First Host Bar
And the problem was that Kim Namhu was neither the type to shrink in front of a senior nor the type to cross the line.
He wasn't giving particularly rude answers either.
"I brought him in thinking I'd raise a tiger cub, but it looks like I ended up with one that already has teeth and claws, even if he's not fully grown yet."
"What's a host got to do with tigers? As long as you can seduce women well and don't cause trouble, that's enough."
"Haha. Interesting guy. Fine. If this really is your first time, there's a lot you'll need to learn. Applying it right away will be hard, but for now, just think of memorizing everything Ji-hoon tells you. It'll all come in handy later."
"Yes."
"I like that spirited answer."
Kim Namhu understood exactly what Jang Hyo-woon was getting at.
With rookies, no matter what a senior taught them, they often failed to grasp the meaning and rarely put it to use in the field. Only after rolling around on the bottom for a long while would a moment of enlightenment hit—Ah, so that's what he meant—and understanding would finally click into place.
Of course, I've already finished that entire process.
Kim Namhu was confident he could be thrown into real work right this second.
For roughly three days, Kim Namhu learned from Cha Ji-hoon inside the host bar how the industry actually ran.
At the same time, he was given the chance to watch how a host bar operated.
Kim Namhu felt a yawn coming on but barely managed to hold it back.
Relearning things I already know is boring work.
But he had already claimed he had no host bar experience. He couldn't exactly admit he'd done the job somewhere else, so Kim Namhu quietly listened to everything.
"You're really lucky, you know that? You can scour all of Seoul and you won't find a host bar with conditions this good."
"Yes."
"Are you even listening to me?"
"I'm listening."
"Then say it back to me."
He could pretend to be interested for a few hours, but any longer than that had apparently become impossible. In the end, Cha Ji-hoon started to suspect Kim Namhu was letting his words go in one ear and out the other, so he demanded he repeat what he'd been told. If the young rookie got it wrong, he fully intended to chew him out.
"TC is fifty thousand won an hour, with ten thousand going to the Main. You get one day off a week. When a customer orders anything twelve years or older, you take a thirty percent wari per bottle. Tips are personal. If you do well, you can walk away with seven or eight hundred a month, right?"
"Huh? Uh. Uh."
The hardest part for any newcomer entering this industry was usually mastering the terminology used only on this floor. TC was table charge—the price customers paid to hold a table and play. Wari was the cut of the liquor bill you received when expensive alcohol was ordered. And how much a host could take home if he worked full attendance and hustled hard was something Cha Ji-hoon hadn't even mentioned.
Not knowing Kim Namhu had come from the future, Cha Ji-hoon had no idea how the man had figured out the monthly income as well.
"Uh… uh?"
"That's correct, right?"
"It's correct, but… is this really your first time?"
"Yes, it is. You said if you look into it, everything comes up, didn't you?"
"Then how did you know the monthly income?"
"If you run the numbers, the rough figure just falls out."
Next, Cha Ji-hoon took Kim Namhu to teach him the songs commonly called gyoga in host bars. They were upbeat tracks sped up even further and used to raise the energy in a room. Singing them while throwing in fun choreography could lift the mood of almost any drinking party.
Cha Ji-hoon taught him a few songs, showing him the entertaining dance moves and key points.
"Practice at the coin karaoke place here today. I'll check tomorrow."
As a host bar that was doing reasonably well in Gangbuk, The Queen had a varied gyoga repertoire. He had already taught him a full eight songs.
"You don't need to memorize every single point. If everyone does the exact same thing, it actually gets boring. Coming up with your own points is what matters."
With that, Cha Ji-hoon clocked out. He was being paid a hundred thousand won a day for teaching Kim Namhu. It was less than what he made working as a host, but there were also nights when he never got a single Choice and walked away with nothing—so teaching like this was sometimes the better deal.
Kim Namhu sang a few more songs in the karaoke room.
"This is completely kid stuff."
Making money by hyping the atmosphere with songs and dances was work for the lowest of the low. A real player could strip a woman bare and get her legs open with nothing but his mouth.
The next day, Cha Ji-hoon took Kim Namhu back to the coin karaoke and had him perform the gyoga.
Kim Namhu sang with genuine energy for the first time in a while. He felt no embarrassment singing in front of another man. After all, he would have to do it naturally in front of women he didn't know either.
Cha Ji-hoon watched Kim Namhu sing, completely absorbed. It was clearly different from what he had taught. But he was a host himself. He recognized immediately that Namhu's performance was the kind that actually lifted a room.
"Hmm. Hmm. Looks like you put a lot of thought into it. You must have practiced hard. What do they call it—the type who puts in the work when no one's watching?"
"Yes."
Cha Ji-hoon had now taught Kim Namhu pretty much everything worth teaching: how to flash your teeth at women, how money moved through the host industry, how to raise the mood of a drinking party just enough.
Originally this education is supposed to take two weeks.
But there was nothing left to teach, and just killing time felt wrong. Cha Ji-hoon wasn't that much of a piece of trash.
"Then only the final lesson is left. Call it the last practice before you're thrown into the real thing."
"What's that?"
"You know what a pickup artist is?"
Kim Namhu nodded. It was a strange occupation that hadn't been around long. People who approached women on the street and ran game on them—though types like that had always existed in the nightlife districts since long ago.
"Lately they take money from clueless guys by claiming they'll teach them those techniques, right?"
"Well, yeah. Anyway, at The Queen we've used it as practice for a long time. Approaching a woman you don't know and having a good time with her. It's basically the same as host work, isn't it? And there's zero chance of causing any damage to the shop."
Kim Namhu remembered the distant past. The Queen really had used that bizarre form of practice. At first, even walking up to a stranger and asking for a phone number had been hard, and a single rejection would shatter your mental state completely.
It was such a rough memory I almost forgot about it.
But the practice had definitely been effective. If you could approach a woman on the street, talk to her, and have fun, handling a customer who walked into a host bar became easy.
Kim Namhu knew that practice had helped him a great deal.
And now… well, I can do it easily.
Cha Ji-hoon and Kim Namhu stepped out onto the nightlife street. Neon signs blazed brilliantly in every direction, and young men and women who'd been drinking staggered around here and there.
"It's simple. Seduce one woman and have a good time with her. Pull that off and you've learned everything a host needs to know. I'll be watching from nearby, so give it your best."
Cha Ji-hoon grinned smugly and shoved Kim Namhu out onto the street. He handed over a hundred thousand won as operating funds—enough for a couple of drinks.
He's learned everything easily so far, but this one won't be easy.
Approaching a woman you didn't know, earning her goodwill, and hanging out together was never simple. In the process of becoming a host, anyone who worked hard enough could learn the gyoga. But a lot of people washed out on this particular practice. It simply wasn't that easy.
Cha Ji-hoon quietly watched Kim Namhu's back, fully expecting those confident shoulders to droop.
Kim Namhu calmly surveyed the street. In his previous life he had been Korea's top host; he had been through land battles, sea battles, air battles, and even streets like this. Naturally he had a few techniques for this kind of work as well.
First, if you just hit on any random woman, you fail for sure.
Unless you were genuinely celebrity-handsome, you couldn't succeed by approaching just anyone. Right now Kim Namhu looked decent and was dressed in a style women liked, but that alone wasn't enough.
The important part is the ability to pick a woman who's ready.
You had to choose a woman who was hungry for a man. A woman who wasn't hungry made it hard to create a good atmosphere no matter how plain she looked. On the other hand, a woman who was hungry would fall into a man's arms with just a little push, no matter how beautiful she was.
Of course, it's not an ability you pick up easily.
You only gained it after dealing with hundreds or thousands of women. It felt less like a skill and more like a kind of sixth sense—an instinctive ability to detect when a woman was in heat.
Kim Namhu stood on the street and watched the women passing by. He skipped any woman who looked sharp and venomous even while sober. Those types valued their pride more than loneliness and rarely opened their hearts to a stranger. Most women were like that.
He also skipped any woman who already had a man beside her. Talking to one of them was the same as picking a fight with the guy.
Groups of women only were out too. When women clustered together, there was always at least one who hated watching one of her own fall for a good-looking man—some plain girl who would throw every obstacle in the way, claiming her friend already had a boyfriend or another appointment.
That woman looks good.