His Hideout
His hideout.
As time went on, I started to understand why the manager had been complaining so much even after being the one to bring him in. The man had barely started working and already seized control of the entire store in the blink of an eye.
"Alright, goods are coming in. Move those asses. Get the carts loaded."
"Mrs. Jeong, go fill the empty spots in the bulk aisle. I'll cover the POS."
"I brought some guys who can actually lift. Hey! You know what to do, right?"
A pack of rough-looking punks who could have been his clones came swarming in and, in no time at all, finished the backroom cleanup and restocking that had been giving everyone headaches. It was genuinely flawless work—nothing you could nitpick. No wonder people called him an ace worth going out of your way to hire.
He had the experience from working this kind of job before, sure, but he also had the bulk, the strength, and a natural gift for bossing people around. The type of guy you always found one or two of in every school class—the delinquent ringleader. And as he strutted around like he owned the place, the whole power structure of the store started shifting in a weird direction.
"Manager. Gimme the company card. We're doing a dinner."
"Huh? What dinner? And this month's budget is already—"
"What, so you're just gonna leave the ladies who worked their asses off for this event high and dry? Just ignore them? You sure you can handle that?"
"Wooo! He's right! Gangho's talking sense. You worked us that hard, the least you can do is throw us a bone even if you don't raise the pay."
"Ah... fine. Take it. But no beef."
"Ugh... cheapskate. Whatever. Come on, ladies! Let's go grease our stomachs."
And just like that, every female employee in the store went giggling out after him for dinner. That was how it went. Gangho had welded the women who worked there and the junior guys he'd brought in into one big clique, and then installed himself as their ringleader.
Meanwhile, the manager, the male staff, and me—the one who couldn't fit in with the women—made up the other faction. And our side was badly outnumbered. Watching it all, I could feel the anger starting to boil up. I'd worked in a real company before. I'd suffered through office politics.
But this was the first time I'd ever seen a subordinate gather a pack of hangers-on and run around this blatantly, practically in open insubordination. And when I tried to complain about it, the manager just...
"You just don't know how things work on the floor, Hyomin. If you ignore guys like that around here, everything falls apart."
He didn't like it either, but he'd accepted that he had to put up with it. And whenever Gangho's antics left him stewing, he'd pull me aside the way he had last time, leaning on me for comfort in a way that made my skin crawl so much I couldn't even bring myself to ask more questions.
On top of that, what really pissed me off was the growing sense that someone was deliberately targeting me—and I was pretty sure Jeong-a's influence was behind it.
"Seriously, how much paperwork could there be that only that lady gets to sit in the office with the AC blasting? What is this? Give it to me. I'll help."
"Uh, ah... th-that won't be necessary. Hyomin, if you're done, you can head out."
Open challenges to my admin work, or...
"Excuse me? You don't want me coming into the men's break room anymore?"
"Ah, well... apparently the rules never allowed it to begin with. Wouldn't you be more comfortable resting with the other women anyway? So from now on, try to stay out of—"
The older male employees looked uncomfortable about it, but it was obvious who was really behind the change.
I never thought of them as huge privileges, but one by one I could feel every little courtesy the place had extended to me disappearing. And every time it happened, Jeong-a would parade around the store on Gangho's arm and stick her tongue out at me, looking very pleased with herself.
Wow... so this is how they eat people alive? What the hell did I even do to them? I was furious, but I had no grounds to argue. Strictly speaking, those conveniences had been special favors. That didn't make the humiliation any easier to swallow. What kind of disgrace was this?
If I hadn't been fired—if this had still been my real career—I would have been ranking high enough to snap my fingers and make a store manager dance. And now I was getting bullied by some part-timer who wasn't even management, just the same temp level as me? That bitter resentment flared even hotter the moment I caught my own reflection in the hallway mirror.
"Right... is it because I just look like some ordinary woman with nothing going for her?"
The thought made something surge up in my chest. Ha... so that's how you want to play it? You think I'm just going to take it lying down? You picked the wrong person. Even a worm will turn if you step on it. There's no way I'm sitting still for this. I swore I'd get even.
But how? That question nearly crushed me on the spot. No matter where I looked, there was nothing I could use. Just picturing that intimidating build and rough face made my whole body shudder. Even before the gender change, if I'd gone at him head-on, one hit would have put me on the floor for sure.
"Absolutely... not that way. I have to use my head. Set a trap."
And as I thought that over, something clicked.
"Ah! That bastard's hideout. If I dig into that place..."
Among all the ways he strutted around like he owned everything, one thing in particular had always rubbed me the wrong way—he'd taken over the detached storage room they used for supplies and turned it into his personal office, his own little den. The sheer arrogance of it was unreal. But that arrogance had handed me an unexpected opening.
Back when I still couldn't go into the women's break room and used to wander the back areas, I'd once noticed that the ventilation room connected to that space through a vent. At the time I'd just thought, huh, okay, and moved on. But thinking about it now—if I snuck in through there, I could spy on whatever he was doing in his hideout.
And a guy who acted like he was king of the store would absolutely be doing something that broke every company rule in there. The moment the idea hit me, I moved. When my shift ended, instead of going home, I quietly headed that way.
He was definitely on closing today, right? Then he'd come here to take a break this evening. I'd hide and watch what he did. So I crept into the ventilation room and made my way toward the vent where a narrow gap in the floor looked down into the supply room. Then I heard a strange sound.
"Aah... hngh... aaah..."
"Ah, fuck. Keep it down. You that desperate to advertise you're in heat?"
The voice that followed was Gangho's. I dropped almost flat to the floor and peered up through the vent gap into the supply room. For a second I nearly made a sound out of pure shock. Above the vent, a dark-skinned, soft, fleshy female body came into view. Jeong-a.
Through the narrow slit of the vent I could see her pants kicked off, panties hanging off one ankle, her ass completely bare, her uniform top shoved up. Her voluptuous body was on full display. And behind that vigorously moving rear end was Gangho.
Wh... what the hell? These lunatics. Are they seriously having sex in the supply room? Is there no CCTV in here? I'd only expected maybe some petty theft of inventory, and now I was staring at something I had no words for. Wow... Gangho, you absolute animal. Nothing is off-limits for this guy.
And he really did seem to think this place was his kingdom. How else do you call Jeong-a out during work hours for something this shameless? They were a match made in hell, that was for sure. But on the other hand, I also thought: got him. This was ironclad. I'd found his weakness.
If I filmed this and used it as evidence... While I was thinking that, Gangho suddenly moved. He reached out, grabbed a fistful of Jeong-a's hair, and yanked. The body that had been braced against the wall with her ass out arched backward with a stifled moan, and then she was fully mounted on top of him. She couldn't hold it in anymore and let the sound out.
"Kh... s-so good..."
"Ha, fuck. Hold out a little longer. Don't come already, you premature slut."
With her own weight driving her down, Jeong-a was impaled deep and trembling in spasms while Gangho scolded her with a bored look on his face. Once she was thrown back from her position over the vent, I could finally see Gangho clearly. He looked like a beast.
The Irezumi tattoos covered his arms and entire upper body. This son of a bitch... he really was a gangster. And those tattoos, stretched over his corded muscle, had a three-dimensional life to them, like something alive. It looked like some vicious monster had mixed itself into him and was gripping Jeong-a's hips, tormenting her.
And thanks to the way Jeong-a was trembling with her legs spread, his cock was visible from below... it didn't feel real. Compared to the one I'd had myself not that long ago, it barely even looked human. It was like some grotesque stalactite from a cave had forced its way into a woman's body.
It made me feel sick. What the hell was that thing? Was he even the same species of man? And while taking something that absurd, why was that bitch Jeong-a writhing around like that? Soft and flabby, skin a mess, the same mean-spirited woman who went around picking fights with everyone.
She was always on my case about loafing around, looking ready to eat me alive—and the whole time she'd been in here losing her mind doing this? No wonder she'd been strutting around like the queen of the store. When you throw yourself at the self-appointed king like that and submit completely, of course nobody dares call either of them out.
The secret, blatant little performance those two were putting on in his hideout had given me my lead and answered my questions—but at the same time my chest felt tight and the anger kept rising. The strange smell seeping through the vent was part of it.
Cigarette smoke, Jeong-a's perfume, the smell of that place... and this... is that bastard's body odor?
A man's smell so intense it made my stomach turn flooded my nose. It wasn't just ordinary scent. Some unspeakable mix of sweat, cologne, and his particular musk was so thick I thought I might choke. It was strong enough to completely bury Jeong-a's smell underneath it.
Smelling that, I decided to scrap the idea of gathering evidence for now and get out. He wasn't going to suddenly break a habit, so I could catch the proof later. If I stayed any longer I was going to throw up from the revulsion. Holding down my churning stomach, I carefully slipped out of the ventilation room and escaped outside.
But it wouldn't leave me alone. The image of Jeong-a thrashing on top of Gangho's body kept replaying in vivid detail in my head, and even when I clamped a hand over my nose and mouth, that dense smell from inside lingered like a memory. And somehow, it refused to let me climb out of that nauseating feeling. For a long time.