“Even you?”
I choke out a laugh. “Fuck no. You don’t know who you’re talking to, pretty boy.”
“I know exactly who you are, Arakawa-san.”
That stops me for a second. Not because I’m surprised or scared—fuck that—but because I like hearing my name in his mouth. Cold and deep. No fear in it. No awe either.
“You’ve got a reputation,” he continues, and there’s something about the way his mouth barely moves when he talks that makes it feel like the air itself is saying the words.
He’s fucking strange, this one. Calm in the unnerving way only predators or corpses manage. Most people flinch when I smile. He doesn’t even blink when I bare my teeth.
“So what’s the point of this shit you do?” I ask, prowling across the room. “It looks like foreplay for freaks to me. You tie people up and… what, stare at them till they cry?”
“Sometimes.”
“You tie people up to get off, then? For kicks?”
“For connection.”
“Bullshit,” I say with a laugh.
I turn back to him and he’s watching me with a weirdly curious expression.
“You’re drunk,” he says simply. “Come back when you’re sober. Then I’ll show you.”
I scoff and go back to circling him again like.
“Oh come on. Don’t be like that. I’m curious now. You just… tie people because they want, right? They are masochists and stuff.”
“I tie them to reveal what they are beneath the skin.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
He sighs soft and patient, like I’m a child mispronouncing big words.
It pisses me off.
“It means that Kinbaku is not merely restraint. It is exposure. It’s an art of silence. A method of peeling. It demands trust. And precision.”
“Sounds boring.”
“You said you were curious.”
“Sure. What’s like for me, then? You tie me up and jerk me off?”
“No.”
“You tie me up and… what, beat me?”
“Also no.”
I stop pacing, square up in front of him. “Then what the fuck is the point?”
“Like I said: you surrender. You give your body to someone else. Entirely. Without demand. Without pleasure guaranteed. You stop fighting.”
I bark a laugh. “Stop fighting? You don’t know me.”
“No. But I recognize certain types. I know you’re terrified of silence.”
