Without a word, I picked up the glass and brought it straight to my mouth. I figured it was better to just drink it fast and get it over with. Since it wasn’t much, I knocked it back in one go, out of habit from drinking soju — and immediately regretted it.
Forget the overpowering smell — before I could even register the taste, the liquor burned its way down my throat and spread through my stomach. It was so harsh I nearly choked it back up. Chugging straight from a soju bottle would have gone down easier than this.
“Ooh, you can really drink.”
The blond man said, sounding impressed.
“One more.”
He seemed to be getting into the spirit of it and poured the same amount into my glass again. Maybe because I now knew what to expect, I was reluctant to drink it, but the blond man kept watching me intently, clearly waiting until I finished it, so I had no choice but to tip it back again.
The second one went down a little easier than the first, at least.
“Ha, you don’t hold back, I like that.”
He said something flirtatious enough to suit some perverted old man, then poured again.
Leaning in close, pressing his body against mine, he said in a low, laughing voice,
“Drink up.”
“…….”
This was already the third round in a row, and it occurred to me that maybe this bastard just didn’t like me and was doing this on purpose.
Gentlemanly, my ass.
On the surface he laughed lightly, playing the affable type, but his personality wasn’t nearly as easygoing as it looked. I’d honestly have preferred dealing with someone who cursed me out or threw punches right to my face. Types like this were more dangerous than you’d expect.
Every single “gentleman” the owner had praised to high heaven turned out to be exactly this kind of difficult customer.
Not wanting to push him any further, I drank this one down too. Maybe it was from downing three glasses back to back, but the alcohol hit me hard and scrambled my thoughts. I tilted my head up toward empty space for a moment, blinked, and lowered it again.
I exhaled, trying to push out the rising scent of alcohol along with my breath, and clear my head, when the blond man, leaning against my shoulder, murmured into my ear.
“So hot.”
What nonsense.
As irritating as it was, I couldn’t exactly spit in his face, so I just kept my eyes fixed on the innocent glass in front of me.
But then—
Glug, glug, glug.
This time, he poured roughly three times what he had before. The glass filled to the brim, golden liquid swaying inside it. Just looking at it was enough to turn my stomach now.
This fucking bastard.
I turned my head to look at him. A curse nearly slipped out of my mouth. The moment our eyes met, he grinned wide and said,
“If you finish this one too…”
He opened his wallet, and this time it wasn’t fifty-thousand-won bills. He pulled out a check — and not even a hundred-thousand-won one, but one with three zeros more than that.
“This is all yours.”
The escorts watching the scene unfold made their attention even more openly obvious now. Every single one of them stared at the check on the table with eyes practically vibrating. If I’d refused to drink, they looked ready to lunge for it themselves.
It was an amount I couldn’t have earned working part-time jobs for an entire month straight. More than what I’d made in a full month risking my life on that deep-sea fishing boat. And that kind of money had been stuffed into my pocket before I’d even been in this room for a full hour.
This life of mine, honestly…
Moments like this made it feel like a sick joke.
I picked up the glass.
And thought to myself,
Fuck… I’m screwed.
If I drank all of it, how long could I even hold out?
I’d never drunk enough to actually black out before, but something told me this would do it. Still, there was no putting the glass back down now either. Hoping I at least didn’t have some embarrassing drunken habit, I brought the glass to my lips —
Bang.
A sound violent enough to rattle the table, and the air around us froze instantly.
The man in the seat of honor had slammed his glass down hard onto the table. The glass beside it tipped over and shattered against the floor.
Even the blond man, who’d been chattering away beside me with a smile this whole time, went still.
Every sound at the table seemed to cut off at once, and a chill spread through the entire room. I sat frozen with the glass still in my hand.
Then the man’s eyes lifted, fixing directly on me.
Those beautiful eyes pinned me precisely. In that instant, my only thought was: I’ve been caught. I wanted nothing more than to get out of there immediately. It felt like his gaze alone was crushing the breath out of me.
That’s when it happened.
“We’ve prepared something today with a lingering finish that holds up even without a cigar.”
It was the escort attending to the man.
“Would you like another glass?”
Under the dim lighting, his thin shirt was unbuttoned at the top by a couple of buttons, exposing the line of his neck. He was the lead escort, one who, even at West Hollywood — known for being selective about its guests — was selective about which guests he’d attend to himself. The only other time I’d seen him was a brief glimpse of his silhouette when the VIP lounge first opened; this was the first time I’d seen him this close.
He swiftly tidied the cluttered area around them. He didn’t seem to rush at all, yet the cluttered table cleared up almost instantly, and he met the man’s eyes. I couldn’t help but admire how naturally he tried to seize control of the moment.
No wonder he was the lead escort, I thought — and yet the man didn’t so much as glance at him.
And then—
“Come here.”
A low, quiet voice.
A command carrying no emotion whatsoever.
A brief silence.
Everyone at the table began watching the man’s mood carefully. And I was no exception. I sat frozen, glass still in hand, eyes darting.
Reading the situation as best I could, it became clear that the person I was actually supposed to be appeasing wasn’t the blond man — it was the man in the seat of honor.
Tch.
I clicked my tongue inwardly and stood up, glass still in hand.
A sudden grip.
The blond man caught my hand. The glass tilted, and the liquor sloshed over, spilling down my wrist. The unpleasant feeling of liquor seeping into my sleeve from the inside out.
The blond man said, lips curling.
“Why’re you getting up already?”
The soft edge to his words might have sounded gentle on the surface, but this bastard wasn’t right in the head either. He looked like he was smiling amiably, but the air in the room felt like it could erupt into a brawl any second.
The blond man held my hand firmly. He wasn’t pulling hard, but the grip on my hand felt heavy, like being caught in a snare.
“You still need to finish your drink.”
He said it with a smirk, as if deliberately trying to provoke the other man. The blond man clearly had no intention of letting go until I’d finished the glass.
I glanced around to see how the other escorts were handling this, but they were no better off than I was, equally stuck. Even the lead escort I’d been counting on just held his breath and stayed exactly where he was. I gave up looking for help.
I stared down at the swaying liquor in my glass.
A strong temptation rose up — wouldn’t it be better to just drink it and black out entirely?
That’s when the gaze from the seat of honor pierced straight through me.
I lifted my eyes from the glass, and met the man’s gaze. Something about him seemed twisted, off-balance, and just like that first day we met, he was dragging me toward him with nothing but his stare. And helplessly, I found my body starting to move toward him, as if pulled along.
I stopped short.
My body couldn’t move forward any further. It was the blond man’s grip on my wrist. He showed no sign of letting go, locked in some kind of standoff with the other man, with me caught between them.
The blond man spoke.
“You’re being unusually touchy today. Usually you don’t even look twice.”
He wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled, hard. My body lurched, and I ended up sitting right on the blond man’s lap.
“Is it because of this one?”
He said it right against my ear.
The blond man seemed to be enjoying himself, provoking the other man. The man’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. But like cracks slowly spreading through silence, the atmosphere around him grew steadily more menacing.
What the hell is this now…!
Caught between the two of them, I couldn’t help but wonder what exactly I was doing here.
Especially appalled at the fact that I was now sitting on someone else’s lap, my face twisted with displeasure, when the blond man suddenly grabbed my face and forced it to turn toward him.
And just as he leaned in close, about to kiss me—
Crash!
The glass that had been slammed onto the table went flying, grazing past my cheek, and shattered sharply against the wall. Everyone in the room let out short gasps, and shards of glass scattered everywhere. Some of it nicked the skin under my chin, leaving a stinging sting there.
The room froze over once again.
No one breathed.
Just as it seemed like the two lunatics were about to come to blows—
“Okay, that’s enough.”
The blond man slowly loosened the arms wrapped around me.
I instinctively stood up off his lap. My body felt heavy, as if pressed down by lead. No — beyond heavy, my stomach was churning. The cough and fever that had been clinging to me since yesterday, combined with all the alcohol I’d just downed, left my body feeling half-detached from reality.
In the middle of all that, the blond man pushed at my back and said,
“Go on, your master’s calling.”
A shove.
The push knocked loose what little balance I’d managed to hold onto. My body tipped forward, and my vision lurched violently. Just as everything in front of me seemed to sway and collapse, I barely managed to grab the table and steady myself.
