013 - Renegotiation
Good lord. I'd already come twice yesterday, and now I was having a wet dream on top of it.
Apparently what happened yesterday really had left an impression on me.
I picked up my phone to check the time. Mom had already left for work.
She'd sent me a message. Something about having prepared food — take this and that out of the fridge, do it this way and that way, and there you go.
Mom was still young enough to enjoy her own life. She was only a little past forty, and prettier — or at least no less pretty — than the actresses her age you saw on TV. And yet the only thing on her mind, all day long, was working, and then using the money she earned to put food in her son's belly. Me.
My lower body felt sticky and uncomfortable, so with tremendous effort I dragged my leaden body out of bed and left the room.
I washed up, changed my underwear and pants, and then set out the meal exactly the way Mom had instructed. Even though my stomach was queasy and I had no appetite, the food was delicious — practically designed to cure a hangover.
Mom was, quite literally, the person who had made me.
I couldn't win against her.
If I'd drunk that much with my friends like on any ordinary night, I probably wouldn't have remembered a thing. But everything from yesterday was still crystal clear — the events had been so new and so shocking that I kept sobering up in the middle of it all.
Mom's love and care came through in the meal she'd left for me, and the more I felt it, the more intensely the guilt surfaced whenever I thought back to my conversation with Jinwoo yesterday.
I finished eating, washed the dishes, and stretched out on the couch with the TV on. For hours I lay there in a daze, replaying the conversations I'd had with Jinwoo and Mina.
Mina had told me not to take the bet. A husbandless widow like my mom, she said, would almost certainly fall for the advances of a young, attractive man like Jinwoo. If I wanted to raise my odds, she said, I should demand that Jinwoo reveal to Mom that he was my friend. Do that, and Mom would definitely resist his seduction.
If Jinwoo failed to win Mom over, I'd win the bet and take the hundred million — obviously a good outcome for me.
And yet somehow, hesitation kept stirring in a corner of my mind.
Jinwoo was no fool either. If I made that kind of proposal, he might decide winning was impossible anyway and simply call the whole bet off.
Everything so far had rested on the premise that Jinwoo and I would both play fair.
Truthfully, neither of us strictly had to. A hundred million won was on the line.
As for me, all I'd have to do was tell Mom everything truthfully, keep it secret that she already knew, and refuse Jinwoo's demands for a year. Then the two of us — Mom and I — would pocket the hundred million.
The reverse was also possible: Jinwoo could claim he'd tell Mom he was my friend, then simply never say a word. There'd be no way for me to verify it.
If I was going to demand that, I'd need to be able to confirm he'd actually revealed himself to her — say, by somehow introducing Jinwoo to her myself, face to face.
Telling Mom the truth would reduce my chances of losing the bet to zero. But I couldn't predict at all how she'd take it. It would take real courage just to admit I'd made a bet with a friend over my own mother — and beyond that, knowing her personality, there was a good chance she wouldn't want to earn money that way in the first place.
A hundred million would be a huge sum for the two of us, no question. But the more I thought about it, the more certain I was that Mom would say something like, "I have no intention of joining a bet like that — tell him no, and never see that friend of yours again."
So I crossed the option of telling Mom about the bet off my list entirely.
That was when a message arrived from Jinwoo.
After thinking it over for a long time, I reached my conclusion.
I would not tell Mom about the bet. But I wouldn't refuse the bet either.
Because the hundred million I stood to win through it was just too tempting.
Still, what Mina said made sense too. I believed there was no way it could happen — but there was a possibility Mom would fall for Jinwoo's advances. Just picturing Jinwoo inside my mother's body made my stomach twist. I hoped with everything in me that it would never come to that.
But I didn't want to reject the bet outright, either...
Which meant, in the end, I had no choice but to follow Mina's advice and drive Jinwoo's odds — however slim they might be — down to zero.
If Jinwoo refused the proposal and the bet collapsed, then so be it. That was better than having my mother taken from me.
And if Jinwoo happened to be overestimating his own abilities, underestimating women the way he seemed to — then he'd accept the proposal. Judging by the way he'd talked yesterday, that possibility looked fairly high.
And if he accepted, I'd wait for the right moment to introduce him to Mom. Jinwoo would be brimming with confidence, but once he learned the man courting her was my friend, Mom would never fall for him. I didn't know how loose the women Jinwoo had been with were, but Mom wasn't that kind of woman.
Then, one year later, I'd have a hundred million in my hands.
So I started typing.
Figured as much.
Even by my own standards, that cut straight to the bone.
For a long while, Jinwoo didn't reply.
As the silence stretched on, I was the one who started getting anxious. So even for Jinwoo, this was a bridge too far. Was the whole bet about to fall through? Had I wasted my shot? It wasn't too late even now — maybe I should just tell him to go ahead and do it his way.
Nearly ten minutes passed before his reply came.
Jinwoo was no fool, as expected.
But I'd anticipated this to some degree, so as disappointed as I was, I figured there was nothing to be done about it.
Then his message continued.
I'll write it all out in detail, building on what we discussed yesterday, so give it some thought.
I make my move without telling your mother I'm your friend. If I fail to sleep with her within a year, you win, and I pay you 100 million. After that, I promise I'll never approach her again.
But if I do succeed in sleeping with her, I win. I'll have your mother — what more could I want? You owe me nothing.
Now, here's where your loser's-bracket chance comes in. At a point I choose — remember this, it's important, my timing, not yours — I'll let you have the chance to reveal to your mother that Kim Jinwoo is her son's friend. After I've slept with her, at whatever point I decide is far enough along, how's that. How you do it is up to you.
You'd better not mention the bet. I won't either.
You could just run into me on the street and go, "Oh, this is my middle school friend," whatever you like. Your call.
If your mother learns I'm your friend and still doesn't cut things off with me, I win again, and you still owe me nothing.
But if she learns the truth and leaves me, you win, and I'll pay you the 100 million.
So even if you lose the first round, you get a second chance at the money.
Once again, I had no choice but to agonize over it for a long time.
Stripped down, Jinwoo's thinking went like this: with the son's friend card revealed, seducing Mom would be nearly impossible for him. Without it, he could. And once she'd fallen, he believed he could make her fall so completely that even if she later discovered he'd been her son's friend all along, she wouldn't be able to leave him.
Absurd. Utterly absurd.
And yet I thought this was actually better than the original proposal.
For one thing, I'd never fully believed Mina anyway. Mom was a woman who had lived knowing nothing but raising me, and would go on that way. Jinwoo wasn't her type at all — not the kind of man she liked — and he was the same age as her own son. I thought the odds of her falling for him were slim.
And if I did happen to lose, I'd get another chance. No matter how deeply Mom fell for Jinwoo, once she learned he was my friend, she'd never keep seeing him.
It made me sick to imagine Mom giving him her body even once — but that possibility was low to begin with, and even if it happened, having another shot at winning afterward was as good as getting a hundred million for free.
Still, it wasn't an easy decision to make. I deliberated for nearly thirty minutes before I finally sent my reply.