The Goddess's Price Tag
"Oppa... how do I look?"
Choi Yura gave a slow, full twirl where she stood and waited for an answer.
Seven in the evening, at the Star Cafe in front of campus. She had shown up right on time, and it was obvious she had dressed for this from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes.
A white off-shoulder dress laid every curve of her body bare. High-heeled strap sandals trembled precariously with every step. A cubic-studded necklace glittered against her collarbone on that slender throat, and the amount of skin she was showing was far more daring than anything she ever wore to class. Passing men kept glancing over, staring as if they had forgotten how to walk.
"Whoa, look at that girl. Is she a model?"
The murmurs drifted in from every direction. But what I saw first was not the glamour. It was the desperation she had so carefully dressed up and hidden underneath it.
Ten million won. To pay the price of the money I had transferred her, she had packaged herself tonight like an expensive product sitting on the front row of a display case.
"Not bad."
I propped my chin on my hand and looked her up and down, slowly. My gaze slid down the smooth line of her shoulder, lingered on the deep valley of her chest, her cinched waist, and finally the slender ankle exposed above the sandal strap.
An outright visual rape.
The old Choi Yura would have snapped, What are you staring at!? Now she just stood there and took it with her whole body, her face flushing as if she were shy. This was the obedience capitalism made.
"Get in."
I opened the passenger door of the car I had waiting. A black Bertz S-Class, used but meticulously maintained. The door shut with a heavy, expensive thud, and the smell of luxury leather brushed my nose. The first trophy I had flexed with my coin profits.
"Wow... Oppa, you bought a car?"
Choi Yura's eyes went wide. The look in them changed in an instant. In a single second she had upgraded me from a returning student with a little money to a capable young-and-rich. Greed flickered in her pupils as she stared at the emblem. For a slave of capitalism, there was no pitch more certain than this.
"Yeah. I couldn't exactly put you on a bus for a date."
I took the wheel and smiled, easy and unhurried.
"Let's go. I made a reservation."
The engine hummed, and the car slid away from the curb. In the passenger seat, Choi Yura kept twisting around to take selfies of the interior. Her elaborately nailed fingers adjusted the angle so the Bertz emblem would show. Watching her harvest bragging material for social media was not cute. It was pitiful.
A high-end omakase in Cheongdam. A dinner course that ran over three hundred thousand won a head. Soft lighting. An immaculate hinoki cypress counter. The chef's precise, disciplined hands. Everything about the place was expensive.
The chef set a carefully pressed uni nigiri on the plate. Choi Yura picked it up with her chopsticks, slipped it into her mouth, and let out a string of little moans of delight.
"Mmm~! This is so good. It just melts. I've never had anything like this..."
She looked genuinely happy. A few days ago this same girl had been crying over tuition and debt collectors. Put expensive food on her tongue and every worry in the world vanished from her face. Simple. Materialistic. And therefore easy to handle.
"Eat as much as you want. Worry about staying skinny tomorrow."
"Tch... I don't even have to manage it. I was just born this way."
She gave me a coy, eye-smiling look. Girlfriend-for-hire. She was playing her part faithfully — feeding me bites, linking her arm through mine, catering to my mood as if she were actually in love.
But I knew. Behind that smile hung the enormous shadow of her family's collapse. And her head was full of nothing but anxiety. Where is this man taking me after dinner? What is he going to ask for tonight?
Toward the end of the meal, right as dessert was due, I lifted the shopping bag I had left by my chair and dropped it on the table.
"What's this?"
"Open it."
Choi Yura opened the bag with trembling hands. Inside was a black box stamped with the Chanelle logo, and a white camellia flower.
"Holy... this is..."
Her pupils shook as if an earthquake had hit them. She opened the box. There it was — the exact model she had wanted so badly, the one she had been too broke to buy, the one she had carried a high-grade knockoff of from Dongdaemun while living in constant fear of being found out. The genuine Classic Medium Flap Bag revealed itself in all its aristocratic glory. The soft sheen of lambskin. The weight of the chain. Even the smell of the leather was different.
"That fake you were carrying around last time. It was bugging me."
I turned my sake cup and dropped the fact on her, casual as anything.
"If my girl walks around with something like that, it makes me look cheap."
"Oppa..."
Moisture gathered in Choi Yura's eyes. Moved? No. Those were tears of relief and desire. Relief that her worth had been confirmed in cash. And a desire close to survival instinct — the desperate need to never fall back down to that miserable bottom again.
"Thank you... thank you so much..."
She clutched the bag to her chest, as desperate as a shipwreck survivor hugging a life vest in open ocean. To her, I was no longer just a creditor. I was her only patron. Her savior.
"If you're grateful, you should pay for the meal, right?"
I knocked back the last of the sake and stood.
"Let's go. Time for round two."
She followed me without a word, the precious Chanelle bag held tight against her chest.
A hotel suite. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the night view of the Han River unrolled like a panorama. But the living room held nothing but a heavy silence.
Choi Yura set the bag down carefully on one end of the sofa and stood there, awkward. The look on her face said it: this was the part she had known was coming.
"I'll go wash up."
She tried to escape toward the bathroom.
"No."
I caught her wrist.
"Just do it like this. I like it better that way."
"Huh...? But I sweated, and..."
"Doesn't matter. I like how you smell. It's more real this way."
I pulled her roughly down onto the sofa. Then I drew the zipper of her dress down, slowly. The sound of it cut through the silence. Cool air-conditioning touched the bare skin of her back, and she flinched. The white dress slithered to the floor, leaving her in her underwear.
Black see-through lingerie. A matching set, top and bottom — the kind of underwear you put on when you have decided tonight is the night.
"You really prepared for this, huh?"
I smirked, and she flushed and dropped her head.
"You're beautiful."
I traced a finger slowly down the valley of her chest. Soft, springy flesh. The body of the business school's campus goddess — the fantasy of every guy on campus — and I was touching it however I wanted. The sense of conquest ran up my spine like a current.
"Yura."
"Yeah..."
"If your dad goes bankrupt, this is what you'll be doing every day. Stripping in front of fat old men you don't know. Pouring their drinks. Selling a fake smile."
I reminded her of that bleak future, cruelly and on purpose.
"By then your price will have dropped even more. Who's going to pay top dollar for a body that's been used up? There won't be anyone buying you Chanelle bags. You'll be lucky to get a handful of tip money."
"Stop... please don't say that..."
She tried to push at my chest, looking like she was in pain. The thing she least wanted to hear. And the one thing she could not deny.
"So do a good job. For me. Right now."
I grabbed her chin roughly and forced her eyes to meet mine.
"I know... I know, so... please don't throw me away..."
She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. A desperate kiss. There was no love in it. Just a frantic working of her tongue, packed with the survival instinct of a girl who could not afford to lose me.
I wrapped an arm around her waist, laid her back on the sofa, and pushed between her legs.
"Show me. Show me what you're worth. You've got to earn this bag."
Choi Yura pulled her own panties off with trembling hands. Then she spread her legs wide. Shame was a luxury she could not afford. Right now she was paying off ten million won of debt and the price of a brand-new Chanelle bag with her body.
"Haa... Oppa... put it in... hurry..."
She begged with a flushed face. Her eyes had gone unfocused. I lined myself up against her wet entrance without even putting on a condom.
"You won't regret this?"
"I won't... I want to be Oppa's... I want to be Master's..."
Master.
I had not even told her to say it. The word just came out of her mouth. Same as Seo Jisu yesterday — she had figured it out on instinct. The essence of this relationship was not boyfriend and girlfriend. It was a thorough master-and-slave arrangement.
"That's right. You're mine."
I drove in to the root in a single stroke.
"Aaaah!"
Choi Yura screamed and dug her nails into my back. She was tight. Tight enough that calling her a masterpiece of a pussy would not have been an exaggeration. The warm, narrow walls clamped down as if they meant to swallow me whole and never let go.
"You like it? Better than an expensive bag?"
I gripped her hips and moved my waist roughly as I asked.
"Nngh! Ah! I like it! Better than the bag... hh, Oppa's cock is better!"
A lie. A blatant business line. But it was a lie that sounded good.
I picked up the pace. The creak of the sofa and the wet, slapping sound of flesh hitting flesh filled the silent suite.
"Yura. Look at me."
I looked down at her, her eyes glazed with pleasure.
"When you go to school tomorrow, show the bag off. Tell them your boyfriend bought it. Spread it all over campus."
"Nngh... okay... haah!"
"And if any of them look jealous, bring them along. Tell them I'll buy drinks."
"What...? Nngh... why?"
Confusion flickered through her unfocused eyes.
"I'd get bored if I only spoiled you. I should get a look at some other pretty girls too."
Choi Yura's face twisted. Jealousy? Or anxiety? The terror that her place might be stolen — that this one and only lifeline might be handed off to some other bitch — lit her up.
"Don't... only look at me... only spoil me..."
She locked her legs around my waist. The walls of her pussy convulsed, clamping down hard.
"Then squeeze tighter. So I can't think about anyone else. Prove you're the best one."
"Hhk! Nnnngh!"
She twisted her whole body and clung to me. A frenzy of sex, pleasure and possessiveness and survival instinct all tangled together. She was coming apart completely. Into my slave. Into my doll.
At the peak, I emptied my desire into her deepest place.
"Come... come inside... I don't care if I get pregnant..."
I came listening to her delirious rambling. The body that received me arched up like a live fish and then went limp.
The next morning, in a major lecture hall, I sat in the very back row with my chin in my hand.
The door opened and Choi Yura walked in. She looked different again from last night in the Bertz. A bright pastel dress, and on her shoulder, worn proudly for everyone to see, the genuine Chanelle bag I had bought her. Her entrance was a runway walk.
"Holy shit, Yura! What is that? You bought it? That's insane!"
"Wait, isn't that this season's new drop? Those are impossible to even get!"
The girls swarmed her like bees. Choi Yura lifted her chin like a queen and smiled, elegant.
"Yeah. My boyfriend bought it for me. For our anniversary."
"I'm losing my mind... Who's your boyfriend? He's loaded. I'm so jealous, seriously."
Choi Yura glanced my way. I pretended not to notice and fiddled with my phone. Our relationship was not a secret, but there was no need for me to go around advertising it. The rumor would spread across the whole campus through her loose mouth anyway.
Then the front door opened and Seo Jisu walked in. She had gotten noticeably thinner in just a few days. A pale face with no makeup. Hollows under her eyes. Even her clothes, which she always wore pressed to a knife-edge, looked somehow disheveled. The terror of the revenge porn and the memory of the warehouse were eating her alive.
Seo Jisu was about to sink weakly into her seat when her eyes met Choi Yura's — Choi Yura, who was laughing brilliantly in the middle of her crowd. A stark contrast. One was a queen of vanity dressed in money. The other was a tragic heroine with her weakness in someone else's hand.
Interesting.
I curled the corner of my mouth, pulled out my phone, and composed a group text. Recipients: Choi Yura and Seo Jisu.
Sent. A notification chime rang out.
Choi Yura's phone went off first. She had been showing the bag off to her friends; she checked the message, and her expression froze.
Both of us?
She turned around with a bewildered look and stared at me. At the same time, Seo Jisu felt her pocket vibrate. She checked the screen and bit down hard on her lip. A look of despair. But it was an order she could not refuse.
I looked back and forth between the two girls and grinned. Choi Yura for the money. Seo Jisu for the video. Two bitches wearing different collars, gathering tonight in my cramped rooftop room.
"Cleaning's going to be a little intense tonight."
I waited for class to end as fast as possible. The three-person play about to unfold in that narrow, secret space of my room — I was so excited I could barely sit still.