Rika Kawasaki, in the end, still didn’t understand men well enough—or rather, she didn’t understand the complex rebound of human nature under extreme impact.
She couldn’t comprehend, nor could she overlap the current scene with what had happened just moments ago.
Just now, this man had been under her, his consciousness hazy, skin flushed with passion, those slender arms had, without awareness, almost dependently wrapped around her neck, responding to her demands with a clumsy and burning fervor.
Their breaths had mingled, their body heat pressed close, as if every inch of skin, every tremor, was telling of some primal submission and merging.
Yet now, those same hands pressed against her face with all their might, leaving a burning pain and an even deeper, ice-cold resolve.
Truthfully, given Kaoru Hoshitani’s current state, his limbs were as weak as if his bones had been extracted, his body so spent he seemed little more than a pool of melted snow, barely able to stand.
But on Rika Kawasaki’s sharply contoured, healthily tanned cheek, there was still the clear imprint of fingers, a persistent burn continuing to spread.
She didn’t erupt in anger right away; she didn’t, as usual, release an intimidating aura in the face of provocation.
She merely turned her head slightly, maintaining the posture from after being struck, and silently, unblinkingly, stared at him.
In those gray eyes—usually sharp or filled with aggression—a rare, dense confusion and incomprehension surfaced, as if she were scrutinizing a precise machine that had suddenly broken down beyond understanding.
“Bastard… may you die a horrible death!”
Kaoru Hoshitani’s voice was hoarse and shattered.
His eyes, usually as clear and moist as a young deer’s, were now swollen red, filled with bloodshot veins and overwhelming resentment, nailed fiercely to Rika Kawasaki’s face.
His gaze was so sharp it seemed it could pierce the skin, straight to the bone.
He clenched his teeth, each word squeezed out from between them, soaked in the bile-like bitterness and endless venom of his heart.
This was more than a curse—it was a shard of his soul, splintered in agony, laden with accusation against a world so unfair.
He hated so much.
He hated this absurd world, for producing someone as vile, domineering, and indifferent to others’ will as Rika Kawasaki—a calamity descending from nowhere.
He hated her for barging into his ordinary yet peaceful life, trampling everything he had carefully protected and dragging him into a filthy, muddy abyss with her inescapable force.
At the same time, that boiling hatred turned madly back on himself.
He hated his own unworthy body, hated its irresistible, ancient weakness and betrayal.
He hated that, during those long, humiliating hours, he had shamefully responded, even in moments of blurred consciousness, caught by the primal pleasure of his own body.
He hated himself for failing to protect his most precious chastity, like a delicate porcelain toy, played with and defiled at will.
That self-loathing twined around his heart like a poisoned vine, tightening with every second, suffocating him.
He even… couldn’t control the sharp flicker of resentment aimed at Aina Saiten, his girlfriend, who wasn’t even present and knew nothing.
He hated her for not noticing his abnormality sooner, for failing to satisfy the secret, unspoken cravings buried deep in his heart, and most of all, for not keeping the promise she once made—to “always protect him”—when he needed her protection most, when he was most desperate.
The very moment this thought surfaced, a deeper sense of guilt and self-reproach crashed over him, but Kaoru Hoshitani, whose mind was reeling under the trauma, couldn’t sort out the tangled chaos of his emotions at all.
Forced for the first time to face the cruel fact of “losing his chastity,” an endless tide of negativity broke loose from the darkest cracks of his heart, flooding and drowning everything in its path.
Shame, anger, despair, self-denial, hostility towards the world… so many feelings tangled together, burning his nerves.
If there were a knife within reach, he might have really plunged it into the chest of the woman who had ruined his life, then without hesitation ended his own, washing away the shame in the most extreme way or enacting a final, powerless revenge.
Yet reality was cold.
He was weak all over, unarmed, barely able to stand.
He knew he could do nothing now—not even perish together with her, that too was a luxury.
That sense of powerlessness destroyed him even more thoroughly than hate itself.
“Ugh—”
A broken, suppressed sob burst from his throat.
He suddenly clutched the edge of the Bath Towel wrapped around him—his last scrap of dignity—so hard his knuckles turned white.
With his other hand, he wiped haphazardly at the wet traces on his face, not knowing whether it was sweat or tears.
Then, barefoot, he stepped onto the cold, smooth hardwood floor, as if chased by a vengeful spirit, bolting out of the Second Bedroom without looking back.
It was already dusk; the corridor lights were off, leaving the space dim.
He staggered, steadying himself on the wall, barely avoiding a fall.
The staircase loomed ahead.
He all but threw himself forward, grabbing the cold wooden banister and stumbling down.
His bare feet slapped the stairs in a rapid, messy rhythm.
Chill and prickling pain stabbed at his soles, but he didn’t notice—he just wanted to move faster, faster, to escape this Villa that felt like a beast’s gaping maw, to flee the air saturated with that woman’s scent, to get away from the nightmare that had swallowed him whole.
When he finally reached the spacious yet suffocating Living Room on the first floor, and saw that heavy Door leading to the outside world, a feeble glimmer of hope sparked in his despair.
He lunged forward, trembling fingers reaching for the door handle—
“You go out like that, and guess what? Maybe someone’ll film you and upload the video online.”
Rika Kawasaki’s voice drifted down from the second floor—not loud, not even emotional, just cold, like a perfectly thrown ice pick, nailing Kaoru Hoshitani in place.
He froze, his hand hovering midair over the door handle, trembling.
Those chilling words were like the deadliest curse, yanking him back to the fear of reality.
Of course—he was only wearing a Bath Towel, hair disheveled, probably still bearing ambiguous marks on his skin.
If he rushed outside in broad daylight… what kind of stares, questions, or even lewd speculation would he draw?
What if someone really filmed it…
A cold dread worse than before crawled up his spine, making him shiver.
His impulse to flee was crushed by an even greater fear of social ruin.
But he didn’t give in.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he turned around and lifted his head, eyes locking onto the figure above on the second-floor landing.
Rika Kawasaki had somehow left the Second Bedroom and was now casually leaning against the dark, polished railing.
She was still unclothed, her athletic figure outlined by the dim upstairs light.
In Kaoru Hoshitani’s eyes, his hatred seemed to crystallize into poisoned arrows, shooting at her—if looks could kill, she would have been shredded a thousand times over.
The two stood in silent standoff: one below, wrapped in a Bath Towel, ragged and burning with hatred; one above, naked, poised, gaze complicated, looking down.
The air congealed.
Only the faint background noise of the City far off, and Kaoru Hoshitani’s own ragged, humiliated breathing, echoed in the silence.
A minute felt like a century, every second gnawing away at his tattered sanity and dignity.
Finally, it was Rika Kawasaki who broke the suffocating silence.
She seemed to sigh, very softly, almost inaudibly—a sigh tinged with a bit of impatience and… helplessness she herself hadn’t noticed.
She said nothing more, just turned away from the railing, her figure disappearing toward the Master Bedroom.
Soon, she reappeared, holding a neatly folded set of clothes—the very ones she’d bought for Kaoru Hoshitani yesterday.
She descended the stairs, her footsteps echoing clearly in the empty Villa.
She stopped in front of Kaoru Hoshitani, close enough for both to smell the same lingering bath scent on each other, and… a subtler trace left by the madness before.
The scene now was strange and ironic.
Just moments ago they’d been tangled on the bed, bodies and souls merged in the most intimate of ways.
Now, almost naked, they faced each other as if separated by a glacier.
Kaoru Hoshitani was covered only by that single, thin Bath Towel, revealing pale skin and delicate collarbones, still marked with fading red traces.
He trembled, whether from cold or emotion was unclear.
Rika Kawasaki, on the other hand, displayed her powerful, healthy body openly.
Her tanned skin glowed in the scattered light from the high window, a sharp contrast to Kaoru Hoshitani’s pallor.
Her gray eyes observed the man before her—his face, just recently flushed with passion, now only white with hatred, and the open, undisguised glare of someone staring at a mortal enemy.
Utterly inexperienced in romance, used to solving problems with force and direct action, Rika Kawasaki felt an unfamiliar, awkward stagnation for the first time.
She seemed about to speak; her lips moved, but no words emerged.
She hesitated, as if pushed by some unknown impulse, slowly raising her right hand, fingertips trembling, perhaps intending to wipe away the tears from Kaoru Hoshitani’s cold, tight face, or to smooth his furrowed brows.
The motion was stiff, uncertain—a faint attempt at comfort.
Yet before she could touch him, Kaoru Hoshitani slapped her hand away with all his strength.
“Don’t touch me!”
Kaoru Hoshitani’s voice was sharp and broken, full of extreme disgust.
He shrank away from her as if dodging the dirtiest plague, then all but snatched the clothes from her hands.
Turning his back, he tore the Bath Towel from his body in a flustered, clumsy motion, letting it fall to the floor, and frantically struggled into the clothes.
The Shirt’s buttons kept missing their holes; the Pants’ zipper wouldn’t cooperate, every movement rushed, desperate to wrap himself up, teetering on the edge of collapse.
Finally dressed, if not neatly, he scrambled for his Shoes and shoved his feet into them without bothering to tie the laces.
Through it all, Rika Kawasaki stood there, silent, watching.
She made no move to stop him or speak again, the confusion in her gray eyes interlaced with deeper, murkier emotions.
She watched him finish, watched as he glared at her one last time with red, hate-filled eyes, as if branding her with an eternal curse.
Then Kaoru Hoshitani wrenched open the heavy Door.
The dim twilight swallowed his thin figure.
He staggered, and without a backward glance, dashed out, vanishing quickly among the garden greenery and the street beyond.
Bang.
The Door closed slowly behind him, making a deep, muffled sound, finally separating inside from outside.
The Villa fell once again into vast, suffocating silence.
Only the subtle scent in the air—a mix of passion and sweat—not yet dispersed, and the wrinkled, abandoned white Bath Towel on the floor, gave silent proof that all that had just happened was not a dream.
Rika Kawasaki remained standing where she was, her naked body by the shaft of light coming through the door crack, appearing strong and yet strangely… solitary.
She looked down at her hand—red where he had struck it—and looked up again at the tightly closed Door, a slight frown between her brows.
For the first time, her always decisive gray eyes showed a turmoil she herself could not name.
Through it all, she had not made a single sound to stop him…