Side Chapter: Ayumu

xxxxx

"Ayumu, you have a customer coming in 30 minutes from now." A man told me, leaning back behind the old marble counter as his brown eyes flicked through the pages of a sports magazine. He was tall and slender, with black hair that flowed halfway down his back. He wore a more formal style, black pants, a long-sleeved white shirt and a black blazer over it. The shirt was unbuttoned, leaving the white skin of his chest exposed.

"New one or a regular, Ryohei-san? - I asked, not out of curiosity, but to get an idea of what I should wear to welcome them.

"It's old man Kimura again, good luck." - Ryohei-san said, taking his eyes off the magazine for a moment and giving me a sympathetic look. I nodded at him and walked away, a grimace forming on my face.

Damn it, of all the possible customers, it had to be this fat, aggressive creep.

The bastard seems to have a huge obssession with me, as I'm the only girl he asks for every time he visits this brothel. I don't know if it's because he prefers women with short black hair or perhaps because I'm tougher than the other prostitutes available, having practiced martial arts for most of my life, which in turn makes me the only one who can withstand his twisted sexual desires involving physical aggression and, above all, strangulation.

Well, at least after a year of servicing this asshole, I know what's in store for me and how I should behave so that it all can end promptly.

Going through the corridors of the whorehouse, I exited the rear of the place, heading towards a two-storey annexe. The small building, just like my workplace, was poorly maintained, its paint not having been touched up for a long time and even having some broken windows. Thankfully, my room was on the first floor. The wooden stairs looked like they could break at any second. I felt sorry for Mrs. Kaede because she was the only one out of the three of us who lived on the second floor.

Entering the room, I had to dodge my bed to avoid hitting my knee. All the rooms in this complex were tiny, with barely enough space for us to move around freely. In a way, it resembled a large bird trapped in the wrong-sized cage. Apart from the bed and the closet next to it, there was no other furniture in the room.

Unlocking the closet, I crouched down and opened the last few drawers. I ended up choosing a piece of black lingerie to wear, not due to liking them, but because it was that fat bastard's favorite. I also picked up items such as handcuffs and a whip. As I finished collecting everything, my eyes went up to the inner part of the door. Two photos were hanging on it.

I stood up gingerly with all my belongings in hand and took a look at each picture. One of them was of when I won my first karate tournament. I was holding the trophy in my hands with a huge smile on my face, my mother was gently hugging me from behind with a happy look and my father was waving my medal in front of the camera, pointing at me with a funny expression.

A hollow smile cracked over my lips.

My parents... I really missed them. It's been a long time since I've had contact with either of them, I didn't see both anymore from the day I was kicked out of the house. The sheer hatred and dejection on their faces made it very clear to me that they would never want to see me again.

The only things I managed to grab before I was forcibly removed from the house were this photo of us and...

My attention turned to the other photograph, in which there was a blond boy next to me, his ocean-blue eyes staring at the camera while one of his arms was wrapped around my neck, drawing me to his chest and in the process, making me blush.

Hiroki-nii...

I brought a trembling hand up to the photo and touched it gently, running a finger over the young blond's figure.

That was a period when I was truly happy. I still had a family who loved me with all their might and a best friend who supported and protected me. That was his nature, Hiroki has always been a caring person and I don't doubt that if it were possible, he would go all the way to the depths of hell to help those he loves.

And what did I do to such a kind and protective boy?

I betrayed him for the sake of pleasure.

Looking back at how I lived my life after Kokujin's arrival, every decision I made was worse than the last.

I can't deny that I was attracted to Kokujin when I first met him, and I suppose that was partly because of my masochistic tendencies, which at that point were still new to me. The way his eyes roamed over every curve of my body and his aggressive, direct manner made me feel desired and aroused.

Apart from being bullied as a child, boys were never interested in me, treating me more as one of them than as someone of the opposite sex. Instead, it was always the girls with longer hair and who opted for more dainty hobbies rather than martial arts that caught their fancy. So when at long last a man who demonstrated that he felt something, even if only carnal, for me came along, a surge of longing welled up inside me and I simply couldn't resist.

That passion wasn't the only reason, of course. The feelings I'd been harboring for years for Hiroki-nii also had a hand in my choice. Ever since I heard that he had started dating Nao, my heart had broken.

I never showed this sadness in front of him because I knew it would make him worry for me, so I pretended everything was fine. But every time I saw them together, the pain in my chest kept mounting. That's why I thought that Kokujin's entry into my life might be my salvation, since I thought that with this man, I would be able to bury my feelings for my childhood friend and find a new love.

I was fully aware that our relationship was purely sexual, but I often thought that one day he would come to love me, and I was willing to do whatever he wanted to make that happen.

I complied with his every request during our sex sessions and, although I was outraged when he started asking me to say bad things about Hiroki, I never turned him down. Part of me knew it was a horrible thing to do, but another part of me constantly whispered that it was okay, that men liked to feel in power, not to mention that it was just a seasoning to spice up the sex. I began to consider these requests to denigrate Hiroki-nii to be normal, and over time, I even began to get turned on every time I insulted my friend.

I didn't know if it was because of the pleasant sensations that ran through my lower body every time Kokujin shoved his big, thick penis inside me, which fried my brain, or simply a way of venting all the discontent I felt about Hiroki-nii and Nao dating, maybe even the two of them put together. All I know is that after each sex session with him, the guilt I felt about saying such bad things gradually faded.

I interpreted that as a sign that my feelings for Hiroki-nii were dwindling, and that because Kokujin was occupying more and more of my mind, I was falling in love with him.

I faithfully believed this, so much so that even when I found him having wild sex with Nao in the PE equipment room and was ordered by him to go and do it alongside her, even though I was astonished, I didn't feel hatred or repulsion. Quite the opposite, I was excited and happy that he still wanted me even though he was fucking a girl as beautiful as Nao. In my mind, that was proof that even if he felt lust for another woman, Kokujin did love me.

I'd love to blame it all on youthful indiscretion, but that's not the case. At some point, on account of what I considered to be love for Kokujin, I began, like the others, to believe that Hiroki-nii was a pathetic person and that he should disappear from our lives so that we wouldn't have to deal with a dead weight like him. Instead of warning him about Nao's betrayal, and later his family, I just joined them. My feelings had really been distorted to a stage where I'm sure the old Ayumu would have felt horror and fear at what she would turn out to be.

When Hiroki-nii actually left and never came back, I didn't feel bad about it or anything, the love I felt for Kokujin had grown to such an extreme that he was the only one I really cared about. Kanoko and Kaede evidently echoed this sentiment. I thought Nao also felt like that and would be happy that Hiroki-nii was finally gone from our lives, but after he left, she changed radically. I didn't know the reason, but at first it was the decrease in the number of times she participated in our orgies, then it got to the point where she stopped any sexual interactions with us.

I wouldn't have been so weirded out if she'd only stopped having sex with me, Kanoko and Kaede-san. Yes, we had some fun sessions between girls and I'm sure we all enjoyed them, but at the end of the day it was just that, curiosity. With Kokujin, on the other hand, not only did we crave him physically, but we also had feelings for him, so I was shaken when she refused to even have sex with him.

As I was never actually close to Nao and frankly never liked her that much, I quickly put that aside and was filled with glee since from that moment onwards, I would have more time with Kokujin alongside Kaede-san and Kanoko, who were people I genuinely cared about.

We persisted with our almost daily sex routines, and although Kokujin and the others tried to convince Nao to come back, they never succeeded, which gave me relief.

As the years went by, my sexual encounters became progressively more... careless. Before, I made sure to take a pill so as not to get pregnant, but as I felt (or thought I felt) that Kokujin loved me to a greater and greater extent, just sex and the few dates we had every now and then were no longer enough.

I know that if anyone heard me at the time, even my 'sex sisters', they would have assumed I was going mental, but I believe that my love, or rather obsession and need for Kokujin had reached a level where I felt obliged to materialize our love, and what better way than with a child?

After mulling the idea over in my head for hours, I decided to stop taking the pill and the inescapable happened: I became pregnant.

I'd only found out about the pregnancy a few days before Hiroki-nii had sent that farewell DVD. Speaking of that DVD, when I saw that older, better-looking version of him, I felt a rush of hunger for him. Perhaps the feelings I imagined to be buried forever had resurfaced like a dim flame for just a moment, but I made a point of extinguishing it again, after all, the only man I had chosen to love was Kokujin. However, my insistence on that man brought me to my downfall.

On the very day I was working up the courage to tell him about our baby, the son of a bitch ended up selling me to this place without batting an eyelid, going far enough to send a damn video to my own parents so that they would disown me.

Well, he succeeded in fucking up my life.

I was a true moron, if I hadn't been so fixated on feeling validation through what I mistakenly considered love, maybe the child that once grew in my womb wouldn't have had to leave this world in such a cruel and inhuman way.

My stay in this place made me self-reflect on every decision I've made in my short life, and I regret each and every one of them. For many nights I created scenarios in my mind about the 'what ifs'.

What if I hadn't given in so easily to Kokujin? What if I had not been stupid enough to think that a despicable man like him would actually love me? What if I had warned Hiroki-nii about everything? What if I had supported him just as he had done for me when we were children? Would I have become Hiroki-nii's future girlfriend and we could have started a family together? With the way Hiroki-nii has always been, I'm sure he would've rejoiced at my pregnancy and done everything he could to provide a good life for the child.

I know these are scenarios that never had or would have any chance of happening, but in a odd sense, imagining all this helped me deal with my pain instead of heightening it, as it took me out of the reality I found myself in, at least for a few minutes.

I don't feel alive in this place, I just go about my days like a zombie, breathing but dead inside.

I wonder if one day I'll succeed in getting out of this dark cage and take flight into the blue sky. It may just be me trying to fool myself, but I wish with all my might, even though I know I don't deserve it and that I'm only reaping what I've sown, I pray for a glimmer of light to fall on me and illuminate my obscure life.

I really hope that in a near or even in the distant future, I can find Hiroki-nii to apologize. I know he will probably never forgive me, but I owe it to him for all the terrible things I and the others did.

But until all that happens, I'll have to carry on living like this and serving the clients of this filthy place against my will.

Closing the wardrobe door, I left

the room and went back to the brothel, unwillingly ready to start another day of hellish work.