looked up at her with those dead, icy eyes. "That's what I said," he confirmed. "Are you hard of hearing? Or just stupid?"

She bit back a retort before bowing her head apologetically.

"I saw this one practically pulling the other kid into this dojo as we were driving by and I got curious," he carried on explaining insouciantly, but then her terror spiked after he walked around Min-Jung's body and towards her. "I figured – oh, another bully. How quaint."

He stopped before her and gazed down at her and while she was able to meet his eyes for a second, she quickly averted her gaze as she saw nothing but darkness and violence and cruelty staring back at her.

"But I was bored and in need of entertainment, so I figured I'd drop by and see what's what. Imagine my surprise at finding out all of this dojo's dirty little secrets," he said, and gently but firmly, she felt the bloodied tip of the shinai lift her chin up to look at him. "And the role you played in creating this little bacchanal."

The word was unfamiliar, but she could gather from context what he was talking about. He'd found out how Min-Jung and his buddies had subjugated the kendo club and turned it into their hangout and fuckpad, regularly bullying the members while their leader fucked her silly before her weak ex-boyfriend's eyes.

"It's all rather disgusting, and I would've been content with just having this place shut down and all of you thrown in juvenile detention for doing this sort of thing in a school, but then that fool over there," he removed the shinai to point to Min-Jung's body, "claimed being strong gave him the right."

He sighed. "And I so loathe these alpha-beta morons. So I wiped them all out."

"W-Why?" she asked. She gulped as the shinai was back beneath her chin and all but forced her to stand up. Only then did she realize this man was shorter than Min-Jung. Indeed, he was only about a head taller than her!

"To teach you all a valuable lesson about power, of course," the man told her with a cruel smile. "Power is not in one's physique. That's just brute strength. And that's the weakest form of power, for a broken bone can wipe out any strength you might have."

And just as she was about to say something, she felt her breathing constrict as the man's hand was clenched around her throat. She was barely able to gasp in surprise at the sudden loss of airflow before her hands were clawing at his arm, which held firm.

"And beauty fades with age. True power never fades," he lectured her as every neuron in her brain fired in horror, fear, and existential terror. This man was killing her! And he was doing so while lecturing her! "Power is me being able to stroll in here, Miss Su-Min, tell all of your little classmates and lover that if they move I will disappear all their loved ones, and practically kill every single person in here and do you know what consequences await me?" he asked.

She shook her head desperately as she continued to scratch and claw at his arm.

"None," he told her as he drew her near and gazed into her eyes. "I will walk out of here a free man. I will sleep in a bed whose worth alone probably costs more than your annual tuition at this fancy school. You could combine the medical bills of every person in here and it wouldn't be a drop in the value of my properties."

"Your lives are meaningless, Miss Su-Min," he continued casually as her face turned blue and her consciousness slowly faded. "Your dreams, your hopes, your loves…they mean nothing to people with true power."

And just as suddenly, he let go of her and Su-Min collapsed on the ground, panting and wheezing. And yet, for all the fear and terror she felt, she couldn't help but feel mildly turned on the way she'd felt turned on when Min-Jung had dominated her their first time together, when he'd raped her.

"S-Spare me, please!" she begged him, her face flushed and sweaty. "I…I'll be your woman!"

The man stared down at her blankly for a moment before snorting. "My woman?" he chortled. "Miss Su-Min…I wouldn't fuck you for all the money in the world."

And just as he ended his dismissal of her, the shinai lashed out and slammed into her left cheek, snapping her head to the side. The blinding pain she felt then was nothing like she'd ever felt before. She was used to it, of course – between her chosen sport and lover, she was used to pain.

But this was different. The pain Min-Jung inflicted on her was meant to arouse. The pain of kendo was meant to teach.

This was pain to hurt. To break. To shatter.

Already, she felt her jaw move out of position. Even trying to cry out in pain was agonizing.

"People like you, who bray about power and rights and alphas, are unworthy of attention, of love, of care, of compassion, or consideration," the man calmly told her as he walked up to her and suddenly, savagely, kicked her in the gut. She cried out again in pain – doubly so as her broken jaw made the mere act torturous. "You are parasites and monsters who feed upon the goodwill of others. You abandon your reason and logic in favour of mere carnal pleasures."

Her head snapped up as he pulled her hair upwards, forcing her to look into his eyes, tears streaming down her once-beautiful face. "You are less than human, a mere insect to be trod upon by your betters," he told her without an ounce of rage or hatred. It was as though he were addressing a blank wall.

As though she was not a person, but a mannequin to be beat upon.

And he treated her thusly, too. For the next fifteen minutes, the man waged a one-sided war on her, shattering bone and tearing ligaments as she was put through a hell she had never imagined was possible. And although she begged for the darkness to take her so she would be unable to feel any further pain, the man made sure to keep her awake – though how, she wasn't sure.

By the time he was done and left the premises, Su-Min lay there in a pool of her own blood and urine and excrement, her bowels and bladder having given up somewhere in the middle of the beating. The entire dojo, in fact, was now pungent with the smell of waste and blood and fear.

Even when the ambulances came and she considered denouncing her attacker, the mere thought of him and what he'd do to her if he found out and somehow got away with it kept her in terrified silence. Even after she was hospitalized and it soon became obvious to her that the man had gone a step further and spread word of what she'd done to her ex-boyfriend and kendo club at the behest of her lover, she refused to name him.

Even as her parents disowned her and Min-Jung refused to have anything to do with her – mostly due to him being similarly disowned, but also because every time he looked at her he'd scream in traumatized recollection of his own suffering – she refused to name him.

Even once she'd recovered enough to be discharged – the last kindness her parents had shown her – she refused to leverage her experience to get financing. Even after she spotted her tormentor one day, while she was scavenging for food near a fancy restaurant, she refused to act on it – instead screaming in terror and being forcefully ejected from the area for disturbing the peace.

She once tried to approach Ji-Ho, the only one to have escaped that day's events, but whatever her tormentor had done to him, he seemed to have completely moved on with his life. She watched him as he left school – her old, beloved school, where she'd once dreamed of graduating with honors and going to a good college – in the company of another girl.

For a moment, she'd been consumed with rage at the thought of Ji-Ho, of all people, escaping the terror and pain she'd been put through. She raged at the thought of him being happy!

But the day she decided to act on it, she saw him again.

Her tormentor.

Waiting for Ji-Ho outside the school and chatting with him like old friends. Her ex kept thanking him profusely and even, sickeningly, introduced the monster in human skin to his girlfriend.

Terror rooted her to the ground, the knife in her hands shaking like a leaf.

But never more so when, suddenly, her tunnel vision was obscured by a large, looming shadow.

Two men towered above her, their pristine suits triggering her trauma all over again.

"The boss would like a word, miss."

Oh.

So that's what he meant.

True power really wasn't about who had the better physique. Or bigger dick. Or more beautiful face.

It was the knowledge that she had never truly left his grasp. That he'd always been in control. That her life had ended on that day and she'd been too stupid to realize it.

This was true power.

And she was about to get another lesson in it.

◑◑◑◑◑◑◑◑

Review & Stones