A Gangster's Proposal

"Finish eating? Then we're leaving."

The car pulled away slowly, the night scenery beyond the window streaming past like flowing water. The sweet lingering scent of soju, the lingering warmth of skin, and that unmistakable leather smell of the car seats all tangled together into an air that felt, strangely, safe.

Harin blinked her eyes against the drowsiness pulling at her.

Her reason knew this was no time to let her guard down, but her body had already begun answering to something else. Right beside her, the line of his profile she'd been sneaking glances at stood out in sharp relief under the passing streetlights.

Seated in the hush of the car, breathing in his scent while the low hum of the engine vibrated through her, watching the way his eyelids had dipped slightly lower—it was maddening. Disgust, fear, and yet a strange, inexplicable heat, all of it mixing with the alcohol and spilling off in a direction she hadn't intended.

Her fingers tightened around the hem of her pants. Her fingertips had gone numb.

The sound of each breath through his nose, the veins standing on the back of the hand gripping the wheel and along his forearm, the way his throat bobbed every time he swallowed—Harin couldn't tear her eyes away, and it unnerved her. Her senses were tilting, hot and unwanted, toward him.

He seemed to feel her furtive gaze.

"Got something to say?"

He glanced sideways at her first, casual as anything.

Harin took it as an opening, as good a chance as any, and spoke.

"What is it you do, anyway?"

It wasn't simple curiosity. Harin believed that if she could get him to admit it himself—that Lee-gang was a mobster, a thug—then this uneasy restlessness, this subtle reaction of her body, would be cut off at the root in a single stroke.

She felt his gaze flick over from the driver's seat, brief and measuring. Turning the wheel with one hand, he answered a beat late.

"I run a pawnshop. Own a few logistics warehouses too."

He paused, as if choosing his words, then added flatly, "Manage some buildings. A bit of this and that……."

Harin listened closely, and understanding landed in her gut at once. What he was saying now wasn't exactly a lie—but it wasn't the truth either.

"It's not just 'this and that,' is it."

For a life to be written off with a phrase like that and that, there wasn't a single ordinary thing anywhere near him. A CEO barely into adulthood, an expensive-looking car, a black suit, the Arena, that blood-soaked abandoned church… He lived a life impossibly far removed from anything resembling ordinary days.

And above all, she hated having to admit that she was the one being drawn toward him. Swayed by him.

Before he could answer, Harin passed her own verdict. If she didn't stop this here, it wouldn't just be her in danger—her grandmother and Hayul would be dragged in too.

Her mouth had gone dry. The part of her straining to flee from him and the part of her pressing closer stood locked in a tense standoff inside her chest.

So she had no choice but to spit the words out harder.

"You're a thug, aren't you. A goddamn gangster."

At that, the line of Lee-gang's jaw hardened, just barely. A delicate silence settled over the car.

He looked at Harin sitting beside him out of the corner of his eye, then turned his gaze back to the road ahead. And then he let out a short breath of a laugh.

"Guess you sobered up."

Harin glared at the side of his face. She'd struck bone-deep, and yet he looked calm. Unbothered. At ease.

The car climbed a hill road into the mountains and came to a stop in the empty lot at the edge of a small village. The moment the engine died, the air inside went cold in an instant.

Harin opened her door with the practiced ease of someone used to getting out here, stepped down quickly, and started toward the mouth of the alley that led home.

Behind her came the heavy thud of the car door, the click of the locks, and then the slow, deliberate tap of dress shoes catching up.

So now he means to learn where I live, too.

A hollow laugh ghosted across Harin's lips. Gangsters could dig up bank records and home addresses whenever the mood struck them—nothing about it required tailing someone up a hill on foot.

And yet there he was, trailing her with uncanny persistence. His footsteps were close enough now to be distinct, and at the sharp sound of dirt and grit grinding between asphalt and leather sole, Harin grimaced and stopped walking.

This wasn't the first time he'd driven her home. Every time before, he'd dropped her off at the lot and vanished without a backward glance. What wind had blown him out of that habit tonight, of all nights, she couldn't fathom.

She turned her back on him and asked, "Why are you following me?"

He stopped a few paces behind her and looked up at where she stood on the slope of the hill.

"You want something from me?"

His eyes drifted through the empty air for a moment, as if weighing something, then crinkled into a smile, as if an amusing thought had struck him.

"If I tell you—will you hear me out?"

Harin's brow creased.

Lee-gang dipped his head with a soft laugh and went on. "Fine. I'll skip the niceties and talk like the thug I am."

"……"

"I'll sponsor you. Fight in the Arena as a fighter."

His voice was low, and impossibly, perfectly calm. He said it with the frankness of a man who had exactly one purpose and no reason to hide it.

She scowled at him. "I already told you no—"

"Your father."

He cut her off, then added quietly, "He disappeared, didn't he?"

At the tremor in her eyes, Lee-gang swallowed, slow and deliberate, and stepped closer.

"From what I hear, he got mixed up with gangsters. Then vanished."

Under the streetlight at the mouth of the alley, her shadow wavered just slightly. She had no idea how far his knowledge reached, and the not-knowing was its own kind of dread.

"How the hell do you know that?"

"As a fellow gangster thug, I could find him for you."

It was the tone of a man who knew exactly where her soft spot was and had it clamped in his fist. It sounded, unmistakably, like a negotiation.

Harin couldn't speak for a long moment. Her throat felt packed solid.

Dad. She had let herself think about finding him. Had allowed herself the hope that if she did, maybe the weight pressing down on her shoulders—the weight she carried for Hayul and for her grandmother—might grow a little lighter.

But realistically, hunting down a man who'd already been swallowed by the underworld and vanished wouldn't lighten that load. It would bury her deeper. So she'd folded the thought away and put it in a drawer.

"I can't stand gangsters."

At her words, Lee-gang's eyebrow twitched.

"You included."

"……"

"You've already had my whole background dug up, haven't you? If you went that far, then you know exactly how much I resent my father. Wouldn't common sense tell you not to bring him up?"

He raked a hand through the hair at the back of his head, his face tight with something like exasperation, as if she were the one being unreasonable.

"Hey. Look at your own situation. No parents. No proper job. You scrape by on part-time work, you've got a kid hanging off you, and your grandmother's in and out of the hospital. You know what those bills run?"

Every word of it true, which was exactly why Harin had nothing to say.

"By any normal measure, these are good terms. You know what sponsorship means? A place to live where you can finally sleep easy, food on the table, someone in your corner—I'll give you all of it, and all you have to do is box to your heart's content, the way you always loved. What exactly is your complaint?"

Harin left him standing there and walked up the hill toward the blue gate of her house.

Not worth another second of listening. He judged on his own, pitied on his own, and bestowed on his own. Who had ever asked to be pitied?

"Hey—!"

But Lee-gang came after her.

She glanced back over her shoulder with a scowl, irritation crawling all the way to the tips of her hair, and nearly shouted it at him.

"Do you like me or something?"

She hated herself, too, for being drawn to a man this insufferable. "You thought if you came at me like that, I'd drop to my knees and grovel? 'Oh thank you so much for taking pity on me, thank you ever so much for liking me'—is that what you expected?"

Where Harin bristled, Lee-gang stayed composed. He closed the distance with a face gone unreadably still, and then—with a pressure that was neither rough nor gentle—he cupped her jaw and cheek and pushed her back against the gate.

The iron door clanged against her spine, and his lips came down on hers.

The instant their mouths met, everything behind Harin's eyes went white. A soft, pliant tongue pressed past her teeth, drenching the bitter taste of soju, burrowing deep.

Tongue met tongue, and a faintly wet sound slipped out between their lips. Harin's hands floundered in the empty air—until Lee-gang caught them, as if to say hold on to me, and drew them up to rest against his chest.

Through the hard plane of his chest she felt it, unmistakably: his heart pounding, pitching, surging. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt.

His large hand pressed deeper along the line of her waist and back, and the searing heat of his palm pushed through her clothes, straight down her spine. He pulled her startled body flush against him, and at the same moment his tongue pushed deeper, sweeping over the soft flesh of her mouth.

Then Harin felt it—something hard pressing firmly against her lower belly. Layer upon layer of clothing between them, and still the heat of it pulsed against her, insistent and swollen, and her breath shuddered.

She wasn't so naive, at her age, not to know what it was. She knew very well how aroused he was, and what—by now—was the only thing left in his head.

The kiss grew rougher, the once-pliant tongue turning greedy and sharp as it raked through her mouth.

She was dizzy. His breath, his heavy bodily warmth, the fever of his skin—it all fused together and sank into the deepest part of her, waking something that had been asleep inside her for a very long time.

Even as his lips left hers with a soft, wet sound, Harin felt a shudder run through her, as if everything she was were being swept away.