Subjugation on Broadcast (38)
At the staff member's cue, both contestants began flipping through the sheets one by one. Gyeo-wool turned each page with astonishing concentration, and Seon Woo-hyeon's contestant kept pace beside her, matching color after color. They pushed all the way into the eighties.
Han Gyeo-wool's gaze never wavered. But once they crossed into the eighties, Seon Woo-hyeon's contestant was pouring cold sweat. Her eyes had started to flicker. The colors were beginning to blur together.
Kim Ji-yeong, the woman representing Seon Woo-hyeon's team, had been handed the answer sheet two days before the semifinals. She'd memorized without rest for three days straight, but committing colors to memory was harder than memorizing any other kind of answer — cycling through the same ten-odd shades over and over had worn her down.
And so, on the ninetieth sheet, Kim Ji-yeong finally got one wrong.
Only then did Gyeo-wool allow herself a bright, radiant smile.
"That— that stupid bitch... I gave it to her and she still couldn't get it right?!"
Seon Woo-hyeon exploded out of his seat. He'd caught himself mid-sentence — blurting out that he'd given her the answer sheet in advance would have been a disaster — and the broadcast cut his audio, but Dong-hyun's team had understood every word.
Gyeo-wool emerged from Room One beaming, her expression so bright it was as if she were looking straight at Dong-hyun and asking, Did I do well?
Kim Ji-yeong, by contrast, had gone deathly pale. Cold sweat streamed down her face; she looked pitiful.
The moment she returned to the spectator seats, Seon Woo-hyeon cracked her across the face. He couldn't use the electric shocks during an active match, so he'd resorted to his own fists.
"You dumb bitch. You couldn't even do that?"
Kim Ji-yeong hit the floor and kept gasping out apologies.
"Strip. All of it. You don't even deserve to wear clothes."
Told to undress in front of everyone, Kim Ji-yeong didn't hesitate. She reached for her clothes at once.
"You don't have to do that."
Dong-hyun stepped in before he could watch any more of it.
"What?"
"The hell are you doing?! I said strip! Who the fuck are you to interfere?!"
At Seon Woo-hyeon's snarl she pulled her shirt off again. Full, heavy breasts swayed into view, impossible to ignore.
"I won the intelligence match, which means I've got the right to take one slave. I'm choosing her. So you don't have to listen to a word Seon Woo-hyeon says."
Tears spilled down Kim Ji-yeong's face. Losing the intelligence match had plunged her into pitch darkness — and now a single thread of light had cut through it.
She pulled her shirt back on. A chorus of disappointed groans rose from the men around them. She paid them no mind at all.
"Y-you... just you wait. The second you become my slave, I'll make you taste hell."
Seon Woo-hyeon's threat only hardened Dong-hyun's resolve to escape. If the organizers were already rigging things this blatantly, there was no telling what they'd pull in the finals.
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Ji-yeong, come over here."
The instant Kim Ji-yeong left Seon Woo-hyeon's side and walked toward Dong-hyun, Seon Woo-hyeon's face flushed a violent red. In his entire life, no one had ever taken something that belonged to him. He had no idea how to handle it.
Kim Ji-yeong made sure he was watching, then pressed herself into Dong-hyun's arms.
"You... you... I'll fucking tear you apart..."
The venom in Seon Woo-hyeon's voice made Ji-yeong flinch all over again — but when Dong-hyun's broad arm wrapped around her, a strange calm settled over her.
"Ah! Jin-woo... I have something to tell you. Quickly."
Ji-yeong told him that they'd tampered with the sight clicks on the gun Dong-hyun's team would be using in the second game. Dong-hyun passed it straight to Jin-ju.
Jin-ju had already been bracing for something like that. She barely even blinked.
"The first game goes to Ahn Jin-woo's team. We'll proceed immediately to the second game. Both contestants, please move to Room Two."
Jin-ju headed for Room Two with her teammates' cheers at her back. From Seon Woo-hyeon's side, a vaguely sinister-looking man stood and followed.
He looked Yoon Jin-ju up and down and smiled a greasy little smile.
"I told them I wanted you if I won. Didn't think you'd actually show up as the representative."
"Hmph. You seem pretty sure you're going to win."
"We'll see. Has a girl like you even held a gun before?"
The man was swaggering. Seon Woo-hyeon had already walked him through the entire match and stacked every advantage in his favor — and looking at this delicate-looking woman, he couldn't imagine she'd ever pulled a trigger in her life.
Jin-ju ignored him completely.
Inside Room Two, a staff member assigned them their shooting lanes. Back in the last semifinal, Dong-hyun's team had assumed the assignments were random. Knowing the truth now left a bitter taste.
Jin-ju stepped into her lane and checked her weapon. At a glance it looked fine — but the windage click, the left-right adjustment, had been cranked hard off-center.
It wasn't the revolver she'd carried as a detective, so the platform was different, but years on the force didn't just evaporate. She corrected the click with practiced ease. Anyone who didn't know guns would have eaten the sabotage raw. Having Jin-ju as their representative was a stroke of luck.
Seon Woo-hyeon's man shot first. His opening round scored a nine.
"Tch... first shot, I guess? Didn't land as well as I'd hoped."
That same greasy smile was still plastered on his face as he glanced over at Yoon Jin-ju.
Jin-ju settled into a proper sight picture and fired.
Bang!
Yoon Jin-ju's first shot scored an eight. Centering the click had kept her from missing by much.
"Not bad..."
He looked faintly startled — he hadn't expected her to put up an eight. He'd been told her gun was sabotaged. An eight was not what he'd been promised.
He shot again. Still rattled by Jin-ju's performance, he landed another nine.
Yoon Jin-ju put her next round in the ten-ring.
Two exchanges, and she had already tied it.
From there the man alternated nines and tens. Yoon Jin-ju put a ten on every single shot.
"That's all you've got, even with a rigged gun? Heh."
Jin-ju lowered her weapon after the final round and laughed in his face.
"You bitch!!"
The man lost it and charged her. The staff member beside them tried to intervene, but he closed the distance too fast.
He threw a punch. Yoon Jin-ju caught his arm and threw him over her shoulder in one clean motion.
"Ghhk—!!"
The impact across his back left him dazed. She rolled him, wrenched his arm behind him, and folded it the wrong way.
"Aaaagh!! It hurts— it fucking hurts!!"
"All that macho posturing, and you're nothing special."
Only then did the staff drag the man off and issue a warning.
Jin-ju stepped out of Room Two wearing a proud little smile. She caught Dong-hyun's eye, drew a V across her cheek with two fingers, and grinned. He didn't think he'd ever seen anything prettier.
Looking back on it, even when they'd first met as master and slave, he and Yoon Jin-ju had never had a particularly ugly relationship.
The man she'd beaten, on the other hand, paid for it dearly. Seon Woo-hyeon stripped him naked and put him through punishment drills, same as he'd done to Kim Ji-yeong. After hearing what the man had said to Yoon Jin-ju, Dong-hyun didn't feel the slightest urge to save him.
"With two matches decided, we now come to the final event — the physical contest. Both representatives, please move to Room Three."
Dong-hyun rose from his seat. Across the way, Lee Su-hyun stood as well.
From the moment the representatives had been chosen, Dong-hyun had expected it would come down to the two of them.
Fire seemed to burn in Lee Su-hyun's eyes. He was here to avenge his childhood friend.
Then he watched Lee Yu-rim walk up to Ahn Jin-woo, wrap her arms around him, and cheer him on — without so much as a glance in Su-hyun's direction.
Su-hyun's feet stopped dead. The blaze in his eyes wavered.
"Master! Please win!"
Yu-rim's voice carried straight to Su-hyun's ears. She knew exactly who he was about to fight, and she still said it. The fire in his chest burned hotter than before.
How much... how much must she have suffered to say something like that... Yu-rim. I'll save you.
Lee Su-hyun carved the misunderstanding deeper into himself with his own hands.
Dong-hyun and Su-hyun entered Room Three. Dong-hyun climbed into the octagon and rolled his shoulders loose.
"Lee Su-hyun. Let's have a good match."
Su-hyun didn't answer. Dong-hyun understood the change well enough. After being taken as Seon Woo-hyeon's slave, if Su-hyun had seen the footage of him and Lee Yu-rim, rage would have been the only natural response.
"Hoo..."
Dong-hyun let out a slow breath. He'd gone up against gangsters and all kinds of men — but he'd never fought a professional male fighter. As far as he knew, Lee Su-hyun was considered top-class even in this world. He needed to lock in.
The bell rang, and Su-hyun exploded across the cage.
A left jab came flying. Dong-hyun lifted his right hand to parry — and Su-hyun's left fist slammed into the right side of his abdomen instead.
"Ghhk—!"
A perfect liver shot.
Dong-hyun's right knee buckled on its own, and Su-hyun's right knee came screaming up into him. He threw both arms across his body and soaked what he could, but he couldn't take it all. His big frame went sliding backward and crashed to the canvas with a heavy thud.
Su-hyun pounced like a tiger, fist cocked all the way back, lining up a ground-and-pound.
Possession