Claiming the Prize
Less than a minute had passed since the teller quietly slipped away to make a hushed internal call when someone appeared behind Jihoon.
"Sir, if you'll follow me, please."
It wasn't the teller. It was an entirely different female employee, the kind who seemed to exist solely to handle VIP protocol.
A tight black pencil skirt that traced every curve of her figure, sheer black stockings of unmistakable quality gliding over sleek legs that drew the eye and held it.
And the faint, expensive scent of her perfume tickled the tip of Jihoon's nose.
Until yesterday, a polished banking beauty like this wouldn't have met his eyes on the street — and now here she was, bowing and escorting him as if he were the only man in the world.
Once again, a pleasant stiffness stirred in Jihoon's lower half.
He made a show of casual indifference, nodded, and followed her into the private elevator.
Ding—!
The moment the chime sounded and the doors slid open, a different world unfolded — one entirely removed from the bustling lobby downstairs.
The floor was covered in top-grade carpet that swallowed even the sound of footsteps, and gallery-quiet lighting cast a calm, luxurious glow across the third-floor corridor.
Guided by the woman, Jihoon pushed open the heavy wooden door at the end of the hallway and stepped into a sprawling, perfectly soundproofed private room.
At its center sat a massive, top-shelf Italian leather sofa — roomy enough for three or four adults to lie down on.
"Please, make yourself comfortable here, sir."
Following her gesture, Jihoon sank into the sofa.
The plush, yielding leather cradling his hips coaxed his knotted muscles deliciously loose.
"Sir, to process your prize claim, we'll first need to verify the authenticity of your lottery ticket. Could you hand it over along with your ID?"
The woman made the request in a voice both warm and impeccably courteous, her hands folded neatly in front of her.
Jihoon swallowed dryly.
The moment had come at last.
From his pocket he drew out the crumpled lottery ticket — warmed all night by his own body heat — and his ID.
"Here... you go."
His voice trembled, ever so slightly.
The instant he passed the ticket over, her cool, smooth fingertips brushed lightly across the back of his hand.
Under normal circumstances he'd have flinched, but right now every nerve in Jihoon's body was locked onto that little scrap of paper leaving his fingers for hers.
The woman scanned the barcode in the upper corner of the ticket, along with his crooked signature and personal details scribbled on the back, her eyes moving with brisk efficiency.
Then she turned to him and offered one more gentle smile.
"Everything checks out. I'll proceed with the verification and payout process now. Please wait here just a moment — I'll be right back."
She bowed deeply, slipped out of the room, and the heavy door clicked shut behind her.
"Whew..."
The second he was truly alone, Jihoon let out the breath he'd been holding in a long exhale and sank back against the leather.
The massive ceiling-mounted climate system pumped out cool, crisp air without pause, and yet fat beads of sweat were gathering on his forehead and the bridge of his nose, dripping one by one.
Extreme tension fused with the insane, electric thrill that five billion won was about to land in his hands — his every pore had flown wide open.
Wiping the sweat away with the back of his hand, Jihoon looked down at the table in front of him.
On it sat a bottle of water, a single sheet of paper clipped into a binder board, and a gleaming, premium ballpoint pen.
"Huh? What's this?"
Jihoon picked up the pen and pulled the paper toward him.
Survey for Lottery 1st-Prize Winners
"Hm. So the Nonghyup head office even runs a survey for winners."
A dry chuckle escaped him. It wasn't a bad toy for killing time in these nerve-shredding minutes. Jihoon clicked the pen open and began skimming the items.
What was your primary motivation for purchasing a lottery ticket?
① A good dream ② Coincidence ③ I buy regularly ④ Other
If you had a good dream, what kind of dream was it?
① Ancestors ② Pigs/animals ③ Fire/water ④ Feces ⑤ Other (describe: _________)
"Number one, obviously." He checked it without hesitation.
"Ha... how the hell am I supposed to describe this one."
Jihoon snickered, pen in hand.
A dream where my gorgeous blonde Russian wife, wearing a garter belt, sucks me off before screaming in orgasmic bliss and begging me to knock her up?
If he wrote that, the Nonghyup employee compiling the statistics would no doubt recoil in horror and dismiss him as a lunatic.
With a sly smirk, Jihoon checked '⑤ Other' and, in fluid, elegant handwriting, dressed it up respectably in the blank: a dream where I met an angel of a foreign wife.
What kind of dreams he had about that angelic wife, of course, remained his own sweet secret.
What are your primary plans for the prize money?
① Real estate purchase ② Loan repayment ③ Savings/deposits ④ Business capital ⑤ Other
"Real estate, obviously. First thing is escaping this damn mold-infested basement hovel."
Jihoon circled ① and ③ with a decisive flourish.
Just as he finished the survey, his time-killer complete—
Creak. The heavy door swung open.
Jihoon hastily set down the pen and shot upright on the sofa.
The same polished woman from before was gliding in, cradling something precious on a silver tray.
Each soft footfall seemed to sync with the pounding of Jihoon's heart.
"Thank you for your patience, sir."
She approached and set the tray down on the table.
On it rested a stiff, glossy gold-class VIP passbook — the bank's exclusive line — and a single crisp sheet of paper.
"Your ID and ticket verification have both been completed without issue. As you requested, rather than your existing account, we've opened a new one and transferred the full prize money for your first-prize winning on all five lines in a single deposit."
The woman respectfully presented the A4 sheet — the transaction receipt — with both hands, holding it before Jihoon's eyes.
"Here are your transaction receipt and your passbook. Please confirm the details."
Jihoon's hands trembled like aspen leaves.
Holding his breath, he fixed his gaze on the deposit amount field of the receipt balanced on the tips of her smooth fingers.
Beside the stamped date, printed in bold, vivid black ink with almost merciless clarity, was the final take-home figure — after the taxman's flat 33% cut had been carved away and the rest lodged into the account.
Deposit Amount: ₩5,060,000,000
Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten-thousands, hundred-thousands, millions, ten-millions, hundred-millions, billions.
He lost count of how many zeros there were, and counting them made the world tilt dizzily before his eyes.
"Five billion... and sixty million won..."
A soul-drained groan slipped from Jihoon's lips.
The text he'd been staring at on a smartphone screen and the sheer weight of cold cash as seen on a VIP passbook and receipt bearing his actual name were heaven and earth apart.
The solid, weighty feel of the passbook in his hand.
Sealed inside this thin little booklet was awesome power — the power that had, in a single stroke, overturned the life of a bottom-feeder who until recently had agonized over whether to spend another five thousand won on lottery tickets while scraping by on convenience-store triangle kimbap.
"Congratulations, sir. From this day forward, our bank's VVIP lounge will do its utmost to assist with your asset management."
The woman bowed once more, her waist folding to a perfect ninety degrees.
That bow of flawless submission.
The tingling, blind devotion Yevgenya had offered in his fantasies as she groveled prostrate on the floor strangely overlapped with this sleek, real-world banking beauty lowering her head before him.
"Ha... hahaha."
Buried in the leather sofa, Jihoon covered his face with the hand clutching the transaction receipt and began to laugh, low and helpless.
Stepping out through the great revolving doors, Jihoon's footsteps were light as feathers.
A private room in the Chinese restaurant on the top floor.
One entire wall was floor-to-ceiling glass, and the glittering skyline of downtown Seoul spread out exhilaratingly beneath his feet.
What Jihoon had ordered was Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, laden with the rare delicacies of mountain and sea — premium Peking duck, shark fin, abalone, sea cucumber, the works.
The head chef, dressed in a pristine white uniform, came into the room himself and carved the steaming Peking duck into perfect, ready-to-eat slices right before Jihoon's eyes.
The whisper of the knife gliding through that crisply roasted skin was pure art.
After the chef bowed courteously and withdrew, Jihoon wrapped a piece of duck skin — slathered generously in hoisin sauce — in a thin pancake and popped it into his mouth.
"Insane..."
The nutty, dense richness of the duck fat exploded across his tongue as the crisp skin shattered.
Then a scalding spoonful of the Buddha Jumps Over the Wall broth — deep, dark, and complex — sent a medicinal warmth spreading through his every vein.
This was the ultimate flavor that capitalism had engineered — something cheap delivery jjajangmyeon or convenience-store kimbap could never deliver in a lifetime.
"Buuurp—."
A satisfied — no, an imperious — burp rose up his throat.
Dabbing his greasy lips with a napkin, Jihoon gazed out through the glass wall.
"Ahh... so this is what money's for..."
Dozens of floors below, it was the lunch hour, and office workers spilling out of the forest of buildings, along with cars packed bumper to bumper, scurried about busily like swarming ants.
The fact that until yesterday he'd been just one ant in that swarm now felt like a distant past life.
"The rich get to eat like this every day, look down at views like this every day... that's what makes the world worth living in. How hilarious must all those poor bastards down there look, fighting tooth and nail over a few thousand won."
As he rolled his wine glass between his fingers and looked down at the ant swarm, an arrogant smile spread across Jihoon's lips.
A perfect sense of fulfillment, as if he owned the world.
But before the afterglow of that satisfaction had even faded, his gaze drifted to the huge, empty round table behind him.
"Still..."
Jihoon muttered bitterly, poking at what remained of the feast.
"I'll admit... eating something this good alone feels a little off."
The vast, opulent private room.
The chef's phenomenal cooking.
The panorama spread beneath his feet.
And yet the bone-deep truth that not a single person existed to sit across from him and share this joy sharpened into a keen loneliness that stabbed at a corner of his chest.
Ever since a freak accident had taken his parents in childhood, Jihoon's life had been one of utter solitude.
He'd been shuttled from one relative's house to another, eating the cold rice of charity, and the moment he came of age he fled into independence and threw himself into the job market.
All the way up to the musty basement room he'd moved into for work — through every step of it, he had gritted his teeth, fought tooth and claw, and endured that loneliness and isolation by sheer desperate will alone.