CAR 33

Yan closed his eyes and spread his arms wide, as if the thin, metallic sound were a hymn. In the empty classroom, there were only him and Dennis. And this was the most plausible peace that Yan pursued.

“I’ll give you a chance.”

“…”

“Serve me.”

Dennis recalled the day he licked Quachi’s instep.

He had stomped on the young Dennis’s head until he finally burst something on his forehead. With his blood-soaked face, Dennis had licked Quachi’s shoe. The hard, disgusting sole was smeared here and there with mud and filth. Quachi had wiped it clean on Dennis’s tongue. Quachi from those days had commanded him in the same way as Yan.

To serve him.

“Goddamn Bonaparte can’t be your backer.”

Do you know why? Yan asked himself, pacing around the cabinet.

“That bastard is very fickle.”

“…”

“Therefore, the one you must reverently serve, licking up even his cum…”

“…uck.”

Yan moved closer to the cabinet. Dennis’s throat was completely hoarse.

“Fuck off.”

Yan, who had his hand on the cabinet, let out a long sigh. It wasn’t the answer he wanted. But this too served as a sufficient answer. Yan, who was looking down coldly at the key in his hand, approached the window. As he watched the footsteps move farther and farther away from the cabinet, Dennis suddenly felt the urge to urinate.

Yan threw the cabinet key out the window. The face that looked back at what would soon become Dennis’s coffin was terrifyingly cold.

There were countless classrooms and practice rooms in the main building.

The classrooms for stodgy education were located on the relatively higher floors, and the practice rooms and dining hall used by most of the dancers were further down. The top-floor classrooms that one had no reason to climb to after the morning routine was over.

Occasionally, an old cleaner would sweep the classrooms, but he was lazy and not meticulous. There was no way he would come all the way to the classroom at the very end. It would be a relief if he wasn’t startled by the sight of a firmly locked, shaking cabinet.

For that reason, Dennis was completely cut off from the outside world. Perhaps Yan had wanted this. Just as Dennis had sized up and observed Sami, who was in a worse position than himself, Yan too must have been watching Dennis for a very long time.

This confinement was a kind of declaration that he would no longer tolerate the parachute teacher who neither obeyed him, always acted stiffly, nor lent an ear easily.

Dennis gradually grew dull, like a sardine dying in salt.

‘I’ll give you a chance. Serve me.’

Yan’s voice kept echoing in his ears.

Would it have been better to comply with Yan? He always stirred Dennis up through someone else, without using his own hands. If Dennis had crawled between his legs like a dog from the start, he might have had to suck the dicks of the entire student body. At the end of his endurance, Yan would have finally dissected and displayed the battered Dennis…

Dennis let out a dry, feeble laugh without realizing it. He could just become the ghost of the cabinet, and just as Eric’s hallucination cursed Dennis, he too could torment Yan. After making that resolution, his situation no longer seemed terrible. Dennis, who leaned his head against the cabinet, laughed as if he had lost his mind.

The thing pacing outside the cabinet had no footsteps. It must be Eric. He was even humming, seeming to deeply wish for Dennis to kill himself, unable to overcome his panic. Now he was even clapping his hands as if to encourage the gradually dying Dennis.

Clap.

Clap.

Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.

Dennis suddenly tried fitting his thick tongue between his teeth. It wouldn’t be easy to sever the blunt piece of flesh in one go. Either die of dehydration in here, or die painfully by crushing his tongue with his front teeth…

What Quachi had taught Dennis as part of his education was how to commit suicide. If there was a tool, to slice his arm, and if he couldn’t even throw himself off a building, he personally pointed to the part of the tongue to bite with his leather-gloved hand, touching the root of Dennis’s tongue.

Even though Dennis mainly followed Quachi around, catering to the nobles, and disguised himself as a footman to eavesdrop on the servants’ affairs like a rat, so a grand suicide was not particularly necessary.

Dennis, who had decided to tear out his own tongue, adjusted his posture. He let Eric’s incessant clapping sound go in one ear and out the other and stared into the darkness pooled inside the cabinet.

His father, beaten to death below the wall, had hung on Quachi’s fence for over a fortnight. It was part of young Dennis’s daily routine to go and watch the blackened, dried-up groin and the body that was gradually becoming soft like filth.

Someone pissed on his father’s corpse. There were also those who spat. After they disappeared from the entrance of the fence, Dennis would pour clear wash water over his father’s body.

After being discovered by Quachi, he had to be locked in the closet for a full two days. When Dennis, released from the closet, headed for the fence, he could no longer see his father’s body.

Footsteps were heard.

It couldn’t be Eric. It was less frivolous than Yan. It wasn’t the sound of dress shoes either. Dennis, who had been about to bite his tongue, found himself listening to the noise from outside. The footsteps stopped right in front of his classroom.

Dennis was well acquainted with the swift stride that crossed the wooden floor cheerfully.

The leisurely pace as it approached the cabinet was infuriating. Since he was the type who didn’t usually make his presence known, it was impossible to tell where he was standing. It wasn’t even certain if it was ‘him’.

He looked down blankly at the cabinet, which was shorter than his height. He then closed the distance to the object in one go and spread his arms wide.

His long, splendidly defined arms wrapped around the cabinet. He was poised to lift and carry the cabinet at any moment. He, who held the gray, paint-peeled cabinet deeply, rested his cheek against a corner. Through a tiny gap, the other’s low breathing could be heard fully.

He shook the cabinet for a moment, as if to check if the thing inside was alive. The recoil made Dennis feel nauseous.

Soon, he took a step back from the cabinet and fiddled with the latch. There was a hole, but with no key, it was a structure that could not be opened. The man, who had been looking at it briefly, suddenly opened his mouth.

“You’ll have to step back.”

“…”

“Stay as close to the wall as you can.”

Dennis, without a word, pressed his back against the deepest part of the cabinet. He might kick the cabinet. Like Yan, he might add on various conditions, betting on Dennis’s life… They were different yet the same. Dennis, who held on to his fading consciousness with effort, stared at what he presumed was the front.

Soon, Dennis inhaled sharply at the noise that was sharp enough to cut his ears. Something blunt and sharp was striking the steel door. He reflexively covered his ears at the sound of metal being crushed.

As if tearing off the latch wasn’t enough, he crudely struck the hinges as well. A dull blade pounded all the corners of the cabinet until the rusted hinges crumbled. He then threw the blade to the floor and inserted the side of his hand into the gap between the door and the hinge. When he twisted open the door, which reeked of iron, with the strength of his arms, the other’s form was slowly revealed.

Dennis reflexively covered his eyes. The classroom was dark enough, but it was nothing compared to the inside of the narrow cabinet. It was also to hide his foolish expression. When Dennis removed his hands, he saw the body of the familiar man.

Vittorio, drenched in a stream of what could be sweat or water, was looking down at him, his hand on the cabinet. His chiseled face was shadowed, so besides his large features, his detailed expression could not be discerned. He stood blocking the entrance like an imposing statue.

“Found you.”

Even after the door was half-destroyed, Dennis could not easily crawl out of the space allotted to him. Vittorio, who was looking at the hesitating Dennis, swept his sweat-drenched bangs back.

He smelled twice as strong as usual. Dennis, who felt an urgent need to urinate due to his full bladder, finally staggered out of the cabinet.

“You’re in quite a state.”

Vittorio, who clicked his tongue, offered his arm as if doing a great favor. He had no intention whatsoever of relying on him, but because he had been crammed in a narrow space for a long time, he staggered as soon as he took a step. Dennis, who had shown an unwanted disgrace, bit his lip.

Vittorio, who firmly supported Dennis, was merely watching him. His clammy fingertips briefly traced down Dennis’s cool neck.

Dennis, who had been trapped in a sealed place all day, felt a strange fear now that all sides were open. It felt as if someone was watching them. His whole body trembled.

He had almost been trapped in there and died a disgraceful death from dehydration. The form of death that Dennis feared most was probably ‘neglect’.

Vittorio, who turned the limp Dennis, who looked as if he would collapse at any moment, this way and that, suddenly embraced him. As the hard chest supported him, Dennis naturally let the strength drain from his body. Dennis’s limbs, which had become entangled with him against his will, trembled.

It was the first time Vittorio had hugged him. Hadn’t he always pressed Dennis down, threatened him, looked down on him with an imperious gaze, pissed on him, or shoved his lower body at him first?

Now he held Dennis’s body fiercely, as if to control even his convulsive trembling. The force was so strong that his irritable chest felt like it would burst.

“You’re so pitifully frightened…”

“…”

“Why didn’t you call my name?”

It was a ridiculous question.

There was nothing more idiotic than Dennis calling out to him desperately. In the first place, wasn’t Vittorio the root of all evil, disaster, and origin? It was also after the regular performance that the subtle hostility had turned into contempt.

“I’m curious about what you saw inside the closet.”

Closet… Dennis, who had been mulling over his words absentmindedly, was visibly shaken. That place was buried deep inside Dennis, festering. It was strange that Vittorio mentioned a closet. Because the place Dennis had been trapped in until just now was a cabinet.

Vittorio’s gaze, as he looked down at Dennis’s rigid shoulders, was still calm.

“I mean, in the cabinet.”

He changed his words. Dennis squirmed. Regardless, Vittorio held Dennis in a deep embrace and did not let go. The tip of his foot briefly brushed against Dennis’s calf. He was now on the verge of suffocating from the excessive, entangling hug.

Dennis, who could no longer control his churning stomach, buried his head in Vittorio’s shoulder. He kept his mouth firmly shut, but there was no way to stop what had already surged up to his throat. Dennis, pale as a sheet, vomited at length on Vittorio’s shoulder.

As if unbothered by the fishy vomit drenching his shoulder, Vittorio’s large hand rubbed his back.

🩰

A dress shoe crudely invaded the space between the boy who had collapsed on the floor and the floor itself. The arrogant, leather-clad instep idly lifted the boy’s lower abdomen. The man clicked his tongue when the boy, who he had expected to flip over helplessly, held on quite well. For what it’s worth, this one’s a little bastard too…

The man with his back to the boy rummaged through a silver tray. The man, who had fished out a lime from the glass of fruit wine he had been drinking, approached the boy, holding it. Fermented juice flowed down the cheek of the boy who was crawling on the floor. The boy gradually twisted his body and tilted his head back.

‘Tongue.’

Following the man’s gruff voice, the boy on the floor also opened his mouth. A thick tongue, protruding from between his teeth, trembled. The man squeezed the lime in his hand.

The boy eagerly licked the bitter liquid that fell onto his mouth and philtrum. When the lime, wet and twisted in his grasp, fell, the boy caught it with his mouth. It was his ‘meal’ in three days.

The man, who placed his shoe on the cheek of the boy who was chewing on even the peel, murmured quietly.

‘You can talk now, can’t you?’

‘…’

‘About where your dog-like father hid the safe key.’

Before he could even finish chewing the salty lime, the man’s shoe struck the boy’s Adam’s apple. The boy, who had vomited up what he was chewing, gagged once more and rolled on the floor. The boy, who looked up fearfully at the shiny instep splattered with his nosebleed, shook his head.

He truly did not know. The man who was his father had not told him anything. Hadn’t he always muttered like a habit that with his death, this lucrative ‘business’ would also end?

Far from raising a successor, he was a father who had no great interest in his only blood relative. Because of such an irresponsible man, the boy had been suffering from beatings for a week.

‘You must say you don’t know, even if you do know, say you don’t, your head has gone completely empty so you don’t know anything, live as an idiot, I’m telling you to live as a fool, even if they skin you and throw you in boiling water, you endure it, this father of yours is not telling you anything, not informing you of anything, not giving you any hints, do you understand, if you understand, nod your head, don’t make a sound, it means don’t answer either, you stupid bastard, who do you take after to be so dull, but I still loved you, hey, open your eyes, listen to your father’s words to the end, what you have to do is, until the very end, say you don’t know anything, never answer, if you open your mouth, if you run your mouth, I’ll kill you even in death, do you understand, do you understand…’