By the time I turned six, the children had grown tired of the devil-hunting game. I no longer resisted, and my defeat had become easy and boring. So, they found new games. Worse games.

  "Be a pig, Prometheus!" they would shout, as I put my face in the mud. "Bark! We want to hear the dog bark!" And I would do it.

  I no longer ran away. I had surrendered. Humiliation became part of the air I breathed.

  At night, my sessions with Ikumi had also changed. Her words about "forging metal" and "fire" had disappeared. She became silent. The blows came coldly, with a mechanical rhythm, as if she were performing a routine, boring task.

  I hated this coldness.

  I longed for her old anger, because at least it was directed at me. It was real. But this silence told me I wasn't even worthy of her anger anymore. I was just something to be beaten before bedtime.

  One day, as they were forcing me to act like a pig again, something inside me snapped. A final spark of defiance. When their leader pushed me toward a muddy puddle, I stood up.

  I said in a quiet, hoarse voice, "I don't want to."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  They were shocked for a moment, then they burst out laughing. "Look! The devil is back! He's possessed the pig!" "Hunt the devil!"

  The beating began. But this time, I fought back. I bit, I kicked, I screamed with all my might. "I am Prometheus, the son of the devil! I swear I will never forgive you for as long as I live!"

  They laughed even harder as they crushed my small resistance.

  That night, I went to Ikumi's office, my body a new map of bruises and cuts.

  She looked at my condition and said with her usual coldness, "This is your fault for being weak. If you were strong, they wouldn't have dared to touch you."

  She raised the whip and began to strike. The same cold, methodical, empty blows.

  And right there, I broke. I couldn't stand this coldness anymore.

  "Mother..." I cried in a broken voice. "Go back to how you were! Hit me with feeling! Hate me! Do anything! Just don't be so cold like this!"

  She stopped.

  For the first time in years, I saw a different expression on her face. It was almost a smile. A strange look of twisted understanding.

  She went to an old drawer in her desk and took out the first leather whip, the one she had used on me in the beginning.

  She returned and stood before me.

  "Alright, Hong Min," she said in a quiet, frightening voice. "Do you love your mother?"

  I whispered, "Yes."

  The beating that followed was different. Every strike carried a strange charge. It wasn't anger; it wasn't coldness. It was... pleasure. I could feel her focus, her pleasure as she exerted absolute control, as she extracted the pain from me.

  It was a powerful feeling, terrifyingly intimate, and directed entirely at me. She was "enjoying" me.

  And as I fell into the spiral of pain, a single question, an innocent and horrific question, echoed in my head. 'This feeling... this focused attention... this pleasure... Is this what they call love?'