Give and Take
It's the manager.
The moment Jo Sua caught sight of Kim Taeyoung, she fled into the break room. She had no idea what face she was supposed to show him. Nineteen years old, and her love had ended without her ever managing to do a thing about it. If she had known it would hurt this much, she would have confessed — at least once.
But it was too late now. A girlfriend stood at Kim Taeyoung's side, an older woman who dressed far better than Sua and whose figure was frankly unfair. Once he had a girlfriend, there was no way Sua could offer him her heart.
But wait… why did the girlfriend change?
This was not the woman who had come with him last time. Because the woman was tied to Kim Taeyoung, Sua remembered her perfectly. The face was different. The body was different. She could not be mistaken.
"Sua."
"Eek!"
Kim Taeyoung had followed her straight into the break room. At the sound of his voice she startled as if she had seen a ghost.
"Jump like that and you make it a little awkward for me."
"I-I'm sorry. You startled me."
"You been doing all right?"
"Yes…"
Kim Taeyoung looked at her with pity. Something was weighing on her, all right; her color was bad. He came out with it at once.
"I told you to call me if things got hard. Why didn't you?"
"What…?"
Sua caught her breath. Had he figured it out? Her head and her chest tangled together. How had he seen through her heart, and what on earth had he chased her in here to say?
"Take this."
Then, out of nowhere, Kim Taeyoung held out an envelope. Whatever was stuffed inside, it was thick.
"What is this?"
"Mm… money. Heard you've been having a rough time. So why didn't you tell me? I told you I made a lot off crypto."
"M-money?"
Sua opened the envelope. It was packed with fifty-thousand-won bills, and at the sight of that much cash the worry she had been turning over blew clean away.
"This isn't a free handout. From here on you go to college, study hard, get a job, and pay it back. You can do that, can't you?"
"Ah…"
Now she understood what he had gotten wrong. Heartbreak had darkened her face these past few days. She hadn't been able to shine the way she used to when he was still on the floor, and once she had brushed Youngji unni off with a lie — that she was struggling because she needed to earn money. Other people said that sort of thing, so she had assumed she could too. The story must have traveled wrong, and that was why Kim Taeyoung was pressing cash into her hands.
"Manager. Why are you being so good to me? You have a girlfriend."
"Huh? A girlfriend? I don't."
"What…? Then the woman who came with you last time? And the one today, too. They're just friends?"
"Yeah. Just friends."
"R-really?"
Sua asked as if she could not believe it. What kind of guy friend and girl friend went shopping arm in arm through a department store? And you did not doll yourself up that hard just to meet a friend. From what she had seen, both the woman last time and the one who had come today had been doing everything they could to hook a man.
Even so, she wanted to believe Kim Taeyoung. She wanted his words to be the truth. The pain of a broken heart was too heavy, and a thread of hope was desperate. If he really had no girlfriend, didn't that mean she still had a chance?
"Why would I lie? They're really not girlfriends. We just meet sometimes, eat, and hang out."
"Oh, s-so they really are just friends?"
"Yeah. Real friends."
Sua's face brightened. More than one thing about it failed to sit right. But love had blinded her, and she believed him.
"Manager. No — you're not my manager anymore."
"Hm? That's right."
"Th-then… would it be all right if I called you oppa?"
Sua was nineteen, not even old enough to step into a bar. Kim Taeyoung was thirty. Eleven years lay between them. The Kim Taeyoung from before the coins would have refused on the spot. Now he was looking at her as a woman, and he nodded.
"Yeoning. You pick a bag?"
"I can't decide."
"Why? Nothing you like?"
"N-no! There is one I like…"
The price was simply too high. She knew Ecobloom sat at the high end even among luxury houses, and she knew the bags were expensive. She had not known they cost this much.
"Hyung. These are the three bags the customer likes."
Jonghun assisted from the side: one in the thirty-million-won range, one around twenty million, one around six million. Of the three, Su Yeoning clearly wanted the most expensive. A sense of shame was all that kept her from deciding.
"Then buy all three."
"Whaaat?"
"Whoa, hyung. That flex is filthy. I'm so jealous."
Kim Taeyoung had nothing to weigh. Thirty million or three hundred million, he only had to buy. Quantity did not matter either. If they caught his eye, he bought the lot.
"W-wait. Oppa, you're buying me three whole bags?"
"Well. Depends how you do."
"What does that mean…?"
"It means if you're good from here on, I'll give them to you as gifts."
He was not about to pour them out for free. The basic principle on which the world turned was give-and-take — equivalent exchange, by another name. If she listened to him, he meant to hand the bags over one by one. Even without that, Su Yeoning would have had no choice but to listen. An incentive, though, was magic. It made even someone already working hard work harder.
Su Yeoning chose the most expensive bag first and cradled the shopping bag against her chest as if it were treasure. It was a fairly large bag, and still it was astonishing that her chest refused to disappear behind it.
"Thank you, oppa."
"Yeah. Stay grateful."
"Of course. Meeting you really is the greatest luck of my life."
At the sincerity packed into Su Yeoning's words, Kim Taeyoung let out a short laugh, then checked the time.
"Almost time to stream, isn't it?"
"Yes. Will you come to my broadcast today?"
"No. I've got another stream to watch."
"Aaah… th-that's too mean."
"Mean how."
"You're saying it right to my face — that you're going off to watch some other female cam."
Su Yeoning put on a tearful face. She had already accepted that she was the one underneath. The compensation was that large. Losing out to another female cam was a different problem. The other woman was probably in the exact same position she was. They were both the lesser party, and falling out of his attention was a matter of pride and of income at once.
"Today I already promised, though. It's something I told her to do, so I have to go watch."
"Hiiing… okay. If you say so, there's nothing I can do. But if you have any time left, please come watch me too."
"Got it. Buckle up. I'll drive you."
"Okay."
Su Yeoning fastened her seat belt. It sank deep between her large breasts, which only made them stand out more. For a moment Kim Taeyoung could not help himself, and he gave her chest a squeeze.
"Aaang. Oppa."
"Heading out."
After dropping Su Yeoning at home, Kim Taeyoung turned the car around at once. He was bound for one of Seoul's wealthy neighborhoods, a cluster of luxury villas. They were not priced as monstrously as his own house, but each unit still ran to several billion won.
He took out his phone and checked the code for the shared entrance. Past it, he went up to unit 302. The door code was written in the KakaoTalk message as well. He punched it in, opened the door, and a thickly feminine scent washed over him.
Hwayeon's scent. She had set diffusers all through the apartment, tuned to the same note as the perfume she wore.
"Oppaaa!"
Hwayeon, in a slip, peeked her face out of the room. The moment she confirmed it was Kim Taeyoung, she threw both arms wide and came running. A slip was sleepwear, and she was playing the part of a woman just out of bed — except her hair was washed and her makeup was perfect. He decided not to remark on it.
Smack, smack, smack. She buried herself against him and peppered his cheek with kisses. Hwayeon was a woman with aegyo and coquetry equipped as a passive, but he had never seen her pour it on this hard.
"Heheheh. Oppa. Did I mention that I love you?"
"You do, every time."
"Oh, come on. Then listen again. I love you, oppa. You know I love you so, so much, right?"
The million donations she had taken in on the Excel Broadcast — a hundred million won — had been an enormous help to Hwayeon. She had taken first in that day's contest, of course, and she had filled her pride to the brim. Grinding that bitch Dohee's uppity nose into the dirt had been a given. What she had suffered across two nightmarish hours, she paid back double over ten. All of it was thanks to Kim Taeyoung. How could she not love him? Gathered in his arms, she rubbed against him like a cat.
"Didn't you say you barely slept?"
"It's fine. You're here. I can sleep when I'm dead."
"Enough of that. You'll wreck your skin, and it's bad for you. Sleep a little. I'll wake you later, and we'll eat then."
Yesterday's broadcast had run more than twelve hours, and it had been a drinking stream besides. After more than twelve hours of drinking, Hwayeon had not made it home until past ten that morning. By the time she took off her makeup and washed, it was past noon when she finally fell asleep. After a brutal broadcast, she had not even gotten four hours.
A grind like yesterday's would normally have meant sleeping soundly straight through until evening. Today, though, she was meeting Kim Taeyoung. To her he was her only lifeline and her savior. She had to see him even if it meant cutting her sleep.
"Mmm? I'm fine, though."
"I've got a broadcast I need to watch, that's all. I'll use your computer."
"Oh, that was it? Then I'm really going to sleep?"
"Yeah."
"Thanks, oppa."
Hwayeon looped her arms around Kim Taeyoung's neck and brought her lips to his. The kiss went deep. He cupped her ass and enjoyed it.
"Oppa! I'm off to sleep! If you're going to jump me, at least wait three hours!"
She called it out with only her body tucked into the bedroom, long fingers spread wide as she waved. Kim Taeyoung answered with a light wave of his own. The bedroom door shut, and he stepped into her streaming room. It was not much different from the room he had seen on screen.
What the screen never showed, though, was piled up everywhere. The side the camera caught was decorated neat and elegant, but step just past that line and broadcast gear and clothes lay strewn, unsorted. Less filthy than simply not put away. The border was so sharp it was almost funny.
Kim Taeyoung smiled faintly and turned on Hwayeon's computer, going straight to KoreaTV. You could watch a stream on a phone, but the screen was too small. A broadcast needed a big monitor and high resolution. Only then could you actually read the chat, and only then was it easy to type a message when you fired off a donation.
It was four in the afternoon, a full hour and a half earlier than Heo Myangmyang usually went live. Even so, her broadcast was on. Kim Taeyoung had told her to.