At first, just dinner.

The Penthouse suite was a cube of glass and steel with views of the city shining like a printed circuit board. The air smelled clean, of expensive fresh flowers and a terrifying tranquility.

Mr. Kuroki was not an exuberant man. He was thin, middle-aged, dressed in an impeccably cut Western suit as dark as his eyes, which watched them from a white leather sofa without rising. His gaze was a scanner: cold, rapid, evaluating every detail of their clumsy arrival.

Magi, in the diaphanous white silk dress, felt that every step forward was a surrender. The ultra-fine fabric moved with her like an obscene whisper, clinging to her curves with brutal fidelity under the cold LED lights of the place. There was no need for imagination; everything was there, exposed with raw and pitiless clarity. A blush burned her face and neck, a shameful stain of color on the ghostly pallor she tried to maintain.

Julia, at her side, was a spectacle of a different vulnerability. The black velvet slip dress was a trap. From the front, it embraced her with false modesty. From behind, it stripped her completely bare from her shoulders to the arch of her lower back. Every time she breathed, the velvet tightened over her chest and the cold air ran down her spine, making her shiver in a way she could not hide. Her sweaty hands stuck to her thighs, trying to pull down the infinitely short hem.

Kuroki did not smile. He made an almost imperceptible gesture with his hand, pointing to two high leather stools in front of him.

"Sit down," he said. His voice was soft, but not warm. It was the tone of someone used to being obeyed.

Sitting was a new agony. For Magi, the high stool **** a posture that stretched the transparent silk even tighter over her thighs and lap. For Julia, climbing onto the stool was an exercise in precarious balance; the dress rode up dangerously, exposing almost her entire buttocks to the cold leather of the seat. A stifled sound escaped her lips.

The dinner was a ritual of silent humiliation. A phantom servant (a man with an expressionless face) served minimalist dishes in microscopic portions. Kuroki did not speak to them directly. He spoke of them, as if they were part of the menu.

"Absolute transparency is an underrated value," he commented, taking a sip of white wine. "It leaves no room for doubt. It allows no misinterpretations." His gaze slid over Magi's body as if evaluating the quality of a material.

"The texture of velvet against bare skin... creates an intriguing contrast," he observed, while his gaze rested on Julia's exposed back. "It suggests half-secrets. A promise of more." His words were not a compliment; they were a mental note.

He had wine served to them. Magi's hands trembled slightly as she lifted the glass, making the golden liquid oscillate. The dress, upon moving, revealed a new angle of her hip. Kuroki did not miss the detail.

"Clumsiness can be... revealing," he murmured, without reproach, only with clinical interest.

There was no groping, no explicit lewd comments. The humiliation was deeper, more insidious. They were reduced to two walking concepts: Transparency and Contrast. Design objects whose function was to be observed, evaluated, and commented upon with dehumanizing distance. Every bite of food was an eternity. Every sip of wine, a reminder of the dryness of their throats. The suite was luxurious, but it was a glass cage where they felt more exposed than in the middle of a crowd. Mr. Kuroki didn't want brutality; he wanted aesthetic submission. And May had dressed them to perfection for the role.