A Sweet Deal

I had no proof. But I was certain.

My interest in Sex Coin—and in this app—caught fire all over again.

I'd already checked Withdraw. I tapped the Difficulty button underneath it.

I frowned and tapped the screen, but nothing changed. Picture a mining target? What is that supposed to mean?

My eyes drifted, unthinking, to the computer monitor. The Naver Cafe post I'd left open was still sitting there.

"Mining was sex, right? So a sex partner would be…"

The first person who came to mind was Lee Jieun, the girl who worked the same part-time shifts I did. Small frame, cute face, and so much aegyo in everything she did that she was like a vitamin during those dead hours behind the counter.

Not that we were a thing. We weren't even flirting. She was just the girl I liked most out of anyone around me, so she surfaced on her own.

I pictured Lee Jieun in my head, and the spare phone's screen changed.

"Whoa…"

I'd only thought about her, and the screen had changed. All I could do was stare. Plenty of the information was unverifiable, but her name and age were dead-on, and even the height, weight, and bust I'd been eyeballing for months were right in the ballpark. If the rest of this was accurate, then the virgin part was probably true too.

"Something's off, though."

I hit the back button and pulled up my own info again.

Same layout, different contents. I flipped back and forth a few times, and the number that jumped out was the one sitting at the very top of the values. I could tell it was the sum of the five categories beneath it—but on my screen it was labeled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Sex Coin Value, and on Jieun's it was labeled Difficulty.

I turned that difference over for a second, then switched the app back to the home screen.

That was the entire Mining History screen. I wondered for a second whether it had hidden functions the way Difficulty did, but the title was a little too on-the-nose for that. It'll update once I actually have sex and earn some Sex Coins.

Next up was the Shop.

The name Shop had already told me I'd be able to buy things with Sex Coins. I just hadn't expected the merchandise to be this bizarre.

Throwing the spare phone across the room and calling it impossible wasn't really an option anymore. There were already too many things here that science couldn't explain. An app that knew information nobody had given it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was one thing. An app that read what I was thinking and put it on the screen? At that point, what couldn't it do?

Changing my face or boosting my stamina still feels like a stretch, though… I waved the thought away and moved on to the last screen.

I read it through again. And again. The text itself ran long, but boiled down it was this:

Have sex with an attractive woman and you get Sex Coins. Become a handsome man yourself and the Sex Coin exchange rate goes up.

"This is a goddamn goldmine."

Think about the world we live in. If you've got money, you can meet as many women as you want. And now the app was telling me that having sex with them would pay me in coins? On top of that, the higher their value—meaning the prettier and more attractive they were—the more coins I'd get. If this was all true…

Prostitution.

The thought landed and I wanted to go do it right then and there. I'd already forgotten that I hadn't even been awake an hour. The plan to look into altcoins evaporated with it. Someone was offering to pay me for having sex—what did I need with a risky coin investment?

I wanted to bolt out the door. Reality put a wall in front of me. It wasn't that I'd never been to a brothel. I'd just never found one on my own.

The first and last time had been two years ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ago, on army leave, tagging along after one of my juniors. I was a broke soldier, so we'd gone to one of those dirt-cheap backwater joints people call a "village special." The ajumma they paired me with hit me so hard I chewed the kid out, and he just looked at me like I was an idiot.

"Corporal Kim, isn't that obvious? How pretty a girl did you expect for fifty thousand won? Once you're out in the real world and making real money, you hit up an OP—it's a whole new world. Girls who look like actual celebrities… phew."

I was out in the real world, all right. I just hadn't made the money, so I'd been sitting on that promise ever since. Now I had a two-million-won windfall in my pocket and Sex Coins to mine. Decision made: I was going to an OP.

"How do you even find a brothel?"

I sat down at the computer, closed the old windows, and opened a fresh search. Then I stalled. I didn't know what to type.

Cheonan officetel.

Naturally, not a single brothel came up—just a long scroll of real-estate listings. I changed it to Cheonan brothel and got news articles about raids and a handful of experience posts. No addresses. No prices.

It was 11:30 in the morning. Calling my junior at this hour to ask felt more than a little pathetic.

Cheonan opi. Cheonan OP.

I was punching in whatever came to mind, and the second I typed OP in English the screen flooded with brothel ads. I clicked the first address I saw and the monitor filled with skin.

The search had been "Cheonan OP," but the site was a nationwide directory. I filtered it down to Cheonan, South Chungcheong, made myself calm down, and started going through the listings one by one.

I clicked into places with meaningless names like Red, Banana, Nurse. Each one had photos of the women, a phone number, and a price list. The prices were steep. A hundred and thirty thousand won for sixty minutes and a single round. Request a specific girl and it was another fifty thousand on top. Bareback and creampie were listed as add-ons, but the second STDs crossed my mind I lost all interest.

"A hundred and eighty thousand, plus travel… call it two hundred thousand. About a thousand Sex Coins?"

The real question was how many coins one round would actually mine. The help text said the yield was target's Difficulty × target's Satisfaction, but I had no feel for how Satisfaction was scored—or, if it was just "how satisfied she was," what the scale even topped out at.

If it's out of a hundred, Jieun's Difficulty is over three hundred, so a single round could hit thirty thousand. If the max is one, that's three hundred. Worst case.

Thinking about it wasn't going to give me an answer. I'd gotten the money for free anyway. Even if I took a small loss, I needed the data. I started combing through the site for real.

This one hid her whole face. If you're that insecure about how you look… rejected, all of them. Nobody I like at this place… oh. She's pretty.

I'd gone through more than thirty profiles. This was the one I liked best. She was sitting at a slight angle in nothing but white underwear, smiling at the camera, long black hair swept over one shoulder so it framed a seriously generous chest.

The write-up wasn't lying—glamorous body, and a face that still looked a little young, which I counted as a bonus. What I liked most, though, was that she didn't look like she'd had work done.

Not that I have a problem with plastic surgery. If it makes someone prettier, I'm all for it. Some people hate it because it affects how your kids will look, but that's all luck of the draw anyway—and if it really bothers you, just get the kids surgery too, right? Botox, implants, I can live with all of it. What I can't stand is the kind of work that announces itself from across the room. The Gangnam-beauty look.

More than half the profile photos on this site were that look. Cookie-cutter. This Gaeul girl might have had something done or she might not have, but she didn't have that surgery-monster vibe, and that was what mattered. I kept browsing and couldn't find anyone I liked more.

I carefully tapped the number on the listing.

It was noon. The sun was hanging at its peak—and even at this hour, the OP was open.