The Premiere
Five in the afternoon.
Min-ho arrived in front of the Venus Entertainment building. Unlike any ordinary day, the lobby hummed with a strange blend of tension and excitement, staff rushing back and forth as they set the place for a party.
"Min-ho!"
Ji-young waved and crossed the lobby toward him. The woman from next door—the scout who had drawn him into this world, and the first woman he had ever had. The office clothes she wore today clung to her figure, and they looked unusually sexy on her.
"Ji-young."
"I've got a good feeling. This is going to be huge. Everybody's waiting on it."
She brushed a hand down his arm and winked.
Min-ho took the elevator to the fifteenth floor and knocked on the door of the CEO's office.
"Come in!"
He opened it, and Choi Seo-yoon rose from her desk to greet him with a brilliant smile.
"Min-ho! It's finally today!"
She looked him up and down, and her eyes went round.
"Huh? Min-ho... you look different."
"Do I?"
"Yeah. You seem a little taller, and the lines of your face are stronger. How do I put it... the male scent on you is thicker."
Seo-yoon circled him once, eyes bright with interest.
"You're definitely not the same as yesterday. Or am I imagining it?"
Min-ho laughed, awkward.
"You're imagining it. I just changed clothes."
The truth was otherwise. As a reward from the System, he had grown two centimeters, to 170, and his Looks had climbed three points, to 53.
"Anyway, you're ready, right? We go up in an hour!"
"Yes. I'm ready."
"Then let's head to the conference room. Can't have the stars missing."
A crowd had already gathered there—Director Kim Tae-joon, the staff, and the day's other lead, Park Yoon-a.
"Min-ho!"
Yoon-a ran to him and threw herself into his arms. Since that first shoot, the two of them had slipped, easily and naturally, into being lovers.
"I'm nervous. I'm really nervous."
He could feel her heartbeat against his chest.
"So am I. But it's something we made. Let's trust it."
He wrapped an arm around her waist and soothed her.
"Oppa! It's finally here!"
Ha-rin and So-mi came over to cheer him on as well.
"I want to shoot with you soon, too."
So-mi gave his newly solid forearm a sneaky squeeze.
"You look even more delicious today... I mean, more handsome."
Six o'clock drew near. The big screen at the front of the room came on, showing the main page of Venus Entertainment's official platform.
"All right, five minutes out!"
Seo-yoon passed around the champagne she had set aside.
"Min-ho, Yoon-a, come to the center."
They stood side by side before the screen, hands clasped tight.
"Four minutes... three... two..."
The air in the conference room sank under its own weight, then swelled again with anticipation. Everyone took up the countdown.
"Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one..."
"It's live!"
The staffer's shout hit at the same moment the thumbnail appeared on the screen.
In the thumbnail, the look Min-ho and Yoon-a turned on each other—hungry, as if they meant to devour one another—was fierce.
"Look at the view count!"
Ji-young jabbed a finger at the bottom of the screen and shouted. Every refresh, the number leapt past anything that made sense.
A hundred views. Five hundred. A thousand.
Thirty seconds after upload, the count exploded.
"Yoon-a's existing fanbase is pouring straight in!"
Five thousand views in a single minute. The live comment feed began to climb like something unhinged.
Five minutes passed. The views blew past twenty thousand in a blink.
Ten minutes in. Fifty thousand views.
Thirty minutes in. A hundred and fifty thousand views.
One hour in. Three hundred thousand views.
"This is huge! This is a monster hit!"
Seo-yoon lifted her champagne and shouted.
"At this pace we clear a million before midnight, no question! That's an all-time record!"
The conference room erupted. Corks blew, and party poppers cracked through the cheering.
"Cheers!"
"To Min-ho and Yoon-a's brilliant debut!"
"To Venus!"
Glasses knocked together all around the room.
That was when Seo-yoon caught the eyes of Min-ho, Yoon-a, Director Tae-joon, and Ji-young.
"All right. Let the staff enjoy the first round here. The real stars are moving on."
Her eyes gleamed, languid and knowing.
"Shouldn't the rest of us celebrate a little more... hot and heavy?"
Imperial, the finest room salon in Nonhyeon, Gangnam—a hostess club where only VVIP clients ever made it through the door. In one of those private rooms, five of them gathered: CEO Choi Seo-yoon, the leads Park Yoon-a and Jeong Min-ho, Director Kim Tae-joon, and the scout Han Ji-young.
The wide marble table was crowded with a whiskey service worth several thousand dollars and platters of fruit.
"You all worked hard! Drink!"
Director Tae-joon laughed, big and easy, and started a round of bomb shots. A few circuits of the table, and the room heated fast. In this world, where sexual freedom had been pushed to its limit—the place people had taken to calling Sextopia—a company dinner was nothing like an ordinary night of drinking.
"Shall we play a game?"
Ji-young produced a die, her smile wicked.
"Plain old King's Game is boring. How about a Partner-Pick Sexy Mission?"
"Yes. A night like this, we go all the way."
Seo-yoon was the first to shrug off the jacket she had on. A thin slip was all that remained, and the lavish curves of her body showed through it.
"Yoon-a and Min-ho are a couple, so they sit together. Ji-young and I will serve from either side."
Min-ho sank into the seat as if buried between the three of them—Yoon-a, Ji-young, and Seo-yoon.
The first die was thrown. It landed on Ji-young.
The person on Ji-young's right was Min-ho.
"Oh my. Our Min-ho? Then let me give you the service properly."
She took a mouthful of whiskey, climbed onto his thigh, and wound her arms around his neck.
"Mm—"
Her lips covered his. Cold, biting liquor slid from her tongue into his mouth, and it was not merely a drink being passed. Her tongue stirred through him and tangled with his, thick and slow.
"Haa..."
When their mouths parted, spit and liquor mixed and drew out between them in a shining thread.
"Min-ho's lips really are delicious."
Ji-young savored the taste and dragged a finger across his chest. Yoon-a, who had been watching, pulled at his arm with jealousy plain on her face.
"Unni, he came tonight as my boyfriend. Don't eat him all up."
"Oh, Yoon-a. Good things are meant to be shared."
Director Tae-joon threw the next die.
He laughed, rough and easy, and pointed at Yoon-a.
"What I want most is your breasts. I spent the whole shoot dying to get my hands on them."
Yoon-a undid the buttons of her blouse without a flicker of hesitation. Min-ho's heart dropped. By every rule of the world he had come from, this was the moment to grab the man by the collar.
"The film came out well thanks to you, Director, so I'll allow it. Just this once."
Right before Min-ho's eyes, her pale breasts were bared in full. The director's coarse hands covered them and kneaded, greedy and unashamed. Min-ho's eyes trembled. For a man who had lived thirty-two years a virgin, the sight of the woman he had opened his heart to being handled by another man was a shock like a blade carving through his chest.
Yoon-a... what are you doing? You're supposed to say you don't want it. Why are you smiling?
Rage climbed his throat, but he couldn't make himself speak. Everyone around them was enjoying the moment as if it were the most natural kind of play.
Yoon-a twisted under the director's hands and let a moan spill against Min-ho's ear.
"Ahn... Min-ho... another man touching me is getting me excited..."
Excited by something she ought to refuse? Is that even possible?
His mind tried to make sense of this world, but the assumptions carved into him over thirty-two years rejected it with violence. He was furious, and in the same breath sick with himself, because his cock was hardening in answer to the grotesque scene.
Yoon-a's hand slipped beneath the table and undid his belt buckle.
"I can't be the only one taking it. You strip too."
Under her hands, he swelled in an instant. CEO Seo-yoon saw it, and her eyes lit.
"Wow... the real thing is even more impressive than it looked on screen."
She rose and came to stand in front of him.
"My turn. A CEO ought to hand out a reward."
She took a piece of ice from the bucket on the table into her mouth. Then she pulled his pants all the way down and began to rub the cold ice along his shaft, already burning hot.
"Hngh—!"
Cold and heat struck together, a shock sharp enough to make his hips jerk.
"Hold still. We're only getting started."
With the ice melting on her tongue, Seo-yoon took the head of his cock into her mouth in a single swallow.
Slrrp... mmmph...
In seconds the luxury room was full of raw, unmistakable sound. On his left, Yoon-a toyed with his nipple. Below, CEO Seo-yoon worked him with her mouth, and on his right Ji-young licked along his ear and whispered.
"Min-ho... feels good, doesn't it? This is what success tastes like."
His mind went hazy. A debut that had hit, and beautiful women pressed in on every side to serve him. It was a wretched night—the kind that showed him how thin the word love had always been, the way he used to understand it.
"Hey—hey! Min-ho's about to come! Everybody get ready to take it!"
Director Tae-joon shouted, worked up and grinning.
"Don't hold back. Tonight you're the king."
Yoon-a kissed him and guided his hand up under her skirt.
"You can finish inside... no. Spray it all over us."
The frenzy ran on until the night was deep. They took one another's bodies, and they did not stop until the smell of liquor and semen, mixed together, filled the room.
Two in the morning.
The party had crested and was finally winding down. When Min-ho staggered out of the room salon on unsteady legs, his phone would not stop chiming. The view count had already blown past eight hundred thousand.
A million views on the first day... it might actually happen.
In the taxi home, still hazy with drink, he stared into the empty air and spoke quietly.
"Status Window."
A soft chime. A translucent hologram rose before his eyes.
Charm and virility are the highest...
Was it the frenzy of the night, or the success of the debut? He couldn't know what the next quest would be. One thing, though, was certain.
The old Jeong Min-ho was dead.
Only two weeks ago he had been a loser hounded by debt collectors, living on instant ramen. A lifelong virgin who had never even properly held a woman's hand. A complete reject.
Now he was the hottest AV actor in the country, a man who spent the night with three beautiful women.
He got home and collapsed onto the bed. One last look at his phone.
The number was climbing fast enough to see with the naked eye.
A million, any minute now...
As his awareness blurred, the corner of Min-ho's mouth lifted. When he opened his eyes in the morning, a sum running well into six figures would be sitting in his account. And he would no longer have to run from the people he owed.
A new life.
Min-ho sank into a deep sleep.