Chapter 9: The Victor's Claim
The door clicked shut with a finality that echoed in the sudden silence. Miyoung’s fleeing footsteps faded, replaced by the frantic thud of Hyukjae’s heart against her ribs and the ragged sound of Donghae’s breathing. The air in the room felt charged, ionized by cruelty and desire.
Hyukjae lay perfectly still, the aftershocks of her climax still vibrating in her limbs. Donghae remained between her thighs, his forehead resting on her stomach. His skin was damp with her sweat and his own. The wet heat of his mouth on her was already cooling.
He lifted his head slowly.
In the dim light, his face was a mask. His jaw was tight, his eyes dark hollows. Her release glistened on his chin, on his lips. The sight was so profoundly obscene, so violently intimate, that Hyukjae felt a new kind of shame twist in her gut. It wasn’t shame for what they’d done. It was shame for the weapon he had made of it.
“You said…” she began, her voice a thin, frayed thread. “You told her…”
“I know what I said.” He pushed himself up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand in a gesture that was strangely dismissive. He stood, towering over her nakedness on the rumpled sheets. He didn’t look at her. He looked at the door, as if he could still see Miyoung’s shattered expression burned into the wood.
Hyukjae pulled her knees up, covering herself. The euphoria was gone, evaporated like mist. In its place was a cold, sinking reality. He had used her body as a cudgel. He had wielded her pleasure as a final, humiliating blow. And she had let him. More than that—she had chanted her love like a battle cry, giving him the perfect ammunition.
“Get up,” he said, his voice toneless. “Get dressed.”
“Why?” The word was a challenge, but it wavered.
“Because this isn’t over.” He finally looked at her, and his eyes were frighteningly empty. “She won’t just cry and run away. Not her. She’ll be on the phone to the team captain, to the coach, to anyone who’ll listen. She’ll call you a home-wrecker. She’ll say you drugged me. Again.” He laughed, a short, bitter sound. “She’ll be halfway convincing.”
Hyukjae scrambled off the bed, her legs unsteady. She snatched her silk robe from the floor, wrapping it tightly around herself. The fabric felt like a lie. “You’re the one who ended it with her. You have the texts. I have the photos of her and—”
“The photos you deleted,” he interrupted, turning to face her fully. “Right? You deleted them. Like I told you to.”
She froze. She had. In a giddy, foolish moment of solidarity after their second round of sex, she’d taken her phone and permanently erased the evidence. She’d wanted to prove she trusted him, that it was about them now, not about Miyoung’s betrayal. It had felt like a romantic gesture.
Now, it felt like stupidity.
“I thought…” she stammered.
“You didn’t think.” He began pacing, a caged animal in the opulent room. “You just feel. You just want. And now we have no proof. It’s her word against ours. And my word,” he stopped, pinching the bridge of his nose, “my word just evaporated the moment she saw my face buried in your pussy.”
The crudeness was a slap. Hyukjae flinched. “Don’t call it that.”
“What should I call it, Hyukjae? The sacred vessel of your love?” He spun back to her, his composure cracking. “She saw you. She heard you. Everyone will hear about it. The quiet, reserved girlfriend walked in on the loud, loose cheerleader fucking her boyfriend’s brains out. How does that narrative sound to you?”
Tears welled hot and sudden in her eyes. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. The victory was supposed to be sweet, warm. This was ashes. “So what do we do?”
His phone buzzed on the nightstand, vibrating against the wood. Then again. And again. They both stared at it. The screen lit up, a cascade of notifications—KakaoTalk, Instagram tags, missed calls. The world was already intruding.
Donghae picked it up. His face, illuminated by the cold blue light, grew stonier with each swipe. “Team group chat. Kyuhyun. ‘Dude, what the hell is Miyoung talking about?’” He read aloud, his voice flat. “The coach. ‘See me first thing tomorrow.’” He looked up. “It’s starting.”
He threw the phone onto the bed. It bounced against the sheets. “We go on the offensive. Together. We say we’re in a relationship. That it started after I broke up with her. That she’s lying, hurt, trying to get revenge.”
“But… we weren’t. Not until tonight. You ended it with her an hour before you came here.”
“And you’ll swear it was days ago. You’ll look heartbroken that she’d make up such vile lies about you.” He stepped close to her, his hands gripping her shoulders. His touch was not gentle. It was imperative. “You’re good at acting. You’ve been acting for a year. So act now. For me. For this.”
She searched his face for any tenderness, any trace of the man who had whispered ‘you’re everything’ into her skin just minutes before. All she saw was strategy, and panic, and a simmering anger that had nowhere else to go. The ‘I love you’ she’d screamed felt like a bruise in her throat.
“You don’t love me,” she whispered, the truth dawning like a cold sunrise.
His grip tightened, then loosened. He looked away, his jaw working. “That doesn’t matter right now.”
It was the truest thing he’d said all night. It cleaved her in two. The physical ache between her legs was nothing compared to this sudden, internal wreckage.
His phone buzzed again, a relentless, angry insect. He ignored it. The energy in the room shifted, condensed. The panic and anger between them twisted, morphing back into a darker, more familiar current. He was still shirtless. Her robe had gaped open.
His gaze fell to the exposed skin of her chest, to the rapid flutter of her pulse in her throat. The fight was leaving him, replaced by a different, more consuming hunger. A need to reclaim the narrative, to dominate the chaos, to feel something other than this crashing dread.
“This is all we have,” he said, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. It wasn’t an apology. It was a diagnosis.
He pushed the robe off her shoulders. It slid down her arms and pooled at her feet. She stood shivering, not from cold. He backed her toward the bed until her knees hit the edge. She sat down, looking up at him, her eyes wide and wounded.
“Lie back.”
She did. The sheets were still damp, smelling of sex and salt. He undid his jeans, shoving them down just enough. He was hard again, a brutal, angry arousal. He didn’t bother with preliminaries. He didn’t kiss her. He positioned himself at her entrance, one hand pinning her hip to the mattress, the other bracing himself on the headboard.
He pushed inside.
It was a different kind of fucking. Not passionate, not vengeful, but utilitarian. Deep, rhythmic, purposeful strokes. He watched his own body disappear into hers with a fixed, almost clinical concentration. As if by occupying her, he could silence the outside world. As if he could fuck the consequences away.
She didn’t make a sound. She turned her head to the side, her cheek against the pillow, her eyes staring at the forgotten romance novel on the floor. The heroine’s promise—“I’d wait forever for you.”—seemed like a cruel joke.
His pace increased, his breathing growing ragged. This was for him. A release valve. She was simply the receptacle. He drove into her, his hips slamming against hers with a force that shook the frame. The wet, rhythmic sound was the only noise in the room.
“Look at me.” The command was guttural.
She turned her head back, meeting his eyes. They were dark, full of a turmoil she couldn’t name. Her own tears spilled over, tracking silently down her temples into her hair.
Seeing them seemed to fracture something in him. His thrusts lost their mechanical rhythm, becoming erratic, desperate. “God,” he choked out. “Hyukjae…” It was the first time he’d said her name since Miyoung left. It sounded like a curse and a prayer tangled together.
He buried his face in her neck, his movements becoming a frantic, shuddering race. She felt the exact moment his control snapped. He came with a low, broken groan, his body rigid above hers, pouring into her with a violence that felt like surrender.
He collapsed, his full weight crushing her into the mattress. He was breathing like he’d been drowning. After a long moment, he rolled off, lying on his back beside her, an arm thrown over his eyes.
They lay in the wreckage. The phone had finally stopped buzzing. The city’s lights continued their indifferent vigil outside.
“I’ll handle the coach,” he said to the ceiling, his voice hoarse. “You just… be ready. Smile. Look at me like you mean it.”
Hyukjae didn’t answer. She curled onto her side, away from him. The physical fullness inside her felt like a hollow echo. She had won him. She had exposed Miyoung. She had gotten everything she’d schemed for.
And as his breathing evened out into an exhausted sleep behind her, she understood with a clarity that cut deeper than any knife: she had never felt more alone. The battle was over. She was left holding the spoils, and they were colder and heavier than she ever could have imagined. The real war, the one for the man lying beside her, had just begun, and she had no idea how to fight it.