She flashed a bright smile and blew an air kiss. She raised her glass for a toast and moved it to her perfectly glossed lips, taking a sip from it. It was as if she had never been nervous. Silently, she breathed a sigh of relief. She had successfully played it off.

She watched as the faint gold of the vermouth spread through her martini glass. Like a splash of sunlight that hit a frozen pond.

* * *

“You deserve so many kisses. Kisses all over you. Chu.”

Byul shuddered at the wet sound.

“Mwah. There’s a kiss for good luck. Mwah. A kiss because I’m proud of you. Mwah. And a kiss because I love you.”

She felt her body sinking deeper into bed.

The sweet smell of vanilla and a hint of tobacco from the incense she’d burnt lingered at the tip of her nose. The sound of water dripping from the metal fountain in the center of the room echoed out, along with the male voice humming out of the speakers.

“Sleepy, darling? You look like you can’t keep your eyes open.”

Those words that she’d listened to thousands of time were like words of enchantment. Sure, YouTube was full of audios like these. “[M4A / M4F] Boyfriend Comforts You to Sleep.” “Boy Confesses Feeling for You While Doing XX (Oral sounds/ Kisses / Lip Sounds).” “[Spicy] Waking Up Tied to the Mafia Boss.” “Making Your Incubus Boy Whimper #binaural #forwomen #deepvoice.” There was an ocean’s worth of what was colloquially called “boyfriend ASMR” content, no matter what one’s type was. Any trope, any situation, any voice type.

But for her, it had to be this. It had to be him.

“It’s okay to sleep. I’ll take care of you while you do.”

She felt her consciousness slipping away. Veggie had deserted his own spa bed and crawled onto her bed, squeezing in between her arms. He licked her cheeks. She smiled, feeling his soft hair, warmth, and heartbeats.

“It’s okay, sweetie…”

Finally. Her life was back to normal.

* * *

The white wall rumbled and split open. Rotated open, to be exact. Byul walked out of the revolving door, that had been a wall mere moments ago, with Veggie in her arms.

After Kat’s surprise visit to Byul’s apartment the night of her car accident, which was months ago at this point, Byul had felt the need to be more surreptitious in protecting her guiltiest, dirtiest secret. She had a friend who owned some of the most viral speakeasy bars in Los Angeles, and they were the Sherlock Holmes of secret doors and passageways. Byul had gotten the contacts of the friend’s construction plugs and asked them to build a secret door to her hideout.

“What do you intend to use this for, miss? You’ll need a permit from the city if you want to make permanent changes, even if it’s a residential apartment.”

The lead constructor had said, flipping through his massive folder of paint swatches and wood samples for a permit document.

“I need a safe place to store archives of out-of-print books. And to read ones that haven’t been published that I signed NDA’s for. Please make sure it doesn’t allow any sunlight entry.”

Byul had answered with leisure, spinning a lie. She pointed to the mountainous stacks of books that were overflowing from each of the many bookshelves in the living room.

‘Being a book influencer does come in handy sometimes,’ she thought.

And it wasn’t all a lie. It was true above all that this room was her safe place. It’s just that in this spa room, instead of reading, she’d spend nights after nights listening to her boyfriend-cuddles-you-to-sleep ASMR. Her secret hideout, her oasis in the middle of the Sahara, her guilty pleasure room was now more private than ever. Even if anyone were to break into her apartment while she was away, it would be no easy feat finding the entry to this room.

Now that the construction had ended, Byul couldn’t help but be reminded of the reason she began this construction project. Of Kat, who had barged into Byul’s apartment all those months back.

“Where do you think Kat’s went, Veggie?”

Byul asked the Golden Retriever puppy in her arms. She hadn’t heard from her influencer friend since the night she lost Veggie in the rambunctious streets of Los Angeles and left her to die on the streets after a car accident. Byul assumed the shame was too big for Kat to show her face again after deserting her.

“Not that it’s any of our business, though.”

Sure, she could check Kat’s various social medias, but she simply didn’t feel the need to go out of her way. If the algorithm wasn’t pushing Kat’s posts to her, it meant she was no longer producing at the quality or with the trendiness she once was. Byul wasn’t one to hold a grudge, but also not one to hold onto a relationship that had faded away. Byul shrugged.

Putting Veggie back down on the floor, she ran her fingers down the wall along the closed revolving door’s seam. It masked perfectly into the wall when it was closed. With curious eyes open wide, Veggie sniffed down the slim line that only the most scrupulous could see. She tapped the button that read open on her app again, testing the door for the umpteenth time.

With a rumble, the wall opened into a half-circle again. At the sudden sound and movement, Veggie yelped and ran behind Byul’s legs.

“Arf! Arf! Grrrrr.”

Only after he was safely behind Byul did Veggie bark at the still, non-threatening door menacingly. Veggie was only ever this sassy and ferocious when he felt safe and comfortable. In other words, when he was in Byul’s space. Byul burst out laughing at her little baby.

* * *

Byul woke up in the middle of the night, parched. She was waking up more frequently throughout the night these days. The smallest sound disturbed her.

‘It must be stress,’ she thought, reaching to her bedside table for her cup of water. It was empty.

‘Ugh.’

She grumbled and got out of bed, slipping her feet into her black fur-trimmed indoor slippers. She grabbed her phone to check the time as she walked to the kitchen with the cup. 5:22AM. She wrinkled her brows, both at the brightness of her phone and at the awkward time. It was a bit too late to go back to sleep, but too early to wake up.

Refilling her water purifier, she scrolled through her notifications. She had uploaded a Twitch archive video of her VTuber, Hoshizora Martini, wearing a maid outfit on YouTube. She had lost a bet in an Apex collaboration stream with a fellow VTuber. “Lost” might be a facetious word, when she lost on purpose knowing the punishment of wearing a maid outfit would pull views.

Your video is doing numbers, the notification read. Byul let out a sigh of relief, putting a hand on her chest. A video with good performance made her day. A video with bad performance did the opposite.

She glanced over the comments adorning the video, strategically liking certain ones and responding to others.

The white lace is so hot. One comment read. I’ll wrap you up in it. Play with you til you scream you can’t.

Byul’s face was totally stern as she read it.

I put it on for you.

She replied, her face as stoic as ever.

Her eyes paused momentarily at another comment that read: Good job today. A simple comment, but one that she never minded getting. She noticed that their profile picture was of a Golden Retriever. As if enchanted, she clicked into their page to enlarge the photo.

It was a grownup Golden Retriever sporting a big smile. It had big, dinosaur paws and a luscious golden coat. A smile spread on her lips. She noticed the header was of the same dog, and that’s when she noticed the commenter’s username. Kuromitsu_33.

Kuromitsu. Where had she seen that name before?

Byul had top-tier memory and it wasn’t uncommon for her to remember certain things about her followers, especially if they were long-time fans. Even to someone who got thousands of likes, comments, subscribers, and followers every day, names and profile pictures eventually became familiar. She assumed it was another one of those familiarities that had taken space over time. She went back to scrolling through their page, admiring pictures of their Golden Retriever.

There was a picture of - presumably - the owner of the account hoisting up the doggo. It was captioned “Me and the chap Goldfish.”

“Pfft.”

She snickered out loud at the dog’s name. It had warmth in it.

“Goldfish? How silly.”

She gave him a nod of approval, as a fellow dog owner who had named their pet an odd name. Judging by how the owner in the picture needed both his arms to hold the dog up and the fact that the dog was covering his entire torso and face, this dog was a chubby one. Zooming into a portrait shot of the dog, she noticed that this Golden Retriever had the same diamond-shaped white spot on its forehead, just like Veggie.

“I wonder if Veggie will be this big one day?”

She asked herself, her voice raspy from just having woken up. She imagined her little Golden Retriever, not yet two years old, becoming bigger than half her body one day.

“He’d bark so much louder. And eat so much more.”

She said, half in a dreamy state.

“And poop so much more.”

She giggled. She tapped the “follow back” button.

To be continued...