The Wager with Mugang
"Nnhhh... Mmh..."
Soft, broken moans spilled through Dong-hyun's room. Son Ga-eun had been coming to him every night since that first time, and by now the ritual had taken on a practiced ease. She opened the door without knocking, slipped out of her clothes, folded them neatly to one side, and climbed onto the bed. Then she lay back, parted her legs toward him, and looked up with a heat in her eyes that was almost a plea.
After climaxing on his hands again and again, she had stopped even trying to hide what she wanted. She chased nothing but the pleasure now, as if she had handed her entire body over to his fingers and washed her hands of the rest.
It had been only three days since Dong-hyun first put his hands on her breasts. Even he had not imagined she would come apart this far, this fast. From the night she first stepped into his room and let him have her pussy, every last scrap of hesitation seemed to have burned away.
It was time to take the next step. He left Ga-eun panting under his hand and quietly stripped off his pants, drawing out a cock already swollen hard. She always covered her eyes with the back of one hand while he worked her, and he brought himself to that unguarded face and pressed the head of his cock against her cheek, rolling it slowly across her skin.
"Mmh... Mmh??"
The moan snagged. Something hot and blunt was pushing against her face. She turned her head, saw what it was, and jerked as if she had been burned. The legs she always kept spread for his convenience snapped shut and drew up against her body.
"What... what do you think you're doing?"
The pliant look she had worn these last few nights vanished. The old Son Ga-eun stared back at him — cold, affronted, every inch the woman she used to be. She clamped her thighs together and covered her bare breasts with both hands, wariness drawn tight across her face.
"This whole arrangement started because you wronged me. Lately it feels like you're the only one enjoying yourself."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"You ought to take care of me too. That's what give-and-take means."
"Do you take me for some kind of whore? I cannot believe this..."
Color rose in her face. She snatched up her clothes and started pulling them on, fingers clumsy with anger.
"Oh? So taking from me is fine, but giving is out of the question?"
"Of course it is. Hah... Forget it. I won't be coming back."
She finished dressing, slammed the door hard enough to rattle the frame, and was gone.
"Heh. I wonder how long that'll last."
She was already addicted to his hands. Dong-hyun found himself curious — how many days before she swallowed that pride of hers and came crawling back?
"So you're not going to do the quests?"
Serién popped into being without warning, as if she had been watching the whole thing from a seat in the front row.
"The quests? Of course I am. After I finish the wager with Grandfather... and after I've got that woman Ga-eun kneeling where she belongs."
"Hmmm... Is that so? Don't leave them sitting too long."
There was a sulky little edge to her voice. Dong-hyun stepped in and stroked her hair.
"After everything you've done for me? You really think I'd do that?"
"Hmph. Fine. I'll wait."
In the real world they had been sharing the same bed every night, and something between them had drawn quietly closer. Not that it had gone anywhere physical. Not yet.
Dong-hyun went back to Mugang's rooms.
"You may go in."
The bodyguard waved him through without a second glance, same as last time. Inside, Mugang was already seated at the Go board. He rose the moment Dong-hyun entered and greeted him with a warmth that would have been unthinkable at their first meeting.
"Grandfather. Did you rest well?"
"Haha. Rest, he says... I've been studying Go so I wouldn't lose to you! Haven't had a moment's peace!"
Mugang tossed the complaint back like a joke, and Dong-hyun laughed.
"Hahaha. Then I should have given you a month and come back later."
"Heh heh heh. In a month you'd only have gotten stronger. Better we settle it today."
He said it as if Dong-hyun's growth were already a settled fact.
"Hahaha. Understood. I'll gather myself properly and make sure I win today."
"Good. I'll take this seriously myself."
Grandfather and grandson faced each other across the board, and the air between them had weight. Dong-hyun placed the first stone in the upper-right corner. Mugang answered, setting his own stone down in turn.
"Khmm..."
A handful of moves. That was all it took for Mugang to feel it — the atmosphere had changed. Yesterday every stone Dong-hyun played had been a fierce, hungry bid to beat him. Today there was room in the boy's game. Ease. Mugang drove in hard, trying to force a collision, but Dong-hyun's stones met him the way water meets a rock: wrapping, yielding, closing around him in something soft and inescapable.
By the time Mugang came back to himself, it felt as though water had risen on every side. He tried to claw free, but it was like standing in the heart of a gorge; there was nowhere to go. The same current that had held him so gently swelled into a cataract, a flood that came roaring in. He scrambled clear of the rising tide by the skin of his teeth. His position on the board was already in ruins.
"Heh heh..."
While Mugang had been absorbed in local skirmishes, Dong-hyun had been quietly taking hold of the entire game.
"Truly remarkable. Truly remarkable. How does a person's skill jump like this? Astonishing..."
Mugang could only marvel. Dong-hyun did not even know how to count a finished board, and still the win sat there in front of him, plain as day.
"You asked me to show you my talent. I simply put in the work."
"Yes... you did talk about talent. I thought it was empty talk at the time. But that talent of yours is real. To think you would beat me in a mere three days..."
Dong-hyun had won by a trick, but Mugang knew nothing of that. In the old man's mind, the thing called talent had just become an established fact.
"Very well. What do you want?"
"The Future Strategy Office. The core of the Mugang Group."
"What?"
Mugang stared at him. He had expected a request for a director's seat at one of the subsidiaries — something modest, something a boy could grow into. He had not expected the Future Strategy Office, the beating heart of the entire group. And for someone this young to take a place there was as good as naming himself the next heir.
"A man ought to play in deep water, I think. I want to put my talent to work in the Mugang Group's most important department."
"Hmmm..."
Mugang's thoughts ran long and quiet. He had already accepted the boy's talent, and he liked the way the boy carried himself — but that was a separate matter from what would happen if Dong-hyun actually moved into the Future Strategy Office. The family's backlash worried him most. Even the talk of joining as an assistant manager in the Industrial Materials Team had drawn blood. Announce the Future Strategy Office and the house would catch fire.
A wager, though, was a wager. He could not simply refuse to pay it.
The current head of the Future Strategy Office was Dong-hyun's father, Kang Shi-hoon. Under him sat eight teams, every one of them led by an executive director. Mugang did not believe the boy would have the gall to ask for the chief's chair itself. The real question was whether to give him a team leader's post, or a general manager's seat beneath one.
"Then which position do you want?"
He decided to hear the boy out first.
Dong-hyun had already chosen. In the days he had been coming into the office he had mapped the company's inner workings — the people, the org chart, the currents running under the floorboards — and he had picked his ground. The place he wanted was the Management Diagnosis Team. They handled internal audits and management consulting. From that desk he could look through every subsidiary in the Mugang Group and keep his cousins in check, and the team already wielded a formidable authority inside the group.
"The place I want is the Management Diagnosis Team."
"Khmm..."
Two thoughts pulled at Mugang in opposite directions: a hope that the boy would not name that particular team, and a quieter conviction that if he was going to entrust Dong-hyun with anything, that was exactly where he ought to put him. The authority was enormous. But with talent like this, the boy could actually fill the space.
"Very well. A wager is a wager. I'll give you that post. There are matters at the company that will need settling first, though. It will take about a month."
The word of permission, at last.
"Thank you, Grandfather. I'll spend the month preparing as well."
"See that you do. Khmm... And, perhaps..."
Mugang coughed into his fist and stalled, groping for something he could not quite say. Dong-hyun got there first.
"Grandfather. It looks like we'll be able to play Go together for a whole month."
"Heh heh heh. Is that so? All right. You may go."
"Yes, Grandfather. I'll take my leave."
Asking his own grandson to keep coming back for Go had been a little too embarrassing to say out loud.
Only after Dong-hyun had gone did Mugang let himself smile. The question of whom to hand the succession to had sat on him for years. For the first time, the shape of an answer seemed to be coming into view.
When Dong-hyun had first been brought into the house, Mugang had not approved of what Shi-hoon had done, and the cowed, diminished boy who arrived had not held his interest. A young man who had loafed until the age of twenty-five had been nothing to look at. Then the boy had stepped into the working world and changed overnight, and now he was fighting to claim a place of his own. And in the process Mugang had seen a talent he had never suspected was there.
If he had known from the start that Dong-hyun had a gift for Go, he would have made him a professional rather than putting him in the company. Instead the boy, who had never studied the game at all, had beaten him in three days. A gift like that was not going to stop at a Go board.
The satisfied look on his face tightened, just for a moment. The instant he pictured actually doing it, he could see the others rising up in protest as clearly as if they were already in the room.
"Hmph. If I say it will be done, it will be done. What can the likes of them do about it?"
The old stubbornness settled back over him, familiar as a well-worn coat.