Chapter 20: Pocketed 200 Million Won
Having secured the debt-assignment contracts from both places, I climbed into the car. It was just past two in the afternoon. I'd felt like I'd been running around all day, yet lunch hour had barely ended. This was the joy of working off-site. Now I could use the field work as an excuse to go home and take a nap.
On the way, I ran the numbers in my head—my expected incentive. First, the baseline: our company already held roughly 180 million won in principal and interest on the debt, with an expected recovery of under 20 million. Recovering the full 180 million from just this alone meant an excess recovery of at least 160 million. Five percent of that was a minimum of eight million won.
Wow.
Combined with my base salary, that was ten million a month. Actually, thanks to the drone-warehouse incentive last time, I'd already been clearing over ten million monthly for a while. Ah—wait. No. This one only paid out once the commercial building sold and the money came back to the company. Unlike the drone deal, I wouldn't get the incentive right away. Still, the eight million was locked in.
And if I assumed we recovered the other debts as well—I'd already brought in Creditors A and B myself, a combined hundred-million-won package acquired for seventeen million. What remained were the capital company and the savings bank. The incentive from those would be enormous.
The moment I'd learned about the Dongtan commercial building and confirmed we could actually get the money back, the thought had hit me instantly. There had to be other debts out there. I should sweep them all up. Then every last bit of it would be my performance. No one else knew recovery was possible. I did. Not taking them would be stupid.
The incentive was five percent of the excess—would they bump it to a special ten percent like they had with the drone deal? I tapped the steering wheel as I thought it over. Ten percent would make the incentive astronomical. I'd have to negotiate. If they refused, I'd push hard. From the company's perspective, this was several hundred million in pure windfall profit they never saw coming. Would they really be stingy about that?
Right. It was only big money to me. Running the numbers now, even totaling everything up, I was looking at over thirty million from this job alone—depending on what we paid for the capital-company and savings-bank claims, and what the commercial building sold for. Either way, I could reasonably expect somewhere between twenty and thirty million in incentives. I'd been fretting over nothing. Incentives of this size came around from time to time—though usually for a team, not an individual.
The capital company. The savings bank. I needed to think carefully about whether I should approach them myself.
I found a decent café, went in, and thought it over over coffee. The two trade creditors were easy. They were company presidents with their own businesses to run. Rather than waste time and money chasing a debt they couldn't collect, they'd had no choice but to sell the stressful claim to someone willing to take it off their hands—even at a rock-bottom price.
But the capital company and savings bank were different. Both dealt in money for a living, and both had their own processes. When an NPL (non-performing loan) firm suddenly came looking for a stale claim? They wouldn't take a personal hit if one account manager sold—so they'd approach it rationally, not emotionally. Even if the handler wanted to sell, they'd have to justify it up the chain and get approval. And of course they'd think: Why are they buying this all of a sudden? Did some money surface somewhere? They'd drag things out and try to negotiate the price up.
Hmm. Fine. Decision made. I'd leave this to the department head. With his connections and clout, and given the amounts weren't enormous, he should bring them in easily. But I'd need a promise that the incentive came to me.
With my thoughts sorted, I downed the rest of my coffee and headed home again.
I was almost home when I spotted a familiar face trudging along the sidewalk. The girl next door. Something about her looked dejected, though. I'd only ever seen her bright and cheerful. Walking with her head down like that was nothing like her usual self.
I pulled up alongside her and rolled down the window.
"Hey."
She turned at my voice, eyes going wide with surprise. Then she recognized me, and her expression brightened a little.
"Oh, hello! Um, the neighborhood thug from next door."
"That was ages ago."
"Right, I guess so. I haven't seen you around much lately."
She gave a small, soft laugh.
"Heading home?"
"Yes."
"Hop in. It's a long walk from here. I'm going home too—we can ride together."
She hesitated for a moment, then said, "Thank you," and climbed into the passenger seat.
A soft, pleasant fragrance filled the narrow cabin of the car. I glanced sideways as she buckled her seatbelt. The enormous volume crushed against her tight T-shirt seized my attention all over again. Wow. I'd been curious since last time. What cup size was she, exactly? Definitely past a D, no question.
"You were walking home? Why not take the bus?"
"Ah… just because…"
The usual brightness was gone from her voice. Curious, I snuck a look at her face—it was clouded over. Her lips pressed tight, the corners of her eyes slightly downturned. She hugged the major textbook she'd been carrying tighter against herself. From the side, her chest was compressed so hard it looked ready to burst, and I had to fight down the urge to see her bare.
Boy trouble? That was my first thought—then I remembered what she'd said under hypnosis last time. I want to do well on my exams. And the memory of her going to the library with a friend. Ah. Was it exam period at the university?
"Is studying not going well, by any chance? Isn't it exam season?"
Her shoulders flinched—I'd hit the mark. She looked at me with those round eyes, then let out a long sigh.
"Yes…. I really needed to do well on these exams… but I think I bombed them…."
She sighed again, staring out the window.
"I really, really needed to do well this time……."
"Something going on?"
"Just… worrying about what happens if my grades don't come through."
"Ah, right…"
I offered a suitably sympathetic smile. And thought to myself: this incredibly pretty girl next door, with those huge breasts and a perfect body—I wanted her. Not just to stick my cock in her pussy, come, and be done. Not that I was going to look only at her, either. Absolutely not.
The car arrived at the studio-apartment building quickly. I found a parking spot and stopped. Then I whistled.
Whee—.
The girl next door froze mid-motion. Her unfocused pupils stared into empty space. She was completely under.
I leaned toward the passenger seat. Looking at her sitting there defenseless, at those soft, plump lips—I couldn't hold back. I closed the distance and covered her mouth with mine.
"Mmm…"
I used a hypnotic command to make her respond naturally. Her lips moved, working against mine—but clumsily.
"Never been kissed before?"
"…No."
I couldn't stop myself. I kissed her again. Sucked once on those soft lips, then pushed my tongue inside.
"Mph."
I watched her rounded eyes with a fond gaze as I twined my tongue around her awkward one, teasing her. It was her first kiss, but with the rejection response stripped away by hypnosis, she didn't refuse. I could have made her more aggressive if I wanted—but I left that for next time. This clumsiness right now only deepened the satisfaction of taking such a pretty girl's first kiss.
I wanted to climb over the seat right then, recline it, and take her—but I stopped the kiss. Pulled my lips away. A string of saliva, stickier from my arousal, stretched between us like a thread. Her face was flushed red. The way she panted, swallowing hard—it made me want to devour her.
"Hoo—."
I steadied my breathing, cooled the heat, then put a hand on her chest to settle myself. An enormous size that wouldn't even fit properly in one hand.
"Ah…"
Even under hypnosis, she flinched when I touched her breast. First kiss, and almost certainly the first time a man had touched her chest. I really needed to keep this one close—not let her go anywhere.
"What's your name?"
"Kim So-hwa."
So now I knew her name.
"Age? You go to Yeongdeungpo University just up the road, right?"
"Yes. I'm twenty, and that's right."
"Height and cup size?"
"I'm 165 centimeters, and my chest is… a G-cup."
Wow. How had a body this slender been born with something that huge attached? I kept groping her breasts through her clothes, distorting their shape, as I asked questions. G-cup. A truly devastating size. And that was with a bra still containing them.
"What's your ideal type?"
"Someone kind, who listens well. Warm, someone I can rely on. Someone I can lean on. And someone who's diligent about their work."
All internal qualities? If this weren't hypnosis, I'd have assumed she was managing her image, saying what people expected. But under hypnosis, it was one hundred percent sincere.
"You said that was your first kiss—never dated a guy?"
"No, I haven't."
"Not even in middle or high school? You must've been popular."
"Yes…. I got a lot of confessions, but the boys would talk about my chest among themselves, so it was a bit…"
Ah. I'd heard that well-endowed girls tended to shrink into themselves during school years.
"How was kissing me earlier? Was it bad?"
"No…. It wasn't as bad as I expected."
Looking at her shy face made me want another kiss. I pulled Kim So-hwa—the girl next door—by the arm and brought my lips close again. She startled slightly, then squeezed her eyes shut. I explored her lips and tongue briefly, then pulled away with regret. I wiped the saliva from the corner of her mouth with a tissue.
Even with the rejection response removed by hypnosis, the fact that the kiss hadn't been bad—no, from her reaction, it had been better than expected. If I played it right, physical contact shouldn't be a problem going forward.
"Why were you so down earlier? Just because you bombed the exams?"
"…My parents said if my grades don't come through this time either, I have to come back home. They think I'm just living alone and playing around instead of studying."
Ah, that would be game over. She couldn't go back home. I wasn't even fully exploiting the advantage of living next door yet. If the distance grew, contact would get much harder.
"Is home far?"
"No. Not super far, but commuting would be tough. More than that… I just don't want to go back home."
Living on her own had been a dream of hers, she added with a little hing.
Yeah. Once you hit university, living alone was something everyone wanted to try.
"These were midterms, right? What about crushing the finals and trying to persuade your parents?"
"Ah…. Yes. That seems like the only way."
Kim So-hwa nodded. Watching her, I thought: was there anything I could help with through hypnosis? Could hypnosis make someone study? If the memory remained after the hypnosis lifted, it might be possible. Maybe if I kept leveling up?
I was about to release the hypnosis when I asked for Kim So-hwa's phone number. I wrote it in my smartphone's memo pad. Registering it in the contacts might make her show up in messenger friend lists—better not. Then I released the hypnosis.
"Uh…"
"We're here."
"Yes, yes. Thank you."
Kim So-hwa smiled brightly and bowed her head. We got out of the car and took the elevator together. Like this, it almost felt like we lived together.
After parting at our doors, I went into my room and sighed. I'd considered introducing myself properly and asking for her number, but I had nothing to use as an approach. Just exchanging numbers because we lived next door felt weird. We weren't even fellow students. For now—I had hypnosis, so it would work out somehow. If not, I could make time to see her often and dig into her weak points under hypnosis.
But first things first. I needed to handle my own business.
I turned on my smartphone and finally began the operation I'd been patiently waiting for. Two hundred million won in crypto. The gallery café woman's personal slush fund. I'd been on edge this whole time, wondering where that money might go. Hidden even from her husband—money she'd have to explain the source of if she ever reported it to the police.
If the gallery café woman simply changed the recovery key, that was fine. I could go back, put her under hypnosis, and find out again. But if she sold the coins and converted them into some other asset? And if that asset was hard to take? That possibility had kept me anxious.
But soon she'd be plenty busy. Even if she noticed the coins were gone—she couldn't have reported it or responded effectively anyway—she'd be too distracted by the crisis of a six-hundred-million-won commercial building in her mother's name about to vanish, plus the threat of lawsuits.
The interesting part: even if you deliberately siphoned off assets like this, and even if a court recognized it, it stayed in the civil domain. You didn't actually become a criminal. So if someone tried to get the gallery café woman's husband—the furniture importer—criminally prosecuted, the police would just shake their heads. Even if a fraudulent-conveyance cancellation suit succeeded in court, under criminal law, if the assets had been moved well in advance rather than right before a judgment, punishment was hard to come by. Practically speaking, it didn't happen.
So I felt zero guilt about what I was doing now. I hadn't before, either—but now even less. If anything, I felt good.
Using the recovery phrase I'd photographed last time and the electronic wallet I'd prepared in advance, I transferred the gallery café woman's slush fund into my own wallet. The coins were stablecoin. Thank god. If it'd been Bitcoin or some other coin, it might have risen—but a crash would have shriveled the value. Converting now would leave a trail I couldn't use, and by the time I came back for it, two hundred million might have become twenty million. But a stablecoin pegged to the dollar was a literally safe slush fund.
I entered the recovery phrase, and the wallet balance appeared on screen. A little over two hundred million at market rate. My hand paused for a moment at the number. An amount on a completely different scale from the small sums I'd been making. I double-checked the address several times, then moved the funds.
A moment later, my wallet balance changed from zero.
It was my money now. This money.
Today, I made two hundred million won. No—I stole it.