I feel fine.

Jacob woke violently from his sleep. He was breathing at a labored pace as if extra limbs or an extra body were going to explode out of him. He wanted to get up from the bed but he felt so burdened. When he pushed himself from the bed, one arm hung from the right side of his body. It wasn’t his.

Jacob quickly twisted his body so that Kirin's body rolled off of his back and he jumped out of the bed. After a few moments, his panting quieted down. Kirin landed with his back to the bed and his sucking thumb did not leave his mouth. Kirin was sucking his thumb so fiercely, all the other fingers in his hand reacted in twitches. Thank god that he doesn't wear a chain when we're in the room, thought Jacob. The rattling could have kept me up all night.

Jacob walked to the bathroom. The sounds of his bare feet slapped against the marble floor and echoed throughout the room. Jacob closed the door behind him so he could use the toilet. He was going to lock the door, but then he remembered that the bathroom door did not have a lock so he closed the door tightly, as if it served any purpose. As he relieved himself, his stomach hurt. The only thing he had yesterday was that glass of milk. Jacob poked his hands and fingers into his own ribcage to settle his craving body until he could have something solid stuck into it.

I should thank him, he thought. For last night. He puts his hand to his forehead and he felt fine.

Jacob smelled himself and realized he needed to take a shower. Especially since he was unable to change out of his clothes last night. He hated being sweaty against starchy fabric. After the toilet flushed, he stripped off his shirt and tossed it on the floor below the sink. Jacob had to roll his moist pants off his legs, snagging against his knees, his calves, and his socks. He balanced himself on one leg as he strained to pull off one sock from his foot, then the other foot. Before he took off his final garment, he took a quick look around. There was no one to see him but the cherubim on the porcelain throne. Shedding all modesty, he took off his briefs before them and headed towards the shower.

Jacob felt a bit awkward in the shower. He was usually used to the enclosed space of a glass cage when he got himself wet. But it was the bathtub from yesterday that he had to stand in. He felt like he was standing in front of a narrow piece of rain that was supposed to fill an empty lake. He quickly turned on the shower and set the showerhead so that the water crashed the top of his hair.

Jacob gritted his teeth when the initial blast of water was freezing cold. Everything on his body immediately became tense. He jumped back from the shower stream and started to use his fingers to test the waters. He squinted up at the showerhead and noticed how it hung obscenely above him. Of course, the shock of cold water does things to stir up a paranoid imagination, thought Jacob.

The water warmed under his hand. Soon, he was able to wet his arm and the curve of his shoulder. The stream of warm water hits his chest, washing the sweat there. The warm water nuzzled his neck and peeped into his eyes and mouth when he puts his face in the current of the showerhead. Jacob bowed his head, the water like a warm blessing that went throughout his entire body.

Jacob grabbed the soap on a rope and scrubbed his body vigorously with the lathered bar. He made a couple of swipes on the open parts of the body and paid more attention to the discreet parts where the body creased like behind the knees and the pits of his arms. He reached behind him do to his own back and he had to contort his arms in order to reach any part of the back. He barely got the area just behind his shoulders and he had to hug himself to get his sides. However, the back gets done. All the way from the top of the shoulders to his lower back in a continuous motion and parts he never imagined he could get by himself. Jacob began to soap the front of his body again when he still felt slick pressure behind him. His back was still being soaped.

Kirin was soaping his back for him.

Jacob looked down at Kirin and realized that the soap was the least of his surprises; Kirin was also naked.

Kirin's body was no less than some creator's obsession with a chiseled statuette. Below the metal collar was where it all began. His chest and stomach were hard and defined like gladiator's armor plating. His arms were sculpted with the strength of a young god. His legs were lean like a stalking panther even when standing still like he was. Parts of him seemed to flex when he moved, no matter how slightly. Muses would have cried on their knees if they saw Kirin's body. Jacob could not help but look lower than his rippled abdomen and higher than his thighs.

Kirin was not a little boy.

Jacob still stood there in the tub without moving. Kirin was still soaping Jacob's body with repeated mechanical movements. His chest was entirely covered with suds before Jacob slowly turned around and washed them away in the shower stream.

"I… I can do this by myself, you know," Jacob uttered, grabbing tightly to his soap on a rope.

"Yes, master," said Kirin, understanding him. Kirin placed the bar of soap at the side of the bathtub and he backed away respectfully so that Jacob did not see his back. Kirin walked backwards in a memorized path to the door. He shrank behind the door and closed it, leaving Jacob alone in the entire bathroom.

Jacob poured a dab of shampoo in his hands and lathered his hair. He was half expecting another pair of hands to get lost in his hair, but after a few moments of waiting, he shampooed himself alone.

Kirin. He’s not a boy, is he? He wondered while the shampoo dew fell off of his hair, down his face, and ran throughout his own body. He wondered if he had any power other than that of his physical body. Is he submitting or consenting? Does he know some things like the sky and other sexes? And the other things he knows, how many other things does he know?

Jacob shuts off the water and toweled himself off. He wrapped the towel securely around his waist and opened the door to the bedroom.

Kirin stood in the center of the room, no longer naked, but his outfit of choice was no longer many sizes too big on him. He wore a sleeveless undershirt and tight, tight shorts that left nothing to his imagination.

"I thought that maybe master would like to exercise at the gymnasium. Forgive my speaking out of turn."

"That sounds great," Jacob said trying to be enthusiastic, although not for his own benefit. It will give me something to do.

Kirin was at the dresser rummaging through Jacob's clothes. He turned around, walked over to Jacob and knelt on the floor. Kirin stretched his arm straight in front of him and held a folded pair of jogging pants and a plain T-shirt.

"Kirin, you don't have to kneel like that in front of me," said Jacob as he took the clothes from Kirin's open hands. Kirin stood up reluctantly in front of Jacob. The top of Kirin’s head came to the bottom of his chin.

"I am sorry, master."

"Kirin, I think I told you before not to apologize so much."

"I am sorry for--" Kirin stopped himself and pursed his lips for violating a direct order. "I will turn around so that master can get dressed."

Jacob gets dressed in the T-shirt and jogging pants that Kirin handed to him. Once dressed, he looked at himself in a mirror on top of the gold dresser. "God, this looks boring." He looked at Kirin who motioned with his head at his comment.

"Masters need not attract attention. Only slaves need to be presentable." Jacob felt that it was a little too blunt but Kirin continued. "Master does not anyone's watchfulness. For master to be left alone, I picked these clothes."

"Who said you can pick my clothes?" snapped Jacob. Kirin puts his thumb between his teeth, looking very doubtful. He did not know where Jacob's sudden animosity came from, but he knew how to remedy the situation. Kirin walked over to the dresser and opened one of the drawers. Kirin took a deep breath and drew out something long and thin. Whatever it was, it was worn at the end and it had a handle that he handed over to Jacob.

"I am very, very sorry, master," said Kirin, kneeling on the floor and making a full subservient bow at Jacob's feet. "For displeasing master so much." Jacob looked at his hand and there was a whip that rolled its length to the floor and over one of Kirin's hands. Kirin's hand was slightly trembling, but he was pressing it so hard on the floor that the sides of his hand became pale. Before Jacob so much as even looked at Kirin's back, he threw the whip on the floor. It made a cracking sound and Kirin's body shook even though it had no contact with his body.

"Stop that!"

"Please be content!" begged Kirin. "I would not have master suffer!"

"Get up!"

"Master--"

"I said, 'GET UP!'" Kirin quickly stood but he covered his face with the bangs of his own hair by keeping his head low.

"Look at me," commanded Jacob and Kirin did so hesitantly. His golden eyes were welling in forced back tears. Jacob has never seen anyone who wanted to be punished in such a way so desperately.

Nor did Jacob know anyone as such.

"I am NOT going to whip you!" said Jacob fiercely. He was trying to reassure Kirin but his words were still biting nonetheless. "Act more like a--"

"Yes, master," Kirin acquiesced, cutting Jacob off. His fists seemed clenched and determined. "Is the timing not right?" Kirin timidly asked.

"What?"

"Will master punish me later?"

"No!" Kirin's fists were still wrapped tight in themselves.

He bowed his head, unable to keep looking at Jacob. "I must amend master, somehow." Jacob crossed his arms, impatient with the bowing and scraping act but it would not end if he did not do something.

"Fine. Give me fifty push ups." Jacob was not certain why he thought of a physical punishment before anything else but it seemed appropriate.

Kirin was finally able to look at Jacob again. "Yes, master."

Kirin laid down with his chest to the floor and his arms at his sides. He lifted his body with pistoned arms almost effortlessly. The grunt that emanated deep in his body was surpressed with tightened lips. His flat body reached so low his lips sometimes kissed the floor in penance.

Jacob was not paying attention to the bobbing motion that Kirin's body made when he lifted his own weight up and down on his arms. He looked at Kirin's back and the slim straps behind his undershirt that did not cover the hills of his back at all. Sinews and skin were not the only geography. There were other topographies on his back only another man could make. Kirin back was a canvas for unforgiving whips. Whips of many masters painted thick strokes of lacerations on his back. They crossed over each other like a wire gate that was branded into skin. A thin layer of sweat made the gate shine on his back.

"What happened to your back?" Jacob asked in astonishment.

"I have been disobedient," said Kirin without breaking pace. Jacob kept his mouth shut. He lost count after thirty-one.

The sweat dripped over and around the back like ball bearings in a labyrinth. They slipped in spirals around his arms and trickled to his hands. His lean flesh was basted in perspiration. Kirin's arms were starting to slow down. The fatigue was roasting his arms. His body was burning. His sweat smelled like smoked meat. Kirin struggled under a plate of light shining from above. The sweat tasted salty in Kirin's lips.

He had to lick is own lips to keep himself from being distracted.

Jacob was getting too hungry. "Kirin, you can stop now."

"Yes, master."

Jacob felt conscious of Kirin's back. He did not want other people to stare him and then stare at Jacob. Jacob was not responsible for his back, nor was he accountable for any part of Kirin's body, no matter what Kirin deemed otherwise. He bent down to Kirin and sniffed his body. When he thought Kirin smelled clean enough, Jacob went to the dresser and fetched a shirt, the smallest one he could find and handed it over to Kirin.

"Master?" asked Kirin as if he did not know how to put a shirt on himself. Even though Jacob was fully aware that Kirin could dress himself, he helped put the shirt on Kirin anyway as if this was an ordinary thing. "Does master desire not to go to the gym?"

"I have not eaten since yesterday," stated Jacob, unconsciously catching Kirin’s affectation in his throat. "I’m hungry."

Kirin bowed his head. "The milk was not enough for master."

"You can’t get by with just milk."

"What is master in the mood for?"

"Meat. I need to stick my teeth into some meat." Kirin fidgeted with his fingers and his lip.

"I shall lead when master is ready to go to such a place."

"I’m ready now," said Jacob but after one step, feeling the jogging pants against his legs, he stopped himself. "Maybe I should go get changed." Jacob looked at Kirin as if to get his agreement but his face remained consentful; it did not say to change into nicer clothes or to stay the way he was. After an awkward responseless silence, Jacob finally uttered, "I’ll go get changed." More for himself than for Kirin.