Meeting Jang Tae-joo (1)
Jang Tae-joo wants to meet me? Why? I'd never so much as exchanged a greeting with the guy until now. But I was curious what he wanted to talk about, and more than anything, getting close to him was the key to everything my mom and I were going through — so there was no reason to refuse. I said I'd come, and followed the dorm supervisor.
The room, naturally, was on the top floor — the fifth. When I stepped out of the elevator, something I'd forgotten suddenly came back to me. According to Lee Ji-young, my mom seemed to be living with Jang Tae-joo. Could she be in the room right now? But the worry faded quickly. Today was Sunday. Mom would be in the room with another student.
When the dorm supervisor rang the bell, the door opened and a male student appeared. Not Jang Tae-joo. But I knew who he was — Shin Hyun-min, the number two of the group that always hung around Tae-joo. He was also the heir to a top-ten conglomerate. Huge build, rough face, short cropped athletic hair — less a chaebol heir than a judo athlete.
"Oh, you're here. Come in. Thanks for your trouble, sir."
"Oh, not at all. I'll be going then. Enjoy your time, young masters."
The dorm supervisor bowed at a perfect ninety degrees and withdrew.
Stepping inside, my jaw dropped. If Ah-hyun's or Mi-jung's rooms were like small apartments, this was like a suite in a five-star hotel. It was spacious, yes, but even at a glance the top-grade interior screamed money, and there seemed to be two bedrooms. So this is where these guys live... For a year at a retaker academy, it was far bigger than the apartment my parents had bought with a lifetime of savings plus a loan.
As I entered, Hyun-min headed toward the kitchen, while Tae-joo sat in a massage chair in the living room.
"Oh, you made it. Sit."
Both were dressed in comfortable training clothes. Tae-joo rose with a wine glass in hand, came over, smiled warmly, clapped me on the shoulder, and went to sit at the table. A height that easily cleared 180cm, a lean frame, pale skin, refined features. The ideal look of a chaebol heir straight out of a drama. I suddenly felt myself shrinking, and took the seat at the far end of the table.
Hyun-min poured wine into an empty glass and asked, "You drink?"
"Moderately, I guess..."
"How much?"
"About a bottle and a half of soju."
Then Tae-joo cut in. "No soju here? Feels like ages since I've had any."
"We have some, but nothing decent to go with it. Wine'll have to do tonight."
It seemed this was Hyun-min's room, not Tae-joo's. Both bedroom doors were closed.
"I'm still craving soju, though."
"Ugh, seriously. Fine, fine."
Hyun-min laughed helplessly, pulled soju from the fridge, and called out, "Ajumma!" One of the bedroom doors opened and a woman in a maid's uniform stepped out.
"Yes, you called?"
A face I'd never seen on the Slave Roster. She looked mid-thirties, around Ah-hyun's age, and like every woman in this place, quite beautiful.
"Make some decent snacks for the soju, would you? Something quick. This young master here simply must have his soju tonight."
"Of course."
The ajumma bowed politely and began taking a few dishes out of the fridge.
"You're Won-jung, right? Do you know who we are?" Tae-joo asked.
"I know your names, at least..."
"We just drink among ourselves all the time, so I figured I'd call you over for a drink. Been wanting to talk to you at some point anyway."
With me? Why? Probably because of Mom.
"Let's have a drink first."
Hyun-min raised his glass. We toasted and downed the wine. My first-ever taste of wine was less sweet than I'd expected.
"Decent wine, this. Reasonably priced, too," Tae-joo said, swirling the last of it in his glass. I wondered what "reasonably priced" meant to these guys.
"You like wine?" Hyun-min asked me.
"Honestly, this is my first time."
"Well, at our age it's usually soju and beer."
Hyun-min nodded, and Tae-joo lifted the bottle. "You should buy a bottle sometime and try it. Don't worry, it's not expensive. You can get this at the mart for twenty thousand won."
"Twenty thousand won?"
So I was drinking something surprisingly cheap.
"Cheap stuff has its own charm," Tae-joo said with a sly smile, and Hyun-min, who'd been listening, jumped in.
"My old man's always saying it, whenever he drinks. A man's gotta eat and enjoy everything out there. That's how you get numb to the ordinary stuff, build up immunity, and aim for bigger things."
"He's not wrong. Though drink nothing but wine for a while and you start craving soju again."
Tae-joo said that while looking at me.
The ajumma set down several plates of snacks and soju glasses, and Hyun-min cracked a bottle and poured.
"Anything else you need?" the ajumma asked.
"No, go rest in your room. We'll call you later tonight."
"Very well. Enjoy your meal."
The ajumma bowed with a perfectly blank expression the whole time and went back into the room.
"Who is she?" I asked.
"Just an ajumma who cooks and does our laundry."
Hyun-min answered, then grinned. "Great cook. Washes real well too." And he snickered like it was the funniest thing in the world.
"How vulgar can you be."
But even as he said it, Tae-joo was laughing too.
We put away a few drinks, talking about this and that — academy gossip, the universities we wanted, high school days. Surprisingly, for chaebol heirs, their conversation wasn't so different from my friends'. I'd assumed they'd talk stocks and conglomerates. When the mood had warmed up nicely, Tae-joo suddenly asked:
"By the way, Won-jung, you roughly know how things run here, right? Yoon Ah-hyun said you did?"
"How things run — like what?"
"The moms. You know what your mom does here, don't you?"
I hadn't expected him to cut straight to it like that. I felt a flash of anger.
"Well... yeah."
I answered and knocked back a shot of soju. A brief silence, then Hyun-min spoke up.
"That bitch Yoon Ah-hyun's gotten way too cocky lately, hasn't she? Time for a little re-education, no?"
"Well, she does her job well, so let's leave her be for now. We'll educate her at some point, sure."
Re-educate Ah-hyun? How?
"You're friends with Kim Se-hwan, right?"
"Yeah."
Why ask that all of a sudden?
"You just came from doing it with Han Mi-jung, didn't you? You know she's Se-hwan's mom."
"..."
"And last week Se-hwan did it with Jeong In-ae. You guys never talk about each other's moms?"
"Why are you asking that?"
I shot back, angry now. The atmosphere turned cold in an instant. The look in Hyun-min's eyes as he stared at me was anything but friendly. But Tae-joo just laughed heartily, patted my shoulder, and said:
"I just want us to be close, that's all. What's there to get mad about? I want to be close like you and Se-hwan are. I'd like to call him over sometime and all drink together, but if we all know everything about each other and keep hiding it, it gets awkward, doesn't it?"
There was something strangely magnetic about his expression and voice. If Hyun-min had said the exact same words, it would have felt completely different. But when this guy said it, somehow it sounded right.
"Come on, let's just drink."
Hyun-min raised his glass. We toasted and downed the soju.
"So? Is it better to keep quiet and hide everything, or to lay it all out and talk openly?" Tae-joo asked me. I fiddled with my soju glass for a moment, thinking, then said to him:
"Is it true my mom's living with you?"
"Whoa, coming in straight for the throat!"
Hyun-min laughed. Tae-joo just watched my eyes quietly, a faint smile on his face, then said:
"Not living together, exactly. But on weekday evenings she's usually in my room."
Silence again. The two of them seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing. This guy had just told me, to my face, that he was fucking my mom every day. What was there to say?
"I don't know how this'll land, but honestly, what I have going is better for your mom. When she's in my room on weekdays, the instructors still come by, and other guys call her out and make her do all kinds of things. Sometimes she has to do it with the other moms, sometimes with a whole group of men. Look, I've brought in other women a few times myself, but I've never shared her with another man. I don't like splitting a woman with other guys. Mostly we just stay quietly, the two of us."
Oh, is that so. I knocked back another shot. Hyun-min and Tae-joo followed suit. The alcohol was starting to creep into my body.
"Well, the water's already spilled, and I already knew everything anyway. I was a little pissed when you brought it up out of nowhere, but let's just talk openly. You like doing it with my mom?"
"Wow, Lim Won-jung, you're bold!"
Hyun-min excitedly refilled my glass. Tae-joo just looked at me, smiling.
"She's the best, your mom. I got an early education in this stuff, so I've had women of every age and description, but I've never had one like In-ae. That quality at that age is genuinely rare."
"Don't you prefer younger women?"
"Nah. Women who've gone hard and shriveled with age, no thanks. But given the same quality, older is better. There's a psychological thrill to it — getting to use a woman my own mom's age however I want."
Then Hyun-min, who'd been listening, cut in.
"Your mom's got a great body. Skin soft but springy, and thick exactly where it should be. The way that ass jiggles is just—"
He seemed to be getting worked up from the sheer imagination of it.
"I'm an ass guy over tits, but her chest is amazing too. Big, great shape. But for me it's her face and that hair. The way that composed face scrunches up a little — that's the prettiest thing of all."
The two of them, thoroughly worked up, launched into a full appraisal of my mother's body. Not two months ago, I couldn't have imagined sitting around drinking with friends and talking like this about my own mom. And as I listened to them, my crotch had somehow swollen into a bulge.