Our New Relationship
It wasn't until the small hours of the morning that we finally pulled ourselves together and decided to watch the sunrise from the hotel.
"Sunrise? Isn't it a little late for that?"
"So what? You said you didn't see it last time."
"...I didn't miss it. You're the one who slept through it, Jieun."
A few days earlier, we had planned to watch the sunrise to celebrate turning twenty. It had felt like the kind of memory Jieun and I could carry for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately she couldn't drag herself out of bed, and the whole thing had come to nothing. It still seemed to sit with her.
"Sorry. I was on the phone with Hui-gyeong and ended up going to bed way too late."
"Forget it. We'll watch it now. This counts as a memory too."
We stripped the sheets stained with her virgin blood, ate, showered, and killed the remaining hours in front of the late-night broadcasts. The heat of that first, burning experience had already gone out of the room. We — or at least Jieun — had slipped back into being what we had always been: friends of ten years.
"Hey, Kim Dojun. It's time. Bring the chairs."
"We've still got a while."
"They said 6:05."
"That's for the beach, isn't it?"
When the hour arrived, Jieun paced in front of the hotel's enormous window like a child who couldn't sit still. I brought over two chairs and set them beside her, then cracked a can of beer and handed it across. She had no hang-ups about drinking, and she took it down in eager gulps.
"Wow. We're already adults. Hehe."
"Slow down."
"Got any snacks?"
"You already ate them all."
The way she knocked it back with nothing to chase it didn't sit quite right with me.
I should get this girl properly drunk one of these days.
It wasn't a dirty thought. I just wanted to know her tolerance and her drinking habits before I sent her off to college. I added that to the list of things I meant to do, took a sip of my own beer, and looked outside to guess when the sun would actually show. Jieun had said 6:05, but the sky told a different story — another thirty minutes, at least.
This should be about the right moment.
In that loose, floating stretch of time before sunrise, there was something I wanted to settle with her.
"Jieun."
No matter how close two people are, an agreement has to be clear. Otherwise you end up with pointless misunderstandings — or worse, the wrong kind of expectations. That was why I felt the need to define this entirely new relationship in concrete terms.
"Hmm? What is it?"
"I'm going to ask one last time. What you said before — that still stands, right? About us having this kind of relationship."
"Why are you bringing that up all of a sudden?"
"Just tell me."
She was embarrassed, but she answered without hedging.
"Yeah. That's why I'm here with you."
"Good. Then let's make things clear going forward."
"Make what clear?"
Given the subject, of course she was interested. Jieun turned her whole body to face me. I tried to put what I had been thinking into words as carefully as I could, so I wouldn't hurt her feelings.
"From now on, I'll cover your tuition. That's help from a friend. Even if it feels like too much, just take it. I refuse to let you refuse."
"...Thanks."
"And I'll give you three million won a month for living expenses."
"Mm. And that's the payment, right?"
Neither of us needed to say what it was payment for. We both knew.
"That's right. Is it not enough? I can give you more if you need it."
"No, it's not that, Dojun. So, um. How many times a month do I have to... you know?"
"How many times? That's, uh... it depends, doesn't it?"
"Ten times would be pretty rough..."
I hadn't expected her to ask for a specific number. A cold sweat prickled across my back.
"Hey, I just padded it on the generous side. We're not doing it that many times."
"Really? That's a relief. Hehe."
"Anyway! We'll leave that as is. One more thing. This part's actually important."
"What now?"
I had to hesitate before saying this next part. What I was about to ask had nothing to do with our arrangement, not really — it was purely my own greed.
"The way we're doing this monthly, you could think of it as a kind of long-term rental."
"And?"
"Ahem. So, as long as we're in this relationship, I'd rather you didn't see other guys."
On the surface it sounded reasonable enough, but the demand was a calculated move — cut off her romantic life at the root, and my own position would only grow stronger. Fortunately, Jieun agreed without a fight.
"Come on, I have a conscience. What boyfriend?"
She shook her head as if the idea itself was unthinkable. Her reasons weren't quite the same as mine, but she had her own logic for it. Either way, I had gotten what I wanted. I let out a quiet breath of relief.
"Okay. That's everything on my end. Is there anything you want? If there is, say it now."
At the end of a negotiation that had gone surprisingly smoothly, I passed the ball to her. Jieun thought it over, then spoke.
"It's not a demand, exactly, but can I ask one favor?"
"What is it?"
"Could you advance me three months?"
The request caught me off guard. I had assumed it would be something sex-related — whether or not to use condoms, that kind of thing.
Three months... that's nine million?
Nine million won. Not a small amount, but that wasn't what mattered to me. Nine million or ninety million — it was all the same at this point. What mattered was why Jieun needed that kind of money.
"What do you need it for?"
"It's for my family. We're moving to Daejeon next month."
"You're moving?"
"Yeah. I told you last time — we're completely broke."
It was a bleak story, but Jieun seemed relatively calm about it. I made a silent vow never to go into business, then asked the question that had occurred to me.
"So the nine million is for finding a place?"
"Yeah."
"And living expenses?"
She was going to take the money I had given her to live on and spend it on rent. The sheer denseness of it made my voice go sharp.
"Ah, I'll get a part-time job. And if things go well I might get into a dorm. Nothing's decided yet, that's all."
"A part-time job?"
I let out a sigh.
A part-time job. It sounded nice enough. Not leaning on a friend's money — earning it herself. But to me, it was a knot of anxiety. If Jieun and I weren't in this kind of relationship, I might have sincerely cheered her on. That would have been the natural thing for a friend to do.
But things were different now. Jieun and I had clearly entered a sponsorship arrangement. From here on, she would sleep with me a handful of times and walk away with millions of won every month. In other words, she was going to realize she could sell her body and make easy money.
Would her sense of money hold up in a situation like that? Could she adjust to a part-time job that paid maybe a million won for a whole month of work? And if someone else came along with a tempting offer — could she turn it down? I didn't know the answer. I just knew what money could do to a person, and I wasn't willing to tolerate even a sliver of that risk.
"Forget it. I'll cover your tuition and a place to live."
"A place too?"
"Yeah. So don't do anything stupid."
I had set the condition at three million a month just a moment ago, but that had been a formality. I was prepared to spend money on her whenever she needed it. Ten million, a hundred million — it didn't matter. What mattered to me was a single phrase from her.
Just say the word. Ask me to do it, and I will — whatever it is.
I had one goal: turn Jieun into a well-fed pig. A pretty little pig so used to me that she couldn't bring herself to leave my side. For a guy whose only selling points were money and a dick, it seemed like a pretty smart approach.
"Nothing else?"
"Nnh. No."
"Then let's watch the sunrise."
With our relationship newly defined, we were finally able to greet the rising sun. Even boxed in by a forest of buildings, it shone brighter than it ever had — as if blessing the twenty-year-old lives that lay ahead of us.
It was a little late, but we held each other's hands.
From the new year on, I became a new person — and an extremely busy one. I looked for a place of my own, researched driving lessons, and shopped around for cram schools for that godforsaken college entrance exam. The fact that I was still a test-prep student, same as a year ago, was especially agonizing.
"God, I just want to quit."
I had more or less given up on getting a real job at this point, and I was starting to seriously wonder whether going to college even made sense anymore. I wanted to work out and build a body like everyone else, travel, drink at bars — so why the hell did I have to lock myself in a room and study for the exam? If someone were selling a letter of acceptance, I would have bought one on the spot, no matter the price.
"Hah. Seong Jieun, I'm really only doing this because of you."
The reason I couldn't give up, despite a thousand reasons to hate it, was Jieun. How to put it. I wanted to be at least a halfway decent person for her. Money was my biggest weapon, that much was true — but you can't live a whole life on money alone. I needed to become someone who wouldn't be embarrassed to show his face anywhere.
"I really need to take a break from crypto."
In the end, I made a major decision for the sake of the exam. It was the only way to keep from wasting another year. I couldn't let last year's disaster happen all over again. I opened the crypto app and took a screenshot of my assets — a souvenir of the greatest achievement of my life.
"See you later, friends."
Then I logged into the crypto board I had practically lived on and wrote a post. The content was simple: the screenshot I had just taken, and a few words of goodbye.
Looking back, an enormous amount had happened on that board over the past year. Laughing, crying. Charts always went up and then they went down — that was just how it worked. I had caught fewer waves than most, but I had caught them, and every one of those waves was still sitting there in the thread history. I couldn't help feeling a little sorry to leave.
There are a few people I'd actually like to meet.
A handful of usernames drifted through my mind. We had only ever known each other through fragments of text, but even so, something like a real closeness had formed.
A moment later, comments started piling onto the post.
"This old guy still doesn't believe me. I ought to show him my face one of these days."
I skimmed the rest of the replies and closed the tab. It was time to get back to studying.