A Midnight Performance

‘Cho the Giant’ – scene #1

The village of Cho's birth had no name worth remembering. It was a collection of mud-brick hovels clustered around a single well, a place where cows outnumbered people and the dirt remembered more stories than the old men who sat in patches of shade, watching the sun crawl across the sky. It was here that Cho grew, like a tree among weeds, conspicuous and strange, his body expanding with an appetite that the meager village could barely satisfy.

By his tenth year, Cho already stood taller than the men who drove the plows. His shoulders spread wide like the yoke of an ox, and his hands, calloused and hardened, could break stones that the village men struggled to lift. The other children avoided him, whispering "giant" and "monster" behind cupped palms. The adults eyed him with suspicion, as if size and strength without lineage was an offense against the natural order.

"Look at the boy," they would say. "Strong as three men but dumb as a post." Their voices carried across the cleared plots of earth where emaciated crops struggled toward the sun. "Hasn't said ten words together in his life."

Cho heard them. He heard everything. Words settled in his mind like seeds in fertile soil, growing into thoughts that he tended carefully, privately. He watched how the village headman extorted extra grain from the widows. He noted which families prospered in lean years through shrewd trading rather than luck. He observed the petty cruelties and rare kindnesses, the patterns of power that governed lives as surely as the seasons.

His mother alone saw past his silence. A small woman with eyes that held the intensity of distant storm clouds, she would brush his forehead with dry lips when no one was watching.

"They think you're slow," she whispered one night as she ladled watery stew into his bowl. "Let them. The tiger doesn't announce its presence to the deer."

She taught him to read using scraps of parchment traded from passing merchants, her finger tracing letters in the dirt when paper was scarce. While his father drank away their earnings at the village's only tavern, Cho and his mother sat by lamplight, piecing together the world beyond their village through fragments of stories and maps.

Then the fever came. It swept through the village like a scythe, harvesting the old and weak. His mother burned for three days, her skin hot as kiln-fired clay, her breathing shallow and ragged. Cho carried water from the well to cool her, his massive frame cramped in their tiny hut, ducking under the low doorway a hundred times a day.

"You're too big for this place," she told him on the third night, her voice a whisper beneath the crackling of the small fire. "Your father, this village—they'll use your strength until it breaks, then discard you like a dull plow blade."

She died before dawn. The village buried her with five others, a communal grave to save effort. No individual markers, no ceremony beyond a muttered prayer from the traveling priest who happened through the village that week. Cho stood at the grave's edge, his shadow stretching long across the freshly turned earth. The villagers gave him a wide berth, uncomfortable with grief on a face they had only ever seen impassive.

"Boy needs to get back to work," the headman said to Cho's father that evening. "That size, he should be pulling twice the load of a normal man."

His father, bleary-eyed and swaying, had nodded. "The boy will work," he promised. "Slow in the head but strong in the back. Good for something, at least."

Cho returned to their hut and found his father unconscious, a pool of vomit beside his head. The man's purse lay empty on the packed earth floor. He had drunk away even the few copper coins set aside for seed grain. Cho looked at his father—truly looked at him—for perhaps the first time. This shrunken, broken vessel had contributed nothing to his life beyond disappointment.

For a week after his mother's death, Cho worked from first light until dark. He plowed fields, repaired fences, carried water, split wood. His hands bled and healed and bled again. The village watched and nodded in approval. "Finally earning his keep," they said.

On the eighth day, he rose before dawn. He packed a small sack with dried meat, a water skin, the precious scraps of parchment his mother had collected, and a knife he had secretly forged and tempered in the communal blacksmith's fires when no one was watching. He left the hut without looking at his father's sleeping form. There was nothing there to see that he had not already memorized and dismissed.

The eastern horizon was just beginning to pale as Cho walked away from the village. He did not look back. Behind him lay nothing but graves and expectations too small to contain him. Ahead lay Arcador, the great city his mother had described from merchant tales. A place where strength and size were commodities to be sold rather than burdens to be exploited. Where a boy who watched and waited could find opportunity in the cracks between power.

Cho walked, his stride eating the distance with methodical purpose. The village would wake to find him gone, and by midday, they would have already forgotten to miss him. Such was the fate of the unmemorable. But Cho had no intention of remaining unmemorable. The quiet, watchful boy was leaving, and what would return—if anything ever returned—would be something the village could never have imagined in their small, circumscribed lives.

---

The road comes to an end at the sea, a gentle slope of white sand that Cho's blistered feet sink into with unexpected relief. Six days of walking has brought him here, to this cluster of huts perched between jungle and ocean. The village appears insignificant, just another stopping point on his journey to Arcador, but he needs rest, food, and perhaps an opportunity. His eyes scan the bay, taking in the shimmer of turquoise water unlike anything in his dusty farming homeland, where even puddles run brown with soil.

Cho stands out like a monument on the beach. At two meters tall, his shaved head gleaming in the sun, he draws stares from the village women washing clothes at the water's edge. They whisper to each other, eyes wide at this muscled giant. He has become accustomed to this reaction. Even in his poor village, where men grew strong from labor, none matched his size. His broad shoulders cast a shadow that speaks before he does.

Palm trees line the crescent beach, their fronds whispering in the salt breeze. Cho breathes deeply, tasting freedom in the air. The fields of his home lie six days behind him, but could be another world entirely. Here the air smells of salt and fish and exotic fruits that hang heavy from trees he cannot name. The heat is different too – wet rather than the dry, crushing heat of the farmlands.

Out in the bay, heads bob in the water like corks. Young men dive from small boats, disappearing beneath the surface for stretches that make Cho count the seconds. When they surface, they toss small objects onto their boats before diving again. Pearl divers. He has heard of them but never seen them work. The nearest diver surfaces not thirty paces from shore, closer than the others. Unlike his companions, this one dives from the beach rather than a boat.

The diver breaks the surface with a splash, hair plastered gold against his skull. A youth of perhaps eighteen, with skin burnished by sun and sea into a golden sheen. He holds something aloft, examining it in the sunlight before tucking it into a pouch at his waist. His body is lean rather than bulky, the muscles defined like ropes beneath his skin. A swimmer's body, made for slicing through water rather than intimidating enemies. When he turns toward shore, his eyes – startlingly blue against his tan – lock onto Cho.

For a moment the diver stands frozen, water streaming down his chest. Then he wades to shore, moving through the shallows with the easy grace of someone born to water.

"You're not from here," the diver says, stopping a respectful distance from Cho. "I'm Kreszo."

"Cho." He offers nothing more, but the diver doesn't seem discouraged.

"You've traveled far?" Kreszo asks, gesturing at Cho's worn sandals and the small pack that holds his only possessions.

"From the northern farmlands," Cho replies, measuring his words. "On my way to Arcador."

Kreszo's eyes widen. "Arcador? That's ten more days on foot, and dangerous roads too."

"The roads don't concern me." Cho flexes his fingers, and the movement draws Kreszo's attention to his arms, the corded muscle there. The boy swallows visibly.

"What's in Arcador for you?" Kreszo asks, failing to mask his curiosity.

"Opportunity." Cho watches how the word lands, sees the hunger it stirs in the young man's eyes. "There's nothing for men like us in villages."

"Men like us?" Kreszo echoes, and something in his tone reveals he's pleased to be grouped with Cho, as if they share a secret understanding.

"Ambitious men. Men who want more than fate has assigned them." Cho gestures to the pouch at Kreszo's waist. "You dive for pearls instead of fish. You already understand."

Kreszo smiles, a flash of white teeth against golden skin. "Most days I find nothing. But sometimes..." He pats the pouch. "Sometimes the sea gives up its treasures. Come, I'll show you where to find food."

As they walk toward the village, Cho feels Kreszo's eyes on him, darting glances that linger on his chest, his arms, the breadth of his shoulders. The attention is unfamiliar but he recognises it immediately. Cho has not seen that look before, but he will come to know it daily, and hourly, in the eyes of men and women alike. It is the look of desire, yes, but something more – the recognition of power, of ambition, of control. Kreszo's gaze carries an innocent hunger that says he would follow Cho anywhere, even to places he has never imagined.

A half-smile forms on Cho's lips. The village may offer more than just a night's rest after all. He needs resources for the journey ahead, for his ambitions in Arcador. And sometimes resources arrive in unexpected forms – like a beautiful pearl diver with adoring eyes and knowledge of local treasures.

"How many pearls have you found today?" Cho asks, his voice deliberately gentle, drawing Kreszo closer like a fisherman playing a line.

"Just three small ones," Kreszo admits. "But tomorrow could be different. The tides bring new opportunities daily.”

"Tomorrow," Cho agrees, though he has learned never to count on such things. Still, one night in this paradise might yield something of value before the road to Arcador calls him onward.

---

Night descends on the coastal village like a velvet curtain, bringing with it a cooling breeze that rustles the palm fronds overhead. Cho finds his shelter at the edge of the beach, where fishermen store their vessels—an aged boat, overturned and resting on weathered supports, creating a low cave of wood and shadow. He claims this space with the ease of a man accustomed to making do, spreading his thin blanket on the sand beneath the boat's protective arch. Privacy is a luxury he rarely expects, yet something tells him eyes follow his movements even now, in this quiet corner of the shore.

The village sleeps early, exhausted from days of fishing and diving. Lamps in the small huts have dimmed one by one until only the moon illuminates the beach, casting silver pathways across the gentle waves. Cho's mind wanders as he settles onto his blanket, calculating the days to Arcador, the coin he'll need upon arrival, the connections he must forge. The barracks there might take him—his size alone makes him valuable—but he wants more than a soldier's life. In Arcador, men of influence control the fate of thousands. He intends to be such a man.

A slight shifting of sand, almost imperceptible, alerts him. The sound comes from behind a stack of fishing baskets not ten paces away. Cho smiles in the darkness. He knows who watches. The pearl diver's fascination had been transparent throughout the evening meal Kreszo had shared with him, those blue eyes drinking in Cho's every movement, his voice catching when their hands accidentally touched over the communal bowl.

Cho considers his options. He could call out, embarrass the boy and send him scurrying back to his family's hut. He could ignore the presence entirely and deny them both what hangs in the air between them. Or he could provide a moonlight performance—one that costs him nothing but might sow seeds of promise that bear fruit later.

The decision makes itself. Cho stretches deliberately, his massive frame extending to its full length. He removes his simple tunic without hurry, knowing the moonlight streaming through the gaps in the boat's planking illuminates his body in strips of silver. The sound of breathing from behind the baskets grows more pronounced.

"The nights are warm here," Cho says to the darkness, as if speaking to himself. "A man sweats even in sleep."

He bunches his tunic into a makeshift pillow, and allows his hands to move slowly down the length of his body, over ridges of muscles, nipples like hazelnuts and down further, to the hard slab of cock which has already stirred with interest—partly from the knowledge of being watched, partly from simple bodily need after days of travel with no release. He lies back, one arm behind his head, the other resting on his abdomen. From Kreszo's vantage point, he must appear as some fallen statue of muscle and shadow.

His hand moves lower, fingers wrapping around his shaft. It is the length of his forearm. He strokes himself unhurriedly, with one hand and then two, with featherlight fingers and then with a direct grip, building his own pleasure while ensuring his watcher has a clear view. Cho's control extends even to this—he could finish quickly, but instead sets a pace designed to prolong, to entice, to mesmerize. His breath deepens, each exhale carrying the slightest vocalization, just enough to reach eager ears.

Behind the baskets, Kreszo shifts position. A slight rustle of fabric suggests the boy is touching himself as well, mirroring Cho's actions from his hiding place. The knowledge sends heat coursing through Cho's body. This is power in its rawest form—the ability to command another's desire without a single direct command.

Cho varies his rhythm, sometimes gripping firmly, other times allowing just his fingertips to trail along his length. His breathing grows more ragged, his hips beginning to rise slightly from the blanket with each stroke. He turns his head toward the baskets, though he cannot see through the darkness to where Kreszo hides. The gesture alone—the acknowledgment of his audience—elicits a stifled gasp from behind the concealment.

"The gods made some men to be watched," Cho murmurs, his voice a low rumble that carries just far enough. "And others to watch."

His pace increases now, his massive thighs tensing as pleasure builds at the base of his spine. Cho doesn't fight it. He allows his control to slip, just enough to make his performance authentic. His orgasm approaches like thunder after lightning, powerful and inevitable. When it takes him, he arches his back, his free hand gripping the blanket beneath him. He spills onto his stomach in pulsing waves, a guttural groan escaping his throat.

From behind the baskets comes an answering sound—quickly muffled but unmistakable in its meaning. Kreszo has found his own release, tied to Cho's by invisible threads of desire.

Cho edges out from under the shelter of the boat, his cock glistening wet in the moonlight. It softens slowly, drops of sperm slithering to the sand. His eyes never leave the shimmering sea, though with each apparently aimless step he moves closer to Kreszo’s hiding place.

With each moment he allows his breathing to return to normal. He makes no move to clean himself immediately, allowing his seed to cool on his skin in the night air. This too is part of the display—the aftermath, the vulnerability, the humanity beneath the giant's frame.

"It will be good to swim in the morning once more," he says after a long moment of silence. "We'll swim at dawn before the others wake."

The invitation hangs in the air like smoke. Behind the baskets, Kreszo remains frozen, perhaps unsure if he's truly been discovered or if Cho's words are merely coincidence. Cho turns his back to the hidden figure, the vast curves of muscle at his ass dark shapes against darker. He stands with his back to the baskets, offering the boy a chance to retreat with dignity intact.

The sound of retreating footsteps, nearly silent on the sand, tells him Kreszo has finally slipped away. Cho closes his eyes, satisfaction settling over him like a second blanket. He has made his first conquest in this village without lifting a finger toward the boy. Tomorrow will bring the true test—whether Kreszo returns of his own accord, drawn back by the invisible hook Cho has set tonight.

As sleep approaches, Cho's mind returns to Arcador, to the men of influence he will need to bend to his will. Some will require force, others wealth or promises of power. But many, he suspects, will fall just as Kreszo has—through desire, through the promise of something they've never experienced but suddenly cannot live without. Cho drifts into sleep, his dreams filled with the city that awaits him, and the empire he will build one conquest at a time.

---

Thankyou for joining me right at the start of this new serial story ‘Cho the Giant’. I’d love to hear what you think. If you’d like to make sure you don’t miss any of Cho’s story then why not Subscribe to the Guya Substack? Cho is one very ambitious young man - he does not intend to be fucking with the village boys in the back of nowhere for the rest of his life. Will he make it to Arcador, and if so what happens next?

With love

Zayq

x

Read on - scene #2 below.