A New Standard
Last night we'd gone at it like animals until I passed out, and today I'd done the same — another round of scorching sex with Park Yujin in the second room.
Park Yujin, who'd transformed herself into a black cat just for me, was embarrassed and clumsy about the whole thing. And yet, once again, she was the one proposing the positions, suggesting the play, doing everything she could to please me. Along the way she'd had to endure things that were humiliating and unpleasant for a woman — like the blowjob yesterday — but she satisfied me with a face and a manner that insisted it didn't bother her at all.
The experience of a woman sexually serving me.
Really...
Even thinking about it again, it had been a good experience.
So I, unable to hold my desire in check, had pounded Park Yujin to her limit until she collapsed. I took care of her, laid her down in the guest room, and went back to my own.
As the tension drained out of me, that peculiar hollow lucidity that always follows high-intensity exertion and ejaculation — sage time — arrived on schedule, the way it always did.
But I liked the feeling. Something about this sage time felt like it might be a genuine opportunity. In the dark room, with nothing but bright moonlight spilling in, I sprawled in a chair and, with sage time's help, rummaged once more through the remnants of my thoughts.
Something lingering unpleasantly in a corner of my mind. Something that kept snagging my attention no matter how I tried to ignore it.
Just what the hell made Jeong Sujin and Park Yujin change like this?
The Jeong Sujin I'd met on the first day had caused an incident with her big mouth, sure — but she was a woman who knew men. A woman who understood how to make herself attractive, who knew how to make a man want her. A woman who accepted sex of her own choosing without a flicker of resistance. No — a woman who knew how to enjoy it.
So why had a woman like that gone into heat the very next day?
Just because it had been a while since she'd had sex? Or because of the thought that she could have a child? Or because of everything that came with having one?
No. None of those.
Among the women I was seeing now, cases like Park Yujin's — where the financial support was genuinely desperate — were the exception. Honestly, even Park Yujin, if things broke even a little her way, could make it on her own in this world. She was a woman with that kind of ability. Which meant women like Jeong Sujin, who'd sailed through the standards we'd set without a single problem, were women who had what it took to thrive in this world by themselves.
So why had this woman suddenly started seeing me as sexy?
Because I was good-looking to begin with?
Insane. If I'd been that handsome, I'd already have climbed the ladder with my face, turned my whole life around, and never once taken a manual-labor side job in all the years since.
Because after the Great Upheaval, the way I acted and thought had changed, and I'd become the kind of personality women liked?
No. Absolutely not. I hadn't changed at all. I was still doing exactly what I'd always done — trying to make the best possible choices within the circumstances I'd been given.
Then what had changed? What had I actually accomplished? How had I been remade?
I'd survived. I'd led the men. I'd said what we wanted, and I'd set the board to build the world I desired. Then I'd made that board succeed, and I'd gotten my hands on everything I wanted.
A changed world. Money. Invisible power. And freedom.
That was how I'd become a man who had everything he wanted.
But I'd already become that man before I ever met these women.
And what was it Hyeongcheol and I had talked about when we met? That every last woman who'd come out to meet us wasn't seeing us as human beings with personalities — they were seeing us as tickets to life on easy mode. That was why I'd told that bastard Hyeongcheol: if women couldn't love us the way we wanted, then we could just love them the way they wanted, couldn't we? If they came at us as easy-mode tickets, then we could just treat sex with them as easy-mode tickets too, couldn't we?
So why were these women suddenly going beyond seeing me as an easy-mode ticket and sending me genuine, human affection?
I couldn't make it make sense. What had I done? In the span of a single day of meeting these women, what the hell had I done? What had I done that made women this attractive give up on making me want them — and start wanting me instead?
I'd cut the bitch running her mouth with crazy talk. I'd had sex for mutual benefit, exactly as planned from the start. I'd rejected the woman who didn't meet my standards. I'd called Lee Ayoung to clean up a mess I'd made, taken a little care of her, and sent her off. And aside from cleaning up the mess I'd made together with Jeong Sujin, there was nothing.
So what was it? What was I missing?
And just like before, I hit a wall here.
I was scared. It was terrifying when good results came out of nowhere and I had no idea what I'd done or how I'd done it. Jeong Sujin and Park Yujin — hell, even Song Hanna — were sending me real affection, and the fact that I didn't know how or why it was coming frightened me.
The image of a wick burning down inside a heart that had been handed to me formed, unbidden, in my mind.
I stared up at the moon that had hidden itself behind the clouds, searching and searching for a truth that flickered at the edge of sight — there and then gone — but I couldn't find it.
Why couldn't I find it.
Why.
Why!
Was the way I thought about things wrong? Was this approach simply incapable of understanding women? Then how did women think? Could men and women even think differently in the first place? What was the difference between a man and a woman?
Men and women —
Ah.
Was this it?
Men and women were different. They were so different that it would be faster to look for what they had in common. I'd already known that. Why else would my older sister and I, raised in the same environment, have held such different values?
Because men and women were different.
A woman, from some point after she was born, naturally accumulated value just by being in pain one week out of every month. A man had nothing of the sort. That was why, between a twenty-year-old woman and a forty-year-old woman, the twenty-year-old was valued more highly — but between a twenty-year-old man and a forty-year-old man, it was the forty-year-old who ranked higher.
That was why I had suffered the way I had, trying to make that single opportunity count.
Why had I forgotten this?
The puzzle in my head started coming together.
Why did a woman need a man? Because she needed a protector to keep her safe, and a partner to have her children with. Protection from what? From the countless problems she would face throughout her life. She wanted the man to solve those problems so that a state of safety would hold.
Then why did these women want me?
Because I had solved and overcome the circumstances and problems I'd been given. So I had problem-solving ability. And with that, I had proven I was the best man among men. Because among the genes a man could give the child she would bear, mine were the best. Because I could give her everything she needed to live, and I could solve every problem that would come her way. Because in this world where women had to compete and survive among themselves without men, they could use me as a cheat code. Because my very existence could make the people around them envious.
And last of all — because the women had figured all of this out.
Ahh...
I see.
That was why Jeong Sujin had picked out my clothes and my hair, and then told me to go get it done. That was what it was.
When I gave up on having a woman love me the way I wanted, women became capable of loving me the way I wanted. That was what a woman's love was.
Right. Wanting to be loved as I was, with nothing to my name — that was asking too much. Expecting every woman to be that kind of angel investor had been greedy. How many trials and hardships were there in this world? Asking that of women — physically weaker than men, spending a week of every month in pain throughout their youth — was insane.
So a man, beyond merely acquiring value, had to remake himself into someone a woman could love. That was why I — unpopular, possessing nothing — once I'd gone beyond effort and actually succeeded, had become someone capable of being loved.
I had been remade into a being women could love. I had become an attractive man who went beyond simply being a ticket to life on easy mode.
"Heh heh... heh heh heh heh..."
The laughter started leaking out, then came pouring from me like a madman's. As the puzzle I'd been wrestling with completed itself in my mind, starting from a single piece, a maddening mental pleasure drained the strength from the two hands clamped over my mouth and forced the sound out of me.
"Ha... ha... ha... ha... ha... ha..."
Ah. This felt good.
"Hahahahahahahaha."
Ah. This felt too good.
"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Like that moon breaking free of the clouds to reveal itself in perfect form, my mind had gone clear — and nothing but laughter rang through the wide room.
This made everything easy. Everything about how to treat the women who would come to me — with what heart, with what thoughts — and how to sort them.
Cut down, cold as a blade, any woman who wanted more than what I offered. Send away the ones who didn't want to enter my arms. Send away the ones who couldn't. Send away, without exception, the ones who entered and then crossed the line. Keep only the ones who came in and stayed quiet — and from among the women who gave me everything, pick and choose, and keep the closest ones nearest to me.
And to do that, what I needed was...
Maintaining my current position, and the society that kept it in place.
Becoming a better man than I already was.
And never, under any circumstances, allowing an exception.
What else did I need besides that?
What else, possibly.