Joint Surety (3)
The chair scraped loudly.
Min Arin slowly pushed it back and rose to her feet.
She stood there blankly for a moment, staring down at the wet floor.
Then the head that had always been held so rigidly high began to bow.
Thud.
The sound of both knees hitting the floor without strength.
With her hands planted on the floor and her waist bent, Min Arin remained frozen there, as if that was all she could manage.
“Clause 4, Section 1. Should Party B engage with the terms of this contract in a passive manner, said contract shall be terminated immediately.”
I murmured the words toward her trembling nape.
She flinched, body shuddering, yet Min Arin still did nothing but stare at the wet floor.
“Don’t have a sense for money? Just close your eyes and lick the floor once and it’s nearly 4.2 billion won.”
“……”
“Well, I guess it makes sense. You never understood how the world works—that’s why you stood as guarantor for your boyfriend’s gambling debt.”
Only then did Min Arin lift her head and meet my eyes.
She glared at me like she wanted to kill me, the same look she used to give me in the team leader’s office.
“What? Got a problem with that?”
At a single sentence she averted her gaze again.
“Want some help? Should I step on the back of your head for you?”
“N-no… I’ll drink it….”
Gulp.
Along with the sound of her swallowing hard, Min Arin’s posture slowly lowered.
Lick.
The sound of whiskey splashing against her reluctantly extended tongue.
I had been about to take another sip to that sound as accompaniment, but the area around my feet fell silent again.
“What are you doing?”
“I… I drank it…”
“Sigh……”
It would have been nice if she understood right away after being told once.
Feeling frustrated, I asked the bartender for a bottle.
“Thank you.”
Taking the bottle he handed over, I grabbed a fistful of Min Arin’s hair.
When I thrust the logo in front of her face, the frown that had been creasing her brow for a brief moment smoothed out.
“If you order by the bottle it’s five hundred. By the glass, forty. Isn’t that too wasteful for a bitch like you who’s desperate for every penny?”
“I don’t have to drink it… mmph…!”
Glug. Glug.
I tilted the bottle into her mouth as she opened it to say something presumptuous.
“Puhaah…!”
Min Arin gasped, spilling the liquor she couldn’t swallow down her chin.
I wiped her wet lips with my thumb and added, “Someone once told me that on the other side of the earth there are people dying because they have no water to drink. So we should value even a single drop. But here you are—with 4.2 billion in debt—wasting this expensive whiskey?”
As she listened to my near-threat, Min Arin’s eyes began to moisten even more deeply than her lips.
“But… it’s dirty…”
I watched her quietly and shrugged.
Thud.
Her shoulders slumped in surrender.
Her head slowly turned toward the floor.
Her glistening lips parted slightly.
Sluuurp—
In the end, Min Arin pressed her mouth to the floor.
After her thin, pale throat moved once, she stopped, squeezed her eyes shut, and then—
Sluuurp. Sluuurp.
She eventually sucked up every last drop of moisture from the floor.
“Haa…”
Still on her knees, Min Arin straightened her back and looked up at me.
“I drank it all…”
Her expression waited for me to speak, as if hoping for praise.
After several whippings.
No matter how much blood flowed or how many scars formed, there was only one thing that could wash all those wounds away.
“You did well.”
At those mere three words her pupils dilated.
Her cheeks flushed noticeably red even under the dim lighting.
Looking at her pathetic state, I stroked her head.
At the same time, her shoulders—which had been tensed up tightly—sagged completely.
“See? You can do it if you try. Even that chronic cleanliness obsession of yours ultimately has no power in front of money, right?”
“……Ah.”
Only then, as if realizing what she had just done, Min Arin flinched with a dazed expression.
“Account.”
As a reward, I threw out words that could stop her painful thoughts.
“……Huh?”
“Recite your account number.”
Her eyes darted sideways and her lips kept opening and closing.
Was some of that cheap pride still left? It was pathetic to see her hesitate like this.
“Every action has a price. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. That’s my principle.”
“……”
Her gaze turned to me, then fell back to the floor.
After hesitating like that, Min Arin finally spoke.
“……QB Bank… that one.”
[QB BANK] WITHDRAWAL 3,000,000 WON / BALANCE 4,120,447,000 WON
It must be time to fill up her living expenses account too.
“……!”
Min Arin, who confirmed the deposit notification, reacted completely differently from me.
She swallowed briefly, her eyes chasing the modest string of numbers.
“The contract only defers the debt; it doesn’t erase it, you know? Work hard to earn it penny by penny from the bottom.”
She was still staring at the screen as if trying to bore a hole through it.
Just as my interest waned and I was about to finish the remaining drink, a small voice reached me.
“Thank you…… Master….”
A statement that revealed she herself acknowledged our reversed relationship.
Her sky-high pride had been broken by just a few pennies. And in less than thirty minutes.
The appearance of a vulgar, material-blinded beast.
Watching her easily utter “Master” without even knowing who I was brought more displeasure than joy.
“Hah.”
A laugh burst out in disbelief.
That she was now kneeling at my feet, willingly taking the role of a subordinate, all because of a debt.
That a woman who amounted to no more than this had driven me to the brink of suicide during those hellish three years?
“……?”
“Puhaha! What? Master?”
I had planned to end it appropriately today since it was our first meeting.
I grabbed Min Arin’s hair again and forced her to look straight into my eyes.
“Eek…!”
“Where are you looking? When having a conversation, you should look at the eyes.”
The moment her anxious, darting eyes finally met mine again—
“So you’re really making eye contact? Aren’t you going to lower them? No matter if it’s a mask, how dare you match my eye level?”
No matter what she chose, there was no correct answer.
I returned her own vile methods right back at her.
“What? Master? Who said I was your master?”
“Th-that’s…”
“Does giving some food to a dying stray cat make you its owner?”
“……”
Even if she fidgeted with her lips, she couldn’t answer.
I glared at her eyes that kept trying to avoid me and continued pouring out words.
“That’s not kindness; it’s self-satisfaction. You don’t want the responsibility, but you want to play with it for a bit. It’s violence that pulls a weak creature away from self-reliance.”
I loosened my grip because I didn’t want to see Min Arin whimpering pathetically.
“Don’t mix your own judgments into this relationship.”
“……”
“Answer me.”
I had merely raised my hand, yet she squeezed her eyes shut and twisted her body away.
After staying frozen in fear for a moment.
“I… I understand….”
Min Arin squeezed out her voice with difficulty.
I pushed away Min Arin, who had gotten too close between my legs, and turned to the bartender.
“It was a bit noisy today, wasn’t it? I’m sorry.”
“I couldn’t hear anything because of the music, sir.”
The bartender answered while turning up the speaker that had been off the whole time.
“That woman seems to need a lot of drinks today. Give her whatever she asks for.”
Then I slid over a tip, stood up from my seat.
“Make sure to order the expensive ones. You need to learn something so we can communicate in the future.”
I walked toward the exit without looking back.
She was probably just staring at the floor anyway.
Living a double life was more exhausting than I thought.
It felt like wasting energy just by splitting my mental strength.
As soon as I got home I tried to wash the dirty feeling away with cold water.
“Master, you’re baaack—!”
Unfortunately, Sera had taken over my apartment without permission.
“……I told you not to call me that.”
“Why not! It’s what I want!”
Giving her a copy of the keycard had clearly been a mistake.
“I’m only your representative, Sera. I gave you the keycard so you could handle emergencies.”
“This is an emergency! It’s been days and I’ve been dying to see you, so it’s an emergency!”
As always, she was an opponent I couldn’t beat with words.
“If you’re going to talk nonsense, get out.”
“What can I do when Master’s house is so nice! It’s perfect for running around! And standing on the veranda here feels the best. The cars look like ants. It makes me feel like I’m such an important person.”
She smiled brightly without a single sharp edge.
When she was like this it was hard to get angry.
It made me feel like the narrow-minded one.
“I’ll wash up first.”
“Oh! Wait, wait a second!”
Sera, who had been dangling her feet while looking out the window, came running hurriedly.
Thump.
She jumped into my arms, grabbing my sleeve tightly, and looked up at me with a strange gaze.
“Sniiiff—”
She stood on her tiptoes, buried her nose in my neck, took a deep breath, and then gradually lowered her body.
Before I knew it she had bent her knees to match my crotch.
Sniff, sniff—
Sera buried her face between my legs and started smelling me.
“I like it when Master hasn’t washed his cock…”
“The sweat hasn’t even dried yet.”
“That’s why—! Just once before you wash. Hmm? Just a taste! I’ll really just taste it. Please? Please?”
Before I could even answer.
“Mmmph….”
Sera was already pulling down my pants zipper with her teeth.
“……This is troublesome.”
I didn’t even have enough time to plan for tomorrow.
“Today you have to choke me really, really hard, okay? You know that, right? Since I’m working from home tomorrow, slap my cheeks a lot too!”
“Fuck…! That fucking bastard…”
He said it was expensive liquor, but it doesn’t even taste like shit?
This or that, they all taste the same.
Those money-wasting posers.
“Give me something else!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I was going to take it out on the bartender wiping glasses, but he hadn’t made eye contact once since I came in.
I was going to throw a fit if he looked at me.
“That fucker…. Seeing how he came out with his face covered… He must be some upstart who made money doing dirty deeds somewhere….”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the deposit history that bastard had thrown at me like some kind of charity.
The first humiliation of my life.
From my school days, I had never once looked up to anyone.
For men taller than me, I just had to make them kneel. If I couldn’t solve it with power, I could just seduce them.
And yet here I was…
Here I was, all because of someone else’s debt…!
Bang!
I slammed the glass down and grabbed my phone.
That Lee Jeong-hyeok, that fucking bastard….
Something about business expansion, overseas distribution.
When that idiot suddenly started spouting knowledgeable talk, I trusted him once and… what? Gambling debt?
That son of a bitch…. I should have known from the moment he suddenly sat me in the team leader position at his father’s company…!
As expected of uneducated bastards, they have no sense of crisis at all.
“……Ah.”
A thought suddenly flashed through my mind.
A way to gather these hopeless bastards in one place.
Looking at the pouring messages, my anger started to subside a little.
“Choi the loser… Starting tomorrow, you’re really done for.”
The remaining resentment I’ll have to vent on that pathetic loser Choi tomorrow.
Together with these lumps of flesh that only know how to beat people.
It’s not like that idiot did anything wrong but…
No.
“Being born a fucking loser is the sin.”