Chapter 010
Clink!
“Thanks, Seongmin-ah.”
[TL Note: The Korean suffix -ì•„ (-ah) is an intimate, casual vocative particle used to call out to close friends, younger people, or children, often conveying affection.]
The two clinked their glasses.
Taehee looked in a much better mood than when Seongmin first met her.
Watching that change in Taehee, Seongmin tried to understand what she was thinking.
‘Is she feeling good because the incident got resolved?’
To Seongmin, emotions were something very simple.
So he thought the same would apply to Taehee.
But Taehee’s feelings were subtle and complicated in their own way.
Seongmin was a guy whose appearance was nothing special.
He didn’t even stand out among other men.
If you took away studying, he was the kind of guy who didn’t catch anyone’s eye at all—that was Seongmin.
That’s why she had dated Junho, the most popular guy at school back then.
But after becoming a new graduate and stepping into the real world, she realized society was a literal jungle.
In that place, guys like Junho—who only had good looks and smooth talk—were thoroughly the weak, the bottom rung.
And today, she saw the appearance of a true strong one in Seongmin.
‘Heh, now that I look closely… he actually looks a bit cool.’
She didn’t like Seongmin or anything like that, but her instincts were starting to feel favorable toward him.
And she also felt grateful that he had safely resolved the incident for her.
“Cheers! One more shot!”
“Huh? Sure.”
Seongmin had almost no experience drinking before.
The only time was when he briefly touched his lips to a glass the professor offered during a department gathering.
Yet today he had already drunk more than half a bottle of soju.
“Ughhh.”
“What? I thought you only studied, but you can really drink.”
Taehee laughed as she poured more into Seongmin’s empty glass.
He was clearly just a model student who only studied and had zero presence, yet for some reason she kept paying attention to him in various ways.
“Actually… this is my first time drinking at a bar.”
“What? For real?”
But contrary to Seongmin’s words, he was already tilting another shot into his mouth.
“Wow, you really seem like you were born to drink.”
“Is that so? But it doesn’t taste good. I don’t get why people drink this.”
“What? You say it tastes bad but you’re downing it so well?”
“Well… because you’re the one pouring it for me.”
Even at Seongmin’s casual remark, Taehee found it amusing.
He was completely different from the guys his age who took pride in their drinking capacity.
At that moment, Seongmin smiled brightly and poured another shot down his throat.
“It doesn’t taste good, but the mood feels nice. So alcohol has this kind of charm.”
“Right? For me too, it’s not really the alcohol itself—I like the drinking atmosphere.”
“Yeah. I used to think drinking gatherings were just meaningless time-wasting, but it doesn’t seem like that anymore.”
“Time-wasting? Well… maybe it can be.”
Taehee had also been feeling a lot of things since graduating from university.
Up through high school she had lived with the title of “goddess,” and there was nothing in the world she feared.
Everyone liked her, everyone praised her.
She wasn’t particularly good at studying, but people were so deluded they even thought she was smart.
She had taken all of that for granted and believed life was just about enjoying yourself.
But after graduating from university, she slowly began to hit the walls of the real world.
Her résumés were rejected left and right, and it was only with difficulty that she managed to get hired at a small company.
She still received plenty of compliments for being pretty, but surviving in society was a completely different matter.
The reason she hesitated to report the traffic accident to the police was also because she was afraid of facing disadvantages at work.
“I used to think everything would just work out easily, but it doesn’t. Looking back, I feel like I wasted time on useless things instead of studying hard.”
As the alcohol warmed her up, she sighed and opened up about her hardships.
Listening to her story, Seongmin understood that she had struggles different from his own.
He regretted the time he spent only studying and never playing.
But he also realized that the opposite case left regrets too.
“No matter how you live, there’s probably regret about the paths you never took.”
“Wow~ You’re actually pretty cool.”
Taehee now seemed to have completely let down her guard around Seongmin.
“Cool? I’m just a pathetic study-obsessed loner.”
“Heh, yeah, that part is true.”
“What?”
When Seongmin got indignant, Taehee smirked and continued.
“But after coming out into society, I realized guys like you are the real final winners.”
“That’s……”
Today was the day she started seeing Seongmin—the guy she used to ignore and call a loner—differently.
In her eyes, Seongmin was no longer a pathetic loner; he was a truly strong existence.
Rather, the time she spent thinking she herself was the strong one now felt like something to regret.
“Maybe that’s why… today I kinda feel like getting drunk.”
In his previous life, Seongmin had once thought the same thing.
He believed he was the true winner, the one who would laugh last.
But reality was a life where his fiancée was stolen by a classmate, and he met a ridiculous death.
It was a life far removed from being a winner.
Thinking about it made everything feel empty.
“Do we really have to win at everything?”
“Huh?”
“Right now, if you can be faithful to this moment and enjoy it, wouldn’t that make you the winner? If you live faithfully to the present instead of dwelling on the past, wouldn’t that be happiness?”
Seongmin spoke his honest thoughts.
But at that moment, tears suddenly started falling from Taehee’s eyes.
Seongmin panicked at the sight.
“W-What? Why? Taehee-ya?”
“Ah, no… it’s just… I’m happy…….”
“Huh? About what?”
Seongmin couldn’t understand what Taehee was saying.
Still, he didn’t want to wake the magic club’s Insight again just to check on her condition.
Then Taehee wiped her tears, gave a small laugh, and spoke.
“I’m… doing okay right now, aren’t I?”
“If you’re doing your absolute best and working hard, then yeah, you’re doing well, right?”
She was the famously aloof and prideful Taehee.
There were times when she had to sell smiles for sales, times when she had to swallow her pride to hit her targets.
Friends who knew her sometimes looked at her with pity.
And Taehee often felt hurt by those gazes.
But Seongmin simply acknowledged her as she was right now, without judgment.
“Thank you. I’ve really been living hard, you know.”
“Yeah, it looks like it.”
Taehee smiled and lifted her glass again.
For the first time, she felt recognized not for her appearance, but for her own efforts.
The feeling wasn’t bad at all.
But for Seongmin, a crisis of a lifetime had arrived.
“Hey! Taehee-ya, snap out of it?”
[TL Note: The Korean suffix -야 (-ya) is a casual, intimate vocative particle used to call someone by name or nickname.]
“Mmm…”
Taehee, completely drunk, didn’t seem able to pull herself together.
They had stepped outside the bar, but she looked heavily intoxicated.
“Just… let me sit for a second…….”
Taehee spoke with difficulty.
With no choice, Seongmin helped her sit on a bench in the alley for a moment.
Then her body slowly tilted sideways and leaned against him.
“Huh? T-Taehee-ya?”
“Just… for a bit…….”
She seemed very worn out from the alcohol.
So he had no choice but to support her.
With a tired expression, she rested her head against Seongmin.
“Haa… I think I drank too much.”
“Should I go buy some water?”
“No… just a moment…….”
Taehee leaned her head against Seongmin.
Along with the smell of alcohol, he thought he caught a strange, subtle scent.
And looking down from above, the cleavage and thighs he had seen in the car were now fully exposed to his view.
‘Ah, this isn’t good…….’
Being pressed so closely against Taehee, the sleeping magic club’s Status—his “magic club”—slowly began to awaken.
As if asking if it was finally time to start, it gradually raised its head.
When it bulged noticeably against the fabric like a rock, Seongmin panicked.
‘If Taehee sees this…….’
Unfortunately, it was right in her line of sight.
He thought it was only a matter of time before she noticed his erection.
But no immediate way to calm it down came to mind.
He felt like he was about to be branded a complete pervert.
And at that moment, a light flickered above Taehee’s head, displaying her Status.
Like someone entranced, Seongmin checked her status.
‘Want to do it? Hm?’
He read her mind.
But with Seongmin’s common sense, he simply couldn’t comprehend it.
Then Taehee’s hand slowly moved.
Grab.
“Hup! T-Taehee-ya.”
Before he knew it, Taehee had grasped Seongmin’s magic club with her hand.
And she looked up at him.
“You’ve never been with a woman, right?”
She squeezed her hand as she spoke.
“Urk.”
“Well, it’s your first time at a bar too…….”
“T-Taehee-ya.”
Seongmin did have experience with women.
Just yesterday, the intense memory with Lee Minju ajumma was still vivid.
[TL Note: Changing Auntie to Ajumma]
So he tried to answer her, but she didn’t give him the chance.
“Wanna do it today?”
“Huh? D-Do what?”
“Should we go over there?”
For a moment, Seongmin thought he saw Taehee give a sly smile.
And where she pointed, a motel sign was visible.
He couldn’t understand at all why she was acting this way toward him.
Taehee had been dating Junho, and she used to think of him as a pervert.
He wondered if she was so drunk she was mistaking him for someone else.
In a hurry, Seongmin checked Taehee’s status again.
Because he was fully erect, her status was easy to read.
‘In heat? A state of wanting to be loved? Suddenly? What the hell is this nonsense.’
At the very least, it didn’t seem like she was just saying it because she was drunk.
And even though Taehee was intoxicated, she was still beautiful.
Compared to Lee Minju ajumma, she was pretty and young.
And she was the woman Seongmin had once even had a one-sided crush on.
While Seongmin hesitated to answer, his magic club answered for him.
Throb!
“Heh, you really are a man.”
With those final words, Taehee took Seongmin by the hand and led him straight into the motel.
She even handled the payment herself.
“Is this your first time in a place like this too?”
“Huh? Yeah…….”
“Heh, nice.”
“Huh? What’s nice?”
“There’s just something about it.”
***
Shwaaaaa!
The sound of running water continued from the bathroom.
Seongmin, sitting at the edge of the bed, still couldn’t fully grasp the situation.
It was clear that Taehee seemed to feel some favor toward him.
But he couldn’t understand why she felt that way.
Somehow things had ended up with him having a relationship with Taehee, but he at least wanted to know the reason.
Yet no matter how much he thought, he couldn’t figure out what point about him had made Taehee feel favorable toward him.
Then, suddenly, as he thought about burying himself inside Taehee’s body, he looked down at his magic club—now painfully swollen and taut.
‘Could it be…… because of this?’
Even as a man himself, he could tell it was quite impressive.
Maybe Taehee had noticed this big thing and liked it?
Because if it wasn’t that, he couldn’t think of any reason for Taehee to like him.
“Yeah, that has to be it. Ajumma liked this thing a lot too.”
He couldn’t understand women’s hearts.
So he simply concluded that it was just because of his big size.
While Seongmin was lost in his own delusion, the bathroom door opened.
Taehee appeared, wrapped only in a towel.
She still had a drunken expression, but she looked much better than before.
Just seeing her like that made his magic club feel like it would burst out and charge between her legs right away.
He worried that if the alcohol wore off, she might change her mind.
But fortunately, it seemed her feelings hadn’t changed.
“You should wash up too.”
She spoke somewhat calmly.
Seongmin, who had been extremely tense, stood up like a machine.
“Ah, okay.”
Seongmin hurriedly stripped off his clothes and rushed into the bathroom.
He scrubbed every inch of his body with extreme thoroughness.
Especially his magic club—he cleaned it with extra care.
After washing quickly, Seongmin wrapped a towel around his lower half and cautiously stepped back out.
Even though it was covered, his magic club still made its bold presence unmistakably known.
Seeing that, Taehee—who was lying on the bed—gave a small laugh.
“Come here.”
“Huh? Okay.”
Seongmin carefully lifted the blanket and slipped in beside her.
When he slightly lifted the blanket, he realized she was wearing absolutely nothing underneath.
And soon, the bare touch of her skin pressed fully against his entire body.
Taehee smiled slyly, leaned her body against Seongmin, and whispered.
“Since it’s your first time, this noona will take care of everything.”
“No, wait, it’s not my first time…….”
Seongmin was about to insist on telling the truth.
But at that moment, Taehee grabbed his magic club tightly.
Having realized that Seongmin—the one she used to look down on—was actually the true strong one, Taehee had felt her own life seemed pathetic.
But at least in this area, she felt a strange sense of pride that she was one step ahead of Seongmin.
She had learned a lot from Seongmin, but she didn’t want to completely deny everything about herself.
This was her last shred of pride: wanting to stand above Seongmin, at least in bed.
“This is the guy who’s so desperate to eat this noona, right?”
“No, it’s not like eating or anything like that…… Hup.”
Taehee flipped back the blanket and brought her face toward Seongmin’s magic club.
He thought he could feel her sticky breath against it.
Naturally, she moved her lips toward Seongmin’s magic club.
Chuuup.
Her lips lightly sucked along the tip as if brushing past.
At that electrifying sensation, Seongmin unconsciously clenched his buttocks.
Throb!
His magic club swelled to the point of bursting.
“Oh my.”
She let out a short gasp of surprise at the fully engorged size.
But soon enough, the massive club pushed its way between her lips.
Even though he had experienced it with ajumma’s mouth yesterday, the still-unfamiliar pleasure shot up his spine like lightning.