Cost of Appearing
Copyright© 2026 by BareLin
Chapter 1: The Algorithm of Me
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 1: The Algorithm of Me - In "Cost of Appearing," barista Juana Perez trades her dignity for cash in escalating psychological experiments on vulnerability and shame. Starting with public humiliations, she becomes a corporate weapon, numbing her emotions for high-stakes deals. As payments soar, she loses her humanity—until she turns against the exploiters, exposing a shadowy network of emotional commodification. A dark thriller on the price of self.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Consensual NonConsensual Reluctant Fiction Humiliation Exhibitionism Voyeurism ENF Nudism
The sound that would fracture my day was not a crash, but a wet, percussive splat. A grande iced matcha latte with oat milk, propelled by a customer’s careless elbow at the pick-up counter, met the polished concrete floor of The Daily Grind from a height of precisely four feet. More critically, the tidal wave of green liquid crested over the lip of the counter and soaked the front of my grey linen trousers in a shock of cold.
I froze. Not just from the temperature.
A collective, sharp inhale came from the line of waiting customers. Then, the snickers. Low, muffled, but as unmistakable as the spreading stain. My cheeks ignited. This wasn’t just embarrassment over clumsiness; I hadn’t even been holding the drink. This was the humiliation of visibility. The wet fabric, a light grey, instantly turned dark and translucent, clinging to my thigh with an intimacy I hadn’t authorized.
“Whoa, Juana. Map of the Amazon on your leg,” Brad, the other barista, stage-whispered with a grin. He meant it as a joke, the kind of bro-humor that was our default. But in the silent coffee shop, it was a verdict.
My body, my very real body under the cheap work trousers, was now public data. I could feel the eyes scanning the contour of my leg, the edge of my hip. This was the core of it: the Emotional Nakedness. I wasn’t physically exposed, but the veil of social anonymity had been ripped away. I was Juana-who-just-spilled-all-over-herself. The bio in their mental feeds is updated in real time.
My brain, trained by a thousand customer service modules, clicked into its override sequence. Apologize. De-escalate. Clean.
“I am so sorry about the mess, everyone! We’ll have a new one for you in just a second,” I chirped, voice artificially bright. I avoided all eye contact, grabbing a roll of blue paper towels. As I bent to mop the floor, the damp linen pulled tighter. I felt a draft where fabric clung and gaped. I knew, with a sinking certainty, that I wasn’t wearing underwear.
It wasn’t a forgetful accident. It was a quiet, personal rebellion. Constriction was the enemy. The pinch of a bra wire, the band of panties, they were tiny prisons, constant reminders of a body that was supposed to be packaged and presented. Going without was my secret freedom, my body’s private truth. But now, that truth was one wet fabric layer away from being a public spectacle.
As I scrubbed, I felt a familiar, dull cramp deep in my abdomen. The timing was so perfect it felt like cosmic mockery. Day two. Heavy. I was using a menstrual cup, another choice for autonomy, for not having to remember to buy tampons every month. But in this moment of exposure, even that internal, practical fact felt like a vulnerability. What if the cup leaked? What if the strain of bending over...? The spiral of potential shame was infinite.
The customer who’d caused the spill, a man in a tech-sector vest, didn’t apologize. He just sighed loudly, checking his watch. “I have a stand-up at ten.”
“Right away, sir,” I mumbled to the floor.
This was my life: a series of tiny economies. The economy of dignity, spent in drips to placate the impatient. The economy of the body, managed through discreet choices that now felt perilously exposed. The economy of cash is forever in deficit. The matcha latte was $7.50. My take-home today, after this shift, would be about $68. The rent on my studio was $1,550. The call from the hospital billing department was yesterday.
I finished cleaning, stood, and held the sodden paper towels like a shameful bouquet. As I turned to rush to the back, I caught a man’s gaze from a corner table by the window. He wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t looking away in pity. He was simply ... observing. His eyes were calm, analytical. He watched my flaming face, my death-grip on the towels, the way I subtly tried to adjust my clinging trousers. He saw it all, and he took a slow, deliberate sip of his black coffee.
His look didn’t feel invasive. It felt like being scanned.
The rest of my shift passed in a low hum of ambient humiliation. The stain dried into a faint, mossy map on my thigh. Every customer’s glance felt like a pinpoint on the spot. I was hyper-aware of my body, the sway of my breasts under my loose cotton tank top (no bra, the freedom now feeling reckless), the swing of my hips, the internal, subtle presence of the silicone cup. My body, which I usually tried to feel neutral about as a functional vehicle, was now a loud, problematic thing in the room.
My phone buzzed in my apron pocket during my five-minute break. A notification from TaskRabbit+, the “premium” gig app I’d recently qualified for after a brutal vetting process.
“New High-Value Task Match: Behavioral Research Participant.”
I tapped it open, leaning against the sticky back-office wall.
Task: Athena Dynamics seeks female-identifying participants, 21-35, for a funded study on physiological stress responses and social perception. Session 1: Non-invasive baseline recording + structured interview. Duration: 75 mins. Compensation: $200. Venue: Private Midtown loft (address provided upon acceptance). Discretion and confidentiality assured.
Two hundred dollars. For seventy-five minutes of talking.
It was an absurd sum. It felt like a typo. It was also exactly the amount I was short for this month’s payment plan on my mother’s outpatient care. The universe, having doused me in matcha, was now dangling a lifeline.
I clicked ACCEPT before logic could intervene.
An instant reply appeared, not from a bot, but from a person: “Research Coordinator K.”
K: Thank you, Juana. Your profile indicates strong suitability. Brief pre-qualifier: Are you comfortable being audio/video recorded in a controlled setting while discussing personal experiences? All data is anonymized and secured.
My thumbs hovered. Recorded. The word sent a fresh jolt of that coffee-shop visibility-shame through me. But $200. I thought of the billing department’s polite, relentless tone.
Me: Yes, comfortable.
K: Excellent. Session confirmed for tomorrow, 7 PM. Attire: Comfortable, casual. As neutral as possible. The address and entry code will be sent one hour prior. Please review and e-sign the attached NDA and participation waiver.
The documents were sleek, dense with legalese, but peppered with reassuring phrases: “for academic research purposes only,” “full facial blurring available upon request,” “participant’s right to withdraw at any time.” It felt corporate, clean, and legitimate. The opposite of the grubby, visceral shame of the spilled drink. This was a transaction of data, not dignity. Or so I told myself.
I signed.
When my shift ended, I practically fled The Daily Grind. On the subway home, crammed between strangers, I felt my body constantly. The brush of an arm against my braless breast. The press of a backpack against my stained thigh. The dull, rhythmic ache of my cramps. I was a collection of sensory inputs, most of them unpleasant. I closed my eyes and tried to mentally calculate the $200. It wasn’t just money. It was a buffer. A week of groceries. A dent in the bill. A day when I didn’t have to check my balance before buying a coffee, I wouldn’t spill.
That night, in the shower, I examined myself. The stain on the trousers was permanent, I knew. I tossed them in the trash, a small, sharp pang of loss for the $25 they’d cost. The hot water soothed my cramps. I washed my body with a generic, scent-free bar soap. I thought about “neutral” attire for tomorrow. My uniform is loose tanks and soft, drapey trousers. No constriction. My private rule.
As I dried off, I caught my reflection in the steamed-up mirror. Just a blur of peach and brown. I didn’t look closely. I stopped doing that a while ago. My body was a fact. It worked. It bled on schedule. It carried me. Its needs were logistical puzzles to solve: food, rest, pain management, and avoiding unwanted exposure. Confidence wasn’t a feeling I associated with it. Autonomy was. The autonomy to choose no bra. To choose a cup over tampons. To sell my time, and now my recorded stress responses, for a price that could buy a little more autonomy back.
But as I lay in bed, the city’s light painting patterns on my ceiling, the man’s face from the coffee shop resurfaced in my mind. His calm, observing eyes. That scan.
A cold thread of doubt slithered through my gut, separate from the cramps.
What if I were just solving one puzzle by walking into another?
The loft in Midtown was not what I expected. No university logo, no clinic smell. It was a pristine, minimalist box on a high floor, accessed by a private elevator that opened directly into the space. The walls were white, the floor polished concrete. One entire wall was a window overlooking the glittering grid of the city. The opposite wall was a subtly textured panel that I realized, after a moment, was a massive, seamless video screen, currently off.
It felt like the set of a very expensive, very silent sci-fi movie.
A young woman with a severe blonde bob and a black turtleneck greeted me. “Juana? I’m Sloane, from Athena. Thank you for your punctuality.” Her smile was a brief, professional curve. “Research Coordinator K will be with you shortly. You may wait here.”
She gestured to a single, sculptural chair in the center of the room, facing the window. It looked more like art than furniture. I sat, my loose cotton trousers whispering against the material. I felt intensely plain, intensely physical in this sterile space. My body, with its hidden cup and its unbound breasts and its secret, neutral comfort, felt like a biological artifact in a museum of clean lines.
“Juana.”
The voice came from behind me, calm, male. I turned.
It was him. The man from the coffee shop.
My breath hitched. The coincidence was too massive, too precise. It wasn’t a coincidence. He’d seen the spill, the shame. He’d scanned me, and now here I was, in his ... lab? Office?
He was younger up close, maybe early thirties. He wore dark, expensive-looking casual clothes: a charcoal merino sweater, soft wool trousers. Nothing with a logo. He carried no tablet, no clipboard. His hands were empty.
“I’m Kyle,” he said, walking around to stand between me and the city view. He didn’t offer a hand. “You can call me K. It’s good to meet you in a controlled context.”
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