To Covet (GL) - Chapter 15

“Wanwan, Wanwan, do you want to play a game?”

“Wanwan, you’re so pretty. You can be the princess.”

“The princess was captured and locked up by the old witch. You have to wait for the brave prince to come and save you.”

They giggled as they picked up a piece of rope and tied it around my hands and feet.

I sat on the slide, watching them run away, hand in hand. I stood up to chase after them but forgot my hands and feet were tied. I fell straight to the ground, and the bright colors of the playground came into sharp focus before my eyes.

I opened my eyes, and I was still in my room, in my bed.

The faces of those children vanished from my memory, along with the entire event. The dream was gone. The only thing that remained was the image of me staring blankly at my rope-bound hands.

I don’t have a memory like that from my childhood. In fact, I have very few memories of playing with children my own age. My companions were the teachers who taught me various subjects like music and dance, and my mom, who was always busy but dedicated to keeping my schedule full.

I rolled over and lay on my back, trying to ease the numbness in my shoulder. I swung my hand and hit a stack of books on the bedside table.

Thump. They all slid onto the floor.

I had taken the bandage off before I went to sleep, and the bruised area was hit. The pain was so intense it felt like it was on fire.

Yu Keyi had put the medicine in the drawer while I was taking a shower. She had even folded a corner of the instructions and left it sticking out so I wouldn’t miss it.

When I came in, wiping my hair, I saw the storage cabinet with a little tongue sticking out.

The handwriting on the label was free and unrestrained, a stark contrast to Yu Keyi herself.

The medicine stuck to the cotton swabs, my fingers, my arm, and the gauze. I had to wrap it several times to make sure it wouldn’t stick to the blanket.

I don’t like sticky things, so I got up to wash my hands.

I looked at her slightly ajar door next to me. If she could help, it would be so much easier.

As I thought this, I instinctively walked toward the door, then quickly retreated.

My hair in the mirror was a bird’s nest. I bit the corner of the gauze and struggled to tie a knot.

The scene from the art studio came to life in my mind: the messy preliminary sketches, the broken charcoal pencils shaped like dead bodies, the pungent smell of turpentine from the storage room, mixed with the scents of wood varnish and paper ink.

I locked the door. The cramped space didn’t allow me to straighten my legs. The thick, gray frosted glass was the only source of light.

One end of the rope was held between my fingers, and the other was on my arm, wrapping around it again and again, hissing like a snake that could come alive at any moment.

Through the door, I could hear laughter from outside, so close I could measure it in inches.

I pressed myself against the wall, hiding my shadow. Fantasy and nervousness vied for a foothold.

Who am I now? A victim of kidnapping and imprisonment? A self-loathing person trying to commit suicide? Or just a servant obeying a voice in my mind? The rope got tighter and tighter, digging into my skin. I could hear a distinct crunching sound, as if it was being transmitted directly from my knuckles to my brain.

The pleasure and enjoyment I had imagined didn’t come. I tried to use struggling to awaken it. Time was passing, and my body was getting hot, but it wasn’t from pleasure; it was from anxiety and impatience. The crude pain in my hand told me to stop.

I shouldn’t be doing this, I told myself. Yu Zhouwan, you’ve already quit.

The art studio hallway was filled with art students in intensive training. I pulled my sleeve down and walked down the stairs, sticking close to the wall.

You must be crazy to do this in such a public place.

The cuffs of my shirt couldn’t be pulled tight, so I tried not to lift my hands too high while I was drawing.

“Expose.”

I scribbled a string of incomprehensible, messy letters and immediately crossed them out.

I remembered a post I used to secretly look at:

“When was the first time you tried being a sub or masochist?”

The charcoal pencil broke, leaving a prominent black dot on the gray plaster head.

“Wanwan, you don’t have to draw all the clutter next to the still life,” her eyes lingered on my work. “Like this rope, just draw a rough shape, or try to combine it with the object? I believe in you.”

…

“Wanwan, don’t you think the ropes on the model are beautiful?” another version of her said to me. “Look, the ropes leave special folds and shadows on the clothes.”

…

I stood in the empty art studio. Under the single projector light, I picked up the rope I had thrown in the corner. The black nylon threads were badly frayed, with white, broken spots everywhere.

It was originally just one of the props for the model’s pose. I put the rope on my legs, wrapped it around my knees and calves, and came back again, tightening it slightly to make it sink into my skin, becoming a piece of art trapped in a net.

…

“Feng Jia,” in the dazed confusion after a kiss, I held her hand that was trying to explore. “Please?”

“Can you… tie me up?”

Feng Jia’s eyes suddenly cleared. She looked at me in confusion but still did as I asked.

I lay there quietly, watching the ropes stack on my body one by one. I was completely restricted, like an animal waiting to be butchered on a cutting board.

It felt like something intangible wasn’t fulfilled. It was like a page in a book being turned by the wind, and it turned into a feather and floated away.

The troublesome passion and desire quickly returned to calm. The very thing I had yearned for became the biggest failure of our lovemaking.

“Wanwan,” Feng Jia said, cupping my face. “Is there something you’re not willing to tell me?”

I untied the ropes, returning from the cutting board to the bed.

“Why do you want to tie yourself up? Doesn’t it hurt?”

It wasn’t a sudden thing, I wanted to correct her. The hot desire in my body had already been extinguished. After a failed attempt, I chose to remain silent.

“No, it’s not what you think,” I said, sitting close to her. “I just wanted to try it.”

It was a long-planned action.

For Feng Jia, a student-teacher relationship was already against her moral principles. It was even more impossible to have a real sexual relationship with me during a significant phase of my life.

I could feel that Feng Jia had feelings for me. She unconditionally trusted my decisions. Even if our relationship had no future, she still confessed her love to me.

But I was hiding something from her. From the moment we officially decided to be together, I started to fantasize about touching the boundaries of my threshold under the conditions of sex and love.

Feng Jia put her arm around my shoulder to comfort me.

I had always loved the slow, methodical way she spoke, but at that moment, I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. I was overcome with a huge sense of shame, as if I had a psychological illness that made me obsessed with self-restraint.

“I can’t bear to see you get hurt,” she said, caressing the marks on my hands with great pity. “You have to stop tormenting yourself.”

My imagination was fading. Simple bondage couldn’t give me the pleasure of restraint. I was eager to try new methods, in crowded places, like the studio, with only a semi-transparent glass door separating me from others, risking being discovered at any moment.

Where Feng Jia couldn’t see, I would vengefully inflict a form of entertainment on myself—ropes that got tighter and tighter, a feeling of suffocation that got closer and closer to death, and a desire to be beaten and humiliated.

But this meant losing the honesty that should exist between partners.

I didn’t expect Feng Jia to go from a beginner to a qualified Dom for me. Her focus was on the beginning, not the process. She stubbornly believed that this kind of game was beyond what an underage person—although almost an adult—should bear, and she asked me to “end” it.

The day Feng Jia moved to her new home in the suburbs, I was supposed to help her move things in her car, but we had another fight. It was still about my one-sided “sexual death,” I didn’t want to use that term, since Feng Jia and I hadn’t actually had sex. I tried to find a more suitable way to describe it but couldn’t.

It was shameful for a rational person to admit to indulging in their desires.

She had now accepted that “abuse” was a normal form of sexual expression, but she still couldn’t understand why I was so obsessed with it. I should forget about these products of desire and focus on my studies.

In a fit of anger, I got out of the car and crouched down by the side of the road.

“If I had known this, I shouldn’t have confessed to you so early,” Feng Jia sighed, turning to go back inside. She truly had nothing else to say. “I don’t want to ruin your future.”

“What does one have to do with the other?”

If it’s not you, it could be someone else. An excessive thought came to mind.

“Yu Zhouwan, do you like begging people to abuse you that much?”

Feng Jia was angry, and her words were cold. She kissed me more violently than before.

After days of the silent treatment, she said she wanted to see me.

I told Feng Jia that she didn’t need to understand my motive; she just needed to give commands.

“Do you want to try it here?”

“Okay, let’s do it.” In the empty classroom, I stood on my toes and hooked her neck, kissing her. “Right here.”

“Yu Zhouwan, I’m sorry,” Feng Jia said, watching the girls run and jump away, then quickly turned back to comfort me. “I should have guided you properly. I didn’t do a good job.”

I felt an inexplicable anxiety, but it only remained on the surface.

Maybe I really should do as she said and learn to restrain myself.

If I could, I wish I had met Feng Jia before I awakened my dark habits. That way, I could have had a pure relationship with her and explored my psychological and physical feelings from scratch, instead of going in with a clear purpose, demanding things, and then arguing over our unequal needs when my demands went unmet.

On the day of the heavy rain, Feng Jia came to see me. I sat in the passenger seat, waiting for her to say something.

“I’m sorry, even though I know my apology is useless,” Feng Jia said, gripping the steering wheel. “I’m not a good partner.”

I turned my head and looked out the window. What had she done wrong? The inner turmoil and torture of a student-teacher relationship were more than enough for her.

“But, Wanwan,” Feng Jia said, stopping the windshield wipers. The reflections of the two of us on the car window were shattered. “I still want to tell you, whether you’re in a serious relationship or looking for a suitable… playmate, don’t easily give up control. It can be dangerous.”

“I can’t do that,” I said, opening the car door, trying to avoid facing her and thus avoid the problem.

“Wait a minute!” She was fumbling in her pocket for something.

“You’ve already done everything you can, Feng Jia. You don’t have to apologize,” I said, instantly soaked by the rain. “I told you I don’t like it that way. Give me some time. I’ll figure out what I really want. Let’s both calm down.”

I knew that a part of my body didn’t belong to me. It wandered outside of my consciousness, constantly expecting to be violently controlled and dominated. It did this when I squeezed the blanket tightly between my legs and when my fingers reached toward the already wet triangle of skin.

Even though my mind was screaming, “No.”

If only I could find a rope to tie me up from head to toe.

I hated myself, especially that night. That person’s face was clearly filled with disgust, and her actions were rough and insulting. She used a photo to threaten me into being her “plaything” without a hint of pity.

But I couldn’t grab her by the hair and throw her on the ground, yelling at her to get out.

This person and I shared half of the same blood, so she knew my weakness. She easily awakened the dormant thing inside me.

Yu Keyi. Ten years ago, it was just a strange name I heard spoken. Ten years later, she became the target of my hatred.

She followed me like a shadow and took humiliating photos of me.

I had no idea how many times Yu Keyi had been watching me from the shadows. Holding my water cup, I would imagine if she had ever pressed her lips against my lingering lip prints. Every time I sat down, I would wonder if a pair of eyes was watching me from the shadows. I felt a similar aura on us. I didn’t know if it was because we were living together or if she had secretly touched my clothes…

While hating her, I couldn’t help but wonder if she had a purpose for coming. Perhaps, it was precisely because she knew I couldn’t resist the temptation of “being commanded” that she was so bold as to set her trap.

I hadn’t thought about escaping the shadow. I started with the most basic form of bondage to reawaken the fictional dominator in my mind.

The bruises on my wrists told me that my fantasies could no longer satisfy me. So I sought her out again. I held out my wrist to her, telling her with my silent action, “Punish me. I took control of this body on my own.”

Even a single finger picking at my neck ribbon would stir the undercurrents in my body.
‘
The only Dom who could affect my threshold was a blood relative. The reality was absurd, but it was happening.

Admittedly, I don’t believe Yu Keyi has feelings for me, but I still can’t understand why she would willingly get herself involved in the whirlpool of incest, when one photo alone would be enough to destroy my entire life.

Unless she truly needed a “plaything.”

A “plaything,” not a “playmate,” because I had no right to say no.

Out of my submissive instincts, I wanted to grab her, but my ultimate goal wasn’t mutual control. It was to lure her deeper and deeper into the wrong river.

At least when she wants to throw away her plaything one day, she won’t be able to walk away scot-free without any psychological burden.

“I have to go downstairs soon,” I said. I couldn’t let her know my mind was in turmoil. I put my hand on the edge of the bed, trying to show closeness to Yu Keyi. “Mom and Dad could come up to look for me at any time.”

“Are you going down?” I asked, picking up the hem of my skirt. “Mom and Dad should be happy to see you here.”

Yu Keyi bit the last piece of dessert on the tray and waved her hand at me.

She was always so detached, as if it had nothing to do with her. After all, I didn’t give her any reason to come. I just told her that if she wanted to, I would be in this room. That was all.

The birthday banquet was similar to the ones my mom had taken me to before. The only difference was that this time, I was the main character. At the cost of my freedom, I gained some baseless attention. I followed my dad around the entire banquet hall, meeting dozens of strangers.

My parents whispered to me to just pretend to drink the alcohol in my hand and not actually drink it.

I still took a small sip when they weren’t looking. It was tasteless.

Time was passing by minute by minute. The sound of knives and forks clinking against plates became more frequent in the noisy conversation.

“Wanwan, you should eat something, too,” mom said, getting off the stage and putting her arm around my shoulder to lead me to the dining table. “Little birthday girl, get whatever you want to eat. Our darling has worked so hard tonight.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Then do you want to eat dinner, Wanwan? Dad can take you out to eat, or what kind of food from the hotel do you want? Just order anything you like.”

“I’m a little tired and want to go back and rest.”

“This… Dad had a little to drink just now. Xiaoya, why don’t you drive her home?”

“No need. I’ll just go up to the room and rest for a bit and wash my face, then I’ll come back down.”

I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my lie. No one else but Yu Keyi had ever said that about me.