The Unraveling of Nikki Kim

Author's note: This is a sequel to "The Breaking of Nikki Kim." I recommend reading that story first, but there's probably enough context in this one that it could be read as a standalone. I know my stories are on the longer side, but I try to invest in building tension and realism because I think it makes for a hotter payoff in the end. The girls in my stories don't just fuck at the drop of a hat because I don't just fuck at the drop of a hat. You need to earn it.

This story is purely fictional. As always, if you like these characters, then let me know in the comments and I'll consider writing a follow-up. Happy reading.

...

After my son Danny and I got back from Sydney, things ostensibly returned to normal, and I threw myself headlong into the daily cadences of our family's life. Cooking meals, driving Riley to baseball practice, taking care of Danny's myriad needs--all of these were welcome distractions from the inner turmoil that was roiling inside me.

But no matter what I was doing--whether it was making kimchi jjigae or ironing Steve's work clothes or watching one of Riley's baseball games--I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened in Sydney. What I'd done. What I'd let Johan do.

For the first few weeks back in LA, I felt like I was holding my breath, waiting for my sins to catch up with me.

The first huge relief came when I got my period. The one tiny mercy that Johan had granted me was that he hadn't insisted on cumming inside me, "settling" instead for spraying his gift all over my pretty Korean face. But even though Johan had pulled out, I'd let him fuck me without a condom, and I was terrified that he might have gotten me pregnant.

But even if I wasn't pregnant, I was still frightened that he might have given me some kind of STD. Johan had told me about all the other Asian girls he'd been with at college, the ones he'd supposedly fucked as part of some kind of misguided campaign to purge himself of his obsession with me. Given how forceful he'd been with me--how he'd sneered at my pleas for him to use a condom--I couldn't imagine that he'd been more careful or considerate with any of these college girls.

I knew that I needed to get myself screened, but the prospect of finding out--of having to tell Steve--scared the life out of me. So for more than two weeks, I made up excuses to Steve for why we couldn't have sex, buying time to see whether any symptoms would start to show. Finally, when it seemed like I was in the clear, I drove to a clinic 25 miles away, where they confirmed that I was STD free.

This was obviously an incredible weight off my shoulders, but on my drive home, I didn't feel as relieved as I'd expected. To the contrary, I felt a gnawing sense of guilt that wrapped around my heart, squeezing the air out of my lungs.

All my life, I've believed in karma. I almost think you have to in order to make it through each day. The world just feels so unfair so much of the time, and the systems of man so rarely seem to deliver real justice. So I've always believed that the Universe will rebalance the scales for us eventually, even if we never see it happen. Some would call this faith, but there are so many physical systems that move towards equilibrium, so why shouldn't fairness work the same way? It's not exactly scientific, but I believe that as the Universe moves towards entropy, it redistributes karma alongside matter and energy.

Usually, my belief in karma soothes me, helps me put things in perspective. But as I drove home from the clinic with a clean bill of health, it was making me completely rattled.

Because how could I get away with it? How could the worst thing I'd ever done go unpunished?

In that moment, I almost wished that Johan had given me an STD. Because then, I'd have to go home and confess to my husband what I'd done. I'd have to endure his wrath, to feel his contempt, to wear the crown of shame that I so richly deserved. That would be a punishment equal to my sin. That would be the karma I had coming for letting my son's best friend fuck me.

But instead, it seemed as if I had emerged unscathed.

I wasn't pregnant with Johan's child. I hadn't been infected by his promiscuity.

My body--my well-toned, well-tanned, big-breasted, Asian-wife body, which Johan had been so determined to claim as his own--was shockingly intact.

My conscience, however, was shattered with guilt.

On the one hand, it felt like I had to tell Steve what I'd done. That would be a real penance, to confess and repent simply because I knew what I'd done was wrong. As a Christian, it felt like that was the only ethical path forward.

But as a human, it felt incredibly selfish to inflict that kind of pain unnecessarily. What good would it do to tell him? How would it help Steve to know that his loving Asian wife had let a 19-year-old white boy debase her in ways that he never could? Who would benefit from this kind of awful truth? Who would even want to know?

The more I thought about it, the more sure I became that telling Steve would only compound my misdeeds. It would be selfish of me to unburden myself at his expense, to say nothing of what it might do to our sons, especially Danny. I resolved that my punishment would be to endure the weight of this secret, to carry it alone, and to let it be a reminder of the unspeakable debt that I owed to my family.

But no matter how morally I framed it to myself, the truth was that this secret was a reminder of more than just my debt to Steve. It also meant that Johan was never far from my mind.

He would sneak up on me several times per day, interrupting me as I tried going about my daily life, inserting himself into the routines that had once given me comfort and solace. I'd be in the kitchen, marinating galbi for dinner that evening, and suddenly I'd hear his voice in the back of my mind:

"You act like this a perfect little wife, but Nikki..."

Something about the sound of my name on his lips--the familiarity of how he said it, in his inimitable German-South African accent--made goosebumps form involuntarily on the back of my neck.

"You know you've got the body of the perfect Asian MILF slut, don't you?"

Even if I was alone, these words inside my mind would stop me in my tracks, make me turn around and check to see if anyone was there. To see if anyone else had heard what Johan had said to me. To see if anyone else had noticed my reaction.

Worse still were the moments when I heard my own voice echoing through my mind, speaking words that I couldn't fathom, repeating them over and over so I couldn't forget.

I'd be out for a run, a song playing in my AirPods, when suddenly a moan would drown out the sound of the music:

"YOU'RE--YOU'RE SO BIG, JOHAN!"

That couldn't be me. How could that be me?

"YOU'RE--YOU'RE--YOU'RE SO MUCH BIGGER!"

Run faster. Run harder.

"I'M A SLUT!"

Run from him. Run away.

"I'M YOUR SLUT!"

When these episodes happened, I would shake my head violently, trying to banish these voices to some lost and forgotten corner of my mind. But the neural pathways that Johan had burned inside my brain refused to go dark so easily.

The worst moments of all were at night. There, lying next to Steve, I would shut my eyes, desperate for the refuge of sleep. But instead of sweet dreams, a slideshow of nightmarish images played against my heavy, closed lids.

Johan, pulling his thick, uncut cock out of his running shorts...

"I was obsessed with you..."

Stroking himself, his proportions growing obscenely...

"I still am..."

Grabbing my blouse, ripping it open...

"I bet your husband would let me do this..."

Tossing me onto the bed, unbuttoning my jeans...

"You're the perfect Asian MILF, the perfect Asian hotwife..."

Pulling my jeans off, peeling down my underwear...

"And your husband knows it..."

Licking me... oh god, he's licking me... you need to stop him now... or he's going to--

My eyes would shoot open. I would glance at my husband, wondering if he could feel my heartbeat racing, if he could sense the tension inside my body.

Then, I would fold my hands on top of the covers, fearful of what they might do if I let them beneath the blankets, too ashamed to allow myself such a depraved indulgence as my husband slept peacefully beside me.

And then I would lie like that, completely still, hands folded, staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep or the light of morning, whichever came first.

After a few weeks of this, I got a prescription for Ambien, which finally helped me fall sleep.

If only it could have helped me to forget.

...

For several months, I tiptoed through life with a constant pressure in my chest. Although there was seemingly no physical evidence of what I'd done with Johan, I felt certain that somehow, the awful truth would find its way out.

I worried that I would slip up and say something that gave me away, or that Steve would notice that something was different about me. I tried to make sure I was doing everything exactly the way I'd always done it, watchful of any behavior that could be perceived as erratic.

Even getting a prescription for Ambien had made me nervous. What if Steve wanted to know why I was suddenly unable to sleep? What if he asked me about the thoughts that kept me up at night?

I'm not a good liar, and I knew that if he pressed me for answers, I wouldn't be able to conceal the truth. But Steve--sweet, decent, and trusting to a fault--never said a thing. So my secret stayed hidden, eating away at me from the inside out, haunting me with words and images that simply wouldn't recede.

I desperately needed to talk to someone about what had happened, but I knew that wasn't an option. This wasn't the kind of thing I could safely share with any of my friends, and therapy felt totally out of the question. Paying someone to talk about what I'd done--spending the money that Steve earned for our family so that I could process the fact that I'd cheated on him--seemed so breathtakingly selfish and indulgent that the thought alone made me nauseous. Not to mention the fact that if I suddenly started going to therapy, Steve would want to know why, and I wouldn't be able to hide it from him.

But there was one person in my life who I thought might be able to help me understand what I'd done, and that was my sister.

I described my sister briefly in my previous story, but I should probably go into a bit more detail.

Nina is older than me by two years. Aside from being a couple of inches taller than me, Nina and I have similar looks: long, silky hair and dark, almond eyes; an upturned, button nose and full, pouty lips; delicate cheekbones and a narrow, elfin chin. She has beautiful skin that seems to glow when she tans, slightly darker than my milk tea complexion.

Back before I got pregnant with Danny, with had almost the same body type: a slim build with a narrow waist and perky, well-proportioned breasts that sit high on her chest. Now, thanks to what Steve calls my "baby boob job," I'm much bustier than my sister, but she has what many Koreans consider to be an ideal female figure.

But aside from her silhouette, I'd say that I'm more Korean than my sister in most ways. Nina was always rebellious growing up, stubbornly defiant of my parents' expectations for her. She seemed intent on making sure everyone knew that she was American, so she eschewed anything that would mark her as seemingly foreign.

My mom tried to pack her lunches, but she wouldn't eat them, insisting that my parents give her money to buy lunch from the school cafeteria. When my parents refused, she started throwing her lunch in the trash, refusing to eat at all. Eventually, my parents gave in and started giving her money instead. I never knew if it was because they couldn't bear to see her starve, or if it was because they couldn't bear to see her throwing money in the trash.

Lunch was hardly her only battle with my parents. In middle school, Nina decided she didn't want to play the piano anymore, telling my parents she wanted to play volleyball instead. My parents, who had started her on piano lessons in kindergarten, were outraged, but Nina was immovable. Their standoff lasted for more than a year, but in 7th grade, my sister quit the orchestra and joined the volleyball team.

Growing up, I idolized Nina for many reasons, but one of them was her ability to go toe-to-toe with my parents and win. Unlike me, she didn't seem to fear them at all, and she wasn't cowed by their disappointment with her decisions. That fearlessness seemed unknowable to me, despite the fact that she was my sister.

But even if I admired Nina's capacity for doing things her own way, I didn't agree with all of her decisions, and some of them made me nervous on her behalf.

Back in high school, Nina was what Asians in LA call an "ABG," which stands for Asian Baby Girl. You can Google this subculture if you aren't familiar with it, but basically, an ABG usually refers to a second- or third-generation Asian American girl who outwardly flouts the notion that Asian women are supposed to be demure little porcelain dolls defined by deference and filial piety.

When I was in high school, I helped out at my parents' noodle shop, which is what they expected of us both. But instead, Nina got a job waitressing at a TGI Friday's, justifying this decision to my Dad by showing him how much more money she was able to make in tips. But although they couldn't argue with the fact that she making more money, they disapproved of basically everything she was spending it on.

She bought a faded leather jacket and a studded belt. She bought two pairs of Converse Chuck Taylor's, one black and one red, so that she could mix-and-match them. She bought boxes of peroxide and cheap hair dye, bleaching out her natural black hair and trying out different hues of blonde or pink or blue. She bought hoop earrings and makeup, shades of eyeshadow and tubes of lipstick in wild, ostentatious colors. She bought fishnet tights and neon rave-wear leg warmers.

My parents hated all of this, but when she turned 18, it got so much worse. Because that's when the piercings and tattoos started to appear on her body.

The day of her 18th birthday, Nina went out with some friends from the volleyball team, staying out way past the 1AM curfew that she had negotiated with my Dad. She got home at 2:55AM, a number which I'll never forget, because I awoke to the sound of my Mom screaming.

"HOW?!" my Mom howled. "HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO YOUR BODY?!"

"IT'S MY BODY!" Nina screamed back, clearly drunk. "I CAN DO WHAT I WANT WITH IT!"

If she was going to get a tattoo against my parents' wishes, you might have thought she'd be subtle about it. But subtle was never Nina's style, especially back then.

"This... this is disgraceful," my Mom moaned, as I walked out of my room and into the kitchen.

On the Chinese zodiac, my sister was born during the Year of the Pig, sometimes also known as the Year of the Boar. And so, to celebrate her 18th birthday, she had gotten a tattoo of Pumba, the warthog from the Lion King movie. The tattoo--which showed Pumba's smiling, mischievous face sticking out up out of the mud--had been inked in color on the inside of her left forearm.

"It's honoring YOUR culture," Nina said, tears in her eyes. "God, how come you only ever see what you want to see?!"

After that, there were more tattoos, on her arms and her legs and her lower back. By the time she graduated from college, Nina had inked a half-sleeve around Pumba on her left forearm, as well as a complicated, intricate piece that covered half her back.

All of these things--the volleyball, the waitressing job, the clothes, the hair-dye, the tattoos--alienated my sister from our parents, but they endeared her to many of the kids at our high school.

Nina's popularity was a big part of her mystique for me. She seemed to move effortlessly through our high school, chatting with everyone, beloved by all kinds of cliques. She was friendly with the other Asian students, but she seemed just as comfortable with athletes and punks and slackers. My parents seemed like the only ones who were immune to her charm.

If it isn't clear already, my sister and I are both very pretty, but Nina knows how to be sexy in a way that has always felt foreign to me. Although we were each blessed with the same lithe body and delicate Korean features, my sister has always had an edge to her, a wild side and a sense of daring that I simply didn't possess. Back in high school, boys used to look at me, their eyes wandering up and down my figure. But with Nina, they did far more than just look.

My sister was well-liked by everyone, but she was especially popular among white boys, who seemed to hover in her orbit wherever she went. Nina had a way of cultivating their attention and making them compete for hers that seemed completely inconceivable to me.

And so, white boys chatted her up in the hallways. They tried to make her laugh in the cafeteria. They approached her in the parking lot after school, offering to give her a ride somewhere, asking for her phone number. They invited her to parties, picked her up in their cars, and kept her out past curfew doing... god knows what.

My sister and I are close, and we talk frequently. But ever since I'd come back from Sydney, I'd been thinking about Nina even more than usual, and I often found myself coming back to her whenever thoughts of Johan invaded my mind.

Then, one day, we were chatting on the phone when an unusual question popped out of my mouth.

"Unni, how come you never got married?"

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"Umm, Nikki?" she said after a beat, an awkward laugh accompanying her words. "Why do you sound like Mom all of a sudden?"

"I didn't mean it like that," I said, defensively. "I don't care, but I was just... curious, I guess."

"I mean..." she said, her voice trailing off. "I guess I just... it was never that important to me."

"But... why?"

"I dunno," she said, clearly thinking about it. "Like, there were just other things that I wanted."

"Like a good job?" I asked. "Or a career?"

"Yeah, that," she said pensively. "But also, like... fun, I guess? I wanted to have fun, and getting married..."

"Didn't seem like fun?" I laughed.

"I mean, look," she continued, laughing herself. "You were always the one who wanted to get married and have babies, Nikki."

"I was, wasn't I?"

"Ohmygod, yes," Nina giggled. "Even back in high school, when everyone else was running around and partying, you were already planning your wedding."

"No, I wasn't!" I protested.

"I mean, not literally, but practically," Nina chuckled. "Hey, you knew what you wanted, and I respect that."

"Well, it's not like I ever got invited to any parties," I pouted. "You always snuck out and left me at home with Mom and Dad."

"That was for your own good," Nina said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you would've freaked out if I'd ever asked you to do something that was against their rules."

"You don't know that," I frowned. "You never even gave me a chance."

"Well, even if I had," Nina said. "The boys at those parties would have eaten you alive."

"You mean your endless supply of white boy admirers?" I laughed. "I don't think they would have even noticed me."

"See, this is why I never invited you," Nina said. "You were so naive back then, and even all these years later, nothing has changed."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, puzzled.

"You know how many of those guys used to hassle me about you?" Nina sighed.

"You're lying," I said.

"Hey yo, Nina!" she said, dropping her voice to imitate a bro-ey white guy. "When are you bringing that little sister of yours around? I've got her 18th birthday marked on my calendar."