The System
Sehwan and I hadn't been particularly close back in school. We'd simply shared a classroom for a single year. But meeting a familiar face in such a strange environment made me happier than I could have imagined. Sehwan must have felt the same, because from that day on, the two of us stuck together.
Sehwan was in Class C. Considering his middle school grades and the level of this place, that was surprising. It was embarrassing that I, who had never once let go of the top spot in my whole school, had been placed in Class F, but Sehwan didn't seem to care much about class assignments at all.
"It's not like they divided us by actually giving us a test, right?"
Thinking about it, he had a point. I'd vaguely assumed they'd assigned classes based on mock exam scores, school records, or CSAT results, but unlike other big-name academies, there hadn't even been an entrance exam for admission itself. The test we'd taken at the interview was far too flimsy to serve as a basis for sorting. I'd heard Sehwan's grades too, and they weren't especially better than mine.
"Then what on earth did they base it on?"
"Who cares what classes the academy made up? All that matters is doing well on the CSAT in the end."
That was fair enough.
Sehwan was aiming for the police academy. He said he'd dreamed of becoming a cop since his second year of high school and studied like a maniac to raise his grades. And apparently he'd already made plenty of friends besides me, which made him a walking encyclopedia of information about the academy.
"You know who that guy is?"
One day at lunch, while we were eating together in the cafeteria, Sehwan pointed at one of the Annex Group members from Class A. Tall, with a clean-cut face and a confident smile that never left his lips — the kind of guy who would stand out in any group, and clearly the leader of the Annex Group.
"Who is he?"
"Ever heard the name Jang Tae-joo?"
"Can't say I have..."
"He's Jang Jun-gu's son. And not just any son — the eldest."
Jang Jun-gu? The moment the name clicked, it felt like a hammer to the skull. He was the current chairman of the number-one ranked corporation in Korea's business world. So that guy was the third-generation heir and successor of this country's most powerful chaebol family?
"Why would someone like that be retaking exams here?"
I couldn't wrap my head around it. Couldn't he get into any elite university in America he wanted?
"Beats me. But all ten of the kids in the Annex are third- or fourth-generation chaebol heirs. And even short of that, there are a lot whose fathers are judges, prosecutors, politicians. Especially in Class A."
"..."
I had no words.
Even after returning to my room that day, the conversation I'd had with Sehwan at lunch kept circling in my head.
*Why on earth am I here?*
An academy crawling with chaebol heirs, dividing its students into classes — the children of good families taught apart from the rest. What possible reason could there have been for me to get in? What was that interview, really?
With something unpleasant lodged in my throat like a fishbone, a month at the academy slipped by before I knew it. Nothing had changed in my daily life, and I was still pouring most of my time into studying, but the intensity of my focus was eroding day by day. My first mock exam results were dead in the water. Better than the CSAT I'd bombed, but not much different from my third-year mock scores. Expecting a dramatic improvement in a single month would have been greedy, I knew — but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed.
The mock exam scores were posted on a Friday. We were told there would be individual counseling sessions on Saturday, so everyone was to stay in their rooms and wait, studying on their own.
My turn came after eight in the evening. The dorm supervisor knocked on my door, and I followed her, setting foot in the Annex for the first time.
The Annex's interior was far more luxurious than the dorms or the main building. There was a sweet scent in the air, too. *Is it because there are women here after all,* I thought, following the supervisor into the elevator up to the fifth floor. When she knocked on the door at the very end of the hall, a familiar woman's voice answered, "Come in." Inside, sure enough, was Instructor Yoon Ah-hyun. The supervisor ushered me in, bowed to the instructor, and left.
Since it was a counseling session, I'd assumed it would take place in an office — but astonishingly, it was the instructor's own quarters. Unlike my studio-style room, it was a proper apartment with a kitchen, a living room, and a separate bedroom. She was wearing a white short-sleeved T-shirt and black dolphin shorts. An outfit I never could have imagined on her, and one that left the curves of her voluptuous figure entirely on display. Her long hair, usually pinned up neatly, hung loose down past her chest today. I didn't know her exact age — I'd guessed mid-thirties — but today she could have passed for twenty-something. She sat me down at the dining table and poured me a glass of juice, then picked up a folder (presumably containing my scores), skimmed through it, and said with a smile:
"If you want to get where you're aiming, you'll have to work like crazy, won't you?"
"I suppose so..."
I answered with my head down. As always... I had absolutely no idea where to look.
I heard the instructor chuckle.
"Still bothered by it?"
When I looked up, she was lounging sideways in her chair, one arm draped over the backrest, legs crossed, reading the folder. A playful smile played across her face.
"You were like this at the interview too... Is it really that hard to look at me?"
"..."
After letting the silence stretch for a while, she set the folder down, straightened up, and looked at me.
"Do you remember what we talked about at the interview?"
"Yes." She must mean the talk about sexual desire.
"Have you been putting it into practice?"
"Uh... just remembering it doesn't mean anything, right? You have to actually do it."
"No, not yet..."
"Why not?"
"I don't know how to, exactly..."
"Hmm."
The instructor leaned back against the chair and studied me again. I still couldn't meet her eyes, and when I lowered my gaze, my eyes landed on her enormous breasts — so I ended up staring down at my own hands instead.
"It's simple. You set a goal you're absolutely determined to achieve, and you reward yourself only when you reach it. At this point, the only reward you could give yourself is masturbation, Wonjoong."
"..."
"Are you masturbating?"
"Sorry? Oh — no."
"You don't? You haven't done it once since you got here?"
"No..."
"Why not?"
"I just... I've been so buried in studying that it hasn't really crossed my mind."
"Really?"
The instructor stared at me quietly, as if thinking something over.
"I mentioned it a little at the interview, but here at MF Academy, we use sexual desire as a positive motivational tool. Of course that alone isn't enough — you also need excellent lectures from excellent teachers like me—"
Her playfully grinning face was almost cute.
"—but no matter how good the lectures are, outstanding results require far stronger focus from the student himself. It's a virtuous cycle of effort and reward. And not just masturbation — I'm talking about a very big reward."
A very big reward...
"So I'd like to start with you right now. Interested?"
She was still watching me with that playful smile. That smile — that maddeningly, unbearably amusing smile — I felt like I'd seen it somewhere recently.
"Yes..."
"Good. That's the spirit."
The instructor got up, disappeared into the bedroom, and came back with a tablet PC. Then she sat down not at the table but on the living room sofa.
"Since we're looking at this together, come sit over here, Wonjoong."
I shuffled to my feet and sat down beside her, keeping about a forearm's distance between us. She gave a small snort of laughter but said nothing, turning on the tablet and starting to navigate it.
The first screen was the familiar academy intranet, except it had menus I'd never seen before. Then the screen suddenly changed to a page displaying a long row of women's faces. The instructor pressed the tablet into my hands.
"Pick one."
"Sorry?"
"It's the reward you can receive tomorrow. See how each photo has an icon? The women with red icons have already been reserved by students with higher priority than you, so you can't choose them. Green icons mean they're available. Tap a face and you'll get her profile and a preview video, so take your time and browse. You can watch the videos of the unavailable ones too."
This was a development I never could have imagined. It felt utterly unreal. What on earth did she mean, a reward I could receive? I couldn't understand a word of what she was saying.
"A reward meaning... what, exactly?"
"Meaning you get to have sex."
"Sorry?"
"Starting this week, every Sunday you'll get to pick one of these women and have sex with her. It's limited to four hours, but within that time you can do whatever you want, as many times as you want. But not everyone gets this reward. There'll be short quizzes in each subject on top of the mock exams, the teachers will evaluate your performance and rank you, and only students whose rankings improve will be rewarded. The higher your rank, the earlier you get to choose the woman you want. They're all fine women we've hand-picked, but the really good ones are fiercely contested."
As I listened to this surreal explanation, I looked at the faces on the screen. Only the faces were shown, ID-photo style, and every one of them was beautiful — but they all shared one thing in common: they were middle-aged women, forty or older. Five to a row, six rows, with the last row holding four. Twenty-nine in total.
"Who on earth are these women?"
"The slaves we've picked and chosen, of course."
The instructor said it with a coquettish, eye-smiling laugh.