Hoshitani Kaoru had originally assumed that, with Rika Kawasaki’s flamboyant personality and formidable wealth, she would take him to one of the most exclusive and luxurious hotels in Tokyo.
He imagined her flaunting her superiority with a glittering lobby and a suite costing hundreds of thousands per night, further crushing what little dignity he had left.
However, the result was far beyond his expectations.
After placing him in the passenger seat, Rika Kawasaki got into the driver’s seat but did not start the car right away.
Instead, she took out her mobile phone.
Her slender fingers swiped across the screen as if she were carefully searching for something.
A few minutes later, she seemed to have chosen her target.
A meaningful smile curved her lips, and then she started the engine.
The car passed through neon-lit streets, turning again and again, before finally stopping in front of a building that looked quite ordinary from the outside.
The sign was not eye-catching and even seemed somewhat outdated.
Yet the flickering purplish-red glow and the faintly visible heart-shaped patterns left no doubt about its nature.
This was a love hotel.
There was no need to ask how Hoshitani recognized it.
In the past, he and his girlfriend, Aina Saiten, had visited similar places a few times on anniversaries or on a whim.
Those memories had once been warm.
But now, standing in front of such a building with this yellow-haired woman beside him, he felt only an indescribable sense of shame and absurdity.
After parking the car, Rika Kawasaki half-dragged and half-pulled him inside, one arm tightly wrapped around his waist.
The posture looked less like lovers and more like a guard escorting a prisoner.
The scene of this tall, athletic blonde woman and the slender, soft-looking man with his head lowered walking into a love hotel glowing with ambiguous red light was silently captured by a camera with a telephoto lens from a car parked in the shadows not far away.
Neon City was already a society that valued privacy greatly.
Establishments like this, catering to special needs, took privacy protection to the extreme.
To spare guests the awkwardness of facing staff at check-in, such hotels almost all used self-service systems.
There were no staff at the front desk, only a cold machine.
In the dimly lit lobby on the first floor, the machine stood quietly.
The screen looped real photographs of different room types, each labeled with a price and a brief description.
Guests only needed to select a room they liked and pay.
The machine would automatically dispense a room card.
Then they could take the elevator directly to their room without interacting with anyone.
Held tightly in the yellow-haired woman’s arms, Hoshitani Kaoru’s gaze fell uncontrollably on the screen.
It had been just a casual glance.
But the moment he saw the room photos clearly, his entire body froze.
His pure, deer-like eyes widened instantly, a flash of disbelief flickering in their depths.
‘This hotel… it’s completely different from the ones Aina and I went to before…’
What shocked him was that the screen did not display standard, uniform hotel rooms.
Instead, the rooms had dramatically different and bizarre themes.
Some were arranged like dim classrooms, with suggestive drawings on the blackboard.
Some imitated prison cells with iron bars.
Others…
“Oh my, they even have a classroom theme.”
Rika Kawasaki clearly already knew about this hotel’s special features.
She might even have come specifically for them.
Leaning close to Hoshitani Kaoru’s ear, her warm breath brushing against it, she spoke with undisguised malice.
“Speaking of which, I’d really like to see you in a school uniform, Kaoru. A sailor suit? Or a fitted suit-style uniform? What do you think?”
“N-no…”
His voice trembled like a faint mosquito’s buzz, tinged with pleading.
“A normal… a normal room is fine…”
He was no longer an innocent boy untouched by experience.
But these overly explicit, roleplay-heavy themes were too stimulating for someone as simple and traditional as him.
He could not accept them at all.
But how could Rika Kawasaki let him off so easily?
The large hand resting against his abdomen began to move restlessly, sliding down along his waist with unmistakable implication before settling firmly against him through the fabric of his pants.
She lowered her head slightly, her lips almost touching his ear, her voice low and tempting.
“Don’t be like that. If you don’t like the classroom…”
Her other hand pointed at the still-scrolling photos on the screen, guiding his gaze.
“Let me see… oh, this train theme looks pretty good too.”
‘The train…’
Following her finger, his eyes landed on the photo introducing the train-themed room.
In the picture was a simulated train carriage interior: pale rose-colored long bench seats, silver strap hangers, tall windows.
In that instant, the unpleasant memory from that morning, the one he had desperately tried to forget, surged into his mind like a broken dam.
In the crowded subway car, a hand from nowhere, carrying an unsettling warmth, had groped him from behind through the thin fabric of his clothes.
The nausea, the fear, the helplessness still clung to his skin like something cold and sticky.
“N-no…”
His voice shook even more violently than before, and his face turned pale in an instant.
His body began trembling uncontrollably, the shudder starting from where Rika Kawasaki held him and spreading rapidly throughout his entire body.
Rika Kawasaki felt the sudden violent reaction of the small man in her arms.
A hint of surprise flashed in her gray eyes.
She raised an eyebrow slightly and looked down at his bloodless face.
Seeing the genuine, almost instinctive fear in his eyes, she formed a completely mistaken guess.
She did not know why his reaction was so intense.
But to her, the trembling and sudden pallor undoubtedly signified an unusually strong interest in this train theme.
Perhaps even a hidden preference he himself had never noticed.
“So you like this kind of thing, Kaoru.”
Her voice carried the excitement of sudden realization, as if she had discovered a new continent.
“No… no, that’s not it… really…”
Hoshitani Kaoru ran a hand through his hair in panic, his voice thick with tears.
He wanted to explain, to tell her the real reason, to make her understand that it was not liking but fear.
But he did not even know where to begin.
And he knew that even if he explained, this woman would only treat it as a more interesting toy.
No matter how he denied it or pleaded in a trembling voice, Rika Kawasaki remained unmoved.
She decisively selected the train theme room on the machine and paid swiftly.
With a soft sound, a room card popped out.
Taking the card, she wrapped an arm around his waist again and half-dragged him into the elevator.
The elevator doors closed slowly, cutting off everything outside.
When they reached the designated floor and the door opened, Rika Kawasaki looked around the room with keen interest.
The space was quite large and cleverly divided into two sections.
The half near the entrance resembled a normal hotel room, furnished with a large bed, a sofa set, a small coffee table, decorative paintings on the walls, and carpeted floors.
Everything looked perfectly ordinary.
But the other half was an entirely different world.
It was as if an actual train carriage had been moved directly into the room.
Up close, the materials and details were not identical to a real train, as it was only a constructed set.
But the layout of the carriage was almost the same as a real one.
The silver-gray carriage door was designed to slide open to both sides.
Hoshitani Kaoru reached out with trembling hands and gently pushed it open.
The first thing he saw was the rows of pale rose-colored long fabric seats on both sides of the carriage.
Above them, bright fluorescent lights emitted a slightly cold, stark white glow, illuminating everything inside with merciless clarity.
The light was cold and emotionless, like that of an interrogation room.
On both sides were tall windows that nearly covered the entire walls.
Through the clear glass, one could plainly see the other half of the room outside, where the bed and sofa were placed.
The design gave anyone inside the carriage the illusion of being displayed, of being watched.
And to enhance the realism, rows of silver strap hangers hung from the top of the carriage.
They dangled quietly there, reflecting cold metallic light under the white lamps, like silent promises waiting to be grasped.
“Well, Kaoru?”
Rika Kawasaki seemed very satisfied.
She looked around, excitement and anticipation flickering in her gray eyes.
She slowly licked her slightly dry lips and then turned her invasive gaze toward the stiff, motionless Hoshitani Kaoru.
“Let’s talk first about how we’re going to play our roles.”
Her voice carried undisguised pleasure at the thought of toying with her prey.
At this moment, as Hoshitani Kaoru stared at the familiar scene before him—the pale rose seats, the stark white lighting, the tall windows, the rows of cold strap hangers—
Everything was astonishingly similar to the environment of the subway carriage where he had experienced that nightmare that morning, as if it had been deliberately replicated.
His pupils contracted violently.
It felt as though an invisible hand had clenched his heart, stopping his blood from flowing.
His heart plunged instantly into a bottomless, icy abyss.
Premium Chapter
Login to buy access to this Chapter.