To the Bank
But his gaze immediately darted to the clock on his smartphone.
"Whoops, whoops. Enough with the useless daydreaming... First things first — I need to get ready to go to the bank and withdraw that money."
Finding Yevgenya, buying an apartment, picking out a sports car — none of it would be possible until the real, physical five billion won was sitting in his own two hands.
His rule had always been simple: handle the most important and most urgent business first, no exceptions.
Jihoon decided he'd better grab a shower well ahead of time to make it to the main branch at Seodaemun Station, and was just about to push himself up off the mattress.
That was the moment.
A heavy, foreign pressure inside his shorts tugged stiffly at his lower abdomen.
"Agh... damn it."
Jihoon lowered his head and stared down at his crotch.
It was the price of being forcibly jolted awake by his alarm at the exact moment he'd been about to unload his cum into Yevgenya's hot mouth, right on the edge of climax.
The semen with nowhere to go, dammed up and suppressed, had swollen his balls to the point of bursting, and Jihoon's massive cock still stood rigidly at attention, veins bulging all over it, straining to punch its way through his yellow trunk shorts as it slapped about, flaunting its presence shamelessly.
From the tip of the crimson-red glans peeking out through the gap in his shorts, the pre-cum he'd been pumping out as he ravaged Yevgenya's throat in his dream was oozing out stickily, soaking his thigh with a slick sheen.
The moment he wrapped his hand tight around that throbbing column, ready to burst at any second, a jolt of pain and pleasure shot up his spine all at once.
"Haa... That seductive little minx had to go grinding her chest and lips all over me in my dream. Now my dick's about to explode."
He wanted nothing more than to jerk it out of himself right then and there... but he had no intention of taking care of this precious hard-on in some pathetic solo session in the corner of his musty basement room.
Jihoon caressed his swollen, rock-hard cock and muttered darkly under his breath.
"First, the moment the bank opens, I deposit every last bit of the winnings as cold hard cash... and tonight, no matter what it takes, I'm pulling this trigger properly."
In the back seat of a taxi gliding smoothly toward the Seodaemun main branch.
Cool air-conditioning washing over him, Jihoon had his nose buried in his smartphone screen.
Any other Monday he'd have been staring gloomily out the window, cursing the hell-day that is Monday, but right now an unmistakable lewd, exhilarating grin was spreading across his face.
On his screen, the gallery was blazing out of control with weekend lottery results — and above all, with talk of the Match-5 jackpot winner, the hottest topic of the entire draw.
Scrolling down, the endlessly pouring comments were a sight to behold.
A vivid pageant of humanity in all its flavors — tearing into each other, seething with envy, going berserk over inferiority complexes.
Looking down at that mud pit of a comment section, Jihoon felt a rush of euphoria so intense it made his groin ache.
The lust he hadn't been able to release in his dawn fantasy of Yevgenya fused with the thrill of standing above all these people, swelling the tent in his pants heavy and full all over again.
'Ah... I'm itching so damn bad to flex this, fuck.'
Human nature really was a cruel, ironic thing.
The urge to slap a single photo of the receipt onto an anonymous forum and strut was climbing all the way up his throat.
What if, right this second, he posted proof with a caption like [Yo, come on out, whoever was whining that 5 billion can't buy a Gangnam apartment lmao]?
The gallery would quite simply detonate.
The ones who'd scream it was photoshopped and deny reality, the ones posting "AI-forged" analysis threads, the ones begging him to please just pay off their 10-million-won debt, the ones groveling on the ground going "Sir, could you at least buy us one order of pizza?" — all of them.
Just imagining those bastards gasping at his feet, throwing their pride in the trash, made the hair on his whole body stand on end with delight.
But Jihoon soon turned off the screen with a smirk.
"Ahh, restraint. Restraint. One careless brag and I get IP-traced, doxxed, and swarmed by lunatics — nothing but a headache."
The internet's tenacity exceeded all imagination.
There was no need to sully a perfect life that had just landed billions in his lap.
This sweet taste of victory and superiority was something to savor in secret, entirely within the privacy of his own skull.
"You have arrived. Payment has been completed."
A soothing AI woman's voice broke into his reverie.
The taxi had stopped near Seodaemun Station.
Gone were the days of a driver saying "That'll be so much, sir" — the empty front seat of the driverless autonomous taxi had already settled the fare with his registered card, and with a soft, silent whir, the back door swung wide open.
The moment Jihoon stepped out of the taxi, the main branch building — towering like a colossal glass palace amid the forest of downtown Seoul skyscrapers — overwhelmed his field of vision.
It was desire itself made flesh: a mass of ambition shooting toward the heavens like a monument to money and power.
"From this moment on... my life changes completely."
Jihoon swallowed dryly and slipped his hand into his pocket. His heart began to pound wildly.
'Name, resident registration number, and contact info all written on the back of the ticket? Check. ID in my wallet? Check.'
He ran through the checklist in his head one more time — the items he'd verified dozens of times overnight for fear of losing the ticket or having it stolen.
He wasn't some idiot who believed old internet ghost stories like "gangsters stake out the main branch, sniff out jackpot winners, and throw them into a cargo van."
This colossal main branch was, after all, a place that corporate suits and VIPs streamed through around the clock for business loans and financial transactions worth tens and hundreds of billions.
A mere first-place lottery winner was nothing more than a passing plankton in that enormous current of capital.
His head knew it was safe, but his chest — carrying a scrap of paper worth five billion — thundered fit to burst.
Doing his best to look casual, Jihoon quietly blended in with the hurried office workers and suited elites streaming toward the building entrance.
'Among all these people rushing around... could there be another winner here for the same reason I am?'
Jihoon glanced around and chuckled inwardly.
Stepping through the massive revolving doors into the first-floor banking hall of the main branch, he was hit all at once by the blast of giant air conditioners, that stiff peculiar smell of money banks carry, and the scent of marble.
The grandeur and overwhelming scale were on a different dimension from the small neighborhood branch.
Jihoon passed the information desk, pulled a number ticket from the dispenser, and planted himself on a plush sofa.
Seated in the waiting area, his gaze drifted toward the tellers beyond the counters.
Young, polished women in crisp uniforms, hair swept back in flawless buns, mechanically processing transactions while staring blankly at monitors displaying tens of millions, hundreds of millions of won.
'Those women get first-place lottery winners crawling in every single week... what do they think each time?'
Once again, Jihoon's lewd imagination raised its head in his mind.
'Are they analyzing the winners' fortunes and face-reading in their heads? Or do they play polite and professionally courteous on the surface while fantasizing about marrying up and being called "Madam"?'
Just as his crotch was starting to stiffen inside the swirling vortex of daydreams—
♫ Ding-dong. Customer number 7014, please come to Window 3. ♫
The number on the display board and the announcement snapped Jihoon wide awake.
With a slight cough, he pushed down his rising hard-on, clutched the lottery ticket tight in his pocket, and walked toward Window 3.
"Welcome, sir. How may I help you today?"
A female employee with an elegant, intellectual beauty — her name tag reading the rank of Assistant Manager — greeted Jihoon with a warm smile in her eyes.
Jihoon sat down in the chair in front of the counter and took one long, deep breath.
"Um..."
His voice failed him for a moment, and it came out as a squeak.
The teller didn't rush him, simply watching him with a friendly smile.
Jihoon leaned in close toward the counter and, in the quietest, most confidential voice he could manage so no one nearby would hear — yet unable to suppress the trembling — whispered:
"Excuse me... I'm here... to collect a first-place jackpot."
The instant the words left his mouth—
The teller's professional smile faltered, just barely, just for a heartbeat.
At the word from the mouth of a man she'd assumed was just another customer here for a loan or a deposit, her pupils dilated for a fraction of a second — then returned to their usual professional gleam.
"Oh... yes, of course, sir."
Her voice turned noticeably softer, more confidential. She rose quietly from her seat, glancing around at the people nearby, then bowed courteously toward Jihoon and opened her mouth to begin the next step of the procedure.