Chapter 9: Dangerous Recording
The silence of the penthouse after Lisa left was a different creature than the silence of her old dorm. It was a quiet that felt earned, spacious and full of light. Nelissa stood in the center of the living area, the morning sun painting hot stripes on the polished floor. She wore the satin nightgown Lisa had given her, the fabric cool against her skin. She felt, for the first time in her life, like she was standing inside her own life, not just peering at it from the shadows.
She didn’t wait for Kang. She texted him a polite refusal, showered using Lisa’s bergamot products, and dressed in her own clothes—the tailored trousers and silk tank from yesterday, which felt like a uniform of her new, braver self. She took the subway to campus, a deliberate choice. She wanted to feel the ground beneath her feet.
Walking through the university gates was like entering a diorama of a past life. The same brick buildings, the same clusters of students, the same damp smell of old books and anxiety. But it had lost its power over her. The whispers, the glances—they were just background static now. She floated through it, insulated by the memory of Lisa’s breath on her neck, the feeling of her sleeping weight in her arms.
She was excited.
Her steps were light. She bought an overpriced latte from the campus cafe and didn’t flinch when the barista, a guy from her bio-chem class, did a double-take at her outfit. She just smiled. “Morning, Min-ho.”
He blinked, stupefied. “Nelissa? Hey. You look… different.”
“Feel different,” she said, and took her coffee.
She attended her lectures, not as a ghost, but as a student. She participated in a discussion on cellular regeneration, her voice clear and steady. A few people turned to look at the sound of it. She met their gazes, held them for a beat, then looked back at her notes. The old fear was gone, evaporated. What did their opinions matter, when Lisa Manoban had kissed the sweat from her temples?
After her last class, she headed to her dorm. It was a reluctant pilgrimage, a chore to be completed. She pushed open the familiar door to her shared suite. The main room smelled of instant noodles and lemon-scented cleaner.
Her roommate, Soo-jin, was on the couch, earbuds in, scrolling on her phone. She glanced up, did a cartoonish double-take, and pulled one bud out. “Holy shit. You’re alive.”
Nelissa offered a wry smile. “Barely.”
“Where have you been? It’s been, like, weeks. Your parents called here twice.” Soo-jin’s eyes scanned her, wide with appraisal. “And what is this? You look… expensive.”
“I’ve been staying with a friend,” Nelissa said, her voice casual. It was the truth, stripped of its nuclear core.
“Must be some friend.” Soo-jin grinned, a knowing look in her eyes that didn’t actually know anything. “Well, your mail’s on your desk. Mostly junk.”
Nelissa’s corner of the room was a shrine to her old self. The plain, oversized hoodies hung limply in the closet. The neutral-toned bedsheets were dull under the fluorescent light. It felt like examining the shed skin of a creature she no longer was.
She pulled her duffel bag from under the bed and began to pack. It was a quick, surgical process. Textbooks, a few essential pieces of software, her favorite sweatpants. She left the hoodies. She left the frumpy jeans. She was packing the person she used to be into a bag, ready to be stored away.
She was folding a sweater when her phone vibrated on the desk. The screen flashed: Mom.
A tiny fissure of unease opened in her chest. Her parents had been understanding, but distant, about her recent unexplained absences. A call now felt… specific.
She answered. “Hey, Mom.”
“Nelissa, honey. Are you on campus?” Her mother’s voice was calm, but there was a tightness underneath, a pulled thread of tension.
“Yeah, just at my dorm. Why?”
“Can you meet me? At the cafe across from the west gate? The one you like.”
“Now? Is everything okay? We can talk at home tonight.” Nelissa glanced at her half-packed bag, the city skyline visible through her small window, the skyline that contained Lisa’s penthouse.
“Please, honey. It’s important.” The tightness was more pronounced. “I’m already here.”
A cold drop of dread landed in Nelissa’s stomach. “Okay. I’ll be right there.”
She zipped her duffel, leaving it on the bed, a promise to return. Soo-jin gave her a little wave as she left. “See you never, fancy-pants!”
The walk to the cafe was short, but the warmth from the afternoon sun didn’t reach her. The cheerful clatter of the place felt abrasive as she pushed the door open. She spotted her mother immediately at a corner table. And next to her, her father.
Both of them. In the middle of a weekday. Her father, who never left the office before seven.
The dread solidified into a hard, cold lump.
She approached the table. They looked up, their smiles too bright, too forced. “Mom? Dad? What’s so urgent we couldn’t talk at home?” she asked, sliding into the chair across from them.
A waitress appeared and set down a steaming latte in front of Nelissa. Her usual order. The normalcy of it was somehow terrifying.
“We know you haven’t been home much lately,” her mother began, her hands wrapped around her own tea cup.
Nelissa managed a small smile, taking a sip of the too-hot coffee. It burned her tongue. “I’ve been busy.”
They just smiled back, a sad, sympathetic look that made her skin prickle. It was her father who spoke next, his voice the careful, measured tone he used for difficult business calls. “We have something serious to inform you, sweetheart.”
“What?” The word came out flat.
Her mother reached across the table, taking Nelissa’s hand. Her skin was cool. “Your grandfather… the doctors say it won’t be long now. A few months, perhaps.”
Nelissa’s heart clenched. She loved her grandfather, the gruff old man with his kind eyes. “I’ll visit him this weekend. I should have gone sooner—”
“It’s one of his final wishes,” her father interjected gently, but firmly. “He wants you to take over the company.”
Nelissa froze. The cafe’s ambient noise—the hiss of the espresso machine, the chatter of students—seemed to recede into a high-pitched hum. “What? Company? Take over his company?” She heard her own voice, too loud, too sharp. “Mom, Dad, I’m studying to be a doctor.”
“We know, honey. We’re sorry.” Her mother’s grip tightened, a desperate anchor. “It’s the family legacy. It’s what he built. He doesn’t trust anyone else with the core business. He wants blood at the helm.”
“But I’m not business blood,” Nelissa whispered, the fight draining out of her, replaced by a cold, sweeping dread. “I’m pre-med blood.”
“Maybe you could just take over for a few years,” her father offered, his expression pained. He was caught between his father’s wishes and his daughter’s dreams. “Just until we can find someone else, train them up properly. Stabilize things. Then you could… you could go back to your studies.”
Nelissa pulled her hand away from her mother’s. She looked out the window. Students laughed on the sidewalk, their futures a blank, open page. Taking over her grandfather’s company meant moving to Busan. It meant boardrooms instead of biology labs. It meant leaving Seoul.
It meant leaving Lisa.
The thought was a physical punch, knocking the air from her lungs.
“How soon?” she asked, her voice hollow.
Her mother’s answer was a whisper. “Three months, baby.”
Nelissa let out a huge sigh, a sound that carried the weight of a collapsing future. Three months. Ninety days. A tiny, cruel sliver of time.
She didn’t remember finishing the coffee. She didn’t remember saying goodbye to her parents, their promises of “we’ll figure it out” ringing hollow in her ears. She walked back to her dorm in a daze, collected her duffel bag, and took a taxi back to Lisa’s penthouse. The city blurred past the window, a beautiful thing she was being told she had to leave.
When she let herself into the penthouse, it was late afternoon. She moved through the rooms, mechanically unpacking her duffel into the empty drawers Lisa had cleared for her. She folded her clothes, stacked her textbooks on the sleek desk in the guest room—no, her room now. Each action felt like she was building a sandcastle too close to the tide.
The key turned in the lock just as she was placing her last sweater in the drawer.
Lisa burst in, a whirlwind of energy, dropping a gym bag by the door. She looked flushed, vibrant, alive. Her eyes found Nelissa immediately and lit up. “You’re here! You actually did it!”
Before Nelissa could say a word, Lisa crossed the room in quick strides, swept her up in a powerful hug, and spun her around once. Nelissa clung to her, burying her face in Lisa’s neck, inhaling the scent of her sweat and her perfume. The joy in Lisa’s touch was a searing contrast to the ice in her own veins.
Lisa set her down, holding her at arm’s length, her smile brilliant. “Look at you. Moving in. Making yourself at home.” She kissed her, a quick, happy peck on the lips. “I was thinking we could order that insanely spicy chicken you like. Celebrate.”
Nelissa’s heart hammered against her ribs. She looked into Lisa’s happy, expectant face, felt the warmth of her hands, and made a promise to herself, a solemn, silent vow. She would use these three months fully. For Lisa. She would pack a lifetime of feeling into these ninety days. She would love her with everything she had, without reservation, without the shadow of an ending.
She would not tell her. Not yet. She couldn’t bear to see that light in Lisa’s eyes dim, not now, not when it was shining just for her.
“Spicy chicken sounds perfect,” Nelissa said, forcing her own smile to reach her eyes. She wrapped her arms around Lisa’s waist, holding on tight, as if she could physically imprint this moment into her soul. “I’m really happy to be here.”
And she was. That was the cruelest part. She was happier than she’d ever been, standing on the edge of a cliff, with the most beautiful view in the world spread out before her, and a silent clock ticking down in her chest.
The spicy chicken arrived, and they ate on the floor of the living room, the city lights sprawling below them like a spilled necklace. Lisa talked with her mouth full, animated, about the producer’s meeting, about a new choreographer’s ridiculous demands. Nelissa watched the words tumble out, memorizing the shape of her lips, the way her hands cut the air. Every laugh was a treasure she tucked away. The silent clock in her chest ticked, measuring these crumbs of normalcy.
“You’re quiet,” Lisa said later, sucking chili oil from her thumb.
“Just happy,” Nelissa answered, and it was true, a true and slicing thing.
It was late when Lisa led her by the hand down a silent hallway to a door Nelissa hadn’t seen. “My sanctum,” Lisa said, punching a code into a keypad. The door hissed open. The home studio was a capsule of cool, controlled darkness, lit only by the soft blue glow of equipment LEDs and the city’s ambient light filtering through a floor-to-ceiling window. It smelled of synth ozone and aged leather from a single, low-slung vintage armchair.
Lisa, feeling sexy and utterly at home, was wearing a tiny shirt that barely covered her ass and a small bikini bra. The exposed strip of skin above her hips seemed to drink the blue light. Nelissa, in baggy Nike sweatpants and a Calvin Klein bra that lifted and framed her breasts, felt a different kind of naked under Lisa’s appreciative gaze.
She wandered to the main console, her fingers brushing the faders. “Do you work here a lot?”
“When I need to remember why I do any of it,” Lisa said, leaning against the doorframe. She watched Nelissa. “It’s just the sound. No one’s opinions. No cameras.”
Nelissa’s eyes found a framed photo on the wall, half-shadowed. It was a glossy, artistic shot of Lisa on a stage, but not a Blackpink stage. The aesthetic was raw, burlesque, vintage. “Crazy Horse,” Nelissa said, the words leaving her softly. “Paris. 2023.”
Lisa blinked, pushed off the doorframe. “You know about that?”
“I had tickets.” Nelissa didn’t turn around. She kept staring at the photo, at the version of Lisa she’d missed. “Front row. For the third night. My mom found the receipt. She sold them to her pharmacist’s nephew. Said it was ‘devil’s music.’” A hollow laugh escaped her. “I cried for a week.”
Silence stretched, filled only by the hum of a power supply. Then Lisa moved. She walked to the console, tapped a few commands on a sleek tablet. A hidden screen illuminated on the far wall. “Come here,” she said, her voice low.
Nelissa went. Lisa pulled her down into the deep leather chair, settling her between her thighs, Nelissa’s back to Lisa’s front. Lisa’s chin hooked over her shoulder. The video began to play.
It was not the polished, broadcast-ready footage. This was raw, handheld, from the wings. The music was a throbbing, primal pulse. And there was Lisa, but a Lisa unraveled. Her movements were liquid and deliberately crude, a study in effortless provocation. She interacted with the other dancers, with the crowd, but her focus kept returning to a tall, dark-haired man in the shadows, directing, his eyes sharp.
“Frederic,” Lisa murmured against Nelissa’s ear, as if reading her thought. “The artistic director.”
On screen, Lisa approached him, executed a slow, grinding turn that ended with her back against his chest, her head falling back as his hands briefly framed her hips before she spun away. The camera zoomed in on his face, on a look of pure, possessive appraisal.
Nelissa’s body went rigid. A hot, sourceless jealousy, thick and choking, flooded her throat. The clock in her chest didn’t just tick; it hammered.
The video’s energy was a live wire in the dark room. It crackled into the space between them, into the press of Lisa’s bikini-clad breasts against Nelissa’s back, into the heat building where their bodies met. Nelissa felt herself hardening, the fabric of her sweatpants becoming strained and uncomfortable. Lisa shifted, a minute roll of her hips, and a soft gasp caught in Nelissa’s throat.
It happened quickly then. A synergy of simmering jealousy and the raw, visual catalyst on the screen. Lisa’s hands slid from Nelissa’s shoulders down to her waist, and in one fluid, powerful motion, she pulled Nelissa up and turned her, then pushed her back down into the chair. Before Nelissa could process it, Lisa was straddling her lap, settling her weight directly onto the hard bulge in Nelissa’s sweats.
“Fuck,” Nelissa hissed, her hands automatically gripping Lisa’s bare hips.
On the screen, the Lisa of the past was arching under a spotlight. The Lisa of the present ground down, a slow, filthy rotation that made the leather creak. Nelissa’s mouth found the swell of Lisa’s breast above the bikini bra, her lips and tongue hot against the skin. Her hands tightened, urging the rhythm.
“Dance for me, Lisa,” Nelissa whispered, the words a ragged breath against Lisa’s ear.
Lisa’s grinding stuttered. She pulled back just enough to look down, her eyes glittering in the digital light. “You want me to dance like that?” The question was a challenge, a genuine uncertainty laced with heat.
Nelissa’s eyes flicked to the screen, to the man named Frederic watching her Lisa with hungry eyes. A dark, possessive certainty coiled in her gut. Her hand came up and smacked Lisa’s ass, a sharp, crisp sound that echoed the bass line from the video. Lisa jolted, a sharp moan punching out of her.
“No,” Nelissa said, her voice dropping, guttural. “At the show you danced for a man. That Frederic.” She spat the name. “Tonight I want you to dance for me.”
Lisa froze, her shock palpable in the sudden stillness of her body. “He was a business partner, Nelissa,” she said, but her hips began moving again, a slow, insistent grind against the rigid length beneath her.
Nelissa slapped her again, same spot, harder. The red imprint of her fingers would bloom later. “I don’t care. He watched you. I bet he thinks he could fuck you.”
Lisa moaned, her head falling forward, her forehead touching Nelissa’s. “He could never.”
Nelissa’s hand slid from Lisa’s hip, up her side, along her throat. Her fingers spread, a gentle, terrifying cradle around Lisa’s neck. She didn’t squeeze. She held. The claim of it was absolute. “Yeah, he couldn’t.” Nelissa’s thumb stroked the frantic pulse under Lisa’s jaw. “So dance for me. And he’s that pussy on my dick.”
A ragged sound, half-sob, half-laugh, escaped Lisa. It was surrender. It was permission.
She began to move. Not the grind from moments before, but something else. She rose up on her knees, her hands braced on Nelissa’s shoulders. In the blue glow, her body became a series of silhouetted contractions and releases, a private performance. She rolled her hips in a slow, undulating wave, then snapped them forward, a precise, needy punctuation. Every move was calculated, erotic, but her eyes were locked on Nelissa’s, the connection fiercely intimate.
Nelissa’s hands guided, commanded. They gripped her ass, spreading her, thumbs pressing dangerously close to her center, feeling the damp heat through the thin fabric of the tiny shorts. “Is this what he saw?” Nelissa growled. “This pretty cunt getting wet for an audience?”
“Yes,” Lisa panted, her rhythm breaking, becoming needier. “But it’s not… it wasn’t for him.”
“Prove it.”
Nelissa’s hands went to the waistband of Lisa’s shorts, yanking them down her thighs in one rough motion. Lisa helped, kicking them away. She was bare underneath. Nelissa didn’t bother with her own sweatpants, just shoved the waistband down enough to free herself, her cock springing hard and flushed between them.
She didn’t guide herself. She looked at Lisa, a silent, imperious command.
Lisa understood. Holding Nelissa’s gaze, she reached between her own legs, her fingers sliding through her wetness with a slick, audible sound. She coated Nelissa’s length, stroking once, twice, a filthy, loving caress. Then she positioned the head at her entrance and, with a shuddering exhale, sank down.
The fullness made her cry out, a sharp, unvarnished sound that dwarfed the music from the video. She took all of it, burying Nelissa to the hilt inside her, her internal walls clenching in a sudden, violent spasm. She stayed there, impaled, breathing hard, her eyelids fluttering.
“Dance,” Nelissa repeated, her voice a raw scrape.
Lisa began to move. It was a ride, deliberate and deep. She lifted herself almost entirely off, then dropped back down, taking Nelissa in a smooth, brutal plunge. The chair groaned with each impact. Nelissa’s hands were everywhere—kneading her breasts through the flimsy bra, digging into the muscles of her thighs, smacking the reddening flesh of her ass again to spur her on.
“You feel that?” Nelissa gritted out, her own control fraying as the tight, wet heat consumed her. “That’s mine. That’s my cock stretching you open. He ever think about that? He ever dream about how you’d feel?”
“No,” Lisa gasped, her movements becoming frantic, losing their choreographed precision, devolving into a desperate chase for friction. “Only you. Fuck, only you, Nelissa.”
Nelissa surged upward, meeting her thrust for thrust. The angle shifted, went deeper. Lisa’s pleas dissolved into broken, rhythmic whimpers. Nelissa could feel the telltale flutter beginning inside her, the tightening coil. She slid a hand between their sweat-slick bodies, her thumb finding Lisa’s clit, rubbing hard, quick circles.
“Come on his pussy,” Nelissa ordered, her mouth against Lisa’s ear. “But come for me.”
The command shattered her. Lisa’s body bowed, a silent scream on her lips as her orgasm ripped through her, a series of convulsive clenches that milked Nelissa relentlessly. The visual, the feel, the possessiveness of it all tore Nelissa’s climax from her a second later. She held Lisa down, grinding up into her as she came, a guttural, uninhibited sound tearing from her throat as she emptied herself deep inside Lisa’s clutching heat.
They collapsed together into the leather, a tangled, breathing mess. The video had ended, leaving the room in silence save for their ragged breaths. Lisa lay boneless atop her, her face buried in Nelissa’s neck. Nelissa’s arms were locked around her, holding her as close as physically possible.
The clock ticked.
Lisa’s voice, when it came, was muffled, shattered. “How did you know about Frederic?”
Nelissa stared at the dark ceiling, her hand slowly stroking Lisa’s damp back. The jealousy was gone, replaced by a hollow, aching certainty. “I saw the way he looked at you.” She paused. “It was the way I used to look at you. When you were just a picture on a screen.”
Lisa was quiet for a long time. Then she whispered, “It’s not like that.”
“I know,” Nelissa said, and it was the truth.
But the other truth, the one about the three-month clock, sat heavy and unspoken on her tongue. She held Lisa tighter, committing the weight of her, the smell of her sex and sweat and perfume, to memory. The studio, in the aftermath, felt less like a sanctuary and more like a beautifully furnished cage.