“Ugh!”
“Sara, are you okay? Mom will free you soon.”
What the heck does she mean by that—when, where, and how will she actually free me?
Well, she has to free me someday. She can’t keep me tied up forever. The real issue is what she’ll do after I’m free.
No, I can’t even guess what she’ll do before freeing me. That woman seemed to have some wicked thoughts concerning Sara’s body right now.
What kind of “mom” is she?
If she truly thought she was Mom, she wouldn’t even think of doing such things. No, she wouldn’t even dream of it.
I wriggled my body with all my might.
Thud! My body fell to the floor of the car. A heavy pain surged through my stomach. Right, thinking back, the back seat of the car often has that awkward bump in the middle. I must have hit my belly there.
“Sara!”
Choi Na-kyung shouted in panic. Her voice sounded genuinely worried.
…That voice sends chills down my spine.
Choi Na-kyung had been targeting Sara’s body from the very beginning. What was just a strong suspicion became a solid conviction after seeing the situation.
I’m not even sure why. Was she a pedophile who was full of wicked thoughts about Sara from the moment she first laid eyes on her, or did she originally approach Sara for money and ended up liking her?
“Sara, are you okay?”
No, I’m not okay at all.
Especially because of you.
Regardless, I fell to the floor, my body curling up and looking at the ground. Since my belly was resting slightly on the floor, I could just kneel and stand up again.
The problem was, I had no way to move from that position.
Both my legs and arms were tied up. If I could even move my knees a bit, I might have been able to lean forward and take a look, but right now, I felt like a bug. Thanks to Choi Na-kyung’s tight bindings, my every action was severely restricted.
“Sara!”
Choi Na-kyung kept shouting like that, but I surveyed my surroundings while holding on to my consciousness as best as I could.
What am I supposed to do now? How can I escape safely?
…Sara hasn’t gotten up yet. There was no response.
A few horrible possibilities popped into my mind, but I didn’t want to imagine any of them.
I shook my head vigorously, trying to force those thoughts away.
…This body must not get hurt.
And it absolutely must not be taken away by Choi Na-kyung.
Because this is Sara’s body.
My precious, Sara’s precious body.
I wanted Sara to live happily from now on.
So, I had been trying to cut ties with this woman all along.
Thud.
I rested my head against the driver’s seat.
“Sara!?”
Maybe because it was out of the range of the rearview mirror, Choi Na-kyung let out another scream.
Ignoring that voice, I groaned as I leaned my head back, forcing my body to twist. After several attempts, I was able to shift my body toward the door.
Next—
My mouth was gagged. My mouth was full of cloth, and naturally, that cloth was soaked with my saliva. Saliva dripped down from below my lips, but I didn’t mind it.
What I was hopeless about was the situation where I couldn’t use my mouth.
Of course, even without the gag, there wasn’t much I could do with just my mouth. If I opened the moving car door, it’d be curtains for me. Choi Na-kyung was flooring the gas. The winding mountain road was long, but there weren’t many cars around.
‘Not many’ means there were still some.
I immediately lowered my head.
I could see the button for rolling down the window right in front of me.
Turning my head sideways to press up as close to the door as possible, I lowered my head.
After several attempts, I managed to press the button with the gag in my mouth.
Whirr, the window began to roll down.
I quickly raised my head as the window went down, but before I could poke my head out, it promptly started rolling back up.
“Sara, it’s dangerous! You need to stay still until I let you down!”
“Ugh!”
I once more lowered my head to press the button. But again, before I could lift my body, Choi Na-kyung hit the button first, rolling the window up again.
This time, it went up before the window could even come down.
This routine repeated over and over. Choi Na-kyung was practically keeping her finger on the window-up button while driving, and I, unable to move freely, could not fight against her used-to-be-free-moving hand.
Thud.
Every action failed, and as I was searching for a way out, I bumped my head against the window.
Thud!
Then harder.
Of course, I didn’t think I could break the window by banging my head with Sara’s body. I didn’t even think Sara was strong enough for that, and above all, doing that would hurt Sara.
If my friends were here, they would all worry about me, but they would know I wasn’t genuinely trying to bash my head.
…But Choi Na-kyung sitting in front of me wasn’t one of them.
“Sara!?”
Choi Na-kyung’s neck briefly turned towards me before she quickly looked forward again.
She had that expression of not knowing what to do.
Alright then.
Thud!
I slammed my head against the window once more.
The sound was pretty loud. But I didn’t put all my strength into it, just in case it might actually break.
However, Choi Na-kyung, who didn’t know me… or rather, ‘didn’t know Sara,’ seemed to fail to grasp that this was all an act.
“Sara! No! Don’t do that!”
Is this body really that worrying?
She must have thought she had me in her grasp, having raised me so beautifully, but now she’s worried it might break?
If she thought I was that pretty,
If she thought I was that precious,
She could have taken better care of me.
She could have raised me with true love as a real mom without any strange thoughts.
I still couldn’t understand this person’s way of thinking.
I could grasp the sequence of events and even the reasons for such actions, but I just couldn’t understand ‘how’ she could do such a thing.
Thud!
Once more, my head hit the car window.
The speed of the scenery flowing past the window seemed to have slowed a bit.
Thud!
I banged my head against the window again and again.
I’m sorry, Sara. If I had been just a little smarter, I might have thought of a way that wouldn’t hurt.
Once more, as I tilted my head back to slam my head harder—
Eek—!
A dangerous noise came from the car.
“Ugh!”
Thud!
My head connected not with the window, but the back of the driver’s seat. The body I had just managed to lift tipped over, and I crashed to the floor of the car.
Thud, thud, my head repeatedly bumped against something.
Tears brimmed my eyes. It wasn’t just my head that hurt; the abrupt stop of the car rocked my body, causing me to bang into things everywhere. By the time I came to my senses, I was face-first wedged between the back of the driver’s seat and the car door, kneeling.
“…Why is everyone doing this to me…?”
I heard Choi Na-kyung muttering like that.
I groaned as I managed to rise. With no seatbelt on and being thrown around in the back seat of a speeding car, my shoulders were mercilessly slammed against things. In terms of sensation, it felt even more painful than hitting the window just a moment ago.
“Why! Is everyone! Doing this to me!”
Her scream was piercing, and I flinched.
Choi Na-kyung seemed to lash down on the steering wheel in frustration.
“…”
Then, suddenly, everything became quiet.
“…”
For a while, all that could be heard in the car was the heavy breathing of Choi Na-kyung and my own tense breaths.
…Ah, right.
I was underestimating Choi Na-kyung too much.
She was the one who looked at her own daughter as a sexual object, who even went as far as to kidnap me after knocking me out cold.
I already knew she wasn’t in her right mind.
The longer that silence stretched, the more my body trembled.
Right now, I couldn’t escape, nor could I protect my body.
“You said you loved me.”
“…”
Hearing those words gave me chills down my spine again.
Yes, Sara had repeatedly said she loved me in the past. She had called her “Mom,” saying there was no one precious to her except for her mom.
Choi Na-kyung smiled happily, seeing such a Sara.
But…
…That doesn’t mean that.
Eliminating everyone around her, turning them into mere objects, limiting her ability to communicate only to herself.
It was like she didn’t want to lose interest in even the celebrities she saw on the internet or TV. Controlling all information, not allowing anyone to contact anyone else carelessly.
Having left only herself as the one Sara could love.
Yet, Sara had already loved Choi Na-kyung before this.
“You said we would be together forever!”
Choi Na-kyung slammed her hands on the steering wheel again, and I jerked.
“You said you loved me, that you missed me, that you wanted to be together forever, that you didn’t want to leave! You even stopped calling me ‘Mom!’ But why, why now! Why now are you trying to leave me!?”
The last words of Choi Na-kyung, spoken in an eerily calm and quiet manner, sent a wave of terror through me.
