Raon Aesthetic
Even after Min Cha-eun left, my eyes never left Choi Su-jin.
There were other assets besides her, but none of them broke free of Potential Grades E and F. Only Choi Su-jin sat at a Potential Grade of B. On top of that, her Hidden Use was more than enough to snare my attention.
A B-rank for a use like that? Just how filthy does it have to be to push her all the way to B?
If she were properly managed and actually reached that potential, she would be an asset that traded at a premium—expensive money. The real question was whether I could even afford to buy her and care for her right now.
I still can't properly care for Mom or raise her grade. Can I really handle Choi Su-jin on top of that?
The fundamental doubt followed hard on its heels, and the yes-or-no arithmetic started grinding tight circles in my head.
A personal credit loan under my name is impossible, and a collateral loan is out of the question.
Dad had already taken out loans against the house and against Mom, and those debts had been inherited by me. As a fresh graduate who had just been hired at Raon Aesthetic as a menial cleaner, getting a credit line was a long shot. A new-asset collateral loan wouldn't clear for Choi Su-jin either—not when she was already marked for disposal.
The reason I was even thinking about loans was simple: even a disposal-pending asset still cost at least five million won. There was room to haggle a little, sure, but that didn't change the fact that I needed several million, and I didn't have that kind of cash on hand.
What little I've got left will mostly vanish the moment next month's repayment hits.
I never imagined the allowance I'd carefully saved since I was a kid would end up going toward debt—and even that was scheduled to be wiped out in a month.
For now, I told myself not to sit there chewing on a problem that had no immediate answer.
Start with the cleaning.
There were ten rooms. Eight of them held assets awaiting disposal. Every pair of eyes was half-glazed, unfocused. No will to live, no drive, no spark of vitality in those faces. Calling their lives over wouldn't have been an exaggeration. Disposal, after all, was little different from stripping away every last scrap of human dignity. In car terms, they were scrap waiting for the crusher. In animal terms, they were the ones lined up before euthanasia.
And no white knight was going to ride in and save them. Mismanagement had played its part, sure—but the likelier truth was that they simply hadn't been able to keep up with the care they were given.
Even while I cleaned, my gaze kept sliding back to Choi Su-jin. After sweeping and mopping the floors, I checked their bedding. Like the carpets, it was filthy and reeked. Proof that no one had taken responsibility for basic hygiene.
"At this rate they'll just get sicker and hit disposal that much faster."
Maybe that was the point. There was a hard line between assets waiting on disposal and assets with disposal already confirmed.
"...?!"
Then a good idea sparked through my head like a live wire.
Right—if disposal gets confirmed! She becomes almost free.
The pity that had been driving me to clean the bedding and carpets froze my hands mid-motion.
"..."
I looked down at Choi Su-jin for a long moment, then crouched in front of her and met her eyes.
"Hey."
"...?"
She slowly lifted her head. Dull, unfocused eyes stared straight through me. There was no real focus there—just the automatic reflex of someone calling her name, so she raised her face and matched my gaze. Looking into eyes that held nothing but despair, I spoke slowly.
"Do you want to live?"
For the barest instant, a flicker of question crossed her eyes. Then they went blank and empty again. It felt like she had been offered a hand of salvation before, only to be abandoned again—more than once. Refusing to hope was her self-defense.
"If you want to live... you need to get disposal confirmed."
Doubt surfaced in her eyes again, then sank back under. Disposal confirmed meant death, after all. Her gaze only drowned deeper in despair, and she buried her head hard against her knees. Better to die than this—and she had decided to shut me out entirely.
"If your disposal is confirmed, I can save you. Remember that."
Leaving her there with no reaction at all, I threw myself back into the cleaning. I scrubbed the exposed toilets, sinks, and mirrors in all ten rooms—no walls for privacy—and by the time I finished, lunch hour was already closing in. I washed the rags and dishcloths, hung them up, put the cleaning cart in order, and finally left the basement level.
Then I stopped in front of the general manager's office on the second floor.
Knock, knock.
A light rap, and Min Cha-eun's voice answered from inside. The moment I opened the door and stepped in, she took one look at the state of me and wrinkled her nose.
"I've already got the report. Go wash up. With that smell, this is hardly a situation where I can take a briefing."
Her merciless reaction left me no choice but to frown myself.
"Understood. I'll clean up and come back to report."
"There's an employee shower next to the first-floor lobby. Use that."
Cold personality or not, Min Cha-eun was precise when it came to work. Following her instructions, I went down to the first floor and stepped into the shower room.
"They leave people rotting in a basement with no ventilation... of course the stink stuck to me too."
I sniffed my clothes. A thick, sour reek was already working its way out of the fabric.
"...Starting tomorrow, I should bring a change of clothes."
A shower alone wasn't going to fix this. Walk around in clothes that already stank and the smell would just follow me. Looks like I'd have no choice but to wash them right here in the shower room.
"They could at least give me a work uniform. Fuck."
Well—the reason they hadn't was obvious enough. I was doing work that low-grade female assets normally handled, so of course there was no uniform that fit a man. Thinking about it again, the sheer misery of my life made irritation and rage surge up my throat.
I stepped into one of the shower stalls, stripped, and was hard at work scrubbing my clothes when—
Clack.
The outer door opened. Two people came in.
"I heard a guy got hired for the lowest-tier labor today?"
"Yeah. I caught a glimpse of him earlier. Looks decent enough, honestly. But he took a job doing F-rank bottom-rung work? How useless does a man have to be to end up working in the basement, seriously."
"Oh my god, then he doesn't even have any assets, right? What if he's down there raping the disposal girls?"
"No way it'd be that trashy... pff—"
"'No way' is how people get wrecked. Wait—someone's already in here."
Rustle, rustle.
The two of them kept cheerfully tearing me apart while they undressed.
Fucking bitches.
They heard the water I'd left running, turned—and their eyes locked straight onto mine. Then their eyes locked onto my thick cock.
"Kya—kyaaaaah!"
"Kyaa?!"
"...!!"
All three of us screamed, then froze solid as ice. My gaze went to the status windows floating over their heads; both women dropped their eyes to my little brother. My cock stood proud and shameless, practically drooling for attention.
"This is the women's shower!"
I glanced at the woman shrieking like a siren, then wrung out the soaked clothes in my hands.
"The general manager told me to wash here. I didn't know it was the women's shower."
Both of them were assets owned by Raon Aesthetic. Grade D, the pair of them—perfectly average, and their Potential Grades were D as well. I made no move to cover myself. It wasn't that I felt no shame; I was simply bold enough not to bother. At twenty-one centimeters, the massive shaft had grown so fast since I was a kid that it sometimes felt like every nutrient in my body had been sucked straight into my cock.
Which was exactly why, during gym class, the silhouette that jutted out when I changed clothes had become the excuse for Im Jun-sung and the rest of the delinquents to bully and isolate me.
They called me Stallion No. 21.
Short for a twenty-one-centimeter horse cock. A humiliating nickname—and I never once pushed back. No: I chose not to. Their family situations and mine were too far apart. If I picked a fight, the damage might not stop at me; it might spill over onto my parents. That was why my thirst for revenge had climbed all the way to the sky.
On the other hand, as I grew into adulthood, I came to understand that my cock wasn't a weapon—it was a blessing. I was still a virgin who'd never even popped his cherry, but I knew perfectly well how many men dreamed of a size like mine. So I showed it to the two women without flinching.
"O-oh my."
One of them flushed crimson and couldn't tear her eyes off my cock. She wasn't alone. The other looked completely hypnotized, staring only at it.
"You... you really shouldn't do laundry in here... There's a laundry room..."
She stammered it out—suddenly polite, nothing like the gossip from a moment ago.
"Ah. Is that so. First day—I didn't know there was a laundry room."
"S-should I wash them for you?"
Her eyes never left my cock as she asked.
"Ah! I mean—your clothes! Your clothes! You don't have anything to change into, right? If you wait here, I'll throw them in the machine and come right back."
"Would you? I was just wondering what to do—the smell still hasn't fully come out. They need drying too."
"There's a dryer! I'll run the detergent and the dryer for you. Don't worry about a thing."
She snatched my sopping clothes out of my hands, yanked her own clothes back on, and bolted from the shower room. Left behind: one woman in nothing but her underwear, and one naked man.
"Um..."
Avoiding my eyes, she pointed at a chair in the shower room.
"You can sit and wait. I'll... I'll at least lend you a t-towel so you can cover up."
She was so openly kind it was hard to believe this was the same woman who'd been talking shit behind my back minutes earlier.
So this is the power of a cock.