High Stakes, High Returns
“Knock knock.”
“Miss, this is Kim Sunghyun. May I come in?”
“—You’re here?”
The voice was dripping with amusement, like someone who’d just found out the joke was on them and couldn’t stop grinning. What kind of nonsense was she planning to pull now?
“What are you doing? Come in.”
As soon as I received Lee Yohee’s permission, I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The scene inside the room was odd. A metal animal cage sat in the center of the floor, covered by a tarp.
Sniff… sniff sniff…
Every now and then a terrified squeak echoed from inside—like a cornered rodent. My sharpened sense of smell caught the faint, distinctive musk of pure animal fear.
Rats in Yohee’s room? Disgusting. Something was very wrong.
“I’ve been thinking things through, and it seems like handing you an easy task and then forgiving you outright isn’t quite right. So I came up with a game. Three challenges. If you win all three, I’ll let you go.”
She must be out of her mind.
Not only could I choose the rules and stakes however I wanted, but I had to beat three of them in a row to get out? No way.
Still, I couldn’t say it aloud. Right now the blade was firmly in her hand. I’d play along—for now.
“What kind of game is this?”
She flashed a nasty smile, stood up, and yanked the tarp off the cage.
“!”
Wh-what…?
Why was he here?
“Ta-daaa~ The first game is right here.”
Inside the iron cage were two half-demons—neither human, both trapped.
And one of them… was the face I recognized from my past life.
Shiver shiver shiver shiver
A tiny rat-demon, trembling like a leaf, desperately hugging his crying companion. Jerry Lamer.
I’d crossed paths with him two or three years ago at the Samjung Construction site. Always the same guy, always working the same brutal shifts. A rat-demon with a body so small he must have been in constant pain, yet he never once complained.
His sister was sick. He’d shown up anyway, grinning bitterly: “If I don’t work, who’s going to take care of my sister?”
In a place where everyone only spat insults and curses, he was the only pure soul. His heart was so kind that when I was starving and my stomach was growling, he’d split his own rock-hard bread in half and offered me half.
“You’re so small, you don’t need to eat much.”
After he started making fortune cookies, we never ran into each other again, so I never contacted him. But I’d made sure to tell him: if he ever needed help, I’d do one or two jobs for free—anytime, anywhere.
And now this same guy was locked up like an animal in Yohee’s bedroom. What the hell was going on?
“I hate half-demons. Creatures that act like humans even though they’re not… especially rats. That’s why I brought you two here to play with.”
Even though I hadn’t even paid him back for that single piece of bread, the way she was talking made my eyebrow twitch before I could stop it.
“So the task I was given was just to play around with half-demons?”
“Heh? Of course. Why would I give a job like that to someone like you? ‘Just play around’—puhuhu… You’re getting cocky, you know. Your entire life and your dick are riding on that ‘just play around’ joke.”
“…I’m sorry for being insolent.”
I shrugged and returned to my chair. The message hovering above Yohee’s head was new—nothing like the old one.
[Yohee: Park Manager? I’m bored. Catch a couple of trash workers from the construction site nearby. You know my taste, right?]
[Park Manager: Yes, Miss]
The man called “Park Manager” had answered without hesitation even before I took over at Samjung Group. This woman had hurt so many humans just because she was bored—half-demons were just the latest victims.
I forced my fist to unclench while Yohee opened her mouth again.
“You know what? Every time I see a man being eaten alive by his own lust, I can’t stop laughing. It’s hilarious.”
Even though she was a lesbian, the hatred for men had rotted her to the core. Half-demon hatred, man hatred, pure loathing for humanity itself. The neo-Nazis would be crying right now.
I was about to frown when the rat-demon’s voice trembled from inside the cage.
“Hic… O-oppa…?”
“I-it’s okay, Jenny! Oppa will protect you!”
Jerry Lamer was hugging his sister protectively. Same species, same features. He’d said his sister was sick and worked the site anyway—probably using the coin money to pay for her treatment.
“Hahahaha! Look at those two little rats cuddling! Uweeeek!”
Despite the ears, tails, and everything else that made them half-demons, she made a disgusted face and reached into the drawer beside her chair.
One was a pistol.
The other a syringe.
“Hey, rat.”
“Y-yes, yes, Miss…!”
Jerry Lamer picked up the atmosphere instantly, his rat-demon instincts screaming that the human on top was the real target.
He gently peeled his trembling sister away, flattened himself on the floor, and answered.
“Is that female rat the one you’re calling your sister?”
“Y-yes it is.”
“You love your sister a lot?”
“Y-yes…?”
“Huh? You’re not answering?”
Click.
The slide of the pistol racked back.
“H-hic! Y-yes! As family, I love her!”
“I see. Family love, huh?”
Yohee twisted her lips into a cruel smile and tossed the syringe at Jerry Lamer.
Thud.
Her eyes locked onto mine again.
“Kim Sunghyun. This is the starting line of our game. Shall we bet on whether these two rats will fuck or not?”
Wh-what…?
“…Huh?”
“What kind of dumb question was that? I just said it. That rat is claiming he loves his sister ‘as family.’ You didn’t hear it? Then let’s test him. Whether a rat-demon male really has such noble feelings.”
Jerry Lamer had been slaving away on the construction site for his sick sister. He’d never do something like this unless someone had prepared the perfect trap.
And the only thing that could force a man to fuck was that syringe.
Probably some ultra-concentrated drug far stronger than Plimax—a substance that turned anyone into a sex-crazed beast.
“Forcing him to prove his love by injecting a drug like that is too cruel, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t help but object, but Yohee let out a contemptuous snort.
“Hah? What does that have to do with anything? If the drug makes him break his own morals, doesn’t that mean it’s pure family love? Huh? Why the hell would I care about that?”
This woman was even lower than Cha Seyeon.
“If Jerry… no, the rat-demon loses his mind and does what you want, what happens then?”
“Heh? Obviously. That rat-demon will fuck his sister until her pussy is ruined and his heart explodes from the poison. She’ll end up in a brothel. And you and that pervert… since you’re human, I’ll give you two as special ‘raw materials.’”
Raw materials…?
“Huh?”
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s start the game. Hey, rats. Stick the syringe in already. What are you waiting for?”
Shiver shiver shiver
“U-uuuh…!”
Jerry Lamer was on the verge of breaking. I’d already heard every word with superior rat-demon hearing. If I let him inject that drug, he’d rape his own sister until she was destroyed, and both of them would die horribly.
“Haah… this moment is the most thrilling…♡”
Yohee watched him bite his lips until they bled, then exhaled hotly.
Absolute worst.
She’s the worst of the worst.
I wasn’t some saint—I’d run underworld deals while still keeping basic human decency. I never sold out customers’ embarrassing secrets, and I never touched old people or children. That was the bare minimum of human morals.
But Yohee had none of it.
A demon who got off on other people’s pain.
Wasn’t that even a person’s act?
Grit.
You’re the one I’m going to train properly.
I’m going to make your perverted lust drag you into the gutter. And one day you’ll be writhing underneath the very cock you hate so much.
‘Then what about my own cock? Will it count as justice?’
Whatever it takes, I’m going to scrape every last rotten thought out of that head with my dick. I’ll tear apart even his sanity and make him pay for everything he’s done.
I held back my disgust and rage with a calm smile and made my counter-proposal.
“Ahaha, this is interesting. Miss, if it’s not too much trouble, would you like me to offer a more fun game?”
An insanely reckless and dangerous suggestion.
I didn’t know if it would work, but there was no way I could win three back-to-back human-trash games.
And besides the stakes, a tiny rat-demon voluntarily sticking a syringe in his own arm to “resist” a drug? Only a fantasy protagonist would manage that. It would be a completely unfair bet where Jerry Lamer, his sister, and both my life and Haruka’s were 100 % forfeit if I just watched in silence.
‘Then it’s better to rewrite the board.’
Dancing on someone else’s stage was unbearable.
Even if the risk was high, I was the one who should drag Yohee onto my own board.
“Huh? What game?”
I snatched the syringe out of Jerry Lamer’s trembling hands before he could inject it.
“If I win this game, the bet ends right here.”
“…W-what? You’re not seriously…?”