Attending the General Affairs Department Dinner
I'd sat in on a General Affairs Department dinner a few times before, and every single time I came away thinking the same thing: what a dreary lot these people were. Perhaps because they spent their days staring at nothing but numbers, they simply did not know how to have fun.
Round one at the barbecue place was no different — from the opening toast onward, everyone was too busy grilling meat and ferrying it to their mouths to do anything else. Nobody wandered from table to table with a soju bottle in hand the way we did at our Sales Department dinners, and naturally, the mood never flared hot even once, right from the very first round.
If anything, they stayed glued to their assigned seats and exchanged quiet chitchat with only the people within arm's reach, so orderly it almost looked cozy. Then again... no wonder the General Affairs team had been the first in the whole company to win the no-smoking campaign.
With a crowd like that, it was obvious why Ms. Eunmi had spent all this time dodging these dinners with one excuse after another. If my read was right, she liked to have fun. Not that I harbored any particular prejudice against women who smoked, but in this country, a woman with a cigarette between her fingers did tend to be read a certain way — as a girl who'd played around plenty, wouldn't you say?
At round one, I ended up at a table completely cut off from Ms. Eunmi. I'd come along on the coattails of my junior colleague, which meant I had no choice but to sit beside the little punk — and of course the punk planted himself at the innermost table, right next to the General Affairs manager. So there I was, stuck directly across from the manager himself, while Ms. Eunmi, trailing in behind us, took the very last seat at the far end of the other table.
The one mercy was that the tables had been pushed together into a single row of three. Opposite ends or not, the slightest turn of my head was enough to catch sight of her. So I kept up an easy stream of chatter with the manager while sneaking glance after glance her way — and sure enough, Ms. Eunmi sat there with a face like stone, clearly not enjoying herself one bit. What was the world coming to, when a contract employee wouldn't even crack a smile at a company dinner?
Watching her like that only made the urge to put her on her knees before me boil up hotter than ever.
But how?
My phobia of women was nowhere near cured, and she wasn't even sitting within arm's reach — there wasn't a damn thing I could do. So until round one finally wound down, all I could manage was to watch Ms. Eunmi out of the corner of my eye and squirm in my seat.
Genie! Do something!
"Kukuku. Is that your second wish talking?"
Hey, you bastard! If you set this table, you see it through to the end!
"Tch! Humans, I swear... I lay out the whole meal for you, and now you want me to spoon it into your mouth too? Try a little creativity. Creativity."
Creativity, my ass. However I worked it, a man with a phobia of women couldn't lay a finger on Ms. Eunmi, could he!
"Kukuku... don't you worry about that part. Just trust your genie. Your job is to figure out a way to get close to her. As for me... I'll sit back and take my time watching you work. Do well, now. Let this chance slip, and who knows when the next one comes."
This lazy son of a bitch! The genies in animated movies politely prepared everything for their masters — but this guy...!
And so round one fizzled out with nothing to show for it. Impatient for a win, I turned to the General Affairs manager and proposed we move on to round two — there was a beer hall nearby I knew well. The manager, seemingly loath to let the department's first dinner in ages end so soon, took my suggestion gladly, and the whole crowd picked itself up and moved to the place just down the street from the barbecue restaurant, all nine of us intact.
The bar owner already knew my face, and he beamed at the sight of me marching in at the head of a small parade. While a part-timer guided the group off to the big corner table, I lingered at the counter long enough to trade the usual pleasantries with him — been a while, work's been killing me, but look, I brought you a whole party tonight, so take good care of us — before following the others to the back.
By the time I finished with the owner and made it to the table, the General Affairs crowd had already claimed their seats.
And then — what a windfall out of nowhere!!
Genie! Was this your doing?
"Me? Don't know what you're talking about. You just happened to get lucky, is all."
The big corner table seated eight. Counting me, there were nine of us at tonight's dinner. The manager took the innermost seat, and the rest of the men crowded in beside him, filling out one whole table. And along the outer side sat every one of the female employees. Which left my seat as a lone extra chair dragged up to the head of the table — and right at my right hand sat Ms. Eunmi!
The women glanced my way with visible unease at the thought of stiff old me parked at the head of their table, and the ordinary me would have found that seat agonizing too. But that day was different.
Ms. Eunmi.
The woman I had sworn to conquer was sitting at my right side, and the fact alone had me buzzing.
As I settled into my chair, an awkward silence drifted over the women. Ms. Eunmi was the most blatant of all — she drew her bag smoothly toward herself, putting as much distance between us as she could.
Kukuku. Go right ahead, dodge me all you like. You're the target of the first wish I made to the Genie, after all. You can run — but only for now.
The awkwardness didn't last long. At the bar owner's brisk orders, bottles of beer and soju came streaming to our table one after another. Things were moving my way, and I grabbed the bottles and took charge of the mood. Granted, the mood I was steering was strictly the one flowing back and forth with the male employees across the table — but a party mood, by nature, spreads like wildfire once a single person catches the flame.
Under my direction we traded toasts back and forth, straight shots of soju chasing beer, three rounds in a row, and the atmosphere began to burn hot in a way round one never had. Alcohol really was the soul of any company dinner. The stiff, classroom-solemn calm from round one had vanished without a trace, and our table was turning rowdy, loud with laughter and shouting, just like the other customers around us.
True to form, Ms. Eunmi and the other women at our table chattered away among themselves as if I didn't exist, trading words only with the male employees beside them — but I hardly minded. With my phobia of women still uncured, if any of them had actually tried to strike up conversation with me, it would only have cracked the lovely heat we'd built.
Without a word, drawing on the skills I'd honed back in my days at the very bottom of Sales, I started mixing bomb shots — Sobaeksanmaek, the classic soju bomb dropped into a mug of beer, as my base, layered with every variation I knew — and kept the table supplied. Dizzy on the mood, the General Affairs crowd drank down every bomb I rolled out, too far gone to keep count.
"Kukuku. So it's liquor, is it? Old-fashioned, sure — but the most reliable method there is."
The Genie graded my handiwork with that trademark aggravating chuckle of his. His tone rubbed me the wrong way, but I was riding too high to care, and I fired back as if it were nothing.
"You said it — the most reliable there is."
"Kukuku. That it is. Look over there. That woman's starting to lose her grip on herself."
At the Genie's prompting, I stole a sidelong glance at Ms. Eunmi. Early on, she'd shielded the side of her legs with her bag and sat primly upright — no doubt conscious of me, the man she couldn't stand — but by now her eyes were slowly losing their focus. She had her arms up on the table and her chin cupped in one hand, giggling with the woman across from her over something endlessly funny.
And every time she burst out giggling, her chest jolted beneath the loose white shirt. I'd never managed a proper look before, so I hadn't known — but Ms. Eunmi's bust was nothing to scoff at either. Her shirt was tucked into that pink skirt, and from the hem at her waist up to where it stretched across her chest, the pull was considerable. Not a single fold showed around her stomach; the fabric stretched smooth and taut all the way up, silent proof that she carried no belly fat and a chest of considerable size to boot.
Worse, she kept shifting in her seat, and the bag that had blocked my view at first meant nothing now — her long, slender legs lay bare in my line of sight beneath her skirt. Her miniskirt had crept up somewhere along the way, covering little more than the last curve of her rear while leaving her thighs almost entirely on display. One more small turn in my direction and her underwear would have been in plain view. It was a dark corner of a dim bar and the lighting was poor, but her bare legs — not a stitch of stocking on them — seemed to blaze. At the sight of her unraveling like that, my cock swelled thick and heavy.
Ah... how long had it been, watching a flesh-and-blood woman this intently, this long... Ten years of avoiding women made a mockery of itself — my eyes refused to leave her unguarded, unrestrained figure, hungry to make up for every woman I'd never once dared to look at properly.
And then — the moment! The moment Ms. Eunmi, trying to fix a skirt that kept curling upward, lifted her hips slightly and tugged the hem back down — I could see between her legs.
In that poorly lit corner of the bar, and with the instant so brief, I didn't get a clean look at her underwear. But clean look or not, the simple fact that I had glimpsed between the legs of Ms. Eunmi — the same woman who, days ago on that rooftop, had mocked me for being gay behind my back — sent heat roaring into my cock until it strained to punch straight through my briefs.
I packed every ounce of that excitement into my hands and started shaking up bomb shots like a madman.
Drink! Drink and let it all go! And then tonight, you're mine! I'll make sure you never forget me for the rest of your life!