真的只是想喝酒而已。

她說不上是個愛酒的人，酒喝下去，只圖放鬆一下；身體各處的疼痛輕點，腦袋沒那麼緊，就足夠了。自然，這樣的理由下，酒在哪裡喝都一樣，或許獨自在家喝更合她的口味；只是，反倒在人堆裡更落得清靜，酒精的作用更強一些。

既然如此，就沒有不找漂亮女人作伴的道理。

身體和腦袋都繃緊，不就是因為人的虛情假意嗎？明刀明槍的，倒是容易拆解，沒刺進骨髓便能搞定；虛情假意的，裡外不一的，讓人不得不處處猜度，步步為營。就像重量訓練，推的容易，拉的容易，懸在其中才累人；肌肉在無止境的緊繃中撕裂，腦袋也被無限的不確定性攪碎。

上會館找女人陪酒，明碼實價，不講感情，也不留手尾。

把一個陌生的女孩帶到酒店，一夜雲雨，自是出乎意料。倒沒說會帶來什麼可怕的後果，也沒有在心上徒添什麼壓力，只是讓她再次想起自己選擇獨身一人的理由，以及總讓她把其他女人的事扛上肩的弱點。

對任何女人，她總有過多的共情。

「我服侍得你不好。」

女孩伏在她胸前，聲音裡有那麼一點抖動；那嬌嗔裡，有難以察覺的一絲真情，卻被她聽到了。雙臂把女孩環抱著，掌心在其背上游移，她閉上雙眼，叫她不要再說。

單方面的卑微，她討厭極了；即便是在這種買賣裡。

「我還會見到你嗎？」

其實，對雙方都好的回應是「不」。不應該再見；見到，也該以陌生人的身份交集。

「你會想再見到我嗎？」

「為什麼不會？」

「是嗎？」

問的時候，她並沒有什麼潛台詞，也沒有什麼意圖；只是，大抵經驗使然，她問的每一道問題都顯得意有所指，也大概真的如此。

「我想再見你。」

女孩裸著身體走到桌前，從抽屜裡翻出紙筆，寫下一串數字，塞進女人那大衣的口袋裡。

上一次收到手寫的電話號碼，大抵已是學生時期的事，手提電話才剛普及的年代。那種帶青澀的浪漫，早被時代標上老土的標籤；在這簽名都已數碼化的年代，這般年紀的自己也沒想動筆寫什麼，年輕的女孩沒多想便做了。

她有點逼迫自己去相信，女孩這一舉動不過商業技倆；她的想要再見，不外乎是看在金錢份上。比她有錢的人多的是，會館裡出手更闊綽、能買更多服務的人不少；若能相見，多賺一點自然是好，不見，也不見得賺少很多。

她還是心有愧疚；只因對方說過想要再見。

等待是磨人的，無止境的等待更甚；那不是手頭上有什麼活就能避開的，心靈忍受折磨的能力總是讓人畏懼。

所謂共情，就是無法忽視這些情緒，即便它不發生在自己身上。

「我以為你會直接打電話給我。」

「怕姐妹知道我點你的名，會有意見？」

「怕。當然怕。」一如招待其他客人時那般，她摟著女人的手臂，整個人往她靠，頭枕在她肩上，「怕她們發現你的好，跟我搶。」

「原來你在會館裡是這樣說話的。」

她只輕哼一聲，沒有清楚回應。

有說，客人來會館就是要得到在外面的世界無法得到的、他們渴望已久的歡愉體驗；每一個回頭找你的客人，都在無聲告訴你，你有什麼做對了。而你需要抱持的渴望，便是繼續做對的事，讓他們繼續回來，大把大把的鈔票花在你身上。

所謂沉船，溺水的是坐船的人，沉的卻是整條船。

「會帶我出去嗎？」

「我有點想打邊爐。」

「你很怪。想要打邊爐的話怎麼不直接去了？」

「這個城市裡最不歡迎孤家寡人的地方，火鍋店一定是其一。」

「你沒聽過一人火鍋嗎？」

「那種東西不是真的打邊爐。」

「你對打邊爐還真有點要求。好像比喝酒、玩女人還要挑剔。」

「我不玩女人。」

說得輕描淡寫，不知怎的卻很重。

沒有多待在會館，也沒有去打邊爐，兩人直接去酒店開房。跟上回一樣，是高級的行政酒店，沒有什麼情色主題，自然沒有任何器具。這讓女孩一時茫然，彷彿兩人不過一起旅行，一天玩樂下來回到下榻的酒店休息而已。

她從沒想過會有這麼一天，自己會因為身邊沒有任何 SM 玩具而惆悵。

會館明文規定不接待玩 SM 的客人；即便這種條文並不容易監管實行。不論經驗，不論角色，這種玩意對買賣雙方的風險都高。她不想錯手把客人殺了，更不想死於殘虐的性愛裡；最擦邊的，也不過是被蒙著雙眼而已，足夠讓她驚恐了好些日子。

「在想什麼？」

泡澡過後穿著浴袍的女人側躺在沙發上，吃著外賣炸雞，喝著啤酒，看著愣著的女孩，拍了拍自己腿邊的位置。女孩坐了下來，在女人的引導下尷尬地躺到她懷裡，被那雙臂環著。

「不想洗澡嗎？」

「你……」女孩偷看女人一眼，及後又迴避起來，「……今晚想做嗎？」

「你怎麼總在想這個？」女人不禁笑了，「不會想好好泡個澡，喝幾杯？」

「然後呢？」

「然後……抱著睡覺？」

「你就只想這樣？」

「你不想？」

想嗎？

確實，性愛於她而言是工作多於享樂，當中根本沒有愛；或許肉體有快感，靈魂卻總落得空蕩，說不來滿足。到底不用出賣肉體便能輕鬆賺錢，還是在別人的發洩裡得到一絲快感比較划算，她說不上來。

她看著女人，一臉茫然。

「你是那種……」女孩想了想，嫵媚一笑，坐到女人大腿上，環著她的脖子，「……玩綑綁play 才有性慾的嗎？」

女人輕輕皺眉，瞇著眼，微笑看她。女孩愣了半秒，腦袋頓變空白，卻沒再猶豫半刻，俯下身吻她；吻得激烈，像是要把某些要從對方口中湧出的東西堵住，但像是要以此把自己的某些東西送過去。

「電話……」女人有點敵不過來，在間隙間擠出，「……線……」

商務酒店的房間裡，能用的東西原來不少；她鍾情的，竟是連名稱都有點歷史感的電話線。她否認那是什麼癖好，不過是長久以來皆唾手可得；只是，她總忘了它已逐漸變得罕見，畢竟她並不真的鍾情於此。

抱著睡時，確實迎來久違的滿足，卻分不清是因為這場激烈的性愛，還是單純因為……

「體溫。」

「因為暖？」

「冷。」女孩以為她冷了，急急把被子蓋至她脖子處，卻見對方閉著眼笑著，「體溫要低一些才會睡得好。兩個人赤裸抱著，熱力令身體以為過熱，血管擴張，體溫便降得更快些。」

「還有這些東西！」

「而且，」女人把女孩抱得再緊了些，「擁抱能促進愛情荷爾蒙分泌，對抗皮質醇，減低焦慮，且有助睡眠。」

「怎麼會把這麼浪漫的東西弄得像紀錄片？」

「因為我總失眠。」

沒多久，她便睡著了。

真的只是為了睡著而已。只是，這種不得已、無法單獨進行的睡眠，似乎矛盾得像世間所有事那般，難以割捨。

女孩親吻她的額頭，沒再想任何事。她知道，醒來時天必然還沒黑；卻不一定沒有好事。

She had really only wanted to drink.

She wouldn’t call herself a lover of alcohol, exactly— alcohol was just a way to take the edge off. To dull the pain radiating through her body, to loosen up her tight mind—that was enough. Naturally, with that reasoning, it didn’t matter where she drank; perhaps drinking alone at home would even have suited her better. But paradoxically, she found more peace amidst a crowd, where the alcohol’s effects felt stronger.

In that case, there was no reason not to have beautiful women for company.

Wasn’t all the tension in body and mind caused by people’s false affection? Direct attacks were easy enough to manage; you could see the blade coming, deflect it before it got in too deep. It was the ones performing false affection that wore you out — every interaction was about calculation, about defense with every step you took. It was like heavy lifting: the push was simple, the pull was simple, but being suspended in between was what exhausted you. Muscles tore under endless tension, and the mind was ground to pieces by infinite uncertainty.

Going to the hostess bar for company was transparently priced, no feelings involved, no lingering aftermath.

Taking a beautiful stranger to a hotel for a night of passion was, of course, completely unexpected. Not that it brought any terrible consequences, nor did it weigh heavily on her mind; it merely reminded her once again of the reason she chose to be alone, and the weakness that always made her shoulder other women’s burdens.

Too much empathy, for any woman, every time.

“I didn’t serve you well.”

The girl lay against her chest, her voice carrying the slightest tremor. Within that coquettish complaint was a trace of sincerity almost too faint to detect, yet she heard it. Wrapping both arms around the girl, her palms drifting over her back, she closed her eyes and whispered for her to stop talking.

One-sided groveling — she loathed it. Even in a transaction like this.

“Will I see you again?”

In truth, the answer that would be best for both of them was no. They should never meet again; if they did, they should cross paths as strangers.

“Do you want to see me again?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Is that so?”

When she asked, there was no underlying subtext, no hidden agenda; probably due to experience, every question she asked sounded as if it meant something more—and perhaps it really did.

“I want to see you again.”

The girl walked over to the desk naked, dug a pen and paper out of the drawer, scribbled down a string of numbers, and stuffed it into the pocket of the woman’s coat.

The last time she received a handwritten phone number was probably back in her student days, in the era when mobile phones had just become common. That sweet, dated awkwardness of it, earmarked by time as hopelessly old-fashioned; in this era where even signatures are digitized, someone her age wouldn’t even think of picking up a pen, but the young girl did it without a second thought.

She tried to force herself to believe it was only commerce—that the girl’s desire to see her was strictly about money, same as everything else. There were wealthier clients, clients who would spend far more. If they met again, a little extra was nice; if not, the loss wouldn’t cost much.

Still, guilt gripped her —all because the girl had asked to see her again.

Waiting was wearing; endless waiting even more so. It was not something that could be avoided by merely burying oneself in tasks. The mind’s capacity to endure torment was always daunting.

Empathy meant the inability to ignore these emotions, even when they did not belong to you.

“I thought you’d just call me directly.”

“Worried that the girls would have an issue with me requesting you specifically?”

“I would be worried. Of course.” As she did when receiving other clients, Momoka looped her arms around the woman’s arm, leaned her whole body against her, and rested her head on her shoulder. “Worried about them discovering how good you are and stealing you away from me.”

“So this is how you talk with your clients.”

Momoka just gave a soft hum, offering no clear response.

They said clients came to the club to get the pleasure they could not find in the outside world —the thrill they had long craved. Every client who returned for you was silently telling you that you had done something right. And the craving you needed to hold onto was the ambition to keep doing that right thing, ensuring they kept coming back to throw mountains of cash at you.

So-called sinking was not only the passenger drowning; the whole boat went down.

“Will you take me out?”

“I’m kind of craving hotpot.”

“You’re weird. If you wanted hotpot, why didn’t you just go straight there?”

“Of all the places in this city least welcoming to a lone wolf, hotpot restaurants must be among them.”

“Haven’t you heard of solo hotpot?”

“That sort of thing isn’t real hotpot.”

“You really are fussy about hotpot. Even more so than about drinking or playing around with women.”

“I don’t play around with women.”

She said it lightly, yet somehow it landed heavy.

They didn’t linger at the club, nor did they go get hotpot; the two headed straight to a hotel and checked in. Like last time, it was a high-end executive hotel, with no erotic theme, and naturally, no paraphernalia of any kind. This left Momoka momentarily at a loss, as if the two of them were simply travelling together and had returned to their hotel after a fun day out.

She never thought there’d come a day where she’d feel put out over not having any BDSM toys on hand.

The club had a clear policy against clients who wanted BDSM— not that such policies were easy to enforce. Regardless of experience or role, the risk ran both ways. She didn’t want to accidentally kill a client; and she certainly didn’t want to die in some brutal, sadistic sex either. The furthest she’d gone was a blindfold. That had been enough to unsettle her for weeks.

“What are you thinking about?”

Having finished her bath, the woman lay on her side on the sofa in a bathrobe, eating takeout fried chicken and drinking beer. Looking at the zoned-out girl, she patted the spot by her legs. The girl sat, letting herself be guided — a little awkwardly — to lie back against her, cradled within those surrounding arms.

“Don’t you want a bath?”

“Do you…” The girl stole a glance at the woman, then looked away again. “…want to tonight?”

“Why are you always thinking about that?” The woman could not help laughing. “Don’t you want to take a proper bath and have a few drinks?”

“And then?”

“And then... cuddle and sleep?”

“That’s all you want?”

“You don’t want to?”

Did she?

It was true that for her, sex was more work than pleasure, and there was no love in it at all. Perhaps the body found pleasure, but the soul always ended up hollow, never quite satisfied. Was it a better trade to earn an effortless living without having to sell her body, or to glean a sliver of pleasure from someone else’s release? She couldn’t tell.

She looked at the woman, utterly bewildered.

“Are you the type...” The girl thought for a moment, then gave a seductive smile, sitting on the woman’s lap and wrapping her arms around her neck. “...who only gets turned on by bondage?”

The woman furrowed her brow slightly, her eyes narrowing as she smiled up at her. The girl froze for half a second, her mind suddenly going blank, but she did not hesitate another moment. She bent down and kissed her fiercely, as if to block something that was about to surge from the other woman’s mouth, and also as if to pour something of her own into her through it.

“The telephone...” The woman, losing ground a little, managed to squeeze out between gasps, “...cord...”

It turned out there were quite a few things you could use in a business hotel room. What she favoured, astonishingly, was the telephone cord, whose very name already carried a sense of history. She denied it was any sort of fetish, claiming it was just something that had long been readily accessible; only, she always forgot how rare they were becoming, since she wasn’t actually obsessed with them.

While cuddling to sleep, she did indeed experience a long-lost sense of satisfaction, though she couldn’t tell if it was because of that intense sex, or simply because of...

“Body temperature.”

“Because it’s warm?”

“Cold.” The girl thought she was cold and hurriedly pulled the blanket up to her neck, only to see the woman smiling with her eyes closed. “You sleep better when your body temperature is a little lower. When two people hold each other naked, the heat makes the body think it is overheating; the blood vessels dilate, and body temperature drops faster.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Also,” the woman hugged the girl a little tighter, “hugging promotes the secretion of love hormones, fights off cortisol, reduces anxiety, and helps with sleep.”

“How can you make something so romantic sound like a documentary?”

“Because I’m a chronic insomniac.”

Before long, she fell asleep.

It really was just for the sake of falling asleep. Just then, this sleep that could not be done alone —born of a desperate necessity—seemed as contradictory as everything else in the world, and just as hard to part with.

The girl kissed her forehead and let her thoughts go quiet. She knew when they woke, it wouldn’t be dark yet. But that didn’t necessarily mean nothing good would come of it.

短篇小說｜束縛（下篇）Short Story | Bound: Part 2